fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Authorship Attribution through Markov Chain
Tags: Towards Data Science, Likelihood, Markov Chains, Nltk, Authorship Attribution

Given a piece of work, how do we identify its author? This piece of work aimed to give a brief idea on authorship attribution using Markov Chain.

Authorship attribution (AA) is the task of identifying the author of a given text. It should not be confused with Authorship Profiling that concern with the author’s information such as age, gender or ethnicity.

Let’s begin with the assumption:

AA assume that every individual has its own unique writing style and consistently applied throughout his work. We assume that the true author is in the group of candidates author. That is: The prediction model will produce single output from the pool of authors.

Stylometry Features

The main idea behind the AA is that by extracting some measurable textual features ( Stylometry features) ,we can discriminate the true author of the given text that shares with similar features.

There are many types of stylometry features such a Lexical features (word), Character features ( letter frequency, n-gram etc), Syntactic features (error, phrase structure), Semantic features (Synonym, functional) and application specific features (HTML, use of greeting in emails) (Stamatatos 2009).

Here, we focus on Characters level feature, it has the advantages of language-independent (at least for most of the languages) and robust to spelling errors (Like typo, as compare to lexical feature).

Markov Chain:

Markov chain is a stochastic process that model probability of future state solely by its current state. It was introduced by the Russian mathematician Andrey Markov.

Text can be viewed as sequence of words or characters, where the next word or character is governed by stylometric style of author.

Thus, Markov chain can be applied and the transition probabilities between characters can be used as an authorship fingerprint to distinguish between authors.

Log-likelihood

Likelihood of the sequence of text is the product of all the probabilities of the characters. For instance, we have the following probabilities:

P(H|T) = 0.02, i.e. the probability of character H given current T is 0.02

P(E|H) = 0.03, i.e. the probability of character E given current H is 0.03

The likelihood of the text: THE is then 0.02 x 0.03 = 0.006

Hence, the total likelihood of a long sequence of text is going to be extremely small, making it hard to compare. Instead, log-likelihood is used.

The likelihood of the text: THE is then log(0.02 x 0.03) = log(0.006) = -2.22
hubii core now live on mainnet, airdriip registration for ETH holders open
By: Liam Aharon
Tags: Ethereum

More good news from hubii: today our innovative crypto asset manager, hubii core, goes live on the public mainnet. Even better, hubii core now offers easy importing of wallets from a keystore file, Chinese language support and airdriip registration for ETH holders!

hubii core explained

hubii core is a user-friendly tool for managing your hardware and software wallets in one place, available for Windows 7 and above, macOS 10.9 or later and Linux (64-bit only). Haven’t tried hubii core yet? Download the latest version from the official releases page.

Using core, you can see the various token balances inside each wallet and the current fiat value of your holdings. The transaction history for each wallet is clearly displayed, with more details about each payment available at the click of a button. Users have the option to build a contact book of names and addresses, making payments as easy as possible.

hubii core brings much needed simplicity to the complex world of crypto. Wallets can be created directly within hubii core or imported using a private key, mnemonic, Ledger Nano S, Trezor or keystore file. Users are guided through the process by prompts, which explain exactly what is happening at each stage. Wallets can also be backed up or exported as needed.

Payments through hubii core are easy to manage, requiring only the destination address and amount. Transaction gas is set automatically and hidden under an ‘Advanced settings’ menu, where the gas price and limit can be set manually if required.

Simplex Integration

hubii core also offers users the ability to purchase ETH directly using a credit card. Through our partner Simplex, VISA and Mastercard cards can be used to purchase between $50 and $20,000 USD of ETH in exchange for a small 5% fee.

Internationalization

One of our primary goals with hubii core is to make it accessible to as many people as possible. Only 1.5 out of the 7.5 billion people in the world speak English, so clearly for us to achieve this goal hubii core must support multiple languages. We’ve been working hard to enable full translations of hubii core, and are proud to announce that this release of core now supports the most commonly spoken language worldwide, Mandarin Chinese. We plan to add many more languages in the future. Languages can be changed on-the-fly, through a drop-down menu in the application settings.
#42: EasyTutor
By: Kelly Mcquade-W.
Tags: Blockchain, Investing, Education, Finance, Bitcoin

Featuring Phil Anderson, founder of Easy Tutor.

Listen Now

Show Notes

The promise of technology to improve education IMHO has yet to be fulfilled, Easy Tutor claims to have a solution, today, Phil Anderson, the founder, explains how and why they will do this on the blockchain. CEO of EasyTutor Phil Anderson, EasyTutor is a client of Coloring Crypto.

Transcript

Coming Soon.
Let’s talk about filter bubbles and echo chambers.
By: Swizec Teller
Tags: Politics, Social Change, Opinion, Filter Bubble, Social Media

There’s been a lot of talk of filter bubbles and echo chambers. The blue feed this, the red feed that. The media is biased, the facebook ruined information, the twitter is a cesspool, The Result is their fault.

Facebook must change! Twitter must change! Media must change!

