fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Coindelta will delist GRS, ACT and ZEC
By: Rajdeep Singh
Tags: India, Trading, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain

Hello everyone,

Since the beginning, we have kept our users’ interaction as the priority. We always wanted to focus on the user experience on Coindelta. Recently, we have seen liquidity problem in the Indian market as cryptocurrencies prices continue to fluctuate.

One of the solutions to the liquidity problem is to channelize all our resources on the notable cryptocurrencies and promising blockchain technologies.

To create a robust trading environment and offer the best trading experience to our users, we have decided to delist and cease trading for the below coins and tokens at Jan 10, 12:00 PM. The factors that helped us to take this decision are a demand among Indian traders, users feedback, liquidity in the Indian market and customers protection.

Groestlcoin (GRS)

Achain (ACT)

Zcash (ZEC)

Withdrawal of these coins and tokens will continue to support until Jan 31, 12:00 PM.

Delisting Arrangements

1. Deposit and trading closes: Jan 10, 12:00 PM

2. Withdrawal closes: Jan 31, 12:00 PM

Important Note:

1. The deposit, withdrawal and trading of the delisted coins/tokens will be closed precisely as scheduled above.

2. Once delisted, Coindelta will NO LONGER support their deposit, withdrawal or trading.

3. For your asset safety, the holders of these coins/tokens MUST finish withdrawal or trading as per the schedule, to avoid any unnecessary loss.

DELAYED WITHDRAWAL SUPPORT: Post Jan 31, 12:00 PM, you can only request withdrawal by sending an email to support@coindelta.com or by raising a ticket from our support page. This manual process might take up to 30 days.

Going forward, we thank you for your continued support and will continue to contribute to the Indian crypto ecosystem in the New Year.

Cheers,

Your friends at Coindelta
Meet the Team: CEO Pete Martin
By: Aleck Silva-Pinto
Tags: Blockchain

Votem is led by some of the most influential people in the elections, business, and blockchain spaces. This series will bring to light these individuals and their roles at Votem.

Pete Martin (linkedIn)is the Founder and CEO of Votem and is a successful serial entrepreneur who has started and sold several businesses including most recently selling his consulting firm to KPMG, which provided the seed money to start Votem. Pete had successful careers with IBM and as an executive at SAP running an $80M business unit until starting his consulting firm. He has been in the technology business and enterprise-software space for more than 25 years.

Questions:

What was your original inspiration for Votem?

I was challenged by Peter Diamandis to define what my “massively transformative purpose” was; how I was going to positively impact 1 billion in the world before I died. Better access and more transparent voting came to mind as a global problem that needed to be fixed. This has become my life’s mission.

What is the biggest obstacle to Votem’s success?

There is a lot of reluctance to change and legitimate fears of hacking and compromise in the elections business. We can solve the technical challenges but the resistance to change and legislative and political headwinds will prove more challenging, but not insurmountable.

What are your long-term goals for the project?

We have a publicly stated goal to have 1 billion votes tallied through our platform by 2025, and we’re on track so far to meet that objective.

What should people expect from Votem in the near future?

Several versions of our CastIron blockchain-based mobile voting platform will be released, we expect to support our public sector customers in the upcoming 2018 U.S. election cycle and our Proof of Vote® Protocol is being thoroughly vetted and will be publicly released soon.

To stay updated on Votem’s Token Sale and other updates, join our Telegram channel or visit votem.io!
Fun article about faux-physical UI metaphors
By: Pito Salas
Tags: Capriciousness, Algorithm, Technology, Android, Life

Ok, that’s my own curious headline for this interesting article in the New York Times:

“What, after all, is a more recognizable symbol of the capriciousness of life than a deck of cards, out of which your fate is randomly dealt? And yet here the deck icon is only superficial. At heart it’s not a random-card generator but the opposite: a highly wrought program with a memory, an algorithm and a mandate to keep children in the game. An app posing as a spatiotemporal object.” (from The New York Times)
Curate an issue of the London Literary Review newsletter
By: Lochlan Bloom
Tags: Writing

Register below to curate an issue of the LLR newsletter.

Each newsletter is a round-up of articles of interest from across Medium and the web and can cover everything from the latest fiction to the most pressing trends in science and society.

As guest editor, you will have the chance to introduce yourself and present your unique take to followers of the London Literary Review.

If you are a writer and want to find out more simply fill in your email in the box below or get in touch with a pitch at londonliteraryreview@yahoo.com
Each Time We Grieve
By: Mark Nepo
Tags: Life Lessons, Grief, Grief And Loss, Memories, Poetry

I’ve lived long enough to know that every

sigh opens a story, the way a mouthful of

water inflates a dry sponge to the form it

had when found in the deep.

My grandmother, for example, lives in the

mezuzah she brought from Russia, though

I can hardly see her face. And I feel her

son, my father, in the awl and chisel I

have, all weathered from his hands.

And to say your mother was kind holds

so many stories. I imagine all those she

touched, pausing where they are, to

think of her as I write this.

Yet we must go on, but never without

them. Even the bones of dinosaurs out-

waited the ice age to fertilize the flowers

that reanimated the Earth.

This excerpt is from a book in progress, The Slow Arm of All That Matters.

