fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
04/06/2018: Biggest Stories in the Cryptosphere
Tags: Tourism, Ripple, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain

by BlockEx

1. China State TV Program Says Blockchain Is 10x More Valuable Than The Internet

China’s main state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) has affirmed that blockchain is 10 times more valuable than the internet in terms of economic value. It also added that blockchain represents the second phase of the internet. The statement was made on Sunday during the segment ‘Dialogue’. During the hour-long discussion, which was hosted by Chen Weihong on Finance Channel, the public was being educated on many aspects of blockchain. Public figures such as Don Tapscott and Chen Lei also attended the segment. Lastly, risks represented by fraudulent ICOs was also discussed.

2. Crypto Futures Receive Thumbs Up By Indonesian Regulator

Indonesia’s Futures Exchange Supervisory Board (Bappebti) has ruled in favour of crypto futures. The Trade Ministry’s commodities market regulator has classified cryptocurrencies as commodities, which means that they can be traded on the country’s futures exchange. According to Dharma Yoga, the Head of Bappebti Market Supervision and Development Bureau, the decision was reached after a 4-month study conducted by the board. Dharma went on to say that regulation guidelines will soon be issued to cover areas such as taxation, illicit activities and currency exchange companies. This is great news for the public considering that in March, the local Indonesia Digital Asset Exchange was set to overtake the Indonesia Stock Exchange in terms of registered participants.

3. Australian Town Accepts Bitcoin In An Attempt To Boost Tourism

The Australian town of Agnes Water has labeled itself the ‘Digital Currency Town’. In an attempt to boost its main source of income, tourism, the town has started to accept Bitcoin. All of the local businesses operating in the 2000 resident town now welcome cryptocurrency payments. It is even written on the town’s welcome billboard, along with examples of accepted cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, NEM, Litecoin and Ethereum). Transactions are conducted through the TravelbyBit’s app. The news comes following Brisbane Airport (BNE)’s announcement it would start accepting cryptocurrencies as a form of payment, as we previously reported.

4. Japan’s First Bank-Backed Crypto Exchange Is Launched By SBI

Japan’s first crypto exchange backed by a bank, VCTRADE, is now live. Japanese giant SBI Holdings has made the announcement today. Currently only pre-registered users have access to the platform. However, in July it will be open to the public. At the top of VCTRADE’s agenda there is Ripple (XRP) trading. However, even if it is not clear yet when, support for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash will also be added at a later date. The choice of which cryptocurrency to focus on first should not come as a surprise, considering the joint venture we previously discussed between SBI Holdings and Ripple.

This news roundup was brought to you by BlockEx.
Blockchain Pyramid Scheme SCAMMED 13,000 people in 18 days
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin, Investing, Blockchain

If someone tells you, it is possible to make more than 86 million in 18 days, it is NOT a legendary myth. These days many people will blindly invest in any ponzi schemes with the word “blockchain”.

“Blockchain” concept MLM, accumulated more than 86 million in 18 days

April this year, China, Xi’an annihilated the nation’s first “blockchain” pyramid scheme. In merely 18 days, the scammers recruited more than 13,000 members, scammed more than 86 million yuan. To look more credible, they even spent RMB30,000 to hired a caucasian and projected themselves as a “high-tech multinational enterprise with a foreign investment background”.

While you are still fantasizing about earning your pot of gold from the blockchain industry, the scammers had already ran off with your investment.

The most concerning part about this blockchain craze is that people do not understand what blockchain is, but they are so afraid of being left behind by society that they are blindly following the trend.

Blockchain becomes the new, get rich quick scheme, and the total amount of fraud in this industry exceeds RMB300 million.

In Shenzhen there was an illegal fund-raising scam as well. In March this year, the Nanshan Economic Investigation Force cracked a huge fund-raising scam, with thousands of investors defrauded of RMB307 million.

According to the Economic Information Daily, there are more than 3,000 MLM platforms using the blockchain concept for scams.

Exactly how popular is blockchain?

There is a news saying an engineer wrote that he is an engineer on his online dating profile, and no one clicks on his profile. Later, he renamed himself as a blockchain engineer and immediately he received more than 360 love letters. How crazy is that!

*Enjoy what you read here? Join us on telegram for more >>> https://t.me/Coins300_official
Takeover Vundle
By: Alex R. Young
Tags: Scripts, Plugins, Community

I saw this issue in the Vundle (GitHub: gmarik/Vundle.vim) repository: Takeover Vundle #608

Please comment below if you’re interested in taking over Vundle. I’ve not been involved and it’s hurting the project.

If you’re interested in taking the lead — let me know and we’ll discuss transition.

Following the advice Shougo and the community, there’s now a VundleVim organization, and a reddit discussion.

It sounds like the main thing that’s required of the project’s maintainer is support. Gmarik said this on reddit:

I’ve not been active for quite a while now, so for me it’s communication I think. Many people still @nick me and expect some sort of help, but instead they should be asking an active maintainer instead. Transferring ownership will improve feedback loop.

