fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
nothing lasts forever…
By: Michael Robin Manning
Tags: Childhood, Life, Trauma, Change, Relationships

Having a day and some space in-between this provocative thought, I have summated a few things about this experience to make that hurtful truth a little bit easier to swallow.

The only thing you can count on is change. Not always when change will hit, but nothing really lasts forever. People will take a monumental comfort in what’s familiar, change is hard! Most people don’t change; they just become more the way they already are, morphing and finding their way through life. People don’t change who they are because someone is telling them to change, or because society dictates that they will need to change due to new life circumstances. Some people only change when they’re ready to adapt to the next phase of where they think their life is going.

It’s about you. You can’t force someone to change. The trick is, to accept the person for who they are. It’s only then that you can determine if the activity or behavior is intolerable for your life. If the answer is yes, find a way out of it. You aren’t responsible for the behavior of others around you, just the way you allow theirs to affect your life.

In the case of Deja, and many of us who are in situations where we can’t speak up nor have advocates to do so, this is harder. Sometimes we’re dealing with a biological connection to someone who was meant to love, nurture and protect us. The feeling of not being enough to change behaviors of self-destruction our loved-ones engage in may carry with us for the rest of our lives.

However hard it may seem for a child to think the act of being in their parents life will be enough to get them to quit smoking/drinking/doing drugs; it’s not that child’s responsibility to change the parent. I couldn’t tell you why my father changed to be clean, upstanding and appear his life was together, but it happened. Change is your responsibility to yourself, not to anyone else. Because of that, you’re not to blame if someone doesn’t change because of you. Likewise, you will never be enough for a person you want to change.

While we may always remain to fantasize that we have enough power to change an individual, that is only something that must come from the person themself. It’s about them, change comes from the individual themself.
‡ A new book of short stories from Elizabeth McCracken?
By: Terry Bain
Tags: Literary, Short Fiction, Fiction, Books, Reading

‡ A new book of short stories from Elizabeth McCracken?

Yes, please.

You can’t tell from the bookshop page, but the book has a cover, too (which I found on Kirkus Reviews).

I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but I definitely would prefer if you all would buy and read this book of stories. It’s bound to be good. (I’m relatively certain I’ve already read some of the stories in it, and whoah boy. Prepare yourself.)

Sometimes the news is good, y’all.

— t
Smart ways to write JSX in your React app
By: Harsha Vardhan
Tags: Front End Development, Programming, React, JavaScript, Software Engineering

Conditional rendering

There are three ways to conditionally render content in React.

If/Else

This is the general syntax where we use in most of the programming languages.

const val = 7;

if(val>5) {

return <div>Above 5!</div>

} else {

return <div>Below 5!</div>

}

Ternary Operator

You can also use the traditional ternary operators in JSX to render conditionally. We can also use these ternary operators inside JSX when it’s wrapped within {} , as discussed previously.

return isValid() === true

? <div>Yay!</div>

: <div>Error!</div>

Logical Operator

You can also use the logical AND operator && also to render conditionally. When this is used, only if the first condition is true the content will be rendered.
A short note on Gradient Descent optimization algorithms
By: Desh Raj
Tags: Optimization, Gradient Descent, Machine Learning

Mind Map for algorithms (taken from this forum post).

I just finished reading Sebastian Ruder’s amazing article providing an overview of the most popular algorithms used for optimizing gradient descent. Here I’ll make very short notes on them primarily for purposes of recall.

Momentum

The update vector consists of another term which has the previous update vector (weighted by γ). This helps it to move faster downhill — like a ball.

Nesterov accelerated gradient (NAG)

In Momentum optimizer, the ball may go past the minima due to too much momentum, so we want to have a look-ahead term. In NAG, we take gradient of future position instead of current position.

Adagrad

Instead of a common learning rate for all parameters, we want to have separate learning rate for each. So Adagrad keeps sum of squares of parameter-wise gradients and modifies individual learning rates using this. As a result, parameters occuring more often have smaller gradients.

RMSProp

In Adagrad, since we keep adding all gradients, gradients become vanishingly small after some time. So in RMSProp, the idea is to add them in a decaying fashion as

Now replace G_t in the denominator of Adagrad equation by this new term. Due to this, the gradients are no more vanishing.

Adam (Adaptive Moment Estimation)

Adam combines RMSProp with Momentum. So, in addition to using the decaying average of past squared gradients for parameter-specific learning rate, it uses a decaying average of past gradients in place of the current gradient (similar to Momentum).

The ^ terms are actually bias-corrected averages to ensure that the values are not biased towards 0.

Nadam

Nadam combines RMSProp with NAG (since NAG is usually better for slope adaptation than Momentum. The derivation is simple and can be found in Ruder’s paper.
Time Release
By: Ali Shapiro
Tags: Adderall, Comics, Quantum Physics, Drugs, Addiction

Spiralbound

Comics for life, brought to life by Edith Zimmerman.
When was the Last Time you had an Orgasm?
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Feminism, Mental Health, Sex, Sexuality, Relationships

Not only did the advent of major depressive disorder steal my writing voice and annihilate my livelihood but it also ate my libido.