Here is a truth:

Here is another truth:

Television is not the truth! Television is a God-damned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We’re in the boredom-killing business!

Replace television with social media, most of the internet, hell, even traditional newspapers, and you’ll get the situation we find ourselves in.

All media is the same entertaining shit. Designed to please your ego, validate your beliefs, and never to upset you. Unless, of course, upsetting you boils down to “See how bad your life could be but isn’t? Go you!”

This is not a consequence of some vast conspiracy, of The Man suppressing dissent. It’s an emergent result of what you (and I) enjoy. The result of our collective preference, if you will.

Fundamentally, people want to be entertained, not informed, validated, not challenged.

Facebook, Twitter, click-based journalism, television, and the media in general, they’re all just symptoms of our collective laziness. They do all they can to keep us engaged and coming back. They don’t care about informing you, and you don’t care about being informed. You think you do, but that’s not what you click on.

And why would you?

It’s tiring to always fight for your beliefs. It’s exhausting to defend your viewpoint. It’s frustrating that two people can fundamentally disagree and still both be right.

There are several cognitive biases (among them the illusory truth effect, confirmation bias, the bandwagon effect, and congruence bias) that make people engage more strongly with ideas that fit their preconceptions and discount ideas that don’t.

This leads to echo chambers. We each become wrapped in our own little bubble where the world agrees with us, we’re always right, and Those Others™ are just too dumb and delusional to know any better.

They think you’re just as dumb and delusional as you think they are.

So what can you do?

Seek disagreement. Click links you hate. Like and heart and comment on posts you think are crazy, backwards, and dumb. Train the algorithms to give you everything. Show the journalists that they should cover all angles.

Yes, this will make your Facebook and Twitter and the rest “worse”. It will make your life harder and the internet less fun. But remember: when two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

Become friends with people you disagree with.
Enter the boat with me
By: Mathews George
Tags: Hope, Poem, Purpose, Boat, Prayer

Photo by Pietro De Grandi on Unsplash

Enter the boat with me

The same boat you stood in a few days ago

Before you said, “follow me”

The squall reminds me of

my days with the net at sea

You seemed to know that I was

tired of standing on this side,

and so you said,

“Let us go to the other side”

My nets often took me to the middle

of the sea-lake

But you want me to cross the sea

and see

Take the lead

Enter the boat with me.
What Happens When you Learn to Appreciate Ordinariness
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Mindfulness, Politics, Society, Philosophy, Self

What does it mean to be ordinary?

And what if depression were a sane reaction from realists to a world careening out of control?

Did I lose five years of my life to major depressive disorder because I feel and think too much? Or was it because I wasn’t quite prepared for how America works when I immigrated in 2013?

Realists are those blunt folks too down-to-earth to ever espouse the “stay positive” school of self-delusion that provides ego massages on tap. And yet, no matter how inconvenient our radical honesty comes across as, our ranks are growing. The greater the reach of greed and individualism, the more some of us push back in the name of human dignity.

One might argue there’s never been a better time to do so than ahead of a life-changing election in which America could realistically elect someone other than Donald Trump. But likely will not as he is a terrifyingly honest representation of who America is, what it values, and how it behaves on the world stage.

For example, setting more boundaries and erecting more walls between us can’t possibly be the way any society will evolve and yet many of us do exactly that at individual level despite expressing shock at Trump’s ideas. We build echo chambers that comfort us in our self-righteousness; we build niches that elevate us to the status of instant experts about nothing more groundbreaking than our own person.

As an aside, “niche” means doghouse in French.

Realists, meanwhile, shun walls; we are at our best attempting to build bridges to make the world a more tolerant and tolerable place to live in. Even when no favourable outcome looks possible what matters to us is to try, on the off-chance it might just work out.

Often, those bridges are wobbly and collapse half-way through. We lose purchase, we fall into the water, we flounder and flail and make fools of ourselves, hoping someone will be there to offer us a hand to hold.

When there isn’t anyone, we sometimes sink to the bottom without a trace; when we manage to conjure up enough mental and physical wherewithal to fight, we kick the ocean floor and make our way back up to the surface.

And we start rebuilding the bridge because there is no other way forward out of the darkness.
License.Rocks to Tokenise $14.3 Billion Software Licensing Market
By: Wouter Verhoog
Tags: Cryptocurrenc, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tech

License.Rocks to Tokenise $14.3 Billion Software Licensing Market

A case study on OST Partner Company license.rocks

Let’s talk about software licensing. Embedded, Cloud-based, on-premise. Business to business, business to consumer. Billing integration, usage tracking… Not exactly a conversation starter, is it? That is until you realise the sheer size of this under-appreciated market:

The global software licensing market is expected to reach $14.3 Billion by 2023, a compound annual growth rate of 8,5% between 2017 and 2023.

Source: Market Research Future

Looking at regional market shares, the Europeans take the cake: Europe is expected to account for the largest market share of $204M by 2020; with Germany making up the bulk of the market with 25% market share.