Vundle is a popular Vim plugin manager, and it’s the one I use for quickly testing out plugins for this blog. It has over 8,000 GitHub stars, and over 400 watchers. It’s a pretty solid and mature project, so I hope someone picks up the slack!
She Opened Her Mouth and the Roof Fell In
By: Mary Poindexter Mclaughlin
Tags: Self Improvement, Courage, Feminism, Freedom of Expression, Resistance Poetry

She Opened Her Mouth and the Roof Fell In

a poem

Image by Angelo Giordano from Pixabay

She opened her mouth and the roof fell in.

The walls collapsed around her

and the house she had built

with the sweat of her heart

crumbled to dust.

If only I’d kept my mouth closed,

she thought.

But then she saw angles of sunlight

slicing through the haze

a sky so blue it hurt to see

and she could hear birdsong

for the first time in years

So she swept some fragments to the side,

sat down in the midst of the rubble,

lifted her face to the heavens

And called it home
Introducing Eyewitness — The Newsgathering Bot Platform
By: John Griffin
Tags: Social Newsgathering, Chatbots, Media, Journalism, Bots

UPDATE: Out of 736 applications, it was announced today that we are one of the 22 winners to receive funding from #innovateAfrica. We’re absolutely thrilled to have been chosen, and we’re really excited about the potential for Eyewitness to transform newsgathering.

What is EyeWitness Bot?

Eyewitness will allow media organisations to leverage their community on Facebook to gather opinions, tip-offs and quotes. We will save journalists time, enabling them to collect information quickly and on a large scale, with an innovative AI bot and data analysis platform.

Journalists can construct surveys and engage in long-term research projects, delivered to their audience through Facebook Messenger — the most popular messaging app in the world (alongside WhatsApp).

Eyewitness delivers surveys as a conversation, adapting the questions asked based on the answers received, resulting in a more human and engaging experience than a traditional web form. It will also be possible to use photos, videos and other media as part of the conversation.

Journalists will be able to quickly sort and aggregate responses in order to see trends and find interesting stories to follow up for more information and verification.

Initially we’re partnering with The Star in Kenya and Punch in Nigeria but get in touch if you’d like to work with us. We’re really excited about the potential for Eyewitness to transform newsgathering.

Coming Soon

If you’re interested in being a beta tester then drop us a mail and sign up below for updates.

Right now

Atchai creates bespoke AI and chatbots for all sorts of purposes. If you’re interested in exploring the possibilities then please get in touch.
Friend at FutureBank 2018
By: Hogne Titlestad, Co-Ceo, Founder, Friend Software
Tags: Future Business, Finance, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Norway

For the last year, Friend has been working with Ernst & Young and The Norwegian Bank(DNB, largest bank in Norway), among others, to make sure that our ICO project is aligned with Norwegian regulations. The Friend Network is the first ICO to be run in Norway by a Norwegian company. This means that it will be one of the most transparent and compliant crypto-currency crowd funding events in Scandinavia, and a role model for others who wish to follow in our foot steps.

Important and fundamental discussions leads to increased understanding of the many disruptive ideas from the Blockchain- and crypto-communities world-wide.

Sadly, the ICO landscape is littered with shady and weak projects — money grabbing schemes and opportunism. The Friend Network will prove to the skeptics that ICOs are legit fund raising instruments that point to a future where decentralization allows remote regions to compete and innovate on par with the great tech hubs in the Western World.

Open source projects in particular have often times been progressing at a slow pace, lacking solid funding. Such projects have mainly been driven by volunteers, spending their spare time on code and project management. This has traditionally alluded investors to shy away from getting involved, citing missing business models and commercial strategies.

ICOs have changed the paradigm. It has given participants in open source projects access to funding and will make decentralized teams and disruptive technologies a stronger foundation and a more visible presence in the marketplace.

The FutureBank 2018 event is important, because it shows that the financial communities are beginning to realize the positive and vast potential of crypto-finance as well as the legitimacy of the Blockchain technologies and finally the emergence of the token economy.

Decentralized globalization is less intruding on local or regional communities in that it allows innovation to happen outside of the global hubs (Silicon Valley, Berlin, London, etc). This of course stirs up uncertainty in many investor communities and puts pressure on communities where knowledge about new technologies and their opportunities have remained sparse.
Do You Know Where and Why Users Drop Off the Conversation?
By: Avi Yaeli
Tags: Watson Assistant, Analytics, Improve, Announcements

Do You Know Where and Why Users Drop Off the Conversation?

Use the new Dialog Flow Analysis Notebook to understand where and why users abandon your Virtual Assistant

Co-Authored by Avi Yaeli and Eric Wayne.

DDo you feel blind and overwhelmed by the task of improving your virtual assistant? Try our new Dialog Flow Analysis Notebook. You’ll identify problems that keep your users from being successful.

