fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Let the Chosen Ones Choose
By: Susannah Mackinnie
Tags: Storytelling, Childhood, Fantasy, Poetry, Fate

I hear the goddesses speaking.

Haughty, scornful Isabeau derides and dismisses her.

“We go from a beautiful, Amazon princess warrior to this joke, a dysfunctional misfit who wants to be a hero and a librarian. A librarian!”

She considers her unworthy and takes the child’s death as a certainty.
The What, Why, and How of TypeScript for JavaScript Developers
By: Juan Cruz Martinez
Tags: Programming, Software Development, Nodejs, JavaScript, Typescript

Using Types With TypeScript

Basic types

TypeScript has a number of basic types that are predefined. Number, string, boolean, and array are a few examples of them.

You can find the complete list of basic types in the TypeScript documentation .

Here are a few examples:

Note how any type reverts TypeScript to behave the same way as JavaScript. Since our purpose of using TypeScript is to give a better structure to our code, avoid using any type whenever possible.

Similarly, try to avoid using a union of types, but if it is unavoidable, limit the number of types allowed in the union as much as possible.

Declaring custom types

Remember how I used a type called Person in a previous code example? But Person is not a basic data type in TypeScript. I created the Person type according to my requirements to use it as the type of parameter accepted by the given function.

We use interfaces to define the basic structure of a new type we are introducing to the application.

interface Person {

name: string;

age: number;

}

Now, if we create a new object of type Person , it should have the field’s name and age within it. If not, TypeScript throws an error.

VS Code alerting of missing properties in custom types

You can also define optional fields inside an interface.

You can then use a custom type as the type of a field when defining another type.

interface Person{

name: string;

age: number;

address: Address;

}

Extending interfaces

In TypeScript, you can inherit the properties of another type by extending its interface.

Assume that your application needs two different types, Person and Employee . Since an employee is also a person, it makes sense to inherit the Person type’s properties when creating the Employee interface. It prevents code repetition.

You can quickly achieve this by extending the Person interface.

Function parameter types and return types

Similar to variable types, you can define types for function parameters and return values. While the parameter type is declared next to the parameter name, the return type is declared just before the curly braces.

With the type of the parameter and return value defined, we can guarantee that you or anyone else using this function won’t accidentally pass an object that doesn’t have the characteristics of the Car type.

You can also guarantee that the field sold in any object passed won’t be undefined or null. And it eliminates a number of scenarios that could throw an error during the runtime. If you were using JavaScript, you would have to write more code to prevent the possibility of such an error occurring during runtime.

Similar to variables, you can define the return and parameter types as a union of several types.

function buyCar(car : Car): Car | boolean {

if (car.sold === true){

return false;

}

return car;

}

When you declare the accepted parameter or return type, objects of types that extend the initial type’s interface are also accepted as the argument or the return value.
Three Questions With RJ Andrews
By: Mary Aviles
Tags: Datavis, Topicsindv, Interview, Exhibit, Dataviz

I am a fan of pictorial diagrams, but a pictorial diagram is not enough for me. I want some sort of statistical insight as well. You can do that by arranging pictures according to some order.

I did that with the cathedral spread at the end of the Info We Trust book. I was intentional about arranging these. Each one’s an individual map and it’s on polar coordinates — it’s also a polar bar chart.

Source: RJ Andrews, Oriented Cathedrals: ‘Praying Toward the Sun’ reveals a hidden code in Gothic architecture, from Info We Trust.

2. If you were stuck on a desert island, what viz would you want to create and what would you use to make it?

If you’re on a desert island, it’s sort of like a prison, right? So, the natural thing is that you would want to track time. That might keep you from going crazy. Also, how big is this isle? Is this a New Yorker cartoon desert isle? Or, is it a Robert Louis Stevenson desert isle?

I have to eat, so we’re going to assume access to fresh shellfish. I’m making my visualization out of shells. And, I’m not going to be optimistic about my survival. I’m going to clean the beach and make it perfectly smooth. And, the thing that you can do on a desert island better than anywhere else in the world is you can look at the stars. I’m going to take all the shells from the shellfish I’ve been eating and I’m going to bleach them in the sun. Then, I’m going to make the most beautiful visualization of the night sky and reflect it back. That will probably entertain me. And, it’ll keep me out of the sun during the day when it’s hot. It will give me something to do at night. And, I’ll probably do that until I wither away from exhaustion.

3. What is one visualization that has inspired you?

It feels appropriate to pick one from the exhibition. I’ve written about this before, but the Paris Theater Review is my favorite thematic map. I love it. It may be my favorite piece of data visualization of all time. It’s not just perfect, it’s incredibly delightful. When you look at the exhibit write-up, I gave it a second paragraph. There’s nobody who knows how to do what they did here. The color on top is just so vibrant, but you can still see the base map below. It’s an incredible work.
First lessons on accessibility
By: Ihor Averin
Tags: User Experience, Accessibility, Design, Graphic Design, UX

It is quite difficult to read even high-contrast text on a smartphone while walking in the bright sun because of glares. Low-contrast text might be nearly impossible to read at all. Cognitive conditions, that affect short-term memory and concentration, also make it difficult to percept incomprehensible text. It requires more time to process errors for users. Make sure that not only color coding for important content is used, but it also sticks out by boldness, special symbols, icons, etc.

