fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
The speed of your backend's language does not matter
By: Erwan Lemonnier
Tags: Backend Development, Profiling, Python

Python is my language of choice for backend programming. Python is slow. Python is not compiled. Python has dynamic typing, with all the runtime sluggishness that implies. But it does not matter.

To build Gofrendly's backend, we could have chosen Java, Kotlin, Go or Node or anything else really. As long as it comes with a stable and generous ecosystem of third party libraries, and as long as coding time from idea to working prototype is fast enough (Bye bye Java).

But the speed of the language itself was never important. And this is why:

Profiling Gofrendly's backend API

The screenshot above shows you what Gofrendly's backend code spends time on. These numbers are average response times over all API endpoints, taken over a normal day. But the really interesting bit is the color chart:

Dark lilac represents time spent waiting for Datastore queries to return

Green is time spent waiting for Elasticsearch

Yellow is actual Python execution time

A rough guesstimate is that an average backend endpoint spends three quarter of its time waiting for database queries to complete.

We could spend time to optimise our Python code to death. We could rewrite all Python code into C++ or assembler. In the end, the gain would be a weak 25% speed increase. Maybe 30%. Not worth it.

Bottom line: the speed of your backend language does not matter. What does is optimising your database calls: using bulk querying and doing non-blocking asynchronous IO as much as you can.
Algorithms Are A Long Way From Making Great Art
By: Christopher P Jones
Tags: Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Art, Tech

If we are prepared to accept this premise and look beyond the programmers to say that “the computer made this”, then we may wonder what kind of object it is. It certainly looks like art. Not good art, I would argue, but since it fits into the convention of three-quarter view portraiture, is contained within a gilded frame, and is hung on a wall in an environment where we expect art to be displayed and sold, it seems to resemble a work of art.

But resemblance is not enough, of course. Plenty of counter-examples in the history of art, of objects that to their contemporaries looked nothing like works of art — think of Duchamp’s Fountain — should prove to us that art doesn’t have to be recognizable as art for it to be so. The word for works like this, once they are accepted, is original.

I want to argue that a great work of art seizes our attention and engages us on certain fundamental levels. For what inspires our interest in artistic objects is not their similitude to past works of art, but the ripples made by their very existence. The A.I. painting is interesting because it does that. It makes us wonder about art and about what it means to be human, and about what the future might look like.

Yet whether or not its second attempt at portraiture would be any bit as interesting as its first is doubtful. The ripples have already been made, and we wonder, as we do with artists, what next?

It is for this reason that we tend to focus so avidly on the stories of artists, whose lives are sometimes fantastical and fervent, sometimes obsessive, sometimes reclusive, sometimes exuberant. They exhibit “passion” and they develop a “style”. They learn from others, and in turn, influence the next generation. They break established conventions. Some make their art to be rich, others do it in spite of the poverty. Others want to be free. Others still seem to disappear into a broader expression of the zeitgeist.

In short, artists do all the things that human beings do when they live within a society and are subject to all its peculiar restrictions and opportunities. Nothing is lost in these narratives, neither achievement or destitution. Art and the stories behind its making are inextricably linked; they provide the basis upon which we can relate to it.

It’s for this reason that T. S. Eliot’s invocation of a tradition is so pertinent, for it points to the greater weave of fabric that every artist is by necessity tethered to. It is a weave of style, technique, passion, sophistication, ability and fallibility.

Can the stories of A.I. created art ever hope to be as interesting as those of the human species? I don’t know.

Christopher P Jones writes about culture, art and life. Sign up for more.
Boston and Kyoto Celebrate 60th Anniversary as Sister Cities
By: East-West Center In Washington
Tags: Diplomacy, Asia, Japan, Boston, Sister Cities

Mayor Kadokawa welcomed at Japan Society of Boston’s annual gala dinner.

Boston welcomed the Mayor of Kyoto, Daisaku Kadokawa in late April with an annual gala dinner hosted by the Japan Society of Boston. The Society also invited Nobel Laureate and Kyoto University Distinguished Professor, Tasuku Honjo, to attend the event.

Sister cities differ from other bilateral community relationships in that they are recognized with an official signed agreement. Because of the formal structure of this relationship, the two cities are able to successfully foster deeper cultural, educational, and business ties. The sister relationship between Boston and Kyoto began when Mayor Takayama visited Boston in the early 1950s and he was impressed with the similarities between the two cultural and educational centers. Mayor Takayama suggested the partnership for official cultural exchange, and Mayor John Hynes accepted on June 24, 1959.