Photo by giovanni sciacca on Unsplash

You have a purpose in mind with each assistant that you create. Are you providing information or helping your users perform a task? Delivering an assistant requires training to detect what the user is trying to achieve (intents and entities). You must define how to help the user complete a task (dialog flow). Then you need to monitor your assistant to detect any problems your users have. Watson Assistant includes powerful features to reduce the chance of your users getting stuck. These features include branching, jump-to, conditional responses, and digression support. When you combine this with large amounts of usage data, the task of finding problems can be overwhelming. You need help finding patterns of problems.

You want to be sure users are not getting stuck at a specific step or abandoning the conversation altogether.

A standard technique for analyzing abandonment is to perform a manual assessment of user conversation logs. As you read the text of conversations, you can try to understand the flow of dialog nodes with the hope of finding problematic patterns. For the owner of a virtual assistant, this can be very time consuming, and you may still overlook patterns.

This is why we just released the Dialog Flow Analysis Notebook. This Python notebook can help you analyze the dialog flow of low-quality conversations. The notebook provides analysis and interactive visualizations that can help you with questions such as:
Staring at a page and repeat
By: Jan Schultink
Tags: Story

When you start at a blank or partially complete slide, it is tempting to put that key message in. You don’t have the overview of the entire presentation, so the key point will appear — duplicated — on many pages.

The same thing I often see happening on corporate web sites: multiple people make edits on different pages independent from each other.

The slide and the page on its own make sense, the overall story looks garbled and duplicated.
Secrets of Spring
Tags: Cultural Prompt, Writing Prompts, Poetry, Fiction, Blue Insights

Spring levitates through lost horizons of sight

From anticipation stored gently in our minds

Calling us to listen to the story of the hills

To discover scenes hidden in the shade

Blooming within dialogues of earth

As the new organisms regenerate

Navigating the world contours

Through the glimmering sun

Forming cycles of instinct

Coalescing in a secret…

Smile
When I was Young
By: Muhammad Zunair
Tags: Childhood, Carnival, Poetry, Life, Prompt

I can’t remember

The last time,

When I went to a Carnival

I guess,

I was about 12

Or maybe 13

But I still had a vivid memory

Of all those lights

And my younger self,

With my loving father

And my younger brother,

Riding all those rides

All the fun

That we had

And all the joy

That we relished

I still had images in my mind;

Life was as beautiful as a dream

But it’s not about the carnival

It’s about the time

When I was young

And had dreams

— bigger than life —

Of conquering the world

And reigning supreme

That’s something

I really miss today;

Being a child,

Stupid and naive

Longing for things

Without a purpose and a derive

Like most of you,

I long for those days;

Playing in dirt

With no worries to cite

Life was simple

Yet bright
What’s In Your Wallet: Cryptocurrency Coin Correlations
By: Chandan Lodha
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain

Here is a visualization of the coin correlations between each of the top 100 cryptocurrency coins & tokens by the current market capitalization, segmented bi-annually for the past five years. Each dot represents the magnitude of the correlation (hover over the dot to see the approximate percentage of correlation).

Some caveats:

The data set is across ~40,000 users

The data is biased to users who track their cryptocurrency on CoinTracker

If no users held an asset in a particular time period, that entire column/row is discarded

In order to be considered an asset holder, a user must have held at least 5 USD worth of the asset on the date of the snapshot

There are some user data errors (e.g. coins entered before they were created)

You’ll notice that the diagonal is all blank because it is redundant to indicate that 100% of bitcoin holders also hold bitcoin. You’ll see other gaps where (close to) zero users of one coin hold another.

Here are some patterns we have noticed:

1. Correlation by use case. Across many protocols competing for the same use case (e.g. money: BTC vs. BCH, Dapps: ETH vs. EOS, privacy: XMR vs. ZEC, etc.), often users choose to bet on multiple projects in the same space. If a user bets on the smaller project (by market cap), then they are much more likely to also have bet on the larger protocol as well. This intuitively makes sense as larger market cap projects typically have more visibility, lower perceived risk, and therefore more holders. For example:

25% of bitcoin (BTC) holders hold bitcoin cash (BCH):

86% of bitcoin cash (BCH) holders hold bitcoin (BTC):

29% of Monero (XMR) holders hold Zcash (ZEC):

55% of Zcash (ZEC) holders hold Monero (XMR):

17% of ether (ETH) holders hold EOS:

74% of EOS holders hold ether (ETH):

Also the top 10 coins most correlated coins with BTC are

ETH (68%) LTC (43%) XRP (33%) XLM (26%) BCH (25%) ADA (22%) NEO (21%) BNB (20%) TRX (19%) IOTA (17%)

This is similar to, but not exactly overlapping with the top 10 coins by market cap (after BTC): ETH, XRP, BCH, EOS, XLM, LTC, USDT, ADA, XMR, IOTA

2. Interesting tax strategies. When we first looked at the data, we were confused because 100% of users holding bitcoin cash (BCH) in January 2014 were holding bitcoin (BTC). But the BCH fork did not occur until August 2017, so the BCH column should have been blank here — did we have a data error? Possibly. However our colleagues at Stamen pointed out another theory — some users were tracking BCH back to their original acquisition of bitcoin and treating bitcoin cash as the coin they were holding the entire time, and later treating the fork as a bitcoin fork (rather than a bitcoin cash fork). We saw similar behavior with other forks as well.

