fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Next level data visualization
By: Aseem Kashyap
Tags: Python, Charts, Data Analysis, Data Visualization, Plotly

Introduction

Any data analysis project has two essential goals. First, to curate data in readily interpretable form, uncover hidden patterns, and identify key trends. Second, and perhaps more important, is to effectively communicate these findings to the readers through thoughtful data visualization. This is an introductory article on how to begin thinking about customized visualizations that readily disseminate key data features to the viewer. We achieve this by moving beyond the one line charts that have made plotly so popular among data analysts and focusing on individualised chart layouts & aesthetics.

All code used in this article is available on Github. All charts presented here are interactive and have been rendered using jovian, an incredible tool for sharing and managing jupyter notebooks. This medium article by Usha Rengaraju contains all the details on how to use this tool.

Plotly

Plotly is a natural library of choice for data visualization because its easy to use, well documented and allows for customization of charts. We begin by briefly summarizing plotly architecture in this section before moving to visualizations in the subsequent sections.

While most people prefer using the high level plotly.express module, in this article we will instead focus on use of the plotly.graph_objects.Figure class to render charts. And while there is extensive documentation available on the plotly website, the material can be a bit overwhelming for those new to visualization. I therefore endeavour to provide a clear and concise explanation of the syntax.

The plotly graph_objects that we will make use of, are composed of the following three high-level attributes and plotting a chart essentially involved specifying these:

data attribute includes selection of the chart type from over 40 different types of traces like scatter , bar , pie , surface , choropleth etc and passing the data to these function.

attribute includes selection of the chart type from over 40 different types of traces like , , , , etc and passing the data to these function. layout attribute controls all the non-data related aspects of the chart like text font, background color, axis & tickers, margins, title, legend etc. This is the attribute we will spend a considerable time manipulating to make changes like adding an additional y-axis or plotting multiple charts in a figure when dealing with large datasets.

attribute controls all the non-data related aspects of the chart like text font, background color, axis & tickers, margins, title, legend etc. This is the attribute we will spend a considerable time manipulating to make changes like adding an additional y-axis or plotting multiple charts in a figure when dealing with large datasets. frames is used to specify the sequence of frames when making animated charts. Subsequent articles in this series will make use of this attribute extensively.

For most of the charts we make in this article, following three are the standard libraries that we will use:
Building a Data Driven Marketing Team
By: Matthew W. Noble
Tags: Metrics, Marketing, Data, Engineering, Saas Marketing

A High-Level Overview of Marketing Metrics and KPIs

To generalise, the Marketing team requires data to track the revenue cycle. They have Leading Indicators which include Lead Creation, Source of Leads, MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) inclusive of the sub-field Programs that are creating those MQLs, and Lead Velocity. Lead Velocity is effectively how long a lead takes to become “qualified”. The Marketing team also have Indicators which include Opportunity Creation, Pipeline Creation, and Revenue. Revenue should additionally have the ability to be broken down by program / channel (e.g. trade show).

Low-Level Descriptions of the Marketing Metrics and KPIs

Operations Specific Metrics

Cost per Acquisition is the total cost of acquiring a new customer via a specific channel or campaign. While this can be applied as broadly or as narrowly as one wants, it’s often used in reference to media spend. In contrast to Cost per Conversion or Cost per Impression, CPA focuses on the cost for the complete journey from first contact to customer.

Cost Per Acquisition is also differentiated from Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by its granular application i.e. looking at specific channels or campaigns instead of an average cost for acquiring customers across all channels and headcount.

To calculate the Cost per Acquisition, simply divide the Total Cost (whether media spend in total or specific channel/campaign to acquire customers) by the Number of New Customers Acquired from the same channel/campaign.

Channel or Campaign CPA Calculation

Media Spend Calculation
What Did We Get Ourselves Into?
By: Jonathan Foster
Tags: AI, Voice Design, Artificial Intelligence, Microsoft, Tech

From a writing perspective, the work is unprecedented. It requires a deep, hands-on understanding of various media, particularly those steeped in dialogue and character development. Screenwriters and playwrights are well suited; tech writers and copywriters, not so much. To illustrate this unique and potentially burgeoning area of the discipline, I’m thinking a little insight into our history might be illuminating.

There were only three of us at Cortana Editorial’s inception (we are a team of 30 today, with international markets now a key part of our work). The foundation of Cortana’s personality was already in place, with some key decisions made. Internal and external research and studies, as well as a lot of discourse, supported decisions that determined Project Cortana (originally only a codename) would be given a personality. The initial voice font would be female. The value prop would center around assistance and productivity. And, there would be “chitchat.”

Chitchat is the term given to the customer engagement area that, from the customer’s perspective, provides the fun factor. That sometimes random, often hilarious set of queries included anything and everything, from “What do you think about cheese?” to “Is there a god?” to “Do you poop?” Clearly, our customers were serious about getting to know Cortana.