These ties are best shown via university study programs between Kyoto and Boston. Boston falls into Massachusetts 7th and 8th Congressional Districts and in total, the two districts have seven universities with Japanese studies programs. Overall, there are over 480 international students from Japan who contribute around $2.3 million to the local economy. For Kyoto, the Ritsumeikan-Showa Boston University Culture and Society Research Program offers a four week experience that focuses on Boston’s societal and cultural elements. Furthermore, there are four bilateral study abroad exchanges between Kyoto and Boston. Boston University has two partnerships with institutions in Kyoto: the Kyoto Consortium and the Kyoto Tachibana University. Other bilateral exchanges include the University of Massachusetts, Boston and Ryukoku University, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Boston) and the Kyoto University of Art & Design.

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the friendship, many special events are being held in Boston.Japan Festival Boston was held on April 27 to 28 with food booths, workshops, stage performances, etc. It aims to introduce authentic Japanese culture and pass on traditions to the next generation.CIC ArtWeek: Global Arts, Eats & Beats was held on May 3 to introduce the roots of Japanese cultural traditions through art, food, and music.

Japan gave a Japanese-style house to the Boston Children’s Museum for its 20th anniversary. Before that Boston received two cherry blossoms, in addition to four Japanese gardens. These ties and current efforts signal a bright future between Boston and Kyoto.

Caitlin Huynh is a participant of the Young Professionals Program at the East-West Center in Washington. She graduated from Virginia Tech with Bachelors of Arts in International Studies and French.

Seol Hong is an ASAN Academy Fellow and a participant in the East-West Center in Washington’s Young Professionals Program. She is a graduate of Korea National University of Arts concentrating in Musicology and minoring in Arts Management.
The Lonely Married Heart
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Relationships, Lifestyle, Self, Love, Mental Health

Two lonelinesses in parallel may be an odd way to describe marriage and yet it’s an accurate description of mine, the most puzzling description of all.

To conflate marriage and loneliness is unusual; at first glance, those terms seem mutually exclusive. By definition, a marriage contains two people while loneliness is the burden of the isolated self. The two aren’t supposed or expected to coexist.

For years, I’ve sought to understand this. If only I could pinpoint where I have failed or what I’m lacking then I would come up with a solution, a fix. While major depressive disorder has corroded my self-confidence and made me feel inadequate, it isn’t the whole story.

The illness did disappear me as a person, as a professional, and as a wife, but only because it felled me almost as soon as I got married and immigrated.

As a result, I didn’t have the chance to build a new network of my own in a new country on a new continent. This isn’t surprising.

What I hadn’t realized at the time was that my husband was similarly untethered despite having lived in the same country and region his entire teenage and adult life.

In other words, here was a grown man without friends, for reasons that are still a mystery to me. To have gone through life up to that point without the hallmarks of friendship — closeness, unconditional love, devotion — baffles me.

What’s more, it breaks my heart as I can’t imagine what my own life would have been like without the friend I will forever refer to as my North Star.

Anthony and I had known each other since the mid-90s and cancer claimed him at the end of September. No matter where I was in the world, he was only ever a phone call away. For over 20 years, we were each other’s confidants and shared everything, including family and friends.

When he died, my parents reacted as if they had lost a son.

Then again, I’m well aware that my human experience isn’t the only one there is.

What if having the opportunity to forge deep, long-lasting friendships were a privilege rather than the norm? Meeting my husband has forced me to reconsider how I approach human relationships and accept that some of us may prefer their own company.

Loneliness can be a choice rather than the inevitable result of a disconnectedness epidemic.

But the alienation I’ve experienced in the last five years feels like an aberration. Something is missing. While being each other’s best friend is often the basis of a happy marriage, I do not believe one person can be everything to another as this precludes any kind of critical distance. In my mind, this would make for a claustrophobic relationship.

While both my husband and I enjoy and treasure our own company and quality time alone, I didn’t expect to ever feel lonely in my marriage.
The way of artists
By: Himalaya Goswami
Tags: India, Writer, Elon Musk, Art, Writing

A fine example of modern art.

Artists lead.