Visual courtesy of marketresearch.biz

The North American market is expected to achieve the biggest CAGR of more than 10%, with the Asian-Pacific market likely to follow suit, as major players like China and India are “less mature in enforcing IP rights, and more prone to under-licensing,” according to a report published by MarketResearch in January 2018.

With so many licenses sold, one may wonder what happens to those agreements when a company ceases its operations (M&A, insolvency), or when a project simply gets migrated to cloud-based software. Turns out there’s an entire industry dedicated to giving licensed software a second lease of life, and it may well be the fastest grower in the realm of software licensing.
Catch up with Cannes Lions Roving Reporters, Luc and Rogin
Tags: Digital Marketing, Creativity, Cannes Lions, AI, Interview

Every year Dentsu Aegis Network sponsors our brightest and best talent to attend Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, to get inspired, and feedback on their experience.

This year, a duo from Isobar won the competition to attend. So we took a moment to interview them on the Croisette to give an insight into their time here in Cannes.

What’s being a Roving Reporter all about?

From a creative perspective, being a Roving Reporter is being able to make the best of new interfaces and communication tools to deliver DAN’s creative vision in a relevant, fresh and innovative way. It’s about making sure you connect with the movers and shakers within our network — the people who are directing from the top.

Can you tell us more about what you do at Isobar (Luc)!

I’ve worked at Isobar as a creative for a year and a half. Since then, I’ve been busy developing the creative vision and activities for Isobar in Belgium — we’ve been transforming ourselves, whilst transforming our clilents businesses! Amongst other things, I work on the digital content strategy and development, digital assets production, creative solutions and recently I was selected to participate in R500. Route 500 is a high potential programme — so I am flattered to have been selected — and I really hope it will help on my journey to become a creative director.

This is your first Cannes Lions. What were you looking forward to the most?

Basically everything — from the people to the parties. I always insisted on the fact that diversity powers creativity. Exchanging with creative leaders and minds about the importance of creativity in our digital world is the best way to step forward into Isobar’s and DAN’s 2020 perspectives but also for me to get insights from the most experienced markets in the world when it’s about creativity.

Artificial Intelligence, VR and AR features heavily on this year’s Cannes agenda. What do you think will have the biggest impact on the creative process, and our industry?

AI will definitely have the biggest impact on our industry and on the creative process.

It has the potential to ensure we create work with relevance and at scale — getting as close as possible to the consumer. But I strongly believe that using human understanding tools such as empathy and perspective will continue to be valuable.

As a creative, I know that I have to understand AI deeply and how to use its potential to ultimately unveil our abilitiy to create individual experiences at scale — so Jean Lin’s talk about the Future of Creativity will be really useful!

Finally, what are you hoping to get out of your experiences at the world’s largest celebration of creativity?

Insights, learnings and contacts from DAN’s and Isobar’s most advanced markets in creativity to become an asset every step of the way in our future transformation.
Go Chump in the Night
By: Zach Weinersmith
Tags: Childhood, Monsters, Class

Sign up for Taking Stock of COVID: New comics from The Nib

By The Nib

New comics from Matt Lubchansky, Keith Knight, and Niccolo Pizarro. Plus How Seniors Are Living With COVID-19. Take a look
Repeal Section 230?
By: Jay Sizemore
Tags: Propaganda, Politics, Censorship, Trump, Social Media

Repeal Section 230?

Donald Trump is angry at Facebook again

Image by Lisette Brodey from Pixabay

It’s such an odd thing to often wake up these days and find that the President of the United States has been tweeting angry phrases in all caps, but this is the reality of our current world. Donald Trump, who recently declared himself “maybe immune” from coronavirus, was at it again this morning. His tweets have taken on a frenzied kind of “look at me, look at me” attitude, as if he is the class clown in the back of the classroom, angry that no one is paying attention to the noises he can make with his armpits.

Today, he is mad at Facebook again, because the social media giant once again removed one of his posts for misleading content. Twitter didn’t remove the post, but they did flag it with a disclaimer, as they have before, claiming the tweets of the president have a public interest to remain on record. The post in question, is one Trump made comparing coronavirus (again) to the flu, and making misleading claims about the severity of the annual flu season.

screenshot of twitter

It is well established by now, that Covid-19 is at least 20 times deadlier than the annual flu virus. And Trump’s claim that the flu has killed over 100,000 people is extremely misleading. The most people who have died from a flu season on record since 2010 was 61,000, and that is from an entire year of data. Any way you look at it, the coronavirus has killed and is still killing more people than the flu, and it has a much higher risk of mortality.

Trump may have pulled a political stunt trying to lower the public’s perception of the seriousness of the covid-19 pandemic, going to the hospital for three days and then declaring himself magically cured of a virus that is known to leave people permanently lung-scarred and physically affected in other ways, in a theatrically dramatic attempt to save his flailing campaign for re-election. Time will tell if that stunt had any impact, though from the reactions of some of his supporters online, it definitely had an effect. This is why the messages today from Trump were deemed dangerous to the public health, and removed, or flagged.