Why is this important

Oliver can’t distinguish between green and red, so he doesn’t know that the field highlighted in red reports an error.

Media

People with disabilities should be able to perceive media content.

Why is this important

Karl has hearing loss. He watches movies and videos on Youtube exceptionally with subtitles. Joe recently moved to another country and does not always perceive the fast foreign language. He uses subtitles to make sure he properly understands what he is hearing.

In order for a foreigner or a person who is hard of hearing to perceive your audio content, add subtitles or a transcript of the text. Do not use design elements that may be dangerous and unsafe. Make sure you there is nothing that flashes more than three times per second. Animated website elements, logos, or ads can lead to an epilepsy attack for people with certain types of disorders.

Forms

Make sure that you have added instructions or hints that will help users to avoid an error.

Why is this important

Helga has the first signs of dementia and difficulties with short-term memory. She needs contextual hints and instructions that don’t disappear from the screen, otherwise she might get lost. Marc uses screen magnifier, and when information appears on the edge of the screen, he might miss it.

All input information must have clear labels that remain visible even after filling in the field. It is better to warn the user in advance about the data format: date, phone numbe, etc. If the caps lock is turned on, user should be aware of it. Screen readers communicate each label to users. Without proper labeling, forms are inaccessible to many people. Using a placeholder as a label puts a burden on short-term memory. The label disappears as soon as the user starts typing, and the user must clear input text to expose the placeholder label again.
How to Find and Identify Fonts
Tags: Typography, UX Design, Fonts, Open Source, Writing

How to Find and Identify Fonts

The free, easy and legal way!

Wether you’re trying to find the best font for your novella, because you’re a selfpublisher, or you’re designing a leaflet as a startup graphics designer — the licensing fees for professional, commercial fonts can be daunting at times. While there are ways (like always) to basically obtain any font you want for free, there is a free and perfectly legal way to get lots of quality fonts: open source.

Open source basically means, that you’re free to use the fonts for any kind of project, be it commercial or just for private use. There are an estimated onehundredandthirtyfive quadrofontzillion fonts out there in almost as much variations.

Who really needs all of those?

If you’re not required to use “specific” fonts for a given project, you’re free to use “lookalikes” or “alternative” fonts. In all honesty, if you have a handful of fonts, you’re set for almost any kind of project.

I recommend a “5-way typeset” like so:

5 sans serif fonts (think Arial)

5 serif fonts (think Times New Roman)

5 monotype fonts (think Courier New)

5 handwritten and swirly fonts (think Brush Script)

5 really heavy fonts (think Impact or Gothic 821)

5 fonts with dingbats and emojis (think Webdings)

Again, if you’re free in your font choice and don’t need to work with certain fonts (for example, as a graphics designer adhering to CI guidelines), you can do perfectly fine with just a small set of open source fonts like above. Everything else is just excess “fluff”.

If you’re using open source writing software, like Libre Office as an alternative to MS Office, you’re already decked out with a great set of open source fonts like

Liberation Serif (instead of Times New Roman)

Liberation Sans (instead of Arial)

Liberation Mono (instead of Courier New)

Those are all a really great starting point to cover your most basic font needs.

If you’re using a distribution of Linux as your OS (Solus, for example) you already know about the great benefits of open source ressources and software. You also already got a nice set of open source fonts, provided by your OS.
Cracked Like Me
Tags: Humor, Mental Health, Comics, Politics, Self Improvement

Written by

Almost famous cartoonist who laughs at her own jokes and hopes you will, too.
Analyzing My Ex-Husband Never Helped Me Heal
By: Elizabeth Katherine
Tags: Self, Mental Health, Relationships, Life Lessons, Love

Seven months later I still hadn’t quite given up on our marriage. Although he would no longer speak to me since — after that solo couples’s therapy session — I had separated out my finances and left him to manage his own, I was still hoping against hope that we would work things out. I was still trying to understand why things were the way they were.

The night before I had asked him for a simple favour: please pack my vaccination booklet in our daughter’s backpack. I had left it behind in the move. Sure, he’d texted back.

When I looked in my daughter’s backpack that evening I had fully expected him to forget. To my surprise, the vaccination booklet was there. As I leafed through it looking for my Yellow Fever attestation, I realized that I was, in fact, holding my daughter’s booklet. Not mine.

“How does this happen?” I muttered to myself, “How does stuff like this always happen?”

I had learned, over the course of our marriage, to not rely on him for anything.

Ever.

He was always running late. Perpetually disorganized. Forgetful. If he started to do something around the house, odds are he would wander away mid-task and I would end up finishing it or it would simply be left undone.