And the rest of the world follows them with either an ‘Aww’, or the mesmerized face when they come face to face with an artist’s creation or both. And this has been going on for centuries.

In the ancient period, we had limelights to glow the stage when a popular play by Shakespeare was being performed. Now, we have technologies that don’t require a person to step out of their bed to make a living. And the same applies to the artists- they don’t have to step out in daylight to for their work to spread out and bring them fame and the pride that follows fame.

But still, artists lead. Creators, innovators, researchers, explorers, pioneers, writers, filmmakers, musicians, these are the people that push the human race forward. From Leonardo Da Vinci to Elon Musk, we have seen people who could see the world in a way no one else could have imagined. Some of them too ahead of their time, pondering over ideas that would not be a possibility until the next 200 years.

I am talking about Nicola Tesla. Well, he’s one of many examples where we see people that were too early for this world, or the world was too primitive for them, people who were imbalanced, haunted by their own demons, but one day, they vomited gold.

Tesla’s vision of wireless electricity gave birth to the current 21st century, Steve Job’s vision of smartphones gave us the digital revolution era, Einstein’s vision of mass and energy gave us space exploration, Rowling’s vision of the magical world gave us Harry Potter, and Musk’s vision of settling over Mars, well, I am one in the queue.

Artists are visionaries. They understand the simple fact that life is short and that we get to do so fewer things in the time that is given to us. So, if they have a gift to create new stuff, why in the good god’s name one shouldn’t do it?

One should pursue creative endeavours in the most undisciplined, wild, irregular and violent manner as if they’re trying to catch a mad wolf. Having an imagination is a blessing, and the best way to handle a new idea is to absorb it while it's fresh and hot.
DOS via a billion laughs 😈
By: Martin Thoma
Tags: Hacking, Software Development, Software Engineering, Programming, Cybersecurity

How can I defend against a billion laughs?

Assuming that you cannot control the input directly and prevent XMLs with attacks from reaching you at all, I can think of 4 measures:

Lazy evaluation of references : Instead of evaluating the whole document at once, the references are only resolved when necessary. It might solve some issues.

: Instead of evaluating the whole document at once, the references are only resolved when necessary. It might solve some issues. No evaluation of references : Throwing the dangerous feature out of the window for sure means that you’re not vulnerable to the attack anymore. You need to make sure it doesn’t affect your users, though. Communicating this might be hard.

: Throwing the dangerous feature out of the window for sure means that you’re not vulnerable to the attack anymore. You need to make sure it doesn’t affect your users, though. Communicating this might be hard. Reference recursion depth limit : The parser itself could be aware of this issue and have a threshold when it stops evaluating references. However, this might also lead to false-positives — documents that get not parsed, because the parser thinks it’s an attack.

: The parser itself could be aware of this issue and have a threshold when it stops evaluating references. However, this might also lead to false-positives — documents that get not parsed, because the parser thinks it’s an attack. RAM restriction: You can run the code that might execute the billion laughs attack under resource restrictions. This means the execution thread/process receives a (catchable) exception and can continue execution normally. It might especially mean that even if the exception is not thrown, the rest of your system might be fine. Only that thread/process might be killed.

So, how do you do this with Python?

For XML, the simplest solution is to use the defusedxml package as pointed out by Diederik van der Boor (thank you!)

The resource restriction is easiest:

Restricting the parser is sometimes possible, sometimes not. It depends on your parser. Some have parameters like resolve_entities (lxml).

Limiting the maximum decompression size was done against the HTTP/2 “HPACK” bomb (source).

See also

Kate Murphey wrote an awesome article about git bombs, check it out!

What’s next?

In this series about application security (AppSec) we already explained some of the techniques of the attackers 😈 and also techniques of the defenders 😇:

And this is about to come:

CSRF 😈

DOS 😈

Credential Stuffing 😈

Cryptojacking 😈

Single-Sign-On 😇

Two-Factor Authentication 😇

Backups 😇

Disk Encryption 😇

Let me know if you are interested in more articles around AppSec / InfoSec!
Trade ARTIS on TokenJar
By: Artis Turba
Tags: Altcoins, Ethereum Wallet, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Blockchain

You can now trade ARTIS on TokenJar, a decentralized exchange with zero service fees and direct transaction from wallet to wallet, without the need for deposit, registration and KYC. The underlying technology of TokenJar is the 0x Protocol, an open and permissionless protocol allowing for ERC20 tokens to be traded on the Ethereum blockchain.
Address These 5 Questions to Understand Python Logging
By: Yong Cui
Tags: Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Software Development, Programming, Python

1. Why Doesn’t It Use the snake_case Naming Convention?

As we all know, the PEP 8 specified how we should name things in Python. In essence, it’s the so-called “snake_case” naming convention. For instance, we have a function that sends a message. The Pythonic name should be send_message . However, some other languages use the camelCase for function names. In that case, the function should be named as sendMessage .