From the business perspective, chitchat is defined as the engagement that’s not officially aligned with the value prop — so it wasn’t a simple justification to point engineering, design, and writing resources towards it. Fortunately, a heroic engineering team at the Microsoft Search Technology Center in Hyderabad, India, did the needful and signed up to build the experience. It was a crucial hand-raise that set the ball in motion. Another team was tasked with parsing out these unique queries, packaging them up, and handing them over to the writing team as Cortana chitchat.

We realized that as writers, we were being asked to create one of the most unique characters we’d ever encountered. And creatively, we dove deeply into what we call “the imaginary world” of Cortana. Over three years later, we continue to endow her with make-believe feelings, opinions, challenges, likes and dislikes, even sensitivities and hopes. Smoke and mirrors, sure, but we dig in knowing that this imaginary world is invoked by real people who want detail and specificity. They ask the questions and we give them answers. Certainly, Cortana’s personality started from a creative concept of who she would be, and how we hoped people would experience her. But we now see it as the customer playing an important role in the development of Cortana’s personality by shaping her through their own curiosity. It’s a data-driven back-and-forth — call it a conversation — that makes possible the creation of a character. And, it is fun work. It’s tough to beat spending an hour or two every day thinking hard, determining direction, putting principles in place, and — surprise, surprise — laughing a lot.
Seven Shards of Humanity
By: Nadia Camandona
Tags: Humanity, Artist, Environment, Art, Future

The title of my last artwork Seven Shards of Humanity is the result of my 9 years old son’s epiphany.

When my kids, watching me painting day after day, figure out what I’m trying to tell, I have achieved my goal.

I don’t want to please them with my brushes’ strokes: I want to create questions. The deeper the questions, the more my paintings can aspire to be part of the change.

I think I can’t simply call myself an artist. I am first -and foremost- a mother, and I believe in the strength of the example I give every day to my children. Painting is my strongest way to communicate with them because their future starts now.

I believe there is no border between life and art: what matters is trying to be the best part of this world. I work hard for a change through daily actions and I set on the canvas all my humanity.

When kids understand what I meant, I know that it’s good.

I spent a long time making my last painting, composed of seven canvas: it summarizes long conversations with my family members and friends about the meaning of the present life. I put in it a great effort to find the point I was trying to get to. When I tried to find the right title the word mirror was all I could think about, but its meaning was judgemental.

It was my son that made me realize the futility of judgement when you want to show something for the good of all. This is humanity. Everyone can reflect himself in one of this shards, but humanity is each of us and we have to face facts to step back.

I don’t know if all together we will have the strength to take a step back, because when the mirror is broken, even if we fix it, it will no longer be as strong as before. But humanity isn’t a piece of fused quartz smeared with silver. When our flesh is broken and we come back to the soil, we will born again with new opportunities to change the world.

Again and again: it is only a matter of time.

Per la versione in Italiano, clicca qui.
It’s Complicated
By: Katie Mccurdy
Tags: Design, Healthcare, Patient Experience, Health, Data Visualization

It’s Complicated

Visualizing complex health histories & symptoms for two patients with rare and mystery conditions

I recently worked with a smart, well-spoken patient, E., to put together a visual summary of her health.

Unlike many others I’ve worked with, she was not looking for answers or a new diagnosis; she was motivated because she was starting the application process for a new service dog, and she needed to demonstrate her physical constraints and daily needs. She also had a complex medical history, with multiple chronic conditions, injuries, surgeries and procedures, and she wanted to see everything in one place for the first time.

I went through my standard process of gathering her information, talking through her story with her, and creating visuals to represent the conversation. I then created a detailed timeline and symptom map, with an emphasis on her two longstanding conditions, Cryoglobulinemia and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS). Both of these conditions are considered ‘rare diseases’ — meaning each one affects fewer than 200,000 Americans at any given time.

A quick aside with some definitions: Cryoglobulinemia is the presence of abnormal proteins in the blood, and symptoms often include skin lesions and purple spots, joint pain, peripheral neuropathy (in other words burning or tingling in hands and feet), and more. EDS is a connective tissue disorder “generally characterized by joint hypermobility (joints that stretch further than normal), skin hyperextensibility (skin that can be stretched further than normal), and tissue fragility” (source: Ehlers-Danlos Society website).

In addition to these two key diagnoses, E. also had Dysautonomia, an issue with her autonomic nervous system that causes fast heart rate, lightheadedness on standing, inability to regulate sweating, and more.