Trump’s response to this is to cry “censorship” and to tweet in all caps:
Deep Learning for Air Quality Prediction
By: Ashan Lakmal
Tags: Python, Predictions, Deep Learning, Lstm

Deep Learning

As we all know air pollution is one of the major problems in urban cities, where particulate matter is the most dangerous part of air pollution which affects humans than any other substance. Time Series Forecasting to predict air quality using Deep Learning with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Neural Network. First, let's talk about what's called by LSTM and the theory of it.

Recurrent Neural Networks

Traditional neural networks can’t do this, and it seems like a major shortcoming. For example, imagine you want to classify what kind of event is happening at every point in a movie. It’s unclear how a traditional neural network could use its reasoning about previous events in the film to inform later ones. Recurrent neural networks address this issue. They are networks with loops in them, allowing information to persist.

LSTM Networks

Long Short Term Memory networks — usually just called “LSTMs” — are a special kind of RNN, capable of learning long-term dependencies.LSTMs are explicitly designed to avoid the long-term dependency problem. All recurrent neural networks have the form of a chain of repeating modules of the neural networks. In standard RNNs, this repeating module will have a very simple structure, such as a single tanh layer.

repeating module in an LSTM contains four interacting layers.

In the above diagram, yellow boxes denote the neural network layer, Pink circle denote Pointwise Operation, and arrows mention the Transfer, copy . Each line carries an entire vector, from the output of one node to the inputs of others. The pink circles represent pointwise operations, like vector addition, while the yellow boxes are learned neural network layers. Lines merging denote concatenation, while a line forking denotes its content being copied and the copies going to different locations. The key to LSTMs is the cell state, the horizontal line running through the top of the diagram. The cell state is kind of like a conveyor belt. It runs straight down the entire chain, with only some minor linear interactions. It’s very easy for information to just flow along with it unchanged.

The LSTM does have the ability to remove or add information to the cell state, carefully regulated by structures called gates. Gates are a way to optionally let information through. They are composed out of a sigmoid neural net layer and a pointwise multiplication operation. The sigmoid layer outputs numbers between zero and one, describing how much of each component should be let through. A value of zero means “let nothing through,” while a value of one means “let everything through!”

An LSTM has three of these gates, to protect and control the cell state.
How Does It Feel?
By: Aikya Param
Tags: Delight, Poetry, Rhymes, Short, Purpose

How Does It Feel?

Why do I think of velvet when I think of a poem?

Photo by Ankit G on Unsplash

Why do I think of velvet when I think of a poem?

So many meanings — velvet’s summum bonum.

Velvet evokes a feeling in fingers with fuzz.

A fine poem evokes feelings, begrudges

Rational meaning. Some people say, “That’s fine.”

Are poems for us entirely beyond the mind? —

The magic formula to chant over cauldrons;

Call grief or joy, delight or surrender, ambitions

Or strategy. Much of world scripture are songs

In poetry, making it easy to memorize

And recite to guide oneself, or else seem wise

Like a pretend pundit’s PhD velvet disguise.
A Cold Winter Day
By: Dr. Jackie Greenwood
Tags: Poetry, Winter, Nature, Walking, Self

A Cold Winter Day

Enjoying the beauty of the season

Photo by Ales Krivec on Unsplash

Walking under a

cold blue sky,

wisps of white

breaking its expanse

All remnants

of past seasons

buried beneath

crusty snow

Weightless breath

so thin and clear,

warmed by

heavy layers and

the exertion

of movement

Nature is quiet,

no leaves

murmuring

on naked trees

But thoughts

ring loudly

until that tug

of the leash

and the dogs

drag me home

Dr. Jackie Greenwood

Thanks for reading:)

Inspired while walking my dogs and this beautiful piece by Lori Lamothe
Make Peace with Your Need to be Right
By: Bingz Huang
Tags: Mental Health, Energy, Channeling, Life, Inspirational

Originally published on my Facebook page on 2 Sep 2016.

When the mind argues, it’s always right.

It goes back and forth in time, in your memory bank, to find the right things to support your argument.

But, it doesn’t feel right.

Soften yourself further, and ask to feel more love.

Ask to find the Love underneath, or look at the walls you’ve built to block yourself from the love. Be curious about those walls of tension.
Competition: Win BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER’s Complete Series 20th Anniversary on DVD!
By: Frame Rated Staff
Tags: Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Features, Television, Dvd, Competition

Competition: Win BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER’s Complete Series 20th Anniversary on DVD!

Would you like to win a copy of the 20th anniversary edition of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Of course you would! So, read on…

The teen years can be brutal. Especially when you’re Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a high school student destined to slay supernatural, blood-sucking baddies instead of hanging out at the local mall.

Over seven seasons of this thrilling, witty drama from the 1990s, Buffy struggles to maintain allies in the fight against evil, while also engaging in on-off romances with a moody vampire or two.

Now you can own this 39-disc set containing all 144 episodes of one of the smartest, funniest, most action-packed series ever to slay on the small screen.