Swallowed it whole in one bite might be a more appropriate way to describe the demise of my sexuality. In that sense, depression was a time warp that made me into a toddler with boobs and a library card, someone unable to live life unassisted.

And who suddenly no longer has either sexual urges or indeed a sex life. Fun fact: I can remember the last time my husband and I had sexy time as it coincides with one particular event. I’d have to dig and find the relevant piece of paperwork to give you an exact date but let’s say it’s been a long time.

So much time my hymen may well have grown back by now. There are many questions I do not have answers to but my marriage sank into this immutable state of sexlessness that we’ve both come to accept as what is. A measure of how much I’ve internalized it is that I’m now writing about it.

Admitting publicly that attraction is no longer part of your life is problematic, unusual, and rare.

On the one hand, my libido left me, and on the other, it’s highly likely that the person I’ve been married to for the last five years no longer fancies me either. Did they ever? There are some answers I may never get.

This is quite a blow to the ego but depression makes you adaptable to a fault. When the parameters changed, I learned to accommodate them and embrace the kind of comfort I’d never allowed myself before.

As a feminist woman, this reads like a full house on the cliché bingo card. I stopped shaving my legs, grew a full bush, jettisoned make-up, and went 1.5 years without stepping foot into a hair salon. And financial hardship made it very easy, as easy as the total absence of dates. Because marriage made those redundant, somehow.

Not that I let myself go, exactly. Instead, I taught myself yoga at home and became a keen — at times obsessive — practitioner, albeit a fuzzy one. Yogi bear?

But I stopped dolling myself up because I seldom left my house and no one ever came to visit. Plus body hair adds an extra layer of insulation in the punishing Pacific Northwest winter.

And my feminism got tested, hard.
Spark Memory Management
By: Tharun Kumar Sekar
Tags: Spark Executor, Spark Internals, Spark Heap, Spark, Spark Memory

Let's try to understand how memory is distributed inside a spark executor.

Spark executor memory decomposition

In each executor, Spark allocates a minimum of 384 MB for the memory overhead and the rest is allocated for the actual workload.

The formula for calculating the memory overhead — max(Executor Memory * 0.1, 384 MB).

1st scenario, if your executor memory is 5 GB, then memory overhead = max( 5 (GB) * 1024 (MB) * 0.1, 384 MB), which will lead to max( 512 MB, 384 MB) and finally 512 MB.

This will leave you with 4.5 GB in each executor for spark processing.

This will leave you with 4.5 GB in each executor for spark processing. 2nd scenario, if your executor memory is 1 GB, then memory overhead = max( 1(GB) * 1024 (MB) * 0.1, 384 MB), which will lead to max( 102 MB, 384 MB) and finally 384 MB.

This will leave you with 640 MB in each executor for spark processing.

On Heap Memory

By default, Spark uses On-memory heap only. The On-heap memory area in the Executor can be roughly divided into the following four blocks:

Storage Memory: It’s mainly used to store Spark cache data, such as RDD cache, Unroll data, and so on.

Execution Memory: It’s mainly used to store temporary data in the calculation process of Shuffle, Join, Sort, Aggregation, etc.

User Memory: It’s mainly used to store the data needed for RDD conversion operations, such as the information for RDD dependency.

Reserved Memory: The memory is reserved for the system and is used to store Spark’s internal object

Memory Distribution

You have to consider two default parameters by Spark to understand this.

spark.memory.fraction — to identify memory shared between Unified Memory Region and User Memory.

In this case, it is 60%. Say, if we have 1 GB spark executor memory 600MB will be allocated for the Unified Memory Region and 400MB for User Memory.

In this case, it is 60%. Say, if we have 1 GB spark executor memory 600MB will be allocated for the Unified Memory Region and 400MB for User Memory. spark.memory.storageFraction — to identify memory shared between Execution Memory and Storage Memory. The default value provided by Spark is 50%. But according to the load on the execution memory, the storage memory will be reduced to complete the task.

Spark Network Speed

One of the reasons Spark leverages memory heavily is because the CPU can read data from memory at a speed of 10 GB/s. Whereas if Spark reads from memory disks, the speed drops to about 100 MB/s and SSD reads will be in the range of 600 MB/s.

If CPU has to read data over the network the speed will drop to about 125 MB/s.

Common Issue CheckList
What’s in a name!
By: Micki Berthelot Morency
Tags: Names, Immigrants, Culture, Identity, Assimilation

Identity. individuality. Self!

Picture from the author’s personal stock

The phone rings. I push the answer on my screen. A woman’s voice says: “Is this Mee…umm…” she clears her throat. “mee…wail…lee?” I pull the phone away from my ear. She’s too loud.

“Is there someone around who speaks English?” She continues.

“I speak English,” I answer. “May I help you?”

“Oh!”

It was a medical office calling with a reminder for my upcoming appointment. I’m always willing to give a pass to those who don’t bother to ask. “How do you pronounce your first name?” That question usually starts a conversation where I tell the caller that my name is French, and I’d pronounce it correctly.

“Oh, it’s so pretty,” the caller would say, “and you have a beautiful accent to go with the name. You’re from France? I’m dying to go there.”

“No. I’m from Haiti.”

“Oh!”

No one’s dying to go to Haiti.