100% of bitcoin cash (BCH) holders hold bitcoin (BTC) in January 2014 (seemingly impossible)

3. The market changes quickly. Most of the top 100 coins were born in the last 12–24 months so it’s hard to predict what will be around in the future. Bitcoin, however, has proved resilient thus far.
Waiting On the Moon
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Light, Night, Poetry, Moon, Energy

Waiting on the Moon with you

I stand alone beneath the stars

Alone, but not really

The night wraps me in her frozen blanket

The air so still and quiet

As I look up with wonder-filled eyes

Little clouds of crystals escape my lips

Rise up to meet the beam of light

And as the crystals of my breath

Dance in the light of the Moon

I am transported to another place

To another time

And I am filled with warmth

Although my body shivers from the cold

My heart is so full

And the love seeps from my eyes

Silvery tears turn to icicles on my cheeks

Do you see that? Do you see her?

I’ll never look at the Moon the same again

Thank you for waiting with me
Rage on
By: Kathy Jacobs
Tags: Politics, Poetry, Rage, Resistance, Resistance Poetry

How do we keep up the fight?

Rage and fear were enough to keep us going

A year ago, this horror was new

We fought for right and for ourselves

That rage and fear carried us

When women and scientists walked

Our numbers carried a strong message

Showed we disagreed with the administration

We raged, we walked, we supported

When Trump tried to outlaw immigrants

Of a certain belief or background

We made it obvious this wasn’t us

We raged again to keep our healthcare

Over and over — And still we rage

For whatever we do or say those

Republicans don’t hear our truth

We rage against the political machine

We try and try to make them see

People matter more than dollars

People matter more than companies

We rage because the old white men

Keep trying to replace Obama’s legacy

With one that counts money and power

As the only thing that matters.

We rage because all people matter

The earth and the sea matter

Science, education, intelligence, peace

They are what matters

We’ve raged.

For a year

We will rage on

For justice and peace

As long as the waves run to the shores
Frontend Architectural Patterns: Virtual DOM
By: Bowei Han
Tags: Technology, Software Development, Frontend, Software Engineering, Architecture

Frontend Architectural Patterns: Virtual DOM

A Brief Look at a Helpful Abstraction

What’s a DOM?

The Document Object Model (DOM) is the data structure that a browser uses to represent an HTML file.

DevTools DOM visualization

More specifically, the browser DOM is an object-oriented tree data structure with nodes that contain information about the structure, style, and content of a web page. Think you can memorize the spec?

To represent elements in a meaningful way, each node has methods to:

Specify its children.

Set custom attributes.

Add and remove event listeners.

Although the DOM can be accessed and manipulated with JavaScript, it’s typically implemented as part of the browser engine (think C++ ). Besides being responsible for parsing HTML into the DOM tree, the browser engine also handles some other relevant tasks:

Creating a visual representation of the page — the render tree .

. Tracking “dirty” DOM nodes to understand when the render tree needs to be updated.

Calculating element size and position, a process known as layout or reflow .

or . Physically rendering pixels to the screen, a process known as painting.

These tasks are relevant to the DOM…but feel free to take a detour and dive deeper into how browsers work.
Let’s Rebuild our Infrastructure, Not Provide Tax Breaks to Big Corporations and Wall Street
By: Bernie Sanders
Tags: Politics, 2016 Election, Taxes, Infrastructure, Donald Trump

Our infrastructure is collapsing, and the American people know it. Every day, they drive on roads with unforgiving potholes and over bridges that are in disrepair. They wait in traffic jams and ride in overcrowded subways. They see airports bursting at the seams. They see the need for a modern rail system. They worry that a local levee or dam could fail in a storm.

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump correctly talked about rebuilding our country’s infrastructure. But the plan he offered is a scam that gives massive tax breaks to large companies and billionaires on Wall Street who are already doing phenomenally well. Trump would allow corporations that have stashed their profits overseas to pay just a fraction of what the companies owe in federal taxes. And then he would allow the companies to “invest” in infrastructure projects in exchange for even more tax breaks. Trump’s plan is corporate welfare coming and going.

In 2015, I introduced the Rebuild America Act to invest $1 trillion over five years to modernize the physical infrastructure that our economy depends on. In January, I will reintroduce that legislation to directly invest in our roads, bridges, water systems, rail, airports, levees and dams. Importantly, at a time when we need to reverse the 40-year decline of the American middle class, this legislation would create and maintain at least 13 million good-paying jobs, while making our country more productive, efficient and safe.

Unlike Trump’s plan, which creates new tax loopholes and is a corporate giveaway, my Rebuild America Act would be paid for by eliminating tax loopholes that allow hugely profitable multinational corporations to stash their profits in offshore tax havens around the world.
How Drinking 750ml Lemon Water, Every Day For 2 Months, Changed My Body
Tags: Self Improvement, Fitness, Life, Health, Healthcare

How Drinking 750ml Lemon Water, Every Day For 2 Months, Changed My Body

And how it can change yours too.