*Photo credit: Kaboompics.com
Senate Passes SESTA, Awaits Trump’s Signature
Tags: Politics, Senate, Bills, News

A bill regarding sex trafficking after a clean approval from the Senate is headed over to Trump. The bill termed Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA) was approved by the Senate on Wednesday after voting, as it passed with 97-to-2 votes, due to a culmination of huge efforts of republicans and democrats to make the internet safer. It allows law enforcement officials to tighten their grip on websites that facilitate sex trafficking, like Backpage.com. This bill would also help hold internet companies responsible for the content on their sites and face the subsequent consequences.

The bill was created because of Silicon Valley companies and its relations with sex trafficking. Though they have remained out of reach for a long time after the bill signing by Trump, every internet forum and big tech companies with hosting facilities for sex trafficking would be securitized for their content and would face future implementations of the laws and legislation regarding the passed bill. The shield by the law of 1996 that frees them from the liability of illegal content on their websites is soon to be a thing of the past. According to Senator John Thune of South Dakota the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, “it’s a wakeup call” for all and no more offenses would be accepted and or tolerated regarding this issue. It was also clarified that the bill would not create any ripple for tech companies or internet forums who are not involved in this matter.
Mileage Matters: Episode 21
By: Drive Capital
Tags: Augmented Reality

In this episode of Mileage Matters, we talk about the current conundrum small business owners face when it comes to health insurance coverage. We consider how to use artificial learning to our advantage and discuss the progress of augmented reality games and applications.

We compared cultural parallels made between the music industry and the start up world in reference to the HBO series The Defiant Ones. We also touched on Facebook’s ventures into real estate and discussed how companies used to be a provide-all for their employees.

Listen in below as we openly discuss the best opportunities of the week. We’ll see you next Friday.

Mileage Matters is recorded live at the start of every Drive Capital Partner meeting. We kick off our week with a discussion of the things that caught our attention over the past seven days. We’re going to begin sharing these musings in the form of a short podcast. Our goal is to give entrepreneurs a glimpse into how we think about the markets we cover (and more). We’d love to hear from you, and learn what’s catching your attention these days too. Let us know what you think on Twitter or drop us a line.
The Letter P Difference, .slice() vs. .splice()
By: David Chung
Tags: Coding, Flatiron School, JavaScript, Programming

Now with .splice(). The difference between slice and splice is just one letter (in the name of the method, that is). With .splice(), the method changes the array by adding or removing elements from it. The way I remember the difference between the two, is that I think of the “P” as Pineapple. Stay with me now. If you add pineapple to a slice of pizza, you’re changing the original pie of pizza to a pineapple pizza. You’ve ruined a perfectly good cheese pizza. Whether or not you are on team pineapple on pizza or not, .splice() changes the original array by adding or removing elements from it.

When you put the P(ineapple) on the slice of pizza, you now have splice

We can remove elements by giving the method an index parameter and the number of elements to be removed.

Index is where you start removing elements from. Elements that have a smaller index number from the given index won’t be removed.

Every element starting from index 3 will be removed and will be returned.

Will return:

array now only has 1,2,3 left in the array.

When we add the second parameter:

From index 3, we remove 2 elements.

We get:

Elements 4 and 5 got removed and array now has 1,2,3,6.

We can also add elements with the .splice() method. This requires us to give it a 3rd, 4th and 5th parameters.

For example, we could add in a string in the beginning of the array without removing anything:

would return:
Why You Click More on Negatively Titled Articles
By: Rajeet Singh
Tags: Life Lessons, Psychology, Self, Writing, Mindfulness

Why You Click More on Negatively Titled Articles

Negativity Bias and how it skews your attention

Image by Olya Adamovich from Pixabay

Listen to this article here.

You’re more likely to click on ‘6 Habits of Deeply Miserable People’ than you are ‘7 Habits of Incredibly Happy People’. Both titles point to the same thing but from different sides of the coin. The first, however, draws your attention more.

This is because of Negativity Bias; the natural tendency to focus more on negative things than positive.

If you receive 10 compliments in a day plus 1 insult you’re more likely to ruminate on thee insult than relish in the 10 compliments. It’s also why when we argue with our SO’s we tend focus on the negative things they’ve done rather than remember all the positives.

Psychologists Rozin and Royzman outlined the manifestation of negativity bias. Simplified, if one event is of equal positive magnitude as another is equally negative, you’re more likely to focus on the negative event (negative potency).

If both events increase in intensity at the same rate, i.e. the positive event becomes better as the negative event becomes worse, you’ll perceive the negative one to be more negative than the positive one is more positive (steeper negative gradient).

Equal strength positive and negative factors taken together tend to take a more negative outlook in the mind rather than a positive one (negativity dominance). And finally negative differentiation states the way we form negative concepts in our minds is more complex than how we form positive ones, so we have more focuson them because they take more brain power to form.

This is all very technical, so let’s run with our compliments example.

If you receive a genuine compliment and a genuine insult you’ll likely dwell on the insult than savour the compliment. If the person complimenting you does so 3 times more but the person insulting also levels 3 more digs at you, you’ll perceive the insults to be far worse than the compliments are positive. When thinking of the same number of compliments and insults, your mind will naturally lean toward seeing the overall experience as negative, even though the positive and negative factors are equal.
10 Laws of Nature Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know
By: Steve Glaveski
Tags: Work, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Leadership, Business

The internet is littered with techniques and hacks from successful and some not-so-successful entrepreneurs that are said to help increase your chances of entrepreneurial success.