Decades ago, in a Boston high school, a teacher decided I was going to be Micki. She didn’t have the patience to let me have my name and I didn’t have the courage yet to fight to be called by it.

I had already left a lot on the shore of my home country to become an American. The early years were hard. I had to learn to adapt to so much: new language, new climate, new values, new races, new housing…

Then I lost my name.

What’s in a name?

Mine was chosen by my Papa. I was a Daddy’s girl. A name is your first identity. That’s what distinguishes you from everybody else. Even though I grew up in a neighborhood in Haiti with three other girls with the same name, but mine was unique to me in the context of my family. And when you add my last name to it, it is who I was born to be. Then I got married and picked up another last name.

My birth name connected me firmly to my individuality. When I became all these other people: American, wife, mother, immigrant, diaspora, Micki…What was my real identity?

“A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” — Dale Carnegie.

The day back in high school when I accepted to be called: Micki, I gave up more than I’d realized. But I didn’t want to frustrate people with my name and I sure didn’t want to call attention to myself in class, so I became that other person.

There’s a question on the naturalization and citizenship application, that allows the applicant to change his/her name. For months I considered it. I could pick Nancy, Irene, Carol…but in the end, I kept my birth name. The one my parents chose for me because it suited me.

“Why is it so important to use people’s names? A person’s name is the greatest connection to their own identity and individuality. Some might say it is the most important word in the world to that person.” —Joyce E. A. Russell.

Because someone has a name you can’t pronounce does not mean that person is dumb and deaf. Don’t speak too loudly. We can hear you just fine!

My name is: Mireille.
Coronavirus: Kenapa harus bergerak sekarang
By: Cornellius Yudha Wijaya
Tags: 1st, Covid 19, Indonesia, Coronavirus, Virus

Coronavirus - When Should You Close Your Office?

How To Use Coronavirus Work From Home Model If you want to use this model, make a copy. I can't allow editing, as there…
From Bitter To Sweet
By: Ravyne Hawke
Tags: Self Improvement, Poetry, Personal Growth, Emotions, Prompt

Anger and outrage once served me well

I allowed their bitter seeds to dwell

created a warm place to flourish

swallowed the dreaded fruits to nourish

After decades of their consumption

their pungent taste lost their seduction

My soul longed for rejuvenation

something sweet to change my perception

Now when bitterness reaches my tongue

peace and joy flood in ‘til it’s gone

© 2020 Lori Carlson. All Rights Reserved.
You Would Most Likely Do it All Over Again
By: Taofeek Tolu Shittu
Tags: Mindfulness, Insights, Mindset, Personal Growth

A few enclosed paths lie before thee, and one behind. A couple of choices later, and it’s the same scenario; a few in front and one behind.

Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash

Unlike ‘Choices,’ a game in the app store which tries to mimic real-life decision-making scenarios, you can’t replay an episode like it never happened. Once you go through a path, the others are sealed. And once you carve your way out of a path, it becomes the one behind.

You can visit the previous path, but it can’t be carved any further. While visiting, one or two of the other paths you didn’t take seem visible through gates that can’t be opened.

At some points in our lives, we humans tend to look back with regret at certain paths we had taken or certain decisions we made, claiming that we would do it differently if given a chance to do it all over again.

What most people fail to consider is the fact that at the point of looking back, we have the luxury of an experience that we didn’t possess while looking forward then, an option then that we know isn’t the answer now.

At every present moment, we all have decisions to make, and more often than not, we make them with the best of abilities, knowledge, and experience that we have or at least think we have. We aren’t to know what really lies through the other paths that we don’t take.

So next time you feel so bad about making a mistake, remember that if the slate were wiped clean and you were given that opportunity of choice again, but without the experience, you gained;……..

you would most likely do it all over again.

The mistakes of the past don’t have to hurt so much. They bear gifts in the form of experience, a gift so essential in moving forward.
The Best Banned Books
By: Cynical Xennial
Tags: Ideas, Advice, Fiction, Books, Reading

In honor of Banned Books Week, a collection of ten personal favorites with highlighted quotes from each.

Congerdesign / Pixabay

As the proverbial saying goes, people always want what they cannot have. Just as it applies to an illicit lover or the latest cost-prohibitive shiny thing, it also applies to what people desire to read.

Forbidden fruit is truly sweeter. Consequently, whenever a small-minded group bans a book from a certain demographic, it instantly becomes more seductive and fascinating, resulting ultimately in a larger readership. One simply must appreciate the irony.

It is shocking to see some of the epic, beloved works that have been restricted over the years. Let that be a reminder to us all when future works are pushed to be restricted as well.

I have not yet read everything on the banned list, nor have I loved all the ones that I have read. In honor of Banned Books Week, below are the ten best ones I have read thus far, listed in order of publication.

Fellow reading rebels, comment below and let me know what your favorite banned books are.
How to Spot and Avoid Death
By: Awful Pictures
Tags: Gardening, Science, Cartoon, Death, Interior Design

Home to some of the best stories on medium. Look around, relax and enjoy one with a sip of coffee.

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Submission Guidelines for Vital World Online
By: Rejoice Denhere
Tags: Self Improvement, Submission, Writing, Fiction, Business

Submission Guidelines for Vital World Online

What you can submit and what you need to do

Image by Pixmedia on Pixabay

Vital World Online is a fast growing online publication.