The 20th anniversary release contains audio commentaries on selected episodes, behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes, outtakes, audition tapes, trailers, cast biographies, scripts, karaoke sing-a-longs, and new 20th anniversary edition packaging.
Causalities of a Broken Relationship: A Poem
By: Chasity Gaines
Tags: Broken Heart, Memories, History, Poem, Past

Candy apple red Mustang

Uncomfortable cramped

Back seat, speakers vibrate eardrums

and butt cheeks, sitting dead center

Ponytail bobs with animated chatter

and raised voices in tune with the radio



Cooler than a polar bear’s toenails

A gap between front teeth

Freckled hands shuffle cards

with that goofy gaped grin

Treating me as if I was older

You never minded when I tagged along

Not a single time was I denied

A backseat ride between you two

Cruising the lot, windows down

The thrill of acting older, flashing

Shy smiles, flirting

with the toss of honey blonde hair,

my deep blue eyes sparkle



You didn’t even mind the sleep-overs

Crashing on the couch, MTV on

Side-splitting laugher with the bestie

as the blow dryer sounds after a quick

Love-making spell, she hated wet spots



Like the older brother I never had

Protective, shoulder to cry on, and

Your best attributes, your

sarcastic humor and giant heart

Taking in your girlfriend’s

clingy teenage sister.



But that was so long ago

You both moved on with life

Ending up with another

While I’m the one who lost a brother.

Thinking I was the glue

that bonded you two

Responsible for mending any cracks



Naive fool, I was to believe

blame fell heavy on my straight shoulders

When the dream was finally over

Like the rush of electric heat

From the taste of a new summer affair

Ebbing as the cool autumn winds blow

Feeling tender and raw, standing alone

as my life crumbled through my nail-bitten fingers



So I named my son after you

A reminder of the man I once knew

and loved despite faults and broken promises

Hashing old memories

Stealing your Private Stock cigarettes

Silly jokes, late night talks,

hilarious moments, and even the tears.



I saw you tonight, stood straight in sight

You spoke to the people in my group

Even caught my eyes once

So why couldn’t you speak?

to the once deemed little sister

Begging on the inside, hoping

Like the clingy teen sister

You’d speak my name

Giving credence to our shared history.
Addressing an Affordable Housing Crisis
Tags: Economic Development, Affordable Housing, Housing

Last week the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies released their annual State of the Nation’s Housing report. There were many striking findings, perhaps none as concerning as the growing need and shrinking supply of affordable housing (particularly for our aging public).

In 2013, 11.2 million extremely low-income households (earning up to 30 percent of the median income in the area) competed for just 7.3 million units they could afford.

Excluding units that were structurally inadequate or occupied by higher-income households, there were only 34 affordable units for every 100 extremely low-income renters in 2013.

To make matters worse, nearly 2.2 million assisted housing units could be lost from the affordable stock over the next decade. To address this crisis, new affordable housing projects are needed, and each project must be optimally located to maximize its impact. Fortunately, the data to support smart site selection is more easily available than ever before.

This post will show you how to identify the areas of greatest need in a few minutes.

Let’s use Chicago as an example.

First, we are going to look at a map that highlights concentrations of people living below the poverty level ($11,770 annual income for individuals — $15,930 for a family of two) and overlays that with the number of vacant houses in the area. In the map below the darker green tones indicate high concentrations of poverty and the darker pink tones indicate high vacancy rates.
How do people find your papers?
By: The Academia Team
Tags: Higher Education, Edtech, Open Access, Education, Academia

“Someone just searched for you on Google and found your page on Academia.edu.” Ever received this email and wondered how you were found? Google stopped providing us most of these terms in 2011, so for now, keep on wondering.

But, if you do wonder, then check out our newest premium feature, “Academia.edu Searches”! In the keywords tab of your analytics, you’ll see what search terms others use on Academia.edu to find your papers. This can help you understand what specifically about your work is attracting attention, and perhaps even help direct your next project.

You can view the terms for every Academia.edu search where we suggest your paper, and the rank of your paper on the results page. (The search term is premium, the rank is free!). As always, the external keywords sent to us by Google, Yahoo and Bing are still free, and still in your keywords tab of analytics!

Academia’s mission is to make all research available for free to everyone in the world. Upgrading to premium is a way to support this mission and help make all scholarship and science easily and freely accessible to everyone, not just those affiliated with well-endowed institutions.

Academia Premium also includes features such as Mentions, Readers, Advanced Search and Extra Analytics, in addition to Academia.edu Searches. If you don’t see these features, we probably haven’t rolled them out to you yet. We expect a full site-wide rollout within a couple of months. If you’d like early access, let us know at premium-support@academia.edu!
Cute QUEUES
By: Sejan Miah
Tags: iOS, Data Structures, Queue

I know that y’all have been waiting on this queue for too long. So let’s get right down to the code of the matter. Unlike Stacks, Queues are all about FIFO, think about FIFA, except not really. When you are in a queue you would hope that the first person in line would get served first. With this in mind let’s build this out!