All together, these three conditions caused E. a whole host of symptoms and injuries, many stretching back to her childhood. She’d had six broken ankles between age 10 and 15; at one point both of her ankles were broken at the same time. She estimated she’d had close to 50 surgeries since 1985. It was a lot to look back on, and it made for a very full timeline, as you can see below (most words and dates removed for privacy).
How Apple Can Make Money Through a Search Engine
By: Shubh Patni
Tags: Technology, Google, Apple, Innovation, Business

OPINION

How Apple Can Make Money Through a Search Engine

How Apple can make up for losing $12 Billion

Created with Canva Design

Congress wants to break Google, claiming it has illegally thrashed the competition in the search engine market. Google dominates the market with an 86.86% market share as of July 2020.

The argument is that Google pays billions of dollars to other companies to become the default search engine for its consumers.

In 2019, Google paid $30bn for “traffic acquisition costs”, almost a third of its entire search revenue. This was up from $26.7bn the previous year, and up from just $6.2bn a decade earlier.

Google reportedly paid $12 Billion to Apple to make Google the default search engine on Safari for iPhones. This means that if Google is regulated, Apple would lose around $12 Billion each year, which amounts to 1/5 of all its services revenue.

Apple depends on Google, and their ties can be cut anytime. As an alternative, Apple is rumored to be working on its own search engine — Apple Search.

So, how Apple plans to monetize it and make up for $12 Billion?
You had a lot to say this week
By: Kern Carter
Tags: Newsletter, Fear, Creativity, Love, Writing

I love when I can read someone else’s work and feel the energy of the piece. It’s like the words are lightning bolts that leap off the page and charge my mind.

That feeling happened a lot this week and our writers are to thank. They delivered moving monologues on love, fear, absence and guilt. Here’s what you missed:

I also jumped in the mix this week with a piece titled Chaos and Creativity. It’s a short think piece on our ability to create through strained conditions.

We already have more stories coming in so next week promises to be equally as inspiring. Keep submitting. We’re staying open to submissions over the holidays so if you feel like you have something to say, say it. We’ll publish it.
Kubernetes Distributions — What Are They?
By: Alex Vazquez
Tags: Software Development, AWS, Kubernetes, Containers, Programming

Kubernetes Distributions — What Are They?

Learn what they are and why it matters to you

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

One of the biggest announcements from the latest AWS re:Invent 2020 sessions were the release of EKS-D from Amazon. EKS-D is their open-source Kubernetes distribution that’s now available for everyone to start using in their cloud provider or even on premises.

It’s based on past findings and the entire process Amazon has undergone in managing their Kubernetes managed platform, Amazon EKS.

These announcements have many people asking themselves: “OK, I know Kubernetes, but what’s a Kubernetes distribution? And why should I care?”

So I’ll try to answer that with the knowledge I have, and I always try to use the same approach: a Kubernetes versus Linux model comparison.

Kubernetes is an open-source project, as you know, started by Google and now being managed by the community and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and you can find all the code available here:

But let’s be honest: Not many of us are pulling that repo and trying to compile it to provide a cluster. That’s not how we usually work. If you follow the code path — downloading it, building it, and so on — this is usually named vanilla Kubernetes.

If we start with the Linux comparison, it’s the same situation as we have with the Linux kernel that most of the Linux distribution ships, but this is already compiled and available with a bunch of other tools all working together via the usual approach.

So that’s what a Kubernetes distribution is. They build Kubernetes. They provide other tools and components to enhance or provide more features and to focus on additional aspects like a security focus, a DevOps focus, or another focus. Another concept that usually is raised is the purity of distribution, and we try to talk about distribution that’s pure.

We call a distribution pure when it’s building Kubernetes, and that’s it. It leaves everything else to the developers or users to decide what they want to use on top of it.
Donut Plot with Matplotlib (Python)
By: Asad Mahmood
Tags: Data Sceince, Matplotlib, Python, Data Visualization

Donut Plot with Matplotlib (Python)

Let’s start by praising visualizations with a very famous English language adage. It’s cliche but dead on.

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

In this post, I’ll demonstrate how to create a donut plot using matplotlib with python. Donut plot is a very efficient way of comparing stats of multiple entities. As per [1]

Just like a pie chart, a doughnut chart shows the relationship of parts to a whole, but a doughnut chart can contain more than one data series. Each data series that you plot in adoughnut chart adds a ring to the chart.

Now let’s use the following dummy data representing the usage of mobile applications of different social media websites.