And so I started googling these behaviours. A conversation with a friend, who unbeknownst to me had an ADHD diagnosis, confirmed what I had started to suspect: possible ADHD. It was her questions about hyperfocus that convinced me: he could stay up all night researching the benefits of diatomaceous earth or watching entire seasons of a TV show.

These issues like forgetfulness or marathon research projects on weird topics (that left him exhausted the next day) could simply have been personality quirks – except they were un-discussables.

His typical response to any complaint I might have started with “Yeah, well you...” and launched into an admonishment of a behaviour or habit of mine that he didn’t like. We would end up talking about my negative contributions to our home or marriage (and I definitely had many) and circumventing my original point. I would give up, exhausted. He would feel attacked and frustrated. I called this the Dance of Perpetual Misunderstanding.

And so I adapted. I simply pretended his behaviours didn’t impact me as much as they did. I worked around him. I tried to see things from his perspective. I anticipated what our household needed and planned in into my schedule. I tried to ask for as little as possible.

Going down my very own rabbit hole of internet research, I found myself in tears at an article about the effects of ADHD on marriage. I resonated to the point of aching. I resolved to speak with him about this. If we could dig into this, we could get to the heart of things and heal.

A few days later he agreed to meet me in a café. I hesitantly brought up my suspicions about ADHD. He cut me off mid-sentence, “Yeah, yeah, I probably have ADD. Whatever. You probably have ADD, look at how you…”
Docker | Docker Compose | Flask app
By: Raoof Naushad
Tags: Python, Docker Compose, Containers, Flask, Docker

Docker | Docker Compose | Flask app

How to dockerize a simple flask app with Docker

This time we are going to discuss about how we can dockerize a simple flask app using Docker and Docker-compose.

Photo by Kristin Hillery on Unsplash

Docker uses OS-level virtualisations to maintain and use software in packages called containers. These containers are isolated to one another but can be communicated through well defined channels.

Docker Compose is actually a tool to configure multiple container Docker applications for example there may be 2–3 docker containers (one for webapp, one for database etc). By using a single YAML file and single command you can configure and start all the services in your configuration.

When you have multiple parts of the project with docker compose you can work on different components of the project on different Docker containers and combine them to create a single application.

Docker Compose — Source

This story will show you a simple example on how to build a flask application which uses Python modules and make it to run inside a docker container using docker compose.

The first step is to install Docker and Docker Compose on your local machine. For linux users here is the command. For others just look here to install on your respective operating systems.

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

$ sudo apt−get install docker−compose

Now it is time to create a flask app. I believe you already have experience working with flask application. If not it is very simple. Watch few videos or read few blogs.

Simple Flask application

The above code can be saved in a file called app.py in the root directory. This .py few flask libraries and create a route ‘/’ and returns a message. App is exposed on port 7007. Here we also use CORS, Cross origin resource sharing is a mechanism that allow us to configure restriction across other domain other than the domain in the app is served.

You can run this flask app by running python app.py command. But this will ask you to install few dependencies. Install them and write them down on to a file called requirements.txt .

Generated By Author
Lists Can be a Window into One’s Life
By: Dr. Fatima Imam
Tags: Writing, Vulnerability, Relationships, Life, Self Improvement

I perform best on a set schedule where a to-do-list is a part of a routine. For example, my day starts with mediation, tea, and breakfast, reading, getting ready for work, or preparing for classes. I’ve been doing all these things since I was a teenager. Life took unusual turns by creating havoc in my planned lifestyle, but mediation practice has continued. I’m intrigued by this challenge and just submitting a random list. Thank you so much for indulging me. Thank you for reading.

Here it is:

1. I got my high school diploma when I was 13 years old.

2. I’m terrified of all flying creatures and feathers.

3. I never went on a date.

4. My predictions always come true.

5. I wanted to major in politics and psychology.

6. Rome is my favourite city in the world.

7. An unfolded laundry basket is the most exciting thing for me.

8. Silence is comforting; I can go days without talking to someone.

9. I learned to drive when I was 36 years old.

10. I want to open a cat sanctuary and retire to manage it.

© Fatima Imam
Methods in Python: Fundamentals for Data Scientists
By: Erdem Isbilen
Tags: Python, Data Science, Oop, Class Method, Static Methods

Photo by Skylar Sahakian on Unsplash

Instance Methods

Instance methods are the most commonly used methods in a class structure. Any function defined in a class structure is an instance method if otherwise is not stated with decorators. So, you don’t need a decorator to define instance methods.

# Instance Method def display_summary(self):

data = pd.read_csv(self.path + self.file_name)

print(self.file_name)

print(data.head(self.generate_random_number(10)))

print(data.info())

They take an implicit parameter, self, which represents the instance itself when the method is called.

With the help of self parameter, instance methods can access instance variables (attributes) and other instance methods in the same object.

When To Use Instance Methods

Instance methods are the core of the class structure and they define the behaviours of our class.

We can perform the tasks defined in the instance methods using instance-specific data. They can access unique data contained in the instance with the help of the self parameter.