What We Accept

We accept stories from new and established writers in the following genres/topics:

Business

Self-improvement

Fiction

Submissions must be the writer’s own original work.

Formatting Your Story

Below are examples of how your story should be formattted.

How You Can Make Money From Your Writing On Media

For tips on how you can make money on Medium read this article by Dr Mehmet here.

How To Be Added As A Writer

If you would like to publish your story with us please email us at:

vitalworldonline@gmail.com

Please also include a link to the story you would like to submit for publication as well as your Medium username.
Giving Substance to Thought: The Power of Metaphor
By: Angela Volkov
Tags: Language, Reasoning, Perception, Cognition, Metaphor

Abstract thinking

The bouba/kiki effect illustrates that language has deep roots in metaphor. And language structures the very way we think. We rely on metaphor with its transitive properties to communicate precisely because we rely on it to comprehend the world around us — so posits Conceptual Metaphor Theory.

“If all abstract thought is metaphorical, and all metaphors are assembled out of biologically basic concepts, then we would have an explanation for the evolution of human intelligence. […] Metaphor allows the mind to use a few basic ideas-substance, location, force, goal-to understand more abstract domains.” — Steven Pinker, “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature”

Numerous studies show that we associate love with spatial proximity and physical warmth to the point it manifests in our speech — we feel “close” to our loved ones, and “warmly” about them. We implicitly recognise that divinity is “up”, immorality is “down” and “dirty”, and things that are significant are “big” issues and “weighty” matters (Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010).

By connecting abstract concepts such as the blossoming of love or the march of time with our motor and sensory systems we are able to ground them in easily understood concrete terms (Lakoff, 2014). As such, we liken the flow of time to the familiar bodily experience of moving through space (with the past behind us, and the future something to look forward to), and someone’s kind words to the warmth of their embrace, thus relating emotion to temperature.
Tether Added to Crystal Analytics
By: Crystal Blockchain
Tags: Blockchain, Tether, Technology, Crystal Blockchain, Cryptocurrency

Tether Added to Crystal Analytics

The Crystal Blockchain platform has just been updated to include Tether (USDT), along with several other new features.

1. Tether Added to Our Platform

We have now added Tether (USDT) to Crystal Blockchain analytics! Tether is one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies, with a market cap of $4.5b+. Tether support will be available as part of the Bitcoin (BTC) interface on the platform — it has been extended to show USDT transfers.

It is important to note that this addition will mean a few changes in your platform functions, including:

Explorer: On the entity/ address page, it is now possible to check the amount of assets received (in BTC or USDT), as well as the entity/ address balance in fiat (USD or Euro). Both types of transfers (BTC and USDT) are now considered when calculating a risk score, making our overall profiling capacities much stronger.

We have extended the Connections feature for USDT, so users can now choose from five different currencies.

Visualization: Users will now also be able to build visualizations with the USDT layer.

Our Monitor feature now enables users to add transfers in USDT or BTC, so the risk can be assessed appropriately depending on the currency they choose.

In Cases, we have added the ability to set up notifications in USDT, as well as in BTC.

Other Updates:

2. New Analytics Tool: Shortest Path

In the list of All Connections, you will see a new option — “shortest path.” This option will show you shortest transaction path to any named entity from the Connections list. Users will also be able to open a visualization of a path to the entity in a single click.

3. Site Status

Users will be able to check whether all cryptocurrency support systems are operational (eg. due to maintenance or power outages) using the link status.crystalblockchain.com.

4. Nomenclature Change: “Fiat” instead of “USD”

We have also updated our API endpoints. The term “USD” in the current endpoints has been replaced with the term “fiat”. Data is now displayed based on the fiat currency pre-selected in your profile. (Note: these endpoint term changes only affect those who use Crystal via API.)
Persian Poet Hafez
By: Amy Pierovich
Tags: Persian Festival, Poetry, Winter Solstice, Hafez, Love

Winter solstice celebration is on December 21st

Photo by Hannah Gröbmüller on Unsplash

On Shab-e Yalda,

an ancient Persian festival, on December 21st this year,

people will share watermelon and nuts, spit out pomegranate seeds,

in wealthy homes surrounded by pink rose gardens,

flowing water-ways, and orange trees.

As darkness descends, Shab-e Yalda begins,

for it celebrates the winter solstice, the longest night of the year;

one will surely read the poet Hafez deep into the night,

to recognize the dawning days of light,

yet to come.

In Farsi, one says “Shab-e Yalda Mobarak!” or “Happy Yalda,”

“I wish you a long and happy life.”

Hafez, 1315–1390, was called “the memorizer,” gifted and bright.

Hafez wrote,

“I wish I could show you,

When you are lonely or in darkness,

the Astonishing Light of your own being!”

Words appropriate for Shab-e Yalda that echoed through the night,

a reminder that each of us is unique in this world,

may blessings rain on Shab-e Yalda every year.

Hafez also wrote,

“Light will someday split you open;

even if your life is now a cage.”

His words spoke to those living under all conditions,

if your yard be but one shrub and a single thirsty tree,

Hafez’s poems resonated with every heart and soul.