We created a variable that would hold all our items together. Then we created a function that would append new items. The item being appended goes to the end of the queue. Furthermore, when we dequeue an item we need to check to see if we even have an item to begin with. Do not be the presumptuous programmer who assumes anything, check yourself and check your optionals! So once we’ve guarded our items in our queue, then we also check to see if the first element actually exists, if it does GREAT let’s return it! However, if it does not you should return nil because you don’t have anything in your queue! Finally, the peek method should be apparent you want to see who is in your queue and once again the item or person you would most care about is the first person.

Let’s look at an actual example of this:

So here we have the Lannisters. When we first peek inside we have no Lannister’s in our queue. However, after adding in three of the, you can see that we are returning the Lannister that we are also predicting to die this season. Queue’s and cersei’s death should be of no surprise to anyone. When trying to write the code for a Queue try to be empathetic with users and what I say by this is think of a time you were in line or serving someone in line…how would you go about helping them? That mentality should help you be able to write the code for a Queue and remember its core concepts!
How to be a mindful ethnographer. Be present,
By: Uday Dandavate
Tags: Ethnographic Research, Design Research, Contextual Research

Be present,

look, but

don’t search.

Be alert,

be aware, but

don’t focus.

Be patient,

empathize, but

don’t judge.

Be curious,

understand, but

don’t summarize.

Do Care,

Do participate, but

don’t get involved.

Empty your mind,

do collect the dots, but

don’t connect the dots yet.

Scribble notes,

Doodle diagrams, but

don’t type on a laptop.

Ask questions,

probe deeper, but

don’t argue.

Encourage them

to show and tell,

and to express

their opinions, but

hold back yours.

Be sincere,

be courteous, but

don’t get emotional.

Show interest

in their culture, and

in their etiquette, but

don’t bring up politics and religion.

Respect their silence,

interpret it, but

don’t interrupt it.

Respect their energy,

reinforce it, but

don’t be an imposition.

Respect their time,

use it prudently, but

don’t overstay your welcome.

Be friendly

to them, to their family

and to their pets,

because you may have to

go back for more insights.
AWS —Amazon Route 53 — Routing Policies Overview
By: Ashish Patel
Tags: AWS, Route 53, Amazon Echo, Routing, Cloud Computing

Multivalue Answer Routing Policy

Amazon Route 53 —Multivalue Answer Routing Policy

Multivalue answer Routing Policy is like Simple Routing Policy but it can return multiple values, such as IP addresses for your web servers, in response to DNS queries. You can specify multiple values for almost any record, but multivalue answer routing also lets you check the health of each resource, so Route 53 returns only values for healthy resources. It’s not a substitute for a load balancer, but the ability to return multiple health-checkable IP addresses is a way to use DNS to improve availability and load balancing.
Getting Started With Next.js + Storybook
By: Bret Morris
Tags: Web Development, React, Storybook, JavaScript, Nextjs

Recently I set about on a quest to get Next.js (v10) to work with Storybook. It seemed straightforward at first but it proved to be quite the gauntlet. Once I got it working, I decided to write this with the hope of helping the next poor fool who wonders down this path.

Why bother?

Good question. Should be your first question. Storybook might not always make sense for your project. Working on a small site or app without many components? Maybe it's not worth your time. Building a large website with a whole component system? Then yeah, I think it may be worth it. Storybook offers several benefits:

Generates docs for your components, which aids in knowledge sharing among your development team Allows for easier testing of edge-case scenarios — what happens if this component doesn’t have an image, the alternate theme is applied and it’s missing a title? Can be shared with content managers and designers so they can experiment with the component library that they have available to them.

Tutorial

Please note that in this tutorial, I am making the assumption that you already have an existing Next.js project up and running. If you don’t, please start by traversing the Next.js documentation.

Install Storybook in your project

npx sb init

Install dependencies you’ll end up needing

yarn add @storybook/preset-scss babel-loader css-loader file-loader sass-loader style-loader chromatic -D

Edit .storybook/main.js

Your main.js file might look a bit different but it will be pretty close. Mine has been customized for my project: SCSS modules, SVGR, and I’ve opted to include my stories in the components directory.

Edit /.storybook/preview.js

In this file, you just need to make sure you’re importing global styles that need to be accessible to all of your components. Also, and this is important, I’ve included an override for next/image. This is necessary for Storybook to handle the new Next Image component. It basically just replaces that component with a responsive image in all of our stories. Works well!

Create some stories

Finally, create a stories file for one of your components. If you’ll recall, my main.js is looking for stories that have the stories.js extension and are located in my components directory. This might be a little different for you, but you get the idea. Here’s an example of a very simple story that creates two instances — open and closed:

Deploy your storybook

A couple of options here:

Run yarn build-storybook and upload the storybook-static directory to any server Deploy your storybook to Chromatic — a storybook service that offers a ton of cool features including something called UI Review, which takes screenshots of your components and alerts users to changes. Chromatic is cool but an explanation of it requires its own post.

Closing thoughts

I hope this quick tutorial was helpful to you in some way. I know it would have saved me quite a bit of work if I had this before I went down my Next.js + Storybook path. Once you’ve got it all working, I think you’ll grow to love Storybook. Good luck!
The Sentinel
By: Darren T. Atherton
Tags: Poetry, Christianity, Religion, Spirituality, Theology

He’s witnessing abuse

being heaped upon

a dear Friend.