But as I wrote previously, and as the great Richard Feynman noted, when it comes to advice, it’s critical that there is symmetry in circumstance. More often than not, advice dished out online is circumstantial, and what worked for one business won’t necessarily work for another because there are simply far too many moving internal and external parts.

This is why bringing a business idea that worked well ‘overseas’ to your country doesn’t always work because of a deviation in factors such as household income, cultural norms, geographic distribution, population size and demographics, competitive landscape, supply chains, regulation, and so on.

However, if you’re looking for all-encompassing principles that transcend the boundaries, then you should look to universal laws of nature. Such laws hold true not just in business, but everywhere in the physical world.

Becoming a student of these laws and deferring to them when you’re making strategic decisions can give you a significant advantage in not just your entrepreneurial life, but in your personal life too.
The reign of excuses is over
By: Magdalena Ciniewska
Tags: Life Lessons, Dreams, Destiny, Writing

I do not know about you, but I’ve always had a lot of excuses that helped me not to do what could bring me happiness and success and resulting from my dreams.

I do not know the reasons. However, this is not the place for therapy. Instead, it can be a place where I can cleanse myself of all my excuses.

I clearly declare that I do not want to know them anymore. They became closer than family, closer than friends, closer than dreams. They filled me and created my reality.

If I wrote down all the excuses I had in my life, there would be a long list.

And I will tell you one thing. Excuses have caused a total stagnation in my life. But I want to leave a distant past. I can’t change it. I don’t remember everything so the attempt to visualize what was the reason for using excuses so often is just a failure.

I will only deal with the period in which I began to write. Suddenly. Without initial period. Nobody supported my writing with their authority. I just started to go my own way.

But my habit turned out to be stronger. The excuses continued to accompany me.

I wanted to write but I had many excuses. Each was good. For example :

I didn’t know anyone who has been writing.

I didn’t write at primary school, high school and college.

I didn’t have any famous friends.

I didn’t have the enough education which give me a right to write.

I started writing too late.

Nobody helped me and I feel lonely in what I do.

I didn’t hear too many good words so maybe I shouldn’t write at all.



The vast ocean of complaints, excuses and self-pity.

And I came to the conclusion that many things really I can’t change but I can definitely change one. I can throw the excuses from my life.

I will throw my excuses out. I will take them as the rubbish out every day.

I’ll start right away. Already today. I will start everything from the beginning with one small exception. Without excuses.

What can I gain?

No, not everything. I will not cheat anyone.

I can get the time that I had spent on excuses and devote it for writing.

Making excuses mean that we waste time on:

- blaming others

- self-pity

- offending the world

- continuous scratching of wounds and so on.

Without excuses , I think that I could get back at least an hour a day and maybe even more.

Will I pick the fruit of giving up excuses?

I do not know.

However, every day without excuses will always be more productive, longer and maybe even emotionally calmer. Some yields should bring this change but each fruit must have time to mature.

I want to create better conditions for maturation and growth of my writing.

The reign of excuses in my lief is over.

And what are your excuses not to do great and wonderful things resulting from your dreams ?

What are your excuses?
Kubernetes HPA Autoscaling with Kafka metrics
By: Sunny Gupta
Tags: Google Stackdriver, Container Orchestration, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Kafka

How Kubernetes HPA works?

The Horizontal Pod Autoscaler is implemented as a Kubernetes API resource and a controller. The resource determines the behaviour of the controller. The controller periodically adjusts the number of replicas in a replication controller or deployment.

The HorizontalPodAutoscaler normally fetches metrics from a series of aggregated APIs ( metrics.k8s.io , custom.metrics.k8s.io and external.metrics.k8s.io ). The metrics.k8s.io API is usually provided by metrics-server, which needs to be launched separately. The HorizontalPodAutoscaler can also fetch metrics directly from Heapster.

Here, in this guide, we will deploy our HPA reading from external.metrics.k8s.io as our Kafka metrics will be exposed to that API.

What is custom metrics?

Kubernetes allows us to deploy your own metrics solutions. By default, metric-server and heapster act as core metrics backend.

Kubernetes has extended the support to allow custom APIs to expose other metrics provider. Few adapters are written by the third party to implement custom APIs which can be used to expose these metrics to Kubernetes resources such like HPA.

Current Implementations: github.com/Kubernetes/IMPLEMENTATIONS.md

How custom API server and HPA ties together?

The custom API server that we deploy registers an API to Kubernetes and allows the HPA controller query custom metrics from that. API server that we are going to deploy here is Stackdriver adapter which can collect metrics from Stackdriver and send them to the HPA controller via REST queries.

Our custom API server will register two APIs to Kubernetes: custom.metrics.k8s.io and external.metrics.k8s.io .

We will be also deploying an application to write metrics (in this case Kafka metrics) to google stackdriver. The kind of metrics which we are going to write to Stackdriver will be exposed under external.metrics.k8s.io instead of custom.metrics.k8s.io.

Prerequisites

Ensure the following dependencies are already fulfilled:
How to export a chart from Excel to PowerPoint?
By: Jan Schultink
Tags: PowerPoint, Presentation Design, Templates, Data Visualization, Software

Yesterday’s post triggered this question: how to export a chart from Excel to PowerPoint? The short answer: copy the data not the chart.