In our example, we have two instances of CSVGetInfo class and they store different file name values, “data_by_artists.csv” and “data_by_genres.csv” respectively. The instance method of display_summary(self) performs the task by accessing values unique to each of the instance.
10 Sustainable Intentions To Set For 2021
By: Begüm Erol
Tags: Mindfulness, Self, Tips, Wellness, Life

10 Sustainable Intentions To Set For 2021

Replace your short-lived resolutions with meaningful intentions

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

At the beginning of 2020, I didn’t set any resolutions but had only one meaningful intention. Because my resolutions didn’t say anything about what I want to attract into my life. They were always about doing and crossing things off the list. While resolutions were a good source of motivation at the beginning, they never seemed to work out for me.

If you’re like me I have a great offer for you.

Set intentions vs. resolutions

Here we are at the end of another year. This is when we feel ready to pack old ways that don’t serve us and get excited about new things to come. We set resolutions and aim to become a brand new person. We aim to stop smoking, start going to the gym, learn a new hobby, travel at least 5 countries, and the list goes on with most likely things that are hard to stick to. They’re hard to stick to because our success to achieve them depends on our external reality. I guess, we all learned to not attach our happiness to the outside world in 2020. That’s why it’s time to set sustainable intentions instead of resolutions that will fail probably after Monday or at any opportunity when our reality is shaken.

But why are intentions more sustainable than resolutions?

In her article, Angelica Attard Psy.D. describes these two words perfectly for us. Resolutions are like goals that are more about doing. And intentions are more about being what we want to attract into our lives.

Let’s get to the core of this. If we have a resolution like I will go to the gym 5 days a week, we’ll most likely lose the track of our new habit we try to set in the first place when we have some obstacles to go to the gym. Because our resolution is more about doing and arriving somewhere. And it’s dependent on external circumstances.

Instead, if we set an intention like I will take care of my body to feel strong inside and out this year, we go deep into the value and meaning of what we want to attract into our lives. It will not be a failure if we miss the gym a few times. We can keep taking care of our body by supporting it with good food or any other alternative because we’re flexible to keep our intention alive with other supportive things too. We embrace and become what we want to feel.

Therefore, if you’re preparing a list for new things to come into your life next year, put meaning and value before action.

Deepak Chopra suggests a similar attitude towards setting intentions. He emphasizes that once we set an intention, we should detach ourselves from the outcome, intend that everything will work out as it should be, and allow opportunities to come our way. This kind of attitude keeps us on the right track to what our heart desires as we’re flexible and not destination-oriented. We can enjoy and experience different options on the way to attract our intention if what we have strictly in our minds doesn’t work out.
Constant Connectedness Bores us
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Mindfulness, Self, Social Media, Tech, Psychology

Constant Connectedness Bores us

How being always on is eroding our ability to be present

Most of us carry the internet in our pocket, we are constantly connected to one another via social media, but some of us still report being bored.

How is this even possible?

In some cases, it seems that tech privilege hasn’t eradicated boredom but exacerbated it instead. Despite having a treasure trove of interestingness and discovery at our fingertips, we still get weary and restless.

Endless choice may have something to do with it.

Now that we can access whatever educational and entertainment content we could ever wish for, many of us get overwhelmed. For example, we while away hours scrolling mindlessly through lists of movies and TV shows without being able to decide what to watch. Before we know it, the leisure time we had set aside to recharge and relax after a long day at work has vanished, we’ve done nothing with it, and it’s already time to go to sleep

And so off to bed we trudge, frustrated, bored, and often a little annoyed at having allowed tech to gobble up yet another too short evening.

Many of us approach social media the same way; instead of using it selectively, we allow our brain to feast upon whatever is put in front of our eyes without discernment or discrimination.

Whether it adds value to our life doesn’t even come into it; it’s there so we dive in gleefully and soak it all up without engaging our critical faculties.
How Visual Response Rate Affects User Experience | Page Speed
Tags: Marketing Strategies, Marketing, UX, Conversion Optimization, Growth Hacking

No real money was burned in this picture

In early 2018 I created an eCommerce website. I spent almost a thousand dollars on ads before I had my first sale. Just like magic, I made all that money disappear in one month. My first users were leaving without seeing a single page.

The average new user was spending 0 seconds on my site and leaving. Blink and you would miss them.

This white cat would not see users bouncing off my page

I started over and changed my wording to be more relevant to my ads. I updated the layout to follow the F-Shaped Pattern of Reading. I still saw absolutely no difference in my conversion rate because people were still spending my ad money before instantly leaving my page.

Don’t stress if you are at this stage. I was there for many months before I remembered one problem. People expect immediate results on the internet.

Faster visual responses help users stay engaged. In the software world there is an expectation that every application action should feel instantaneous. Typically this is a response that gives a visual cue back in 0.1 second or less[1].

Most websites fall into one of three categories

The Lamborghini that gets the most attention is the one that gets out of the garage

The fastest websites have tried everything, and need to innovate for improving their Page Speed.

Some websites that have devoted, and patient customers. However most new users don’t stay long enough to have their magic moment. That is where they understand the value of the product and buy in.