What speaks to me most about Hafez is this:

“This sky

Where we live

Is no place to lose your wings

So love, love

Love.”

Hafez tells us that love is what makes,

the whole world sing.

On Shab-e Yalda, one would open up a collection of Hafez’s poetry,

and randomly turn a page,

which would be your fortune,

an indication of what would happen in future days.

Hafez,

the poet,

the mystic,

the lover

— of humankind,

fondly remembered by Persians,

and others in this world;

he touched the heart and mind of poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,

Hafez’s thoughts and talents carried forward,

into the Western world.
更聰明的賣早餐？！位置智能幫助全球快餐品牌制定銷售策略
By: Roy Lin
Tags: Civic Intelligence, Digital Marketing, Retail, Location Intelligence, Data Analysis

Thoughts on urban research & innovations. The collaborative content from our greater IVC community. Visit: ivc.city

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LAST DAY OF MIDDLE CHILD
Tags: Steem, Steemit, Questions, Crowdini, Games

RESULTS AND THE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Yesterday’s Question: Have you ever seen a meteor shower live? (not on video)

Comment: “First one was when I was around 16 with a convertible and a girl friend. We would go out in the country and spend hours watching it…” by wizardave who answered “Yes”.

See the results and comments here: https://steemit.com/crowdini/@crowdini/question-2018-08-11

=======

NOTE: Comments are published immediately but votes are not posted until the post is 30 minutes old. If you don’t see your vote after 30 minutes, wait a minute, refresh the page and check again.

Make sure you check to see that your vote was counted. You can tell if your vote counted by seeing the circle with the up arrow to the left of the post earnings is green. You can also go to https://steemd.com/@crowdini (replace crowdini with your steemit username) and look at the right column for your vote.

You can always manually upvote at any time.

If your vote was not counted, fill out this form and we will figure out why ASAP.

=======

YESTERDAY’S RESULT

Yesterday’s Question: What is the best tasting ingredient in s’mores?

Majority Answer: Chocolate

TODAY’S QUESTION

Have you ever seen a meteor shower live? (not on video)
Saying Goodbye To God
By: Sigourney Humus
Tags: Christianity, Religion, Love, Life Lessons, God

Its time to say goodbye. I’m leaving and I think you should know. This isn’t “see you later” or “I’ll be back soon”. It is final. Its the last time we will talk.

By the way, this isn’t a prayer. You see, I am no longer interested in a relationship and that isn’t going to change. I need to be done with you forever.

You have meant so much to me for so many years. My identity was lost in you. That is how you liked it. It is abuse. It is manipulation. It is the destruction of my soul. You have seeped into every part of my life and that means that I need to remove you from so much of my world.

This shouldn't come as a shock to you. I mean, after all you are a god, right? I’m sure you have seen the signs. The distance I have been creating between us. The slow and yet deliberate change in my personal habits that no longer include you. The adjustment from relying on you for my answers to life, to becoming self-reliant. We have grown apart.

I’ve talked to some of your friends about this. They most often look at me with pity. They think I have lost it and can’t understand why I would leave our relationship. They have tried to convince me of all the good things about you. But, I have made up my mind.

Saying goodbye means a lot of things to me. It has taken many steps. When my whole life was infected by you, it was hard to see anything else. But as we grew apart I found that I didn’t need the things you had to offer.

You are a cage. You are a voice in my life that brought me shame and guilt. You held me back from good things in life. You controlled me with your rules and held my soul as a ransom for my actions.

So I am taking myself back. I am saying no more to your control over me. I am saying goodbye.

It is goodbye to shame and guilt. It is goodbye to your manipulation of me. It is goodbye to your rules and your control over me. It is goodbye to the very idea of sin.

But you need to know, this isn’t goodbye to life. This is hello to love. It is hello to a world of living beyond you. It is hello to freedom. It is hello choices, both good and bad, without the fear of failing you. It is hello to my soul on my terms. It is hello to love, free from your conditions.

Our toxic relationship is over now. I won’t go back. Sometimes it takes walking away to understand how bad things really were. I will find new friends, healthy ones.

By the way, this goodbye is for me. It's not for you. I don’t expect a response. But you are a god, so you should know that.
歐盟的 GDPR 跟我有關嗎？
By: Tino Lin
Tags: Blockchain, Gdpr, Privacy, Mandarin, Regtech

It is a camp for Flowchainers to dig up knowledge about DLT, Tokenomics and Flowchain.

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How to read a zip file directly in Python
Tags: Coding, Analytics, Python, Programming, Data Analysis

Python

Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

I want to use this post to show you how to read a zip file directly in Python without decompressing the file or knowing the file name contained.

The code below is pretty self-explanatory:

Import zipfile package to read the zip file. Get the file names contained in the zip file. Choose a file contained to open.

Happy coding!
In the Next Twenty-four Hours, I Am Going to Be a Dead Woman
By: Debdutta Pal
Tags: Women, Humor, Individualism, Society, Satire

When I finished grad school at twenty-four and looked forward to an independent life with wide-eyed optimism, little did I know that I was crossing some sort of imaginary line.

I was walking into quicksand, where everyone and everything around me would take a keen interest in my life while pretending to keep me afloat.