Standard Excel charts are ugly, they have the wrong formatting, they have the wrong colors, axis labels are in the wrong place, data is not rounded up and too precise. Copying and pasting an Excel chart into PowerPoint is also copying all that ugliness. Even worse, copying and pasting it as a picture might make it look blurry.







I believe that data charts in a PowerPoint presentation deserve careful attention and need to be designed by hand. You start by inserting a blank, ugly, PowerPoint chart into your slide, next copy the data across from Excel and then start tweaking until it looks perfect.







Once you have done one, you can use that PowerPoint chart as a template for other charts in your presentation.
Gradient Descent algorithm.
By: Bogdan Samoletskyi
Tags: Gradient Descent, Machine Learning, ML

Brief theory how it works.

Photo by rishi on Unsplash

Disclaimer

Gradient descent is one of the widely used algorithms in the model training, especially when using linear regression algorithm.

What is the linear regression?

Linear regression is the simple prediction method, which is tries to draw a line between all results, which tries to predict data y, which can be dependent from input parameter x.

Image from https://www.machinelearningmindset.com/linear-regression-with-tensorflow/

The formula for linear regression (as seen on the image) Y = aX +b. Where a is intercept and b is slope.

Fore example, we have set of x parameters as {1,2,3} and corresponding y results set {2,3,4} , which means that a=1 and b = 1. This knowledge let us assume that if x=4 then y = 5 (y =a*x+1) .

Gradient descent

To calculate proper intercept and slope during the model training we can use gradient descent algorithm.

Image from https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/879043/Implementing-Gradient-Descent-to-Solve-a-Linear-Re

Here on the picture is the cost function graphic and we want to make our parameter with lowest possible cost function. Red dot on the picture is the cost of error with current parameter. To know in which direction we should move and with which step we should know the vector , to know the vector we need to calculate partial derivative.

First, we need to start from something, so just pick some initial weights (intercept and slope) and calculate the error.

After we have first step we need to step by step calculate the gradient and new weights.

Use new weights to calculate gradient and new weights, until we will have a minimal gradient (preferably zero, but it’s rare luck).

And when you will have weights with minimum error that will be your best parameters which were calculated by using gradient descent algorithm.

Here’s a good thing about gradient descent — step, with which you changing weights dependent on the derivative and will vary. Otherwise, using to big step your calculation can be not very precise, or, in case of too small steps it will be very slow computation.

Another one good thing is that not always (I would say pretty rare) error can be equal to zero and gradient descent is very useful in computation lowest error rate.

In the next article I will try to do a little hands-on experience.
Butterfly or Moth
By: Holly Jahangiri
Tags: Inspiration, Choices, Becoming, Self Improvement, Poetry

Awake

Butterfly or Moth

Rarely does Nature give so many choices as it gives us humans. What will we choose?

Curtains ripped apart,

A harsh and unforgiving light

Is cast, and we —

Roused from somnolent insouciance —

Do we tuck and roll

Our sleepy, caterpillar selves,

To burrow deep,

And deeper yet, seek sleep?

Or, casting cocoons aside,

Stretch fragile, nascent wings —

Becoming things — emerge —

To face the awful freedom

Of a choice: To live, to fly,

To wonder in the sunlit why —

Or beat ourselves (and others)

Senseless.

Against the darkening glass,

Those things that might have been, become

Pale shadows darting, to and fro,

Till sucked into the guttering flame.
In Our House
By: Erika Sauter
Tags: Life Lessons, Relationships, Family, Love, Technology

In Our House

Relationships can be tough but somehow we get through it, together

Original artwork, myself and amberleigh storms

There’s a tree directly blocking the view of the pond from our screen porch. I’m unsure of what type of tree it is but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that each year once the cold air fades and the sun stays up late in the sky, the tree itself makes magic happen.

What makes this tree the most magnificent I’ve ever seen is the thousands of beautiful (and poisonous) white flowers that bloom in the spring. Within a few days leaf buds spurt, forcing the flowers to rain their petals onto the grass where the wind will carry them away.

The tree has been struck by lightening multiple times. It wears each singed vein as a part of its history, telling a story from one storm or another. Limbs that were sacrificed to Mother Nature’s wrath left large gaping holes between branches. I stand beneath its canopy as the sun breaks through and shines down on me.

Regardless of the beating its taken, the tree stands solid and every year new branches poke out here and there. It continues to grow nonetheless, even with many factors working against it. It’s inspiring.

I view this tree as a metaphor for our family. I didn’t realize it at first, though. It took years of watching it do its thing. The damage hasn’t stopped it’s growth nor has it scarred its beauty.