╔═════════════════╦══════════╗

║ Social Media ║ Usage ║

╠═════════════════╬══════════╣

║ Twitter ║ 60 % ║

║ Facebook ║ 75 % ║

║ Instagram ║ 80 % ║

╚═════════════════╩══════════╝

Following is the code for creating a donut plot.

import pandas as pd

import re



data = pd.read_csv('testdata.csv')

print(data.head())



import matplotlib.pyplot as plt



# create donut plots

startingRadius = 0.7 + (0.3* (len(data)-1))

for index, row in data.iterrows():

scenario = row["scenario"]

percentage = row["Percentage"]

textLabel = scenario + ' ' + percentage

print(startingRadius)

percentage = int(re.search(r'\d+', percentage).group())

remainingPie = 100 - percentage



donut_sizes = [remainingPie, percentage]



plt.text(0.01, startingRadius + 0.07, textLabel, horizontalalignment='center', verticalalignment='center')

plt.pie(donut_sizes, radius=startingRadius, startangle=90, colors=['#d5f6da', '#5cdb6f'],

wedgeprops={"edgecolor": "white", 'linewidth': 1})



startingRadius-=0.3



# equal ensures pie chart is drawn as a circle (equal aspect ratio)

plt.axis('equal')



# create circle and place onto pie chart

circle = plt.Circle(xy=(0, 0), radius=0.35, facecolor='white')

plt.gca().add_artist(circle)

plt.savefig('donutPlot.jpg')

plt.show()

Donut Plot

On the very core, donut plot here in this code is being created by creating a series of pie charts of different radiuses one on top of the other with a white circle in the center.

References

[1] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/present-your-data-in-a-doughnut-chart-0ac0efde-34e2-4dc6-9b7f-ac93d1783353
Let’s normalize these acronyms for a better Medium
By: Winifred J. Akpobi
Tags: Short Form, Advice, Writing Tips, Creativity, Writing

Twitter has acronyms and so does Instagram and Facebook, when people use fff-follow for follow or kfb-kindly follow back, and so on. Well, they’re lame but social media acronyms and slangs are never cool, still, they make things easier on social media.

How about we try the same thing on Medium?

I’ve seen lots of authors trying to reply to all responses, it’s usually “thanks for reading.” How about we change that to TFR/tfr!

Lots of readers love responding to stories they loved and enjoyed reading. How about we type ILT/ilt/lt! for “I loved this/loved this”

The point is, we could normalize acronyms on Medium and use them “when necessary.”

Just a suggestion. What do you think?
9 Popular GitHub Repos For Every Web Developer
By: Simon Holdorf
Tags: Technology, Programming, Productivity, Creativity, JavaScript

Realworld

The first repository in this list is Realworld. Its creators call it nothing less than “The Mother of all Demo Apps.” A bold statement, for sure, but I don’t think it’s an exaggeration.

Realworld is an exemplary Medium.com clone (yes, the very platform you are probably surfing right now!). But not only that. The repository lets you choose between different front end and back end implementations, which you can happily mix.

Vue.js + Node/Express or React /Redux + Rust? They got it!

Realworld shows you how the exact same blog app is built on almost any popular language or framework. How awesome is that?
Why Your Startup Isn’t Getting the Right Customers
By: Aaron Dinin
Tags: Work, Sales, Business, Startup, Entrepreneurship

Why Your Startup Isn’t Getting the Right Customers

And what it takes to actually sell your “dream customers”

Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash

“I was sure our product would be perfect for them,” the founder fumed as she dropped into the chair on the other side of my desk. She was building software to help automate hospital billing services — a notoriously complex industry — and she was coming from a meeting where she’d pitched her software to the billing management team at the enormous hospital system associated with my university. To her, this seemed like a “dream customer,” and she couldn’t understand why they weren’t interested.

“So the meeting didn’t go well?” I joked.

She rolled her eyes, clearly not in the mood for my usual sarcasm. “It went terribly,” she moaned. “It felt like they were basically trying to push me out the door as quickly as they could. They had no interest in what I was pitching.”

“Why was that?” I asked.

Shew threw open her arms. “How the heck am I supposed to know? They didn’t tell me anything.”

“It’s not their job to tell you,” I reminded her. “But it’s your job to figure it out. Since they didn’t react to your pitch the way you expected, what does that tell you?”

“That I’m a failure,” she huffed.

“Well, I suppose you did fail,” I replied. “But that doesn’t make you a failure. It’s only a failure if you can’t learn something. In this case, you actually have some valuable new data.”

“But they didn’t tell me anything,” she said. “They weren’t remotely interested.”

“That, right there!” I exclaimed, “That’s important data. You met with a company you thought was your dream customer and they had no interest in what you were selling. Shouldn’t that tell you something?”

“I guess,” she said. “I mean… I guess it tells me I was wrong about who my dream customer should be.”

“And you don’t think that’s important data?” I asked.

“Yeah… I guess so,” she sighed.

“I know so,” I said, feeling like I was trying to drag out an important lesson from my four-year-old daughter rather than a 20-something. “So what’s the next question you should be asking yourself?”

She thought for a few moments, then shook her head in frustration. “I have no idea. Why was I such an idiot?”

“That’s a good place to start,” I said. She raised her eyebrows, so I quickly explained further: “Not that I’m calling you an idiot. But you clearly misunderstood something about this particular customer’s business. That’s a big deal. In order to figure out how to target the right customers, you need to figure out what you’ve misunderstood.”

“And how do I do that?” she asked.