The final group is losing a lot of potential customers to long load times. Their site loads so slowly users assume that either the computer or the site is broken. This is where I started.

Part 2: Dropping Bounce Rates While Driving up Revenues

Shoutouts for proofreading & idea for article: Anastasia Walia Cat Lagman David Morrill Javier Rivilla Olivia Chun

References:
SCORCHER: As Global Records Tumbled, S’pore Baked Under One Of The Warmest Q3 Ever
By: Chua Chin Hon
Tags: Climate Change, Data Journalism, Singapore, Data Visualization, Weather

Singapore has not been spared the recent spate of record heat waves around the world.

If anything else, an examination of the city-state’s weather data from July to September 2019 suggests that Singapore baked under a long heat spell that was noticeably more intense than the long term average over the same period (ie, Q3 2019 data compared with Q3 data in previous years).

In 84 of the 92 days in Q3 2019, or 9 out of 10 days, the mean daily temperature exceeded the long term average of 27.92°C for July-September — the highest since 1983, by this benchmark.

Q3 2019 also had 81 days where the maximum daily temperature exceeded the long term average of 31.39°C for this period, matching the current record set in 1997 when Singapore and the world felt the brunt of the El Nino effects.

The Meteorological Service had earlier said that August 2019 was likely the driest and warmest August since records started in 1929, and that 2019 was poised to set new temperature records.

It is unclear if the weather in Singapore has shifted to a new normal. But the trend lines certainly point in a worrying direction.
Deploy a React Project on Nginx webserver to GCP VM Instance
By: Sajal Dulal
Tags: Google Cloud Platform, Deploy, Nginx, React, Virtual Machine

Creating GCP Virtual Machine Instance

Go to, Google Cloud Console, log in with your Gmail. Create a project, or select your existing one.

Make sure you have access to the Google Cloud services.

If not, you can sign up for the 300$ trial, which is more than adequate for this tutorial.

Click on the burger menu icon, on the top left. Then select the Compute Engine > VM instances.

VM instance in console.cloud.google

Now create a new VM instance, give it a name and leave all the settings at default, or as per your server requirements but make sure:

1. You select a Ubuntu-based system, preferably Ubuntu 18.04.

2. Check both the Allow HTTP traffic and Allow HTTPS traffic checkboxes.

Creating a VM instance

It takes some time to fully create and run a Virtual Machine, but after it is ready it should look something like this.

Accessing VM instance

This is your Virtual Machine with IP address provided right under “External IP”. Please take a note of this IP address, it will be required for later use.

Now to access your server, simply click on the SSH, and click the “, as shown in the image above.

You will be provided with a terminal, inside a browser window which acts as the terminal to the Ubuntu system in our Virtual Machine.
ICOVO、分散型資金調達プラットフォーム(DAF)の拡張ビジョンを公開
By: Icovo Ag
Tags: ICO, Japanese, Startup, Blockchain, Ethereum

ICOVO

We give shapes to possibilities on Ethereum.
Conquer The Fear Of The Unknown.
By: Ntwari Moise
Tags: Social, Work Life Balance, Fear, Entrepreneurship, Life

Photo by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash

At times we think those with the thick skin as an elephant can hope to sail through life unscathed by self-doubt and bouts of depression, but the truth is; we all at some point reach that point in life.

There is a time when a realm of deep personal power leads an individual into conducting their own education, exploring inspiration, shaping the environment and sharing their adventure with others. While work fills a very large part of our lives, those with a great taste in intuitive understanding and creation often strive for perfection in crafting their work.

Humanly, perfection is perceived as a positive thing. Even saying you have perfectionistic tendencies can come off as a great trait; even though internally you feel coldness and darkness has taken over.

We think that by sacrificing our quality time with friends and family or have a good rest when we are tired and exhausted will help us concentrate and work on that project perfectly that we have been thinking about but the truth is that neither one increase our productivity nor puts us in a perfect mental position that will help us cope with what’s to come. It leads to getting frustrated, beating yourself up for past failures or feeling like you can’t live up to your ambitions and expectations which lead you in peril.
Your Weekly AI, Machine Learning and Data Science Recommended Articles (Dec 21)
By: Richmond Alake
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Technology, Artificial Intelligence, News

Your Weekly AI, Machine Learning and Data Science Recommended Articles (Dec 21)

Well written and informative articles aimed at ML practitioners

There are no shortages of AI-focused articles to read on Medium. AI enthusiasts and machine learning practitioners are spoilt for choice when seeking AI-related articles to read on Medium.

This week’s collection of recommended articles cover a range of AI topics such as NLP, AI predictions, audio processing, and more.

Needless to say, each recommended article listed below provides some form of value to ML practitioners and AI enthusiasts.

Happy Reading.
Weekly update from Ubcoin: 23.07–02.08
By: Ubcoin. Cryptocurrency Reimagined
Tags: Ubcoin, Ubcoin Product, Artificial Intelligence, Ethereum, Bitcoin

2. Ubcoin Market team is currently developing a complex AI-system to

1) moderate content,

2) create personal recommendations

3) predict the price of goods

4) improve the quality of product images

5) identify suspicious ads and behaviour.