He’s standing somewhere

raised up,

his eyes wide and searching

for points of release.

There,

the gates to each pen,

each cage.

There,

each latch to loose,

each herd to drive.

There,

the means to make

the infamous whip of cords.

The heat is in his face,

perspiration touching

mild Nisan air,

failing to temper

a smoldering urge to move.

But he commands

this enthusiasm;

it does not command him.

No slave to dogma,

but a lover of substance.

Not the hasty pride of a zealot,

but the spontaneous heart

of a Friend.

As the story goes,

he does nothing to defend himself,

but here he is, the Sentinel,

guarding the precious name of his Heart

from hurried minds —

minds all too busy for a real God,

or perhaps just a Living One;

One in Whose presence

they barter and shout,

Whose liberating love

they blare and blink away

with shouts of haggling,

bleating sheep,

incessant twinkling

of coins across the court.

I see the first table turning,

the first peddler of salvation

darting to safety.

He stands, he moves

revealing the line drawn from the start,

without end,

between heaven and earth.

I can’t avoid the feeling

that nothing akin to compromise

is crossing his mind.
Tell me something good, Torpor.
Tags: Friendship, Humor, Comics, Marvel, Environment

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I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans.
The Surprising Way Gratitude Will Change Your Life
By: Ricky Lyman
Tags: Mindfulness, Happiness, Spirituality, Life Lessons, Gratitude

I started practicing gratitude in 2017 to feel happier. On a daily basis, I would write about 5 things I found myself grateful for.

Yep, sounds pretty crunchy.

But the evidence for the benefits of practicing gratitude is compelling. By simply recalling and feeling appreciation for something, we trigger a cascade of physiological and emotional changes in ourselves.

It tells your parasympathetic nervous system you are safe to thrive and relax. Dopamine and serotonin increase, causing you to feel happy and in the flow. Gratitude predictably and consistently creates a good sense that “everything is ok.”

It’s in this warning system reboot that we find a way to alter our mindset in a fairly easy and effective way.

The most surprising thing about gratitude is that it will give you the power to interrupt your current series of causes and effects and make a better decision for the future.

It’s like pushing pause on all the things dominating your focus right now and setting aside all dramas and moods for something real and authentic. Within seconds of practicing gratitude, your mind relaxes into ease, your body calms, and a subtle light warms what you see and feel.

With gratitude, you interrupt the path you were on for something inevitably better.

Your next conversation will be engaging. Your next insight will appear with ease. Your next action will be consciously made.

When practiced once or twice, gratitude will feel pretty good. When practiced daily, you will change the course of your life for the better. It’s a grandiose and prescriptive statement, but it’s been true in my life.

The simple nature of gratitude makes it accessible to us at any moment; the powerful nature of gratitude gives us a tool to change our lives.

Here are some things you can be grateful for right now:

You are alive. After billions of years of random chemical interactions in a seemingly endless space, you exist on a rock barreling through the darkness at millions of miles per hour.

After billions of years of random chemical interactions in a seemingly endless space, you exist on a rock barreling through the darkness at millions of miles per hour. You are reading this. That means you have access to technology, you live in a society that has the infrastructure to support the internet, and you have the time.

That means you have access to technology, you live in a society that has the infrastructure to support the internet, and you have the time. You have a purpose. Your life has meaning. If not, you simply wouldn’t be here.

And I am grateful for you and your time spent with my words.

Thank you, and have a wonderful day.
The Paradox
By: Abhinav Bhatnagar
Tags: Survival, Storytelling, Life, Fiction, Space

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Sirens are heard, loud, just like something is going to explode. An astronaut opens her eyes; a blurred vision tricks her to not get a clear picture of her situation. The sound of the alarm and hisses of gases from the appliances fills the chamber. She somehow gains her senses back, trying to float through one chamber to another inside the space station. The astronaut reaches the control chamber. A red flash is everywhere on every screen. Her blurry vision tends to come back in an interval of a few seconds as if she was hit by a large object before the explosion. She moves towards the ring-like, filthy windows of the station to check the status on the outside. She could sense the silence on the outside. She floats back to the computers just to find out that the connecting capsule is on fire and her colleagues aboard the station, are trapped between the two capsules as the systems have short-circuited.