“Empathy,” I answered. “It’s one of the most important skills for an entrepreneur to develop. You have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customers and attempt to see the world from their perspective.”
MockupShots: Create Your Own Professional Product Shots in Seconds
By: Jacquelyn Lynn
Tags: Self Publishing, Business, Writing, Creativity, Photography

Writing and Publishing Tools I Use and Recommend

MockupShots: Create Your Own Professional Product Shots in Seconds

Launch your 2021 marketing efforts with brand new images of your book covers and other products

Image created by Jacquelyn Lynn using MockupShots

Creating attractive promotional images of your books and information products takes time, expertise, and money.

Even though we have the talent and expertise in-house (thanks to the outstanding photography and design skills of Jerry D. Clement), we use MockUpShots to create shareable images of our books in a variety of settings.

MockupShots provides more than 600 relevant images (seasonal, holiday, business, casual, with and without people, and more) that you can drop your book cover (or other packaging) into. In seconds, you can download the image to your computer to use any way you want.

Image created by Jacquelyn Lynn using MockupShots

It’s super easy to use: Just upload your book cover, browse through the mockups, and download the ones you want. Choose from stills, videos, and gifs. MockupShots includes tutorials that show you exactly what to do.

Regular lifetime access to MockupShots is $198, but for a limited time, use the special link at the end of this article to get an awesome 60% discount. Pay just $80 for lifetime access to MockupShots for as many books as you want.

Image created by Jacquelyn Lynn using MockupShots

Use these images on your website, in your marketing materials, on social media — wherever you need professional images of your books in a variety of settings. New images are added regularly.

Use MockupShots just once and you’ve more than recovered your investment by eliminating professional photography fees.

Get lifetime access for just $80 — a 60% discount off the regular price of $198. Just use my special affiliate link.

Go here for a complete list of the resources we use and recommend.

This article was originally published on my site at CreateTeachInspire.com. You can reach me there or email me at jacquelyn@contacttcs.com.

You might also enjoy:

Here’s a little more about me:

Finally, here’s how to get a beautiful inspirational quote delivered to your inbox every Saturday:
Sleep Sweet Little One
By: Toni Tails
Tags: Humor, Mental Health, Creativity, Poetry, Art

Sign up for American Haiku Steamship To Writing History

By American Haiku

Writing takes practice. American Haiku is a great way to put your words from your fingers to your piece of paper. Don't quit, you can do it. Take a look
4 Great But Underrated AWS Services
By: Dmytro Khmelenko
Tags: AWS, Programming, Software Development, Cloud Computing, Cloud

1. CloudFormation

CloudFormation is a service that enables us to describe infrastructure as code. Infrastructure as code is a well-known practice to set out and manage IT infrastructure through the configuration files. With CloudFormation, we can define all required components and dependencies between them.

There are a few benefits to having everything in configuration files. First, it makes it possible to speed up the processes, as the task stays only within the code. No navigation between different services and connecting them through the user interface. Second, it adds more reliability and reduces human errors. The code can be reviewed by other engineers, and in case of mistake, the changes can be reverted quickly.

For example, the following piece of code creates a new S3 bucket under your account:

As you can see, only seven lines of code can create a new S3 bucket with a default setup at any moment. No need to do the job manually through the AWS console.

CloudFormation supports two formats: JSON and YAML. Besides that, CloudFormation offers features such as nested stacks, exporting values, or passing parameters between stacks. Indeed, it is a very powerful service to maintain the whole company's infrastructure.

CloudFormation is a free service and you need to pay only for provisioned components.
深入介紹及比較ROC曲線及PR曲線
By: Chen Tsu Pei
Tags: Evaluation, AI, Python, Classification, Machine Learning

深入介紹及比較ROC曲線及PR曲線

在一個二分類模型中，我們的模型通常不會直接輸出0,1直接預測出分類，而是對每個分類輸出一個機率，例如加上softmax對各分類輸出機率，這樣讓我們能夠自己設定一個門檻(threshold)來決定機率大於多少時我們判定為正樣本，反之為負樣本。而 ROC Curves 和 PR Curves 可以幫助我們分析這樣的 probablistic forcast

ROC 曲線以 FPR 為 X 軸，TPR為 Y 軸，每一個點代表設定不同的門檻值所得到的不同的 FPR 及 TPR ，最後繪製成一條曲線。建議可以參考我另一篇文章所介紹的混淆矩陣，以下會再介紹如何計算出 FPR 及 TPR

FPR表示成 1-特異度 而特異度(specificity)意指正確判斷出負樣本，故特異度越高、FPR越低，模型越能夠正確判斷負樣本、表現越好

TPR又稱為敏感度(Sensitivity)，它也是我們熟知的召回率(Recall)，也就是正確判斷出正樣本，故TPR越高則模型越能夠正確判斷正樣本、表現越好

When using normalized units, the area under the curve (often referred to as simply the AUC) is equal to the probability that a classifier will rank a randomly chosen positive instance higher than a randomly chosen negative one (assuming ‘positive’ ranks higher than ‘negative’) — from wikipedia
To Find a Niche, Stop Looking
By: Tochukwu Okoro E.
Tags: Inspiration, Freelancing, Writing Tips, Creativity, Writing

The niche issue would always leave people confused. The point of focusing on one theme for your content can be horrifying. How can you forget other topics or specialties and focus on one thing alone? Doesn’t it mean that you’re limiting yourself to fewer people? Doesn’t that mean less money?