Then I thought, how ironic is it that this tree was planted decades before it became our house? I wonder if the last family who owned it experienced the same thing?
可視化產品2.0 | 告別一成不變, 如何向“Dear Data”藝術中取經
By: Liuhuaying Yang
Tags: 产品经理, Dear Data, Data Visualization, Data Driven, Product Design

啥是Dear Data

Dear Data是在紐約的 Giorgia Lupi 和在倫敦的 Stefanie Posavec 為期一年的實踐項目。每一周，她們倆根據某個生活主題收集自己的數據，然後以可視化的方式手繪在空白明信片上，再郵寄給對方。

左邊一列是Giorgia Lupi 寄給 Stefanie Posavec 的，上面是可視化圖，下面是註解；右邊是 Stefanie Posavec 寄的。

2016年，她們將52週的明信片以及個人筆記出版成冊，吸粉無數。紐約的現代藝術博物館(MoMA)收納了Dear Data。 BBC也對兩人做了專訪《Dear Data: The designers who turned daily habits into art(將日常習慣轉化為藝術的設計師)》。

有北美版和英國版

儘管如此，若建議可視化產品向Dear Data學習，尤其是商業BI，很多人都會如前所述那樣面露難色。但我覺得，至少，我們可以開腦洞，可以訓練可視化能力，可以探索自我。
Daily Bit #174: Slipping, Sliding ETH
By: Daily Bit
Tags: Fintech, Crypto, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

Top Story

Slipping, Sliding ETH

More was body slammed this weekend than folding tables at Bills Mafia (0–1)tailgates. Ethereum dropped below the $200 mark on Saturday afternoon, dipping as low as ~$185 before regaining some footing.

Naturally, that rekindled the conversation: what is/are the driving factor(s) behind ETH’s decline?

ICO and dApp treasury balances are one catalyst. With Ethereum serving as the proverbial watering hole for blockchain development, teams are effectively playing a game of chicken, questioning who can hold out the longest as the price continues to fall.

Thanks to blockchain’s publicity, we can monitor the showdown in real-time through Santiment and Dapp Capitulation. Both sites display the total ETH that was transferred to exchanges from a project’s treasury address in the past 30 days.

Granted, transfers are by no means a guarantee that projects are liquidating ETH to cover costs, but we think it’s a fair assumption. After all… most business expenses still can’t be covered with crypto.

A couple jump out on the high end:

Digix: 44,187k ETH

Metronome: 70.6k ETH

Etheroll: 32.31k ETH

But honestly? We think the transfers are less interesting than ETH sitting in project’s coffers. By our count, there is north of 3 million ETH locked up by the 37 projects on Dapp Capitulation alone. That’s a substantial amount of firing power on the sell-side.

Then there’s Arthur Hayes’ casino, BitMEX

The exchange that needs no introduction. Here’s the deal — BitMEX added Ethereum perpetual swaps at the start of August. Since then, it’s become the highest volume ETHUSD product, outpacing total Bitfinex volume by over 300%.

The price of ETH has also fallen by 57% since the listing. Along with being a great way to lose money (looking at you, 100x leverage), BitMEX offers people a simple way to “short the corn”. Coins that were previously listed on BitMEX took similar tumbles.

Similar to Saquon Barkley’s arrival into an NFL end zone, ETH’s perpetual swap-triggered collapse is considered (in hindsight) a matter of when, not if.
Dementia
By: Kathrine Meraki
Tags: Mental Health, Family, Poetry, Poem, Life

Dementia

A poem about my Grandmother who has Dementia, and the struggle of ‘losing’ someone before they have even passed away.

Image by Lisa van Dijk on Unsplash

We should be

so lucky

To have you

here, with

us

But, something is

different

now

A change,

drip fed

Over the

years

Until,

one day

The drip,

a deluge

Drowning in the

realization that

We are losing

you

Slowly,

surely

Your mind is

saying goodbye

to us

Long before

your body

does.
The Worlds We Hide Within
By: Bradley J Nordell
Tags: Literary Impulse, Creativity, Letters From Li, Poetry, Fiction

The Worlds We Hide Within

Literary Impulse Friday edition is live!!!

Photo by Josh Sorenson on Unsplash

The world we exist in has lost its once true face, and we are now drifting into the blank page of tomorrow. This is scary. It may also seem meaningless. But at the same time, it’s an opportunity to rewrite the path we were on and create a new one for tomorrow — to grasp that formless mist and shape it into something beautiful, both archaic and modern. Here, we can rewrite the failed ways of humanity and create a trajectory of love and growth.

We can paint upon that canvas what lies in our heart’s desire. The poet, the writer, the musician, the scientist, the janitor, the teacher, the cook, the dreamer, and hopeless romantic — together we will write the new story of tomorrow.

Because in the depthless eternity of the mind, we see ourselves in the timeless words of a single story. Worlds upon worlds we build, through the shedding of the past, to fly, at last, into the metamorphic starlit night.

Each of the pieces you are about to read echo these words and ideas. They showcase those sublime worlds within and without. They take each reader into the depths of the human spirit, where we see glimpses of those new facets of tomorrow. Through each verse, we are no longer unfound.

Friday’s LI Reads

My Little Angel by Sajina Ignatius

Another World by Prajakta unKNown

The Hand Footprints on The Eye by Joanna Vang
Setup FastSpring Recurring Payments
Tags: Subscription, Payments, Stripe, SaaS, Online Business

For those who can’t use Stripe, FastSpring is one of the best choices of adding payment system into your SaaS. The doc of FastSpring is so confusing, so I’d like to share how I set up two different recurring payment in my SaaS. I will use React as the example, but it won’t do too much with the React.

1. Create Subscriptions In FastSpring

Login to your FastSpring dashboard, click Products in the menu and select Subscriptions in the submenu. Create a new subscription and set a unique Product Path and remember it because we need to use it after.