Image by Taylor Harding from Pixabay

“You know I tried so hard to spare some time for a workout but with this busy life schedule, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to that.” “I can understand what you’re feeling dude. It’s exactly the same with me. Seriously, I’ve been dreading to try some of the remedies you know…for my skin and all but I guess it’s never gonna happen.”

How many of you feel the same way — When you want to get a membership in a gym or give your skin a lit bit of home makeover, so badly, but your hectic schedule holds you back every time?

Or you may want to go for a morning walk, to shed a few pounds, but late-night work holds you back.

Well, it’s pretty obvious that while juggling between our work life it’s very difficult for us to take our time out for the things we want to do, we hardly ever get enough time to sleep and even spend time with our family then obviously there is no time left for us, for our body.

It’s the same with me.

Although I was stuck at home due to the COVID epidemic that doesn’t mean I have all the time for myself. With staring at laptop screen continuously for 8–9 hours with that listening to professor's annoying voices and on top of that completing their freaking assignments that take not less than 2–3 hours to complete. Trust me that was so much fun — so much ‘fun’…note my sarcasm.

Anyway going back to the track. So, as I said earlier juggling between these freaking things It’s very difficult for me to take some time out for myself, for my body.

After searching on the internet, like a lunatic person, I’ve found multiple benefits of drinking lemon water. Being a lazy person as I was I thought I wouldn’t have to put so much effort in following this remedy and besides it’s pretty simple too so why not give it a try.

So, I tried this remedy for a month and I even wrote an article about it — I Drank 750ml Lemon Water Every Morning For a Month, This is What Happened.

And much to my surprise I actually saw results and seeing its benefits there is no way in hell that I would have stopped drinking it after a month, so I continued it as a part of my morning routine little did I know that it will make a huge impact on my body.
Shopifyでセクションを自作する
Tags: Shopify, Shopify Theme, Liquid

in In Fitness And In Health
When The Conservative Stopped Being Conservative
By: Yenting Lin
Tags: Politics, Donald Trump, Ideas

When The Conservative Stopped Being Conservative

People are losing hope of the current system, and that’s when Trump become popular.

When people are left behind, they become unhappy. If things keep unchanged, they’ll become hopeless and may take extreme actions.

This probably is the reason why Trump is popular.

Current mechanism fail to distribute resources equally. More and more people feel upset and hopeless, and they may loss faith in classic politician and their regular policies. They may consider someone different with unusual opinions, like Trump. People got left behind may consider extreme solution to reverse the situation.

This is the time when the conservative being conservative. conservative.

[Photo credit: Lending Memo]
Crowd Machine Compute Token (“CMCT”) Sale Summary
By: Crowd Machine
Tags: Token Sale, Crowd Machine, Public Token Sale, Cmct, Blockchain

Crowd Machine Compute Token (“CMCT”) Sale Summary

Token Sale Particulars

UPDATED: 20 April 2018 (originally issued 14 January 2018)

The CMCT Sale opened on 1 April 2018. The Pre-Sale part has now closed.

At a date to be announced, the CMCT Sale will re-open with a series of 390 daily public sales.

Two (2) billion CMCT will be issued.

The supply is fixed (i.e., non-inflationary).

Pre-Sale Period

All CMCT (125 million) allocated for the Pre-Sale Period will be distributed pro rata based on a participant’s contribution to the total ETH paid-in by all participants (private and public).

For example, John contributes 1 ETH. The Total paid-in amount received from all private and public participants is 10 ETH. John receives 12.5 million CMCTs (125m x 1 ETH /10 ETH).

The market will therefore determine the price for CMCT, which equals the total ETH received by all participants divided by the total tokens allocated for the Pre-Sales Period. Non US Public Sale participants that contribute between 1 and 10 April 2018 (inclusive) get 0.5 free tokens per CMCT purchased (or 50% bonus). US Public Sale participants that contribute in the first 7 daily public sale periods will get 0.5 free tokens per CMCT purchased (or 50% bonus). No bonus tokens will be distributed for subsequent sale periods.

Pre-Sale KYC/AML and ISRS Period

There will be no sales from 21 April to 27 April 2018 in order to manage KYC/AML and an ISRS4400 review of the pre-sale process. Tokens will be released to Pre-Sales Period participants during at the end of the review.

Daily Public Sale Periods

There are 390 daily Public Sale Periods of 20 hours starting at 00:00 UTC each day.

Tokens allocated for each daily period are distributed pro rata and are based on a participant’s contribution to the total ETH paid-in by all participants during that period.

Bonus tokens not claimed are divided equally and added to each daily Public Sale Period.

Participants that have successfully completed their KYC and AML compliance check before the start of a daily Public Sale Period in which they contributed will receive their CMCTs within 4 hours of the close of that period. All other participants must allow up to 7 days to go through the KYC and AML process and receive CMCTs.