These are the questions that go through your mind when it comes to picking a niche, but as Pat Flynn says it best: There are riches in the niches. To charge more, you have to niche down. Nobody takes generalists seriously. You wouldn’t feel safe at a Doctor who can claim to know how to treat every part of your body — you would want to work with a specialist. The same thing goes with your clients. They wouldn’t like to work with a freelancer who claims to be an expert in everything because you cannot give your 100% to several things.

I remember when I was writing the content for my website (it’s now live by the way), and I wanted to create content for the service page. Initially, I tried to include all the things I know how to do. I wanted to write — landing pages, emails, sales letters, sales brochure copies, ebook writing, SEO, and social media management services.

In the agencies I work for, I do all of these, so I’m pretty experienced in them. But I wanted to include what I was best at and what came to me easily. Before now, I’ve had clients commend me on how well I use storytelling to make their blog posts and emails more engaging. I figured out that I easily come up with content for blogs and emails, but the others seemed more challenging (I still delivered good results though)

I just included the two skills I was best at and used it as main service offerings — and I’ve been going on with them.

I see it a lot on freelancing marketplaces how people include many skills on their profile. Although I can understand the mindset behind it is to attract a broader range of clients, but it shouldn’t be so because specialty is essential. You have to specialize in something to be able to charge premium fees.

Everybody has that thing they do effortlessly, which other people will complain about how difficult it is. Writing is that thing for me. And within writing, there are sub-niches. I picked blog posts and emails as my specialty because I’m good at using stories to improve content engagement. I cringe when I write some technical pieces that don’t have any flair because it’s simply not me. I understand this, so naturally, I’d have to lean towards what I’m best at.
How to Track Unprocessed Objects in S3
By: Dardan Xhymshiti
Tags: AWS, Programming, Data Sceince, Data Engineering

Solution with SQS

Introduce an SQS queue to the setup. I’ll call this queue raw-data-object-creation-event-queue . A message event will be sent to this queue whenever a new object is created in the raw-data bucket.

To accomplish this, set up an event listener at raw-data bucket and listen for All object create events happening. In case an object is created (ie. uploaded at this bucket), send a notification event at the SQS queue created.
Amazon EKS Is Eating My IPs!
By: Nick Gibbon
Tags: Kubernetes, DevOps, AWS, Software Development, Programming

What Has Happened to the IP Allocation?

Interesting! An empty two-node cluster has used up 62 IP addresses. Let’s work out why!

Access config

Set up our EKS cluster kubeconfig so we can use kubectl to investigate. I already have the AWS CLI configured.

aws eks --region eu-west-2 update-kubeconfig --name test

What is deployed?

The two nodes will take two IPs from the cluster.

What is deployed inside the cluster then?

kubectl get pods -A

There are six pods running. These are DaemonSets and Deployments that are EKS add-ons used to make the cluster function correctly.

OK, cool. So, that’s a total of eight IPs we think should be in use. What about the other 54? We don’t have any other workloads in the cluster. There are no Load Balancers eating up space. There are no out-of-cluster resources like EC2, databases, VPC endpoints, etc. What sort of AWS magic is going on here?

The answer lies in how EKS manages networking.
Which Image Is Right?. Are we in an alternate reality or does…
By: Toni Tails
Tags: Humor, History, Marketing, Psychology, Art

Possible Explanations for Mandela Effects

Alternate Realities

One theory about the basis for the Mandela effect originates from quantum physics and relates to the idea that rather than one timeline of events, it is possible that alternate realities or universes are taking place and mixing with our timeline. In theory, this would result in groups of people having the same memories because the timeline has been altered as we shift between these different realities.

False Memories

Before we consider what is meant by false memories, let’s look at an example of the Mandela effect as it will help us to understand how memory can be faulty (and may lead to the phenomenon that we are describing).

Who was Alexander Hamilton? Most Americans learned in school that he was a founding father of the United States of America but that he was not a president. However, when asked about the presidents of the United States, many people mistakenly believe that Hamilton was a president. Why?

If we consider a simple neuroscience explanation, the memory for Alexander Hamilton is encoded in an area of the brain where the memories for the presidents of the United States are stored. The means by which memory traces are stored is called the engram and the framework in which similar memories are associated with each other is called the schema.