After saving the new subscription, select the new subscription on the dashboard, click the Pricing and you can set the charge interval and price for each interval.

2. Create Storefront In FastSpring

I was confused about the relationship between StoreFront and Product. StoreFront is only about the style, and the Product(Subscriptions) is the content which put inside the StoreFront.

So here we create a new Popup Storefront, set the color, pick a logo to display. That’s it. We don’t have to select which subscription to display in this popup storefront at the moment because we can insert subscription content into the popup storefront dynamically in our code.

3. Import FastSpring Script

After creating a new storefront on FastSpring, click PLACE ON YOUR WEBSITE , copy past it into your HTML <head> . I added data-popup-webhook-received to the script as the webhook to receive the notification after a successful payment.

4. Setup Webhook For Successful Payment

I pointed paymentReceived as the the function to be called after receiving successful payment(see above), so I need to define window.paymentReceived in advance. In React, I define it when the SPA start.

5. Display Popup StoreFront With Specific Subscription

We’ve already imported FastSpring script so we can call window.fastspring directly and make our popup storefront to display different subscription by giving it different params.

Say we defined 2 subscriptions in FastSpring, path myproduct-monthly for monthly subscription and path myproduct-yearly for yearly subscription, and then we can call popup storefront with different subscription content as the following:

That’s it. I spent too much time on setting it up because of lacking doc and experience sharing, so I hope this article can help.

You may also need to take care of letting user cancel the subscription or syncing the subscription info which can easily found in FastSpring API doc.
Tonight’s comic stars Torpor’s fifth or sixth best friend.
Tags: Humor, Comics, Friendship, Robots

More from rstevens Follow

I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans.
Token Distribution is Over
By: Bubbletone Blockchain In Telecom
Tags: Blockchain, Token Sale, Distribution

Dear crowdsale participants,

We are glad to announce that the second token distribution has been successfully finished! The users who checked and added their ETH wallet addresses again and completed KYC have received their tokens.

To check your UMT balance, go https://etherscan.io/.

The contract details are as follows:

— Token Contract Address: 0xc6Be00F7ed386015A3c751d38c126c62F231138d

— Token Symbol: UMT

— Decimals: 18

https://etherscan.io/token/0xc6be00f7ed386015a3c751d38c126c62f231138d

As for the airdrop and bounty bonuses, they have already been distributed.

ATTENTION

We are still missing the information from 202 token holders who have not added their wallet addresses or have not completed KYC to receive tokens. Their tokens are locked until September 2018.

We kindly ask these crowdsale participants to go to https://ico.bubbletone.io/login and take the required actions.

We give all crowdsale participants a week to check their balances and contact our support if needed. Starting from August 1, our admins won’t be answering any questions related to the token distribution.
Sampling States Of Consciousness
By: Jack Burt
Tags: Spirituality, Ideology, Poetry, Fiction, Satire

The goblet opens convex

Buddha sips burgundy

Benediction in rhyme

Tastes processed

He ventures fixed

Morsels of mind

He recollects

Translation’s earful

Etched in shine

That’s pure invention —

Whats read in text

Won’t mesh when said

Jack Burt 2020 All Rights Reserved
Ampleforth + DeversiFi
By: Brandon Iles
Tags: Ampleforth, Ampl, Dex, Ethereum

Today we’re happy to announce that Ampleforth (AMPL) is now open for trading on DeversiFi! There are a few things that make this a special milestone.

DeversiFi

DeversiFi is a non-custodial exchange platform, based on the 0x protocol. This means you can trade directly with the security of your own wallet and the trade settlement happens onchain.

One big challenge of Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) is achieving deep liquidity. Since the fees have traditionally been higher for DEXs, it’s been tough for these decentralized alternatives to compete with centralized ones.

DeversiFi, however, shares liquidity with Bitfinex. This guarantees that you’ll see the combined order book depth of both DeversiFi and Bitfinex through the same trade engine.

AMPL’s first 0x Exchange

This marks the first time AMPL has existed on a 0x-based exchange. AMPL has already operated on “Automated Market Maker” exchanges like Uniswap, Kyber, and Bancor.

DeversiFi offers another way to trade AMPL in a decentralized way, but using an order book rather than liquidity pools.

We’ve avoided other 0x exchanges up to now, because of lack of order book depth. However, DeversiFi’s liquidity sharing makes this no longer an issue.

AMPL on Layer-2

In April, DeversiFi 2.0 will launch in conjunction with Starkware ZK-Rollups. Starkware is a Layer-2 solution that leverages Zero Knowledge Proofs to drastically reduce fees and increase throughput. DeversiFi estimates they’ll be able to support over 9000 transactions per second, rivaling centralized exchanges.

It will be exciting to see AMPL’s novel supply adjustment mechanism working in tandem with an offchain Layer-2 like Starkware. We’re looking forward to scaling Ampleforth with this latest technology.