Wherever I go, a job interview, back to my parent’s house, or for a harmless cup of coffee with friends, a cryptic cloud would follow me around.

The ubiquitous question, “So….What are your plans for the future?” will start haunting me, give me sleepless nights, and chip away at my self-worth one day at a time.

Then, a second question, “When are you going to settle down?” popped up when I turned twenty-six. A more potent device had been detonated.

The response “I am settled” would never suffice.

Maybe an ink stamp on my forehead or a permanent tattoo of the word happiness artistically strewn across my forearm could have worked.

Alas, now we will never know.

I was habitually reminded that my eggs have a shelf life. That my purpose, worth, and reason for existence are tied to them. If I let them expire, I might as well be dead, as I am now a burden to this planet.

At that time, I brushed these premonitions aside and thought to myself that with the chemical composition of my brain and mental health issues that I have to live with, death does not necessarily need to be very ominous.

Now that I am turning thirty in less than twenty-four hours, I question my past act of bravery. I like my life now, and I don’t want it to expire. It should go on.
Online UX Design Bootcamp in 2020
By: Eduardo Ramos
Tags: User Experience, Design, UX, New York, Bootcamp

I’m part of the team at the Interaction Design Foundation, a non-profit committed to providing Ivy League-level design education at the lowest price possible.

We developed a bootcamp consistent with our mission. That’s the reason our: Get a UX Design Job Bootcamp is priced at just $1146 ($990 for our existing members). This price is a small fraction of the average cost of bootcamps in the industry (approximately $8000).

In this bootcamp, you’ll get a personal mentor of your choice, and with their help, you’ll pick from over 30 project briefs for your portfolio. The bootcamp has a duration of 8 weeks.

During the 8 weeks, you’ll develop your portfolio by working with your mentor. At the same time, you’ll be working in the best way to showcase both your thought process and your work product in the best possible way.

Your mentor will also help you improve your resume and interview skills. Then, in the final week, you’ll put your coaching into practice with a recruiter from one of the world’s largest design staffing agencies!

Asides from the 8 weeks of expert mentorship, you also get a year of unlimited access to the Interaction Design Foundation’s courses. If you want to know more about the courses, or how good they are, here’s a Quora answer discussing it: What do people who know UX think of the Interaction Design Foundation?

This means that even after the bootcamp is over, you can keep on learning UX design and earn course certificates to add to your resume and LinkedIn profile.

Needless to say, you’ll also gain access to the world’s largest UX design network and all the fantastic networking opportunities that come with it.

While the bootcamp does not come with a job guarantee, you’ll also get lifetime access to project briefs and career-oriented resources. On top of that, the advice you get from your mentor will be a great advantage throughout your UX career.

Fun fact: this bootcamp is the only one in the market that focuses exclusively on portfolio building and career development!

Link: Get a New Job in UX Design (If you’re interested in just the courses, you can get 25% off them here!)
8 VC Insights from the Genesis of Benchmark Capital
Tags: Tech, VC, Benchmark Capital, Vc Career, Venture Capital

Benchmark partner Bill Gurley (PHOTO: Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters — via WSJ)

Whenever you set out on a new venture you benefit from studying what came before. All great acts do this. They do it not only because it accelerates learning but also because it helps identify benchmarks against which future performance can be judged.

On exceptional occasions, it’s possible for a new act to challenge incumbents while completely crushing prior benchmarks, and in the history of venture capital —something I geek out on more than I should — no fund has done so more dramatically than the aptly named Benchmark Capital.

If you’re new to VC and don’t know the genesis of Benchmark, I recommend you seek out a second-hand copy of “Eboys: the First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work.” The book is now over 20 years old but don’t let that put you off. Albert Wenger at USV recommended it to me right before I got started started in venture and it taught me more about the industry than anything I’d come across at the time.

In this blog post I’ll share a few excerpts on insights I gleaned when I read the book but I have to admit, some of the points don’t really hit home until you’ve been a VC for some time. Reading the book before you get into VC and reading it after 2–3 years of investing will reveal different truths and as such, I recommend a hardcover copy that you can return to many times over the course of an investment career.

Available on Amazon

Before we get to the excerpts (and many of them lack full context so you’ll need to read the book to appreciate all nuances), let me share a little on what Benchmark achieved.

Founded in 1995, Benchmark got off to an insanely great start when it made 600 times its money within 2 years on an investment in eBay. Not on only that, but Benchmark’s first fund returned LP capital 92 times over. Ebay is arguably the best VC investment of all time¹ and ‘Benchmark Capital Partners I’ is the highest performing debut fund of all time.

More specifically, Benchmark invested $6.7m in eBay in 1997 for about 20% of the business. Within 2 years eBay was worth $20.7bn and Benchmark’s stake was valued at $4.2bn. Benchmark effectively made 627 times its original investment and generated an annual rate of return north of 2,000% within 2 years. This investment came out of Benchmark’s first fund ($85m) which altogether returned $7.8bn and made its LPs 92 times their money.

Benchmark has gone on to have more hits (Dropbox, Instagram, Twitter, Uber, Zendesk, to name a few) but it’s the early years of the fund and the coming together of its six key partners — Dave Beirne, Bruce Dunlevie, Bill Gurley, Kevin Harvey, Bob Kagle, Andy Rachleff — where the following lessons were drawn.