So when people try to recall Hamilton, this sets off the neurons in close connection to each other, bringing with it the memory of the presidents. (Though this is an oversimplified explanation, it illustrates the general process.)

When memories are recalled, rather than remembered perfectly, they are influenced to the point that they can eventually become incorrect. In this way, memory is unreliable and not infallible.

Memory-Related Concepts

This leads to the likelihood that problems with memory, and not alternate universes, are the explanation for the Mandela effect. In fact, there are a number of subtopics related to memory that may play a role in this phenomenon.

Here are a few possibilities to consider:
The Best Software Engineering Books I Read in 2020
By: Mwiza Kumwenda
Tags: Programming, Software Development, JavaScript, Books, Software Engineering

The Best Software Engineering Books I Read in 2020

A software engineer’s reading list

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash.

As 2020 draws to a close, I am thrilled to share with you a selection of the best software engineering books that I have read during the past 12 months.

If you are a software engineer, data scientist, or one of those people who work in the tech or software industry, you will agree with me that you have to constantly keep learning if you are to remain relevant in the game.

When you decide to become a software engineer, you essentially sign up for a journey of lifelong learning.

There are many ways of learning or acquiring knowledge, but books still remain a dominant force in that sphere.
Feeling Good About Writing is a Good Enough Reason to Keep Going
By: Brandon B. Keith
Tags: Writing Tips, Writing, Self, Art, Creativity

Writing isn’t like eating croissants.

It isn’t like pancakes or waffles or whatever your decadent pleasure.

There’s no need to feel guilty about enjoying writing for the sake of writing. You don’t need to make a lot of money from your writing to be worthy of writing.

Earlier this year, my family and I visited Paris, and I ate more croissants than I could count. It made me want to run a 5K every day.

This is a natural reaction — extreme or not — to an overindulgence issue.

But when I overindulge in writing (if that even exists), there’s no such feeling unless outside circumstances have pushed me to feel this way.

Meaning, I’ve allowed either someone or something to tell me that writing for enjoyment isn’t enough. That I should push for more based on not my own values, but someone else’s.

In marketing, there’s a term called KPI, which means key performance indicators. As a good marketer, you define your KPIs and measure them based on your goals for implementing your marketing strategy.

As a writer, you define your personal KPIs based on your goals.

Many writers who enjoy writing end up quitting altogether because they haven’t properly defined their goals. Or they’ve become attached to goals that don’t align with what they truly value.
The Best of Better Programming (10/31–11/13/2020)
By: Zack Shapiro
Tags: Startup, JavaScript, Software Development, Python, Programming

Jobs from Better Programming Jobs Our job board is launching very soon for your company to hire through us but this week we have two exciting opportunities from the Better Programming Staff! Better Programming's Co-Founder and Publisher is looking for a Ruby or Rails Engineer: * First, Tony Stubblebine is looking for a "I'm looking for a programmer to work on a side project with me to help put self-published books on to Medium. Will pay normal $ + split profit on the tool." More details about the project can be found here: https://coachtony.medium.com/epub-to-medium-daf8ae8431f1 --- * Second, Better Programming is looking for a substitute Editor-in-Chief for Late January-March: My wife and I are expecting our first child at the end of January, so I'm looking for someone with a technical background and some editorial experience to fill in for me while I take paternity leave. If interested, email me @ zack+subeditor@zackshapiro.com with your engineering and editorial qualifications. This is a paid opportunity. --- Jobs are free to post and $100 to promote to our email list of 75,000+ job seekers. Want to post your company's job with Better Programming Jobs? Just fill out our Typeform here. and $100 to promote to our email list of 75,000+ job seekers.
Atlas — Neural Network Reconstructing a 3D Scene From Image 📸
By: Mikhail Raevskiy
Tags: Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, AI

Limitations of past models

Traditional approaches to the 3D reconstruction task rely on the intermediate representation of depth maps before predicting the full 3D model of the scene. The researchers hypothesized that direct 2D to 3D prediction without an intermediate step would yield more accurate results.

How the proposed approach works

The input of the model is 2D images of the scene. 2D CNN extracts features from each input image separately. These features are projected and accumulated in voxels. After 3D accumulation, CNN refines the accumulated features and predicts the truncated signed distance function (TSDF) values. In addition, semantic segmentation of the reconstructed 3D model is carried out without significant additional calculations.
There are Only Two Jobs You Can Do From Your Bed
By: Michelle Monet
Tags: Writing Life, History, Writing, Creativity, Art

Here are some writers and authors who did great work and even preferred writing in bed:

1. Marcel Proust

Shanghai Noir Marcel Proust writing in bed

“It is pleasant, when one is distraught, to lie in the warmth of one’s bed, and there, with all effort and struggle at an end, even perhaps with one’s head under the blankets, surrender completely to howling, like branches in the autumn wind.”