Unlike other modules in the standard library, the logging module doesn’t use snake_case naming. Instead, it follows the camelCase naming convention. The reason is that this module was contributed by the author Vinay Sajip. According to the author, the development of this module was informed by Java’s logging package and Apache’s log4j, both of which use the camelCase naming conventions. The author continued with this convention in this module. The good thing is that although the module doesn’t follow the snake_case naming convention, it has internal consistency due to its use of the camelCase naming convention. So you’ll be less likely to be confused about various names in the module given its consistency.

For interested users, you can refer to this discussion on Stack Overflow regarding this topic.
Tech Update: Meet RSV v2. We are excited to announce that as of…
By: Taylor Brent
Tags: Updates, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Stable Coin, Blockchain

We are excited to announce that as of today, RSV v2 is now live!

Until now, we have been leveraging RSV v1 within the Reserve app. Today we retire RSV v1 and move one significant step closer to realizing our vision of a decentralized, censorship resistant, stable currency.

While this is not the launch of the full Reserve protocol described in our white paper (colloquially known as “main-net launch” in our community), we’re excited because this represents a big moment in the project’s history. RSV is here, it’s out in the world and our community members, at least the nerdiest among you, can mint it and redeem it for yourselves.

How we sometimes spend our Saturday nights ^_^

Meet RSV v2

RSV v2 is backed by a basket of on-chain collateral assets, held by the Reserve Vault smart contract. This basket is comprised of equal parts TUSD, PAX, and USDC — so each RSV is initially redeemable with the Reserve smart contracts for 1/3 TUSD + 1/3 PAX + 1/3 USDC.

Since each RSV token is redeemable directly for this basket, value of the RSV token is economically linked to the value of the basket. This anchors RSV at $1.00, as each of the current collateral tokens is redeemable for USD 1:1. This basket can be diversified over time through decentralized rebalancing, which we describe later.

While RSV v1 was still more auditable than Tether, the truth is it didn’t meet our standards for scalability or decentralization. We’ve made some improvements to this with RSV v2: with RSV v2, anyone can issue or redeem RSV, and all collateral is stored in a smart contract. RSV v2 possesses enough of the properties of our ultimate vision for the protocol that we’re comfortable with people around the world storing their wealth in RSV. This is super exciting for us and opens up a bunch of new opportunities for the progression of the project.

For the near future, issuance, redemption, and rebalancing are likely to be carried out primarily by sophisticated crypto liquidity providers throughout the ecosystem. While anyone can participate in liquidity provision, some parties may prefer to coordinate directly with us to get set up. You can contact us via contact@reserve.org for assistance.
The Covid Vaccine is Finally Here
By: Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa
Tags: Research, Covid-19, FDA, Science, Vaccines

CORONAVIRUS VACCINE

The Covid Vaccine is Finally Here

I, for one, am comfortable taking this vaccine myself

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

No time to read this article? No problem! The content below is available in this video.

It is truly remarkable. The coveted — and desperately needed — vaccine against COVID-19 is here. The FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization late on December 11. In a matter of days, vaccine will be injected into the arms of healthcare professionals and residents of long-term care facilities all across this country.

I have previously insisted that I will not take the vaccine until I see the data, especially if the vaccine was perfectly timed for the Presidential Election. I have looked at the data over and over again. These data seem pretty strong, with very good efficacy against Covid-19:

The graph shows Covid infections days after the first vaccine dose. The red line represents those who received the vaccine, and the blue line represents those who received the placebo. The results are pretty remarkable.

Now, a major concern I have is about side effects. We don’t have long-term data, and that is of course a concern. Data in the short-term do show systemic side effects, and they are typical for a vaccine: fever, headache, muscle pain, joint pain, chills. These especially occurred after the second dose, and they are likely due to the body’s immune response to the spike protein. That likely means the vaccine is doing its job.