The 8 Insights
“I’ve been in that place”
By: Dan Mccarthy
Tags: Point Of View, Observing

Baby, I know what it’s like to be in that boy’s head.

I’ve been there.

Not the guns and stuff. Not killing kids. That’s fucking sick.

But I’ve been in that place the kid got to.

Tell you? I can’t fucking tell you. It’s too painful to remember.

Can tell you what I was thinking. The whole school sitting in the dining hall, the teachers and the priests looking like fucking moppets, preening and smiling. The noise is eating my brain away. An army of rats chewing through my skull. I can’t hear a single thing though.

I’m just figuring out where to cut that big beam over the room so it will crack and crash onto the table. Crush them. They’ll stop smiling. They’ll all fucking scream. They’ll all stop smiling.

I can’t stand the fucking smiles.

That’s the thinking.

It hurts. You just want to run away from it.

Who knows where the fuck you’ll run to.

Whatever happened inside that kid’s brain was him running into a dark place and there was nobody who could pull him out and he didn’t have any clue why he was there. That’s just fucking crazy and it’s out there for every one of us. We just looked fucking crazy in the eyes and it burns up our soul.

What? No, I’m not going to do something like that you stupid shit. It just kills me to know that I’ve got some part of that monster in me.
GEC October/November Newsletter
By: Lucy Gray
Tags: Schools, International, Education, Teachers, Global Education

GEC October/November Newsletter

The Global Education Conference Starts On November 18

Our free, online, world-wide 2019 Global Education Conference takes place November 18–20! Proposals are now being accepted and we encourage you to submit a proposal soon so that you can have your pick of presentation times in our schedule. Take a look at the currently accepted proposals for inspiration — presenters so far hail from Argentina, Australia, Canada, El Salvador, Hong Kong, India, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Remember that all proposals need to have an international focus and relate to our mission. A tutorial on how to submit a proposal is available.

More GlobalEdCon Keynotes Announced

At this time, we’re pleased to announce our second set of keynote speakers have been added! We are honored and excited to have these individuals participate in our conference. See the bottom of this email for details. Note that one of these featured presentations will also be delivered in Spanish. Make sure to register for the conference today to receive future updates.

Get Involved in the GEC Community

In other news, there are a few events and resources we’ve noticed around the Internet:

Here are our announced 2019 keynote presenters:

Pedro Aparicio

Global Citizens Building Bridges for Empathy and Respect, Northridge School Mexico

@Aparicio_Pedro

F. Margret Atkinson

ISTE Global PLN leadership team, ISTE Global Collaboration Professional Learning Network

@https://wakelet.com/@ISTEGlobalPLN

Courtney Bell

Courtney Bell Consulting

Ann C. Gaudino, Ed.D.

Associate Professor, Millersville University

Tara Hofmann

President and CEO , AFS Intercutlural Programs, USA

@boycehofmann

Amanda Lanicek

ISTE Global PLN leadership team, ISTE Global Collaboration Professional Learning Network

@https://wakelet.com/@ISTEGlobalPLN

Bronwyn Joyce

Founder and Director , Education Elevators

@JoyceBronwyn

Jennifer D. Klein

Founder, PLS / Head of School, GLC, Principled Learning Strategies | PLS: Fundadora / GLC: Rectora, Principled Learning Strategies / Gimnasio Los Caobos

@jdeborahklein

Jennifer Manise

Executive Director, Longview Foundation for Education in World Affairs & International Understanding

@LongviewGlobal

Dana Mortenson

Co-founder & CEO, World Savvy

@WorldSavvy

William Piper

5th Grade World Cultural Geography Teacher, University School of Milwaukee

@wdpiper

Krishna Pujari

Founder/Director, Reality Tours and Travel

@KrishReality

Tom Vander Ark

CEO, Getting Smart

@tvanderark
Escalation
By: J.D. Harms
Tags: Poetry, Desire, Love, Poem, Image

Escalation

A Poem

Encroaching, the hand poses

above this white thigh

Pressed to the couch

open, vulnerable

touched and waiting

A lone car

taken to the street at 10

drives by

its headlights flashing code on the wall

I’d like to say

I’ve been here before

But I’m in awe

of you

trying to take you in

as anatomically as possible

building again

some kind of unity

*Commentary: at a certain point, heightening the sense that the desired is coming, is coming, is about to manifest, will be realized…and there’s a sort of blankness that follows, a period that could stretch infinitely, even as you move forwards towards loving, touching, revealing yourself in the other, which functions as an end; but there’s really no end to this end, or there doesn’t have to be. Conceptually, this end can elude us, making us think we’re headed for another end after all and the last one was just another means. This is a surface for inscription. Taking the opportunity to sink into yourself, to sink into the other, you sacrifice clarity even as you scramble to take in the whole scene, be shown as the architect of, at least, a portion of it. The playwright? Oh, that might be a little too on the nose. But let’s say it is, after all, a not-so uncomfortable drift, a canvas you cannot wait to take on, even as you have to wait…
Touch.
By: Keith R. Higgons
Tags: Romance, Love, 100 Naked Words, Fiction, Short Story

It’s not about arousal.