Token Allocations
Spooktober 2020- Article Writing Contest
By: Ruchi Das
Tags: Reading, Books, Newsletter

Spooktober 2020- Article Writing Contest

Give us your best spooky book story

Photo by Andrés Gómez on Unsplash

*As of 21st October 2020, the window for accepting entries for this contest is closed.*

Hey there Booksters!

October is here and we approach the spookiest day of the year. Also, Books Are Our Superpower has crossed 800 followers!

To commemorate this milestone, we’re celebrating Spooktober 2020 with our first writing contest. You need to just follow the following steps to enter:

Read one (or more than one!) spooky book(s). Write an article on the same. The article can be a book analysis, a theme critique, an analysis of a message you derive from it, or any other interesting account related to a spooky/creepy book you’ve read. Please avoid writing plain book reviews. Submit the draft to us. Please follow the BOAS formatting guidelines for the article. First drafts, articles not following our guidelines, poorly written articles are likely to be disqualified. Only fresh drafts are acceptable. Use the subtitle ‘Spooktober 2020 Entry’ for your article so that we can identify your submissions. New writers can send a link to their profile and the draft link to books.super.medium@gmail.com with the subject ‘Spooktober 2020 Entry’. We will review only one story per writer. In the case of multiple submissions, we will consider only the first one.

The submission window is 1st — 20th October 2020.

Our judging panel consists of three judges. There will be two winners and each will receive a bundle of three books.

Participants must be above 18 or have parental permission to share address since we might send physical copies of the books.

We will announce the winners on 30th October 2020.

Excited? Get spooked first! Pick a scary book and submit your entries!

Till the next time,

Anangsha Alammyan, Sai Krishna Kothapalli, Ruchi Das
One science is harder to explain than another
By: Jan Schultink
Tags: Data Visualization

Most of my client work involves a presentation with a hard/difficult business or scientific issue to explain. All science is complex, and it requires someone to study for years to understand it. But in some scientific disciplines I can get away with things.

Take medicine for example. Here is what you can do to make things understandable to the layman:

Micro focus on one very specific condition/disease, and omit all other 35,000 medical issues a student usually has to go through

Simplify, eliminate complex / long / Latin names

Abandon commonly used diagrams, and instead make your own, completely non-standard drawings that are solely aimed at explaining a phenomenon.

Shrink all the statistical proof into a footnote. It is important for peer-reviewed research, it is not needed to understand the basic mechanism of a drug

This can work in other disciplines as well: economics for example. But it does not work everywhere. Mathematics for examples requires a broad understanding of concepts that are all stacked on top of each other, depend on each other. And there is no easy to simplify formulas.
What’s Really Going On?
By: Josh Hallman
Tags: Comedy, Girls, Break Up, Blog, Guys

The greatest question ever, it’s so simple yet complex.
Parents, Check In On Your Child’s Online Activity. Danger May Lurk.
By: Edward Riley
Tags: Internet Access, Teenagers, Family, Mental Health, Parenting

Parents, Check In On Your Child’s Online Activity. Danger May Lurk.

It wasn’t the pandemic that almost broke me but my stepdaughter’s mental health and the dark side of teenage internet access.

Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a month or two where people seemed overwhelmed and panicked. While I understood why some were feeling that way, it didn’t really get to me.

Normally I have pretty bad anxiety about certain things. But this? This I took in stride, knowing full well that it was going to be a year-and-a-half to two years before it would be completely over. It was a situation with precedent. Science knows how viruses behave and Sociologists know how people tend to behave. This could be a semi-predictable situation. I could get a handle on it. I knew how to keep my family relatively safe. My wife marveled at my steady hand. She called me her rock. I stepped up. My entire family did.

As it continued through the summer and into early fall, I saw people give up. We all saw it. It was too much for them to handle. Social isolation and the unchanging scenery of staying home. I don’t condone it but I understand it. I recognize other’s mental health is not my own.

Again we were prepared and equipped. I was okay. I was comfortable. We had all of the creature comforts that we could need. I had curbside pickups at stores, rendering my trips inside a place packed with people to a minimum.

But the one thing that broke me during this time had nothing to do with the pandemic. Or maybe it did. Perhaps it exasperated the situation. The hardest part of the pandemic for me has been raising a teenage daughter, an eight-year-old boy, and a toddler. Watching them have to do online distance learning and missing their friends for nearly a year has been undoubtedly the toughest part of all of this.

But I can handle it. I’ve been a teacher in the past. I’ve always been hands-on with my children’s schoolwork— the schoolwork was something I could handle and help with.

The toddler aspect was certainly difficult, but it’s getting better. He has just turned three and can reason a little more and use his words a little more and understand us a little more each day. It’s been difficult and almost enough to break us. We have bent but not quite broken with this little one.
Huzurlu Yaşam İçin 10 Öğreti — Epiktetos’tan
By: Fatih Saruhan
Tags: Türkçe Yayın, Hayat, Türkçe, Blog, Kişisel Gelişim

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👸🏻♟後疫棄兵，緩不濟急：美股 新聞 劃重點 U.S. stock news to watch 11/15/2020
By: Kyle Chu 微風捕手
Tags: 中文, News, 美股, 投資, Stock Market

China's pork prices drop for the first time in more than a year as shortage eases

BEIJING - Prices of pork in China fell for the first time in more than a year, after months of surging prices for the…
ERGO — Interview with Head of Mobile Innovation
Tags: UX, Illustration, Interview, Design

S: Yes, of course I remember, I had a great time working with you and your team. Can you tell the readers how and why we started working together?