Brandon Iles, ampleforth.org

You should follow me on Twitter: @brandoniles
Weekly Tarot Reading
By: Scorpio Poetry
Tags: Spirituality, Tarot Reading, Tarot, Spiritual, Tarot Cards

Are you breaking free from something? Or do you need to make a huge change? Because with the devil around it shows the there is a need something to end and for change to come through and clean out the mess. You might need to start over. The heart charm is present in this pile so this might be something close to your heart. It is time to restore balance and make a change that perhaps you have been too scared or felt too trapped to do. But in order for you to feel on top of the world, the change is needed. Do it and see what the world will offer to you, heal your heart with change and your soul will greatly reward you.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day ❤
Juan sin miedo
By: Querre Cuentos
Tags: Español, Cuento, Podcast, Storytelling

in Both Sides of the Table
Cryptocurrency Market Conditions Caused UK Royal Mint To Pause Its Blockchain Gold Plans
Tags: Smartereum, Crypto, Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency Market Conditions Caused UK Royal Mint To Pause Its Blockchain Gold Plans https://is.gd/atDUDJ

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A while ago, the UK Royal Mint announced that it was making plans to create a cryptocurrency asset that will serve as a physical representation for gold holdings. However, according to the reports from Reuters on Thursday, the company has decided to freeze its plans due to the current market conditions. This conclusion was rather discouraging to the cryptocurrency community but it isn’t a surprise because Royal Mint’s plan to create the RMG tokens in partnership with CME Group was vetoed by the UK government last year.

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Today — BTC / USD

A spokesperson for Royal Mint made a comment confirming that the token (RMG) will be launched eventually but not yet. The project may be resumed at a later date that was not mentioned. In a private email to CoinDesk, the spokesperson said:

“For years now, Royal Mint has been developing a digital gold token called RMG. This token was to be launched this spring. Unfortunately, the current market conditions are not favorable for this launch. However, we are going to revisit the project at a later date”.

The RMG token was initially to be released in the fall of 2017. However, the partnership with CME didn’t click at the time. CME was supposed to provide a platform for Royal Mint to trade this token. The British finance ministry reportedly blocked the move while they company struggled to look for another exchange to partner with. The RMG token was rescheduled to be released in spring this year. Unfortunately, the plans have been canceled once again.

About RMG

The RMG token was expected to be used for the management of small quantities of gold. This way, investors will be able to penetrate the gold market. It was going to increase liquidity. The company also believed that the blockchain will be used to track gold and make gold provenance more efficient. It was also expected to support global trades.

BitGo, had plans to build several digital wallets that would be used for storing the RMG token. Civic, on the other hand, was going to offer KYC services for RMG. Unfortunately, these plans have all been put on hold indefinitely.

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SEE ALSO: Zcash Hardfork: Zcash [ZEC] is making a major upgrade Next Week

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Smartereum

#Bitcoin #BTC #ETH #LTC #XRP
Data Scientists Are The New Investment Bankers
By: Chris I.
Tags: Tech, Careers, Automation, Data Science, Banking

Opinion

Data Scientists Are The New Investment Bankers

While attending a top business school in the early 2000s, all my classmates wanted to be investment bankers

Photo by Moose Photos from Pexels

This is an opinion piece. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

While attending a top business school in the early 2000s, we all wanted to be investment bankers.

Fast forward 10 years and everyone wants to be a data scientist.

They have more in common than you would think.
On Being Held Hostage by Depression
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Life Lessons, Suicide, Mental Health, Depression, Journalism

For over four years, “You’ll never write again” is the mantra playing on a loop between my ears.

Vocation becomes affliction, soon demanding journalism and I break up. Although ours has always been a precarious union often funded by other work on the side, I’m bereft of purpose without it. Worse, I’m still hard-wired for the job. Curiosity keeps craving words and the blank page taunts me daily with threats of impending intellectual inertia.

So I placate curiosity with my library card, gorging on books in a bid to keep it — and myself — alive. It seems to work. But survival doesn’t pay. I need to start earning a living again, find a way to transfer my skill set to another industry, reinvent, rebrand, relaunch. This dehumanizing approach to work does nothing for my depression.

I’m not a fucking product, I want to scream, I’m a human!

So what if I’m fallible? News flash: We all are. And yet, with only the slightest touch of editorial alchemy, I transform my stay in Depressionland into a “sabbatical”, thus proving to myself my copywriting chops are still intact.

At the time, I’ve only been out of commission for two years. One word is all it takes to preempt awkward questions, one word is all it takes to conjure up the illusion of agency and success. Most importantly, one word is all it takes to slay the guilt and shame associated with not earning a living for so long.

But the word “sabbatical” rings hollow and feels awkward. Try as I might, I can’t get behind it. Besides, it conveys an aura of professional privilege that has always been alien to me. Case in point: I worked in Portugal under brutal financial austerity measures. As a result, my career is littered with the corpses of editorial endeavors that met an untimely end when public funding and advertising revenues ran out. What’s more, the lie touches a nerve. By passing off fiction as fact, I’ve become a full-fledged member of Depressionland’s cult of societal silence.

Not only have I turned on myself, but I’ve become complicit in the very thing I decry.
10 Suggested Pivots for Color
By: Choire Sicha
Tags: Color, Pivots, The Bubble

Color, the app that makes location-based photo sharing possible, that launched with $41 million in investment three weeks ago, is… well, it’s still in business! But the day comes in every business where you send the employees into isolation to “hack” new schemes to pivot the business….

10. It could be like Shazam, which “listens” to music and tells you what it is! Except for colors: you point your camera at something and it names it. (“So that’s what chartreuse is!”)