The use of machine learning technologies improves user experience and makes the use of Ubcoin platform safe.

Read more about this AI system here: https://medium.com/@ubcoin/five-applications-of-artificial-intelligence-on-the-ubcoin-marketplace-c83942b8a62e

Ubcoin Artificial Intelligence System is created under the supervision of the Chief AI Officer Kirill Kosolapov. You can watch an interview with him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HQ_lokV1Us

You can test the real Ubcoin AI-bot here: https://ubcoin.io/en/#universe

Project Marketing

1. The first version of blockchain-based Ubcoin marketplace has been released. This big news was published by 24 media outlets in total in various languages.

2. Fresh video reviews:

USA, Cryptocurrency Investing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaoA2PkWIpo

USA, CryptoSid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1NJrd4zvwQ&ab_channel=CryptoSID

USA, Dushan Spalevich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWHssg7t28A (interview with CEO — Felix)

Indonesia, Mz Vlogger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RjkiqkcH2o

Indonesia, Crypto Rick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViB8s7-Qk60

Indonesia, Kendrick Kalim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_bo3WIve0

Indonesia, Aditya Prakarsa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MNEqyUpdaE

Indonesia, Fredazip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWHssg7t28A

Tokensale updates

Ubcoin continues Bounty Payments.

At the moment we distributed all Bounty programs (phase-1) except Facebook campaign.

We decided to distribute bounty tokens in 2 parts. The first part: earned between the beginning of bounty program and June, 30. Payments have commenced in batches. The second part: earned between June, 30 and August, 27. To be paid in September.

Bounty program continues till August, 27 (end of token sale). To participate in bounty program please join this chat: https://t.me/UbcoinBount

Miscellaneous

At the moment we are finishing negotiations with a Chinese blockchain project about a complex partnership. Public announcements are planned to be made next week.
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.
By: John Gorman
Tags: Karma, Relationships, Love, Psychology, This Happened To Me

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.

Why life is worth living.

I once knew this woman … I believe her name was Camille.

She was a radiant presence in a room, a boundless fireball of beauty and brilliance, who shined the way the new phone does once you peel the plastic off the screen and start it up for the first time.

Anyway, Camille was a singer-songwriter who would just levitate on stage — all humility and grace — and belt out these sun-soaked melodies with earnest lyrics of longing, lust and chocolate. We liked her just fine.

She’d heard I’d traveled down the road that inevitably leads the ego in all of us to the stage. And we ping-ponged some forgettable dialogue before she asked me, sort of in context but sort of shoehorned, “How can I get better?”

Now, listen, I’m not about to tell people to follow my path in music. For that career, I’m still trying to fight with family members on reconsidering the “Do Not Resuscitate” checkbox. But, there’s a common current underneath all art, and under the overlap in the Venn diagram where it intersects with the path your life takes.
How To Build A Successful AI PoC
By: Arnault Chazareix
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Proof Of Concept, Artificial Intelligence, Build Ai

Overview of an Artificial Intelligence System

As an example, I will take a system which classifies documents. It answers to “What kind of document is this?” with classes like an “electric invoice” or a “to-do list”.

AI workflows consist of 5 steps:

receiving the question: “What kind of document is this?”

adding complementary data on the user or the context: “What type of documents does the user have?”

using the data to answer the question: “Which type does this document belong to?” by “This is an energy invoice”

storing the result: adding the new documents to the database

answering the client’s question: “This is an energy invoice”

You can break this down into 3 tasks, or semantic blocks:

Handling the client : receiving the question, making him wait…

Example: an HTTP server

: receiving the question, making him wait… Example: an HTTP server Data conciliation : communication with the “company knowledge base” to add or receive relevant data.

Example: communication with a database

: communication with the “company knowledge base” to add or receive relevant data. Example: communication with a database AI Block: the AI itself which answers the question with a context.

Example: expert system, SVM, neural networks…

Answering the question“What kind of document is this?”

You can find great tutorials on how to architect your server or your data conciliation layer on the web. The simplest solution for an AI PoC in Python is using Flask and a SQL database, but it highly depends on your needs and what you already have. Here is a tutorial on using Flask with SQLALchemy.

We are going to focus on designing the AI itself.

Designing The AI Block

AI tasks can involve multiple heterogenous inputs. For example, the age and the location of a user or a whole email discussion.

AI Outputs depend on the task: the question we want to answer. There are a lot of different tasks in AI. You can see some of the usual tasks in computer vision in the image below.

Various computer vision tasks from a post about image segmentation

Thinking of ways to build an AI seems complicated as soon as you venture out of the standardized inputs and tasks.

To wrap my mind around the complexity of building an AI, I use a 3-step process.

Step 1: Browsing the relevant inputs

First, gather all the inputs you suspect are capable of answering the task at hand and select those that are self-sufficient in the majority of cases.