2. Truman Capote

“I am a completely horizontal author,” said the author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, “I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy.”

Truman Capote writing in bed Copyright getty image

3. William Wordsworth

The Romantic poet apparently preferred writing his poems in bed in complete darkness, starting over whenever he lost a sheet of paper because looking for it was too much effort.

4. Mark Twain

“Just try it in bed some time,” the author told the New York Times in 1902. “I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and a board on my knees, and I scribble away. Thinking is easy work, and there isn’t much labor in moving your fingers sufficiently to get the words down.”

5. James Joyce

The Irish author wrote lying down on his stomach — which doesn’t seem like the most comfortable position.

6. George Orwell

The dying George Orwell used to prop his typewriter up in bed and hammer away at the final draft of 1984. The doctor who treated him in Glasgow said all he could remember was the sound of typing and the fog of cigarette smoke in Orwell’s bedroom.
People first: Aurélien Nicolas (Deckard AI)
By: Aiforse Community
Tags: Machine Learning, Project Management, Software Development, Artificial Intelligence, People

“AI for Software Engineering Process Management” is another one filed of using Artificial Intelligence for Software Engineering.

This time we prepared the interview with Aurélien Nicolas, CTO at Deckard AI, an expert in this Subject Matter, to share a bit about his technical background, personal motivation and profession vision.
Blood and Barbed Wire
By: Katie Mccurdy
Tags: Health, Visualization, Data, Healthcare, UX

Initial meeting

Despite the informality of working on the floor of my home office, I felt that I should kick off the meeting with some semi-professional expectation-setting; I let him know that my main goal was to put together visuals that would help him more effectively tell his story when seeing a new GI doctor. I also told him I was going to ask a lot of questions and he could opt out if he didn’t want to talk about something. (That seems important when crossing boundaries between friendship and informal counseling.)

He’d shown up to my house with a 4-page, single spaced document in which he had written down the things he wanted to say — symptom descriptions, tests he’d had, diets and interventions he’d tried, family history, and more. The narrative contained a lot of useful information, but I could see that it could be difficult for a doctor to absorb in a short amount of time.

Timeline sketch

We started with a timeline of events. I had taped together four 11x17 pages and drawn a line to represent his whole life. Using his prepared narrative, we hunched over the timeline and noted key events; as we worked, he also remembered things that were not in his document.

Some detail from the initial timeline

Feeling good/bad

Next I left the room and gave him some materials to put together a picture of what his body feels like when he’s feeling good and feeling bad. I’d prepared a sheet of icons that he could cut out and tape to the body shape, or he could simply draw on it. He took about 10 minutes to do this.

When I came back, I was extremely impressed by what he had put together. I asked him to talk me through it, and as he did I wrote down quotes along the side of the image.

Feeling bad:

“Like barbed wire making its way through my intestines”

Feeling good:

At this point we had a timeline, drawings of what ‘feeling good’ and ‘feeling bad’ look like, and a list of questions and theories that had come up along the way.

Key problem

Aside from not getting any answers or solid reasoning for his symptoms, my friend’s biggest frustration was that new doctors kept wanting to have him try the same treatments, even though he was sure they were not helping. We decided to put together a matrix showing what ‘helps’ and ‘does not help’ along with any supporting evidence.
How SEO Works In 2017
By: Jason Mcmahon
Tags: SEO, Google, Advertising, Marketing, Digital Marketing

How SEO Works In 2017

The way SEO works has changed. Here’s what you need to know.

The way SEO works has changed. Here’s what you need to know.

Most purchasing decisions start with a Google search and as such, SEO should still be your #1 source of new traffic, new leads and new revenue.

If it’s not, then this is what to do about it. If it is, then this is how to keep it that way.

How SEO used to work

When Google started it was one single internet search engine…

You would log on to google.com and perform a search:

And regardless of who or where you were, you would have seen the same list of businesses from all around the world.

At the time, this was fine.

Google was just getting started, the internet wasn’t very big and there wasn’t that many people using it. But it was growing.

And it got bigger. Much bigger.

In 1998, there were 2.4 million websites on the internet.

Today, there are over 1.2 billion.

And it’s growing by the second:

As the volume of websites on the internet grows, so does the volume of people doing Google searches:

With this much data to process, and this many users to serve, it no longer made sense for Google to show everyone around the world the same list of results. And that’s how we got localised search engines like:

The idea being, to show all users search results that were geographically relevant to their individual location.

As the growth continued, so did the localisation to the point that most people are familiar with today which is ‘city based’ search engines.

Whether searching a keyword with a local intent like “mechanic” or “mechanic brisbane”, most people would expect to see business that are in their local city.

This is the paradigm most businesses we speak to are familiar with and has been the primary model for decision making around SEO strategy for a long time.

And for a long time, it worked well.

But not anymore. Why?