M: Yes, of course. After experiencing first-hand how you work, I thought we should give it a try. The interfaces you had created at the Hackthon really stood out, it was easy to convince my boss. Besides, you and your team are actually our target audience — your age and interests is exactly what ERGO is looking for as future customers. Why not let the target audience design our products of the future?

S: Thanks, I couldn’t agree more. Our first project together was the ERGO “Unfall App” (accident insurance). What are your thoughts on the outcome?

M: We’re super happy. ERGO is super happy, the illustrations are beautiful and the results have been great.

S: We are glad we were able to contribute. We often say we don’t have clients but we have partners instead. How did it feel to work with us?

M: Yes, I mean, the first time we met was quite informal. I think from there our relationship followed the same pattern. So, now that you ask I definitely don’t feel I am your client. We’re closer much closer then that and our direct communication with your team reflects that.
I Don’t Roll my Eyes at “Spiritual but not Religious” People Anymore
By: Emily Hedrick
Tags: Christianity, Atheism, Poetry, Agnosticism, Religion

They taught me to fear myself and my thoughts.

They taught me to laugh at people who told me

to look for the truth inside myself.

They said I would deceive myself.

You can’t find the truth inside you

until Jesus lives there.

Stop navel-gazing and read the Bible.

Some people just want to feel good

to the point of sacrificing Truth

in the process.

Then, during a conversation with my pastor when I was 17, I found myself crying uncontrollably while feeling completely blank. I didn’t understand what my body was doing — I was fine. My tears intellectually confused me.

I had learned to repress my emotions so well that I didn’t know when I was upset anymore.

I became overwhelmed with horror when it dawned on me:

I had been trying to stop myself from existing.

Every time I tried to make myself fit inside my religion, I was amputating

my emotions

my autonomy

my self.

That was what it took for me to question my commitment

to defining my world without my own input.

I slowly started to rebuild myself.
Can I Have
By: Trapper Markelz
Tags: Free Verse, Poetry

Photo by Dan Burton on Unsplash

A yellow tree sheds seasonal tears

over a cement track where shots fired

and feet scrambled toward ribbons broke

and water lost; sunny blue on blue

where kids become eagles, flying off

to make their own memories on grass

in other towns. You must have seen we

were giving away bikes to striving children.

You smiled in language, gestured to our

small bikes, measuring the ground over

and over with your flattened hand,

showing me how high the water has risen,

a hole in your blue shirt floating just

above your right nipple. You couldn’t

get what you wanted: To be seen,

to be heard, to be given, to walk

triumphant in the eyes for provisions

provided. As you agitated back beyond

the fence and crossed the street, I watched

you drift down the sidewalk, talking

to yourself — a technicolor human,

fading to gray, as credits begin to roll.

© Trapper Markelz 2020

If you enjoyed reading this poem, please consider:
How Laundry and Dishes Can Lead to Freedom of a Different Kind
By: Deborah Mcnamara
Tags: Life Lessons, Personal Growth, Mindfulness, Motherhood, Parenting

How Laundry and Dishes Can Lead to Freedom of a Different Kind

If we tweak our perceptions, the simple day to day tasks can also bring us joy.

Photo: Deborah McNamara (Ceramics by Amy Deystone, DS Clay)

Have you ever had the experience of being tethered to home, pining for something different or more? If you are a working mother of young children like myself, there are likely piles of laundry, endless orders for snacks, toys to pick up, and dishes in the sink.

It’s no wonder many women feel stir-crazy after a previous life of comings and goings as we please. Now we are pulled home as waves pulled to shore. Everything we’ve lived before often seems distant and impossible. Some days, being a ‘daughter of the feminist movement’ seemed bust. Was this the endgame?

The long days at home, parenting, and home-keeping could be hard. The sense of responsibility was ever-present. My kids seemed to have three to four needs each minute, my baby needed to be held and fed. There were diapers to be changed every hour, or so it seemed. The messes piled up. I often tripped over the toys strewn about the floor.

I’d been working part-time for an environmental non-profit since my first son was born, and some days going to work did indeed feel easier. I could self-regulate with ease at work. I could get a drink of water right when I needed one. Parenting young children and trying to maintain a sane order at home alternately tossed me into a cocktail of non-stop output, where multitasking was a survival skill.
Adaptive Proof of Work (APoW): Komodo’s Solution To Diff Strand Attacks
By: Komodo Platform
Tags: Apow, Bitcoin, Pow, Komodo

Blockchains do not have inherent security. While major blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are incredibly secure, it’s common knowledge that smaller blockchains don’t have anywhere close to the same level of protection. If a blockchain’s network is small and weak, so are that blockchain’s defenses against malicious attacks.