When testing an AI idea, it’s easy to get greedy and think about solutions that include a lot of inputs: the location of the user may give me an insight into what their next e-mail will be, for example. The truth is: it’s just so easy to get lost in mixing various inputs with different meanings or nature and end up delivering nothing.

Stick to simple, self-sufficient inputs when building your AI.

Step 2: Vectorizing the data

The second step is to preprocess those inputs, to make those usable for various algorithms.

…

Read the full article on Sicara’s blog here
Formosa Financial x CoolBitX- 品牌聯名Coolwallet S設計競賽
By: Formosa Financial Team
Tags: Fintech, Contests, Design, Blockchain, Crowdsourcing

in In Fitness And In Health
Battling Racist Ro(Bots) and Trolls-The Struggle Continues
By: Gfc, Grown Folk Conversations
Tags: Cybersecurity, Ｍedium, Racism, Bots, Writing

Battling Racist Ro(Bots) and Trolls-The Struggle Continues

How I use writing to rage against racist machines

I’ve heard of antagonistic bots on Facebook and Twitter posting racist comments and rhetoric to cause racial conflict, but I think they’ve started targeting Medium. I just discovered possible bots that have been responding to my posts or responses to other people’s pieces.

Over the last year, a number of negative and racist comments have come from weird accounts that appear to be white men have increased. At first, I blocked them, but then I started to respond.

I thought I should chronicle my experiences because they are a little creepy and I wanted to see if there was a pattern.

This week’s bot is Patrick Morris he hasn’t written anything — but I responded 3 times before I suspected it was a bot:

In September 2020

I wrote about 2 more attackers — this may have been a real person or bots. I’m not sure.

In October 2019

Again, I’m not sure if this was a real person or a bot.

Lesson and Conclusion

If you’re writing about race, equity and inclusion be prepared to be attacked by real people and racist bots. You could choose to go down the rabbit hole, but DO NOT TAKE IT PERSONAL. After all, it’s probably bot or a miserable person with issues… Try to respond to dispel or refute false information. That’s all we can do.

However, understand it can time consuming and responses are not part of the MPP even if you make it a story. Therefore, if your goal is to make money for your thoughtful words and rebuttals, make your response part of a separate story in the MPP. This story is an example of a response — that I turned into a story.

I would like to thank all the readers who’ve read and supported my efforts.

In the end, writers like me can continue to battle the racist bots and people, but I think Medium needs to improve their security and their response time to reports of abuse and harassment. I’ve seen some horrible comments and reported them with either no response or slow response. Yet, a picture without a proper caption will get flagged and your piece will be removed in a matter of hours…

I think Medium needs to prioritize protecting writers especially those of us who are doing the work to combat racism and discrimination and amplify the voices of the historically marginalized and silenced.

Thank you for reading.
A dark sight
Tags: Poetry, Air, Blindness, Writing, Literary Impulse

A dark sight

How you walk in dark

been always afraid of dark

used to sleep with lights on

when i was a kid

now i’ve got a bit comfortable

but still when it’s pitch dark

when i can’t even see the faint outlines

i still lose my balance

but you haven’t seen the light ever

it’s been always dark for you

how do you see through dark

and what do you see in dark

do you see the air around you

the pockets of density and voids

and its movements telling you the shapes

and the ripples when someone’s moving

do you see the sounds around you

echoing back from the objects

its shrillness telling you the distance

rising and dipping

approaching and receding

is this what you see

is this how you walk in dark

how can i get this

how can i learn this

or is it that

when one loses some sense

then only he gets this sixth sense
When Art Meets Data: Flowers as a Visual Metaphor
By: Annie Liao
Tags: JavaScript, Design, D3js, Data Visualization, Programming

Popular Baby Names Reimagined as Flowers

Similarly to Film Flowers, my Baby Name Blossoms project uses petals to quantify data — the popularity of the names.

Photo by the author.

The magic behind this visualization is D3’s quantize scale, which allowed me to transform popularity ( d.count ) into the number of petals ( numPetalScale ):

const countMinMax = d3.extent(data, d => d.count)

const numPetalScale = d3.scaleQuantize().domain(countMinMax).range([7, 10, 12, 15, 20])

Since the data I grabbed were the top 10 names for both genders, the values share more similarities than, say, the values of Film Flowers’ IMDb votes, making it a bit challenging to show big variations between the names.

So, how might we add features that distinguish between them? What makes each name unique? While asking myself this very question, I noticed that Film Flowers uses colors to display different genres for each movie.

Perhaps I can use colors as well? How about taking the vowels and painting them accordingly?

Photo by the author.

Here, I used D3’s ordinal scale to connect vowels with a range of colors:

const vowels = ['a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', 'y']

const petalColors = d3.scaleOrdinal().range(['#E44F5D', '#F6B06E', '#EFCB64', '#F8765C', '#E5D35F', '#1DDCCA'])

petalColors.domain(vowels)

Then, inside the function that converts each dataset into flower scale, I passed in a new object containing the vowels of each name:

And finally, I appended the circle(s) inside the flowers.