It’s about bridging the distances.

It’s not about sex.

It’s about aligning our senses.

Naked, you lay.

My left hand roaming free.

Your skin is smooth and silky.

Your smile.

Wide.

When I’m touching you, it’s the only place I want to be.

It’s about you, yes.

It’s about me, too.

It’s about the pleasure, yes.

It’s about the communication, too.

This bond is rare.

This connection is special.

It can leave one emotionally bare.

Touch adds another layer on a deepening relation.

Caressing your silky skin helps iron out the wrinkled cotton of my thoughts.
Scientists Create Exotic ‘Fifth State of Matter’ on Space Station
Tags: Chemistry, Science, NASA, Space, Physics

by Ryan Whitwam

We’re all familiar with the classic states of matter — solid, liquid, and gas. Science is also getting quite familiar with plasma, which is now considered a fourth state. There may also be a fifth state of matter, and research aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has brought us one step closer to understanding so-called Bose-Einstein condensates.

With most materials, you can cycle through the states of matter by increasing heat. Plasma is most similar to a gas, but it’s ionized and electrically conductive. A Bose-Einstein condensate is a completely different animal. This material is dominated by quantum effects, and that makes them enormously difficult to create. On Earth, laboratories can only maintain Bose-Einstein condensates for a matter of milliseconds. However, research aboard the ISS has created a Bose-Einstein condensate that persisted for more than a second.

A Bose-Einstein condensate is so named because its existence was posited almost a century ago by Albert Einstein and Indian mathematician Satyendra Nath Bose. This exotic material only exists when atoms of certain elements are cooled to temperatures near absolute zero. At that point, clusters of atoms begin functioning as a single quantum object with both wave and particle properties. Scientists believe Bose-Einstein condensates could be the key to understanding things like dark energy and the quantum nature of the universe.

Velocity-distribution data showing Bose-Einstein condensate formation (middle and right).

Scientists create condensates by directing atoms into microscopic magnetic “traps” that coax them into a state called quantum degeneracy. Little by little, their quantum states overlap until the condensate becomes a single wave. Scientists have to release the trap to study the material. Unfortunately, even small perturbations from the outside world disrupt a Bose-Einstein condensate. That’s why we can only maintain them for a few milliseconds on Earth. Research conducted on the space station doesn’t have to contend with gravity, allowing them to isolate the condensate more effectively. Past efforts to do the same have relied on airplanes in freefall, and instruments dropped from great heights to lessen the effects of gravity.

In zero gravity, scientists were able to create a Bose-Einstein condensate from rubidium using shallower traps than on Earth. Even after dropping the trap, the material remained intact and in its condensate form for much longer than it would have on Earth. The team was able to take detailed measurements before the Bose-Einstein condensate dissolved. This could lead to incredible advances in our understanding of quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Now read:
About the brand names of globally rolled-out products and services
By: Michael Schmidt
Tags: Marketing Strategies, Digital Marketing, Apple, Branding, Brand Architecture

When launching new products across the globe, a significant amount of time and money goes into legal work like trade mark registration and patenting. A product gets its name after research shows that a certain name is, firstly, untaken and free; and secondly has some sort of a meaning that fits the product. Hard enough, a name can have double meaning in different markets, but more often is a meaning something that refers not to the consumer but the company.

A good example are companies that name their product lines following a particular pattern, like alphabethic or numeric — something that makes sense foremost to them. This results in cryptic names that often don’t speak for themselves. Think of products like the BMW X1, an Audi A4, a Canon D300 or the Nokia N8.

Through advertising, of course, we know and relate to these names. But imagine three friends talk about these products. Let’s say one is from Switzerland (to be neutral), one is Italian and one French — neighbouring countries — and they do not mention the product in a web chat or mail (the problem doesn’t lie in the written name) but pronounce it in a conversation in their own languages.

The Italian says »a quattro«, the French »a katre« and the one from Switzerland in German »a vier«, compared to the English »ay four«.

The BMW they call »ex uno«, »ex un« and »ix eins«, in English »ex one«.

Finally, the Nokia product is pronounced »en otto«, »en wuit« and »en acht«, being »en eight« in English.

Go further with Nintendo’s »tre de es«, »troi de es«, »drei de es« or »three di es« — and you’ve got four different sounding names without even thinking of all the other European languages or Russian or Chinese.

So, who did a great job naming a product with consistent pronunciation in most languages?

Microsoft with their operating system Windows, for example. Or Apple with iPhone (only the prototypes have Nokia-like names, only mystery is the ‘S’), iPod, iPad and iMac. Both of them however weaken this approach using numbers and cryptic letter combinations to distinct updates to the product (Windows 95, Windows CE, Windows 7, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 2). Apple certainly didn’t value consistent pronunciation of Mac OS X (Steve Jobs’ idol Sony did — see #41 here). BMW have a hard time with their whole brand name, respectively.

So, why could this be important? To find out someone is talking about your phone in a foreign radio show you can not understand — this won’t be the use case. But as it is with a global product launch, you want your product name to be in everybody’s mouth. You want thriving word of mouth. You want everybody to talk about your product, to tell everyone. You want them to learn how to spell it.