Proof of Stake blockchains face threats like the Nothing at Stake problem and Weak Subjectivity . Proof of Work blockchains, on the other hand, have to worry about the infamous 51% attack , as well as more obscure attacks like the Diff Strand Attack.

A Diff Strand Attack is when malicious miners raise a small network’s hash rate and mining difficulty to extremely high levels very suddenly. Then, the malicious miners quickly abandon the network, leaving it stranded with such a high difficulty that the remaining miners are totally incapable of processing transactions or finding new blocks.

To defend against 51% attacks, Komodo uses the delayed Proof of Work (dPoW) security mechanism, which recycles the Bitcoin network’s hash rate to give every dPoW-integrated coin the same level of security as Bitcoin itself.

As for the threat of difficulty stranding attacks, Komodo now has a solution for this, too. Komodo’s Lead Developer James ‘jl777’ Lee recently added slight changes to traditional Proof of Work rules to allow a network to quickly and naturally recover from a Diff Strand Attack. This new consensus method is called Adaptive Proof of Work (APoW).

Understanding Proof of Work and Mining

The first step in understanding Adaptive Proof of Work (APoW) is to gain an understanding of how ordinary Proof of Work networks function.

Stated very simply, Proof of Work forces all of the machines on the blockchain’s network- that is, the miners- to compete against one another. Each miner is trying to solve a complex math problem before anyone else.
Use the Foot-in-the-Door Technique to Sell More
By: Ramsay Lewis
Tags: Marketing, Psychology, Entrepreneurship, Science, Business

Evidence for the Foot-in-the-Door Effect

Some of the original research on this effect was conducted by Johnathan Freedman and Scott Fraser in the 1960s. In one experiment, they first asked a bunch of housewives (this was the ’60s) to sign a petition for political action to improve safe driving. The majority of housewives that they approached agreed to the petition.

Then, two weeks later, they contacted the same group of individuals as well as a new group of housewives that they had not approached before. They asked these groups a much bigger request: to allow the experimenters to place a large, ugly sign on their lawn.

They found that 76% of individuals agreed in the first group compared to only 17% in the second group. In other words, asking for a petition signature two weeks earlier led to three times as many people agreeing to the lawn sign. People were more likely to accept the big request if they first accepted a smaller request.

This effect has been demonstrated in a number of contexts. For example, it may also be able to get you more dates. In one study, a young man approached a number of women and asked them to have a drink with him. In the foot-in-the-door condition, he first asked for directions or for a cigarette lighter. In the control condition, he simply asked them for the drink. The women were much more likely to agree to the drink if he first asked them for directions (16%) or a lighter (15%) compared to if he just asked for the drink directly (3%).

The effect also seems to work even if the requests are not made face-to-face. In one study, students were much more likely to complete a 20-minute email survey when they were first asked to help give some information about file conversion. In another study, researchers showed that the foot-in-the-door technique also works in virtual communities.
DAF liquidity mechanism
By: Napoleon Group
Tags: Finance, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Investing, Blockchain

One of the main feature of investment vehicles in the traditional world is the liquidity feature. Indeed, when one invests its money into a product, he usually has an investment horizon where he might need to sell it in order to recover its money. The money could then be used to provide education to one’s children or to buy a house or to fund retirement …

Attached to the investment horizon, you usually have a risk appetite and an expected performance that should remunerate this risk. The longer your horizon, the higher the risk you should be able to bear and the higher the expected return you should get from your investment.

That is why, most of the investment vehicles communicate on their investment horizons. Equities are reputed to be long term investment while on the other side of the spectrum you have monetary instruments that are very short dated with very low expected volatility.

To accommodate with this feature, dedicated investment vehicles, ie investment funds, have also embarked this feature into their value proposal. For example, retail investment funds usually have a daily liquidity whilst private equity investment funds have a fix 5–10 years horizon with almost no liquidity.

For the DAF that NaPoleonX will launch post ICO, we have designed an ad’hoc liquidity mechanism in order to accommodate DAF’s investor with a need to access their money. The liquidity mechanism will be three-fold:

1/ The DAF will issue tokens in order to raise money and these tokens will trade freely on one or several Exchanges. So any investor will be able to sell its investment at any time.

2/ If a DAF is successful, we want to give the opportunity to new investors to invest in them post the initial issuance. This is an important element as most of the strategies that will be proposed will be able to accommodate over 100 million USD of assets when the underlying is in the traditional space. So in order to onboard new investors, we have designed a unique Secondary Coin Offering (“SCO”) mechanism.

3/ If a DAF become unsuccessful, their investors will be able to disband the DAF in the case of 75% of its holders voting for such resolution.

SCOs will be run like ICOs on a monthly basis and will contribute to the attractiveness of our DAFs. The aim is to remove a potential scarcity feature as can be the case with closed end funds. This SCO date will be used to manage several feature of the DAF Smart Contract that will allow DAF’s investors to remain in the driving seat of their investment.

Please visit our website www.napoleonx.ai and feel free to contact us for more information.