There were four people who received the vaccine that developed Bell’s palsy, which is facial paralysis on one side. None of the placebo patients developed this condition. We will have to see if this bears out as more people get vaccinated.

Still, all in all, it seems that this vaccine is safe and effective. I have spoken to experts in Immunology, and they are very excited about this mRNA technology. One of my colleagues lit up when talking about it, and he said that it was a “game-changer,” especially with the potential to develop cancer vaccines. Very intriguing, indeed.

And so, after looking at all the data and speaking to experts, I am comfortable taking this vaccine. This pandemic is literally killing us, this vaccine is the best way we can achieve herd immunity without natural infection and the resultant death and destruction which inevitably follow.

The vaccine is finally here. I pray that the beginning of the end of this nightmare is nigh.
The Reason Communication Is Hard — and a Simple Trick To Fix It
By: Aron Croft
Tags: Self Improvement, Communication, Marketing, Message, Personal Development

The tapping experiment

This experiment was conducted in 1990, and the song “tappers” predicted that the “listeners” would be able to guess 50% right.

What actually happened?

Listeners could only pick out 2.5% of the tunes — 1 out of every 40 songs — versus the tappers’ prediction of 50%. The tappers were so bewildered!

What explains the huge gap between tappers’ predictions and the results?

Go back to our thought experiment.

As the tapper, you can literally hear Happy Birthday playing in your head as you tap away on the table.

But your listener doesn’t have that mental soundtrack playing. Without that, the taps on the table just sound like jumbled Morse code.

In their New York Times Bestseller Made To Stick, Chip and Dan Heath call this the “Curse of Knowledge.”

The Curse of Knowledge shows up everywhere:

When CEOs talks about “maximizing shareholder value,” they have a song playing in their heads that their employees can’t hear

The same is true when construction workers, doctors, and technology professionals talk to homeowners, medical patients, and non-tech-savvy individuals, respectively

In the above examples, when the speakers (tappers) communicate, they find it bewildering when listeners don’t understand them.

But the listeners can’t hear the tune playing in the tappers’ heads.

So, how does this apply to making others understand our ideas?

We have to remember that other people can’t hear the song playing in our heads. They don’t have our exact life experiences that led to our understanding of what we’re communicating.

To overcome the Curse of Knowledge, we need to transform our message. One of the best ways to do that is to make your message “concrete,” instead of abstract.
Open Source Tools for Creating Digital Identities
By: Richard Esplin
Tags: Development, Digital Identity, Evernym, Sovrin, Open Source

Open Source Tools for Creating Digital Identities

Evernym releases a Credential Exchange SDK

I joined Evernym as a Product Manager at the start of April, 2018. I was captured by Evernym’s ambition to provide every individual, organization, and connected device with secure and irrevocable identity. This identity will allow new relationships that will empower individuals as they participate in the modern technology-centered economy. You can read this article to learn more about existing digital identity relationship models and how Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is different.

We believe that an open dialogue with our community will help everyone move faster in achieving these goals, so I will keep you updated on Evernym’s progress in this and future posts. Evernym has a talented team doing great work, but we aren’t going to be successful by keeping our inventions private.

For Evernym to achieve our mission, we need:

The Hyperledger Indy open source project to be an innovative and stable platform for building distributed identity networks.

The Sovrin Foundation to be successful in running a global public utility for self-sovereign identity.

Independent developers and businesses to build solutions that are easily adopted by people from every walk of life.

To meet these goals, we recently released our library for Verifiable Credential eXchange (libVCX) under a permissive open source license. This is the foundation of our commercial products, and we want it to be leveraged by every developer and entrepreneur in the identity ecosystem. We are working to integrate this capability into the Hyperledger Indy project.

We are also enjoying collaborating with developers from other institutions to create a set of reference agents that represent individuals as they exchange identity credentials. These reference agents can be used by solution providers to speed their development.

Hyperledger Indy and Sovrin are quickly growing beyond a single corporate sponsor, and we appreciate the broad support others are providing to advance the vision for the future that they represent.

We hope you will join us in building a citizen-centric Internet. Check back to see updates on our progress.
Here’s What Apple’s 4-for-1 Stock Split Means For You
By: Ben Scheer
Tags: Technology, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Investing, Business

Background

Late July 2020, Apple’s Board of