‘FAILED’, is what the screens flash whenever she tries to extinguish it remotely. “Oh Lord, this is going to be a memory for a lifetime!”, she murmurs in a tense tone to herself. With her blurred vision, she somehow finds her way back to the first chamber, passing by the floating equipment, packed soaps, packed carrots, bread, etc. The spacesuit is out after a struggle. She puts it on & opens the emergency door. “Aaahhhh….!!”, she leaps like a tiger in a jungle, but without friction and gravity, she could only float herself to the capsule. Her colleagues look at her through the window, as the animals peeking through their cages. The hope can be seen on their faces as she approaches the capsule to extinguish the fire manually. As she tries to reach out to the emergency button on the outside of the capsule, she loses consciousness.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Loud bangs on the transmitter are heard as she gains her senses back, once again. She quickly remembers the task at hand & moves to reach the button. A loud hush & after a few seconds the fire is down. She takes a breath of relief as her colleagues are happy inside the capsule. The colleagues find their way inside the capsule, through the rescued path. It seems a happy ending; the astronaut floats her way back to the main capsule. They celebrate their rescue, as suddenly her vision sees few small crow-like objects, flying towards them. It’s the asteroids; she turns to tell everyone. But it’s too late, the station explodes.
Как насчет хоровой музыки? Барочной, а?
By: Orion Nebula
Tags: Music, Pieces

(оглядывается) Детей нет поблизости? А то тут PG17…





(Spoken:) Maid Mary having broke the handle of her hair broom and hearing that (Manservant John) had a long stick that would fit it, desired him to put it in for her.



1. My man John had a thing that was long,

My maid Mary had a thing that was hairy,

My man John put his thing that was long,

Into my maid Mary’s thing that was hairy.

2. My maid Mary then stirr’d it about,

till with stirring and stirring at length it came out,

but then my man John, thrust it in once again,

and knock’d it most stoutly to make it remain.

3. But John with much knocking so widen’d the hole,

that his long thing slip’d out still in spight of his soul,

till weary’d and vex’d and with knocking grown sore,

cry’d a Pox take the Hole for I’ll knock it no more.



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Композитор Джон Экклз, XVII век, Англия
Do this 6 months before you start raising money…
By: Haje Jan Kamps
Tags: Pitching, Fundraising, Venture Capital, Startup

Do this 6 months before you start raising money…

I’ve worked with dozens of startups helping them raise money. This is my #1 tip for everyone I start working with — it’s a no-brainer.

Connie in action at TechCrunch Cruncies in 2017

Before you even start your fundraising journey, sign up for Connie Loizos’ StrictlyVC newsletter. It’s a sorta-daily newsletter that summarizes fundraising activity.

The gameplan is this: Sign up for the newsletter. If you have time, read them as they come in — but you’re a busy entrepreneur, so you probably don’t have time. It’s still really helpful to have them all in a folder (set up a Gmail filter so they skip the inbox and all go to a folder).

When you start your fundraising journey, look at all the newsletters, focusing on funding rounds that are the same size as you’re raising. Connie includes a super helpful summary of each investment round (how old the company is, and a brief summary of what they do, how much they raise). Of course; the important data here is the investors that invest in the same space you operate in. Give it a skim, and add all relevant-sounding VC firms to a spreadsheet or a CMS system. That’s your top-of-funnel taken care of — without having to do a ton of research, and without having to spend a penny.

Easy!
GLX Stablecoin Now Accepted By Daily Fintech
Tags: Stablecoins, Globcoin, Glx, Cryptocurrency, Fintech

Great news keeps coming: The GLX is now the official payment coin for Daily Fintech, a platform committed to fintech news and offering advisory services with more than 25,000 subscribers from 199 countries. We’re seeing the GLX in use: a global payment stablecoin that enables the users to pay for services in a fast, secure and low-cost way.

Daily Fintech users can now choose GLX (Globcoin’s first stablecoin linked to 15 currencies + gold) as an alternative to traditional methods of payment (which are sometimes slow, expensive and cumbersome) to pay for Daily Fintech’s private consultations with experts. The process is quite simple: You choose an expert from their top-level network (such as Efi Pylarinou or Bernard Lunn, author of The Blockchain Economy), schedule your call and pay by the hour, selecting GLX as a new way to pay. The payment will be confirmed instantly.

They wanted to use a cryptocurrency as an alternative to PayPal and credit cards; especially to overcome FX costs and fraud risks. They also needed a cryptocurrency which is non-volatile by design: a stablecoin. But not just any stablecoin.

“Why we chose the GLX StableCoin”

Bernard Lunn, CEO of Daily Fintech; explains in this publication why they have chosen the GLX stablecoin and not another:

1. “Many big corporates and investors prefer a basket that is less volatile than a single currency. GLX is a basket of 15 currencies plus Gold that together account for more than 80% of the World Economy; this is less volatile than even the famously stable Swiss Franc”

2. “Fiat Collateralised (stablecoin model) is the most secure”

3. “The team behind GLX Globcoin, led by Helie d’Hautefort, has decades of sophisticated currency management experience before the Blockchain era”

4. Globcoin’s succesful background with the Globcoin card

5. GLX is based in Switzerland which is interesting for two reasons: 1- FINMA (the Swiss financial regulator) and 2- Switzerland is legally a multi-currency country.

We are very proud to have been selected as a digital means of payment by Daily Fintech. They have a large community with 25,000 members coming from over 150 countries. We look forward to expanding our partnership with them, and other key players in the industry to leverage the unique GLX stablecoin benefits to global service providers — Hélie d’Hautefort, Globcoin CEO

We couldn’t be prouder to have our first real use case with a Swiss, well-established company, with whom we share the same tech-driven community.