9 Visual learning tools for pre-tweens and toddlers. (“Color: We Learn Together!”) Point and match shapes! Has great sponsorship opportunities.

8. Totally kicky Latina lady iPad mag. (Growth market!) Color: ¡Lo tenemos!

7. Flashlight app… with tints.

6. Downlow gay hookup app. (“Get some… color in your life.”)

5. Bouncy castle tossing-thing physics game. This has nothing to do with Color or colors but EVERYONE LOVES a game where you throw things and everyone loves a bouncy castle! Just seeing one on the side of the road can make you happy. Why wouldn’t you want one on your Android?

4. Time management scheme for creatives like artists and writers: divides segments of the day into “shades.” Early morning is “hot green productive time”; late morning is “light pink revision time”; all the other times of the day are “dark blue porn and furious self-recrimination time.”

3. I dunno, something with real estate? Like overseas vacation houses listings or something? But like, in the cloud, you see. (Note: Not sure I really know what “the cloud” is.)

2. Personal finance is still a hot segment right? Can’t we just rip of Mint or something? But by making it social? Like you could check-in at places and input how much money you spent! And share your savings! With a Groupon thingie! Like if enough people share their spending info, they get discounts! Magic!

1. Pay back the investors and fire the cofounders.
Redesigning Persepolis
By: Pendar Yousefi
Tags: Branding, Iran, Soccer, Persepolis, Design

Persepolis is one of Iran’s two football giants. Founded in 1967, it has been attracting the country’s top football talent for generations and its games regularly bring out sellout crowds of 100,000+ to Tehran’s Azadi stadium.

A little bit of history

Ruins of Persepolis (2006 Pendar Yousefi)

Persepolis was named after the ancient ceremonial capital of the Persian empire, reflecting the state-sponsored nationalist discourse of its time which glorified Iran’s historic past. The imposing, intricately carved stone reliefs found on the ruins of Persepolis provided artistic inspiration for many brands in the 60’s, including Persepolis.

After the 1978 Islamic revolution, symbols of Iran’s pre-Islamic past were no longer promoted, and so the state — who had taken over the club — tried to change its name to Pirouzi (or “victory” in Persian). But some things are hard to change, and despite publication bans and years of state media orders, people by and large refused to let go of the old name. In 2012 the club officially reverted its name back to Persepolis.

Logo

Throughout the years, Persepolis’s logos have always been inspired by the Achaemenid art found in its namesake’s ruins. The club’s first logo featured a Faravahar; a winged Zoroastrian deity (today it is considered a kitsch nationalist symbol). It sat in the middle of a creatively crafted frame of lotus flowers (again, inspired by the carved ruins), terminating in a humorously pointy scroll that housed the club’s name. While not terribly creative, the logo exuded a certain charm.
Meditation on Nature in Nature
By: David Wade Chambers
Tags: Meditation, Sunrise, Nature, Kangaroos, Australia

An art and photography publication focused on visual narrative in storytelling.

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Exploration
By: Nadia Camandona
Tags: Hr Giger, Painting, Science Fiction, Aliens, Art

Exploration. Acrylic on canvas. 36"x24". AlieNadia. ©Nadia Camandona

Exploration

My tribute to H.R. Giger’s art for Alien Day 2019

Credits

O’Bannon’s Alien D3. H.R. Giger (1977)

N. 238, The Spell II (detail), H.R. Giger (1974)

I discovered the Master H.R. Giger many years after I have seen Alien, the movie. I was highly impressed by the Alien but I didn’t think of his creator until I restarted to paint and I started to research inspiration models.

It was obvious that an incredible creature as Alien has been created only by a genius. And finally, Giger appeared on my path, giving a new meaning for my passion for Alien: behind the perfect physiology of this creature there was his great art that at some point conveyed in the realization of this ambitious project.

In this artwork, I mixed one of Giger’s first studies of the facehugger for the screenplay writer and visual supervisor of Alien (1979), Dan O’ Bannon, and a detail of a Giger’s huge painting, №238, The Spell II (1974).

The result is the highest moment of exploration of an Alien creature that will become a nightmare for the victim who is not conscious yet about what it will happen.

I wanted to focus on the moment in which the Alien creature connects with a human in mortal but highly erotic intercourse: an exploration of the human as an alien creature, because this is what the human being is for the Alien, but also an opportunity to create a new species.

It can seem shocking, but only from our point of view.

The Universe has a much wider point of view and it doesn’t include emotions.

Only survival.
Facebook security
By: Pito Salas
Tags: Security, Facebook, Technology, Life

I was experimenting with a little known feature in Facebook, “Download Your Information” which will actually supposedly give you a copy of everything that is ‘yours’ on Facebook.



The definition of what is ‘yours’ is fairly tricky of course: is what you posted on someone else’s wall ‘yours’ or ‘theirs’? And so on.



But what interested me was how they made double and triple sure that in fact it was me who was downloading my information.



I had to supply my own password again: ok that makes sense.



But then for extra extra security I was shown a bunch of wall photos of people who are my ‘friends’ and asked to identify them from a multiple choice set of friends. This is harder than you think: not every friend is such a good friend. And not all the wall photos are recognizable. They might be childhood photos, or out of focus group shots at a party or whatever.



But really quite a smart way to make sure that the downloaded content does not fall into the wrong hands.