Thanks to the varying vowels in each name, now we can see more contrast between individual names. The resulting visual effect was more than satisfactory:

Photo by the author.
Everything I wrote about media business and revenue models in 2020
By: Damian Radcliffe
Tags: Innovation, Journalism, Ecommerce, Media Criticism, Covid 19

This is the third in a short series bringing together all of my research, journalism and other creative work from 2020.

It follows earlier posts looking at my work on the changing practice of journalism, and the full research reports (a couple of which are reshared below) that I published in the past 12 months.

Reports

Articles focused on media and revenue strategy

The Impact of COVID-19

Alongside publishing The Publisher’s Guide to Navigating COVID-19, I also wrote a couple of other articles on the pandemic, while also updating the chapters in my COVID report and publishing them as standalone chapters.

Making sense of Media Trends

eCommerce

Last year, I published a major report — the first — into the eCommerce potential as a revenue source for media companies and publishers.

At the start of the year, I extracted the chapters of this report — The Publisher’s Guide to eCommerce — and updated them, following this up with a separate report (The Publisher’s Guide to eCommerce: Case Studies) offering deep dives into the eCommerce experiences of BuzzFeed, POPSUGAR, Marie Claire UK and others.
Editor’s Picks — Top 10: To Be a Top Writer You Must Write
By: Dew Langrial
Tags: Reading, Readinglist, Writing Tips, Writing, Self Improvement

Most of the new writers think they have nothing to write. They believe their stories are not worth telling — that they should not waste the reader’s time.

The reality of the matter is exactly the opposite. New writers have more things to say than old writers. Old writers write more because they know how to write — not because they have more things to say.

The young writers are often more imaginative. Their views and issues are more relevant to the age group willing to learn new things by reading someone who knows their dilemmas.

Most of the new writers — and non-writers — can speak without a break for hours. They can argue for hours using words. But when someone asks to write their views, they fail to produce a meaningful paragraph, or sometimes, even a single sentence.

Just record your argument with a friend on some important topic. You can then transcribe your words. You will get a written log of your discussion. Do you think it is ready for publishing?

Definitely not. You will have to remove all the unnecessary sentences and words. Then you’ll have to add some information to make it easy to understand for your reader. You have to rearrange some of the paragraphs, and you will have to refine some of the arguments. Now, you can show it to someone, and if it makes sense to that person, you have become a writer.

If you look at it like that, you can say that every person who can talk can be a writer. But being a writer is not just about converting your ideas into words and then publishing it.

It is about accepting the responsibility of what you have written — that it is true, and you really believe it to be true.

Accepting responsibility for your written words requires both courage and confidence.

Where can you find the confidence and the courage that can make you a writer?

What converts a talker or a chatterbox into a writer, is the confidence stemming from reading great writers. When you see how they transformed their ordinary feelings into remarkable pieces of art, you secretly wish to do likewise. But you still can’t find the courage.

The courage a writer requires is similar to the courage a boxer needs. You will be punched if you make the wrong move. The only thing that gives the young man — who wishes to be a boxer — the courage to go into the arena is his passion — to win.

When your wish to convert your life events into masterpieces becomes a burning desire, you will find your courage to write your words and then stand behind them with confidence.

But just because you wrote your feelings — and you told your stories — does not mean someone will not challenge your opinions and feelings.

It is when you have to decide to read a lot. Support your work with researches, references, and quotes from people who are an authority in their fields. Your article must present a winning case in front of the jury of your readers.
B2B 行銷方法論（四）：數據運用的姿勢？Medium 後台、臉書甜蜜流量背後的陷阱？
By: 侯智薰 Raymond Ch Hou
Tags: Management, Data Analysis, Business, B2B, Marketing

Airtable: Organize anything you can imagine

Airtable works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organize anything. Sign up for free.
Don’t drown in data!
By: Acrotrend Consultancy
Tags: Data Quality, Business Intelligence, Data Science, Data, Data Visualization

If data is the new water, check out our latest infographic that will sweetly explain how not to drown in it!

Originally published at https://www.acrotrend.com on October 23, 2019.
Tips for Better Learning
By: Madhankumar J
Tags: Education, Learning, Programming, Startup, Learn By Teaching

Retention

“If you can’t explain it in simple terms, then you don’t understand it.” — Richard Feynman

If you have to retain the knowledge that you have learned, the better way is to teach others. Teaching does not always necessarily take the form of a lecture. Share the information with your colleagues or post it on a forum and create a conversation based around it. That’s it — you have started teaching. Eventually, you will end up teaching someone or learning from others.

Teaching is going to be an ultimate test case for your knowledge. Can you convey it to someone else?

Learning pyramid

1. People retain 90% of what they learn when they teach someone else/use it immediately.

2. People retain 75% of what they learn when they practice what they learned.

3. People retain 50% of what they learn when engaged in a group discussion.

4. People retain 30% of what they learn when they see a demonstration.

When we start to distill a concept into its basic parts, it not only boosts understanding but also fills knowledge gaps.

If you feel any gaps, go to consumption and then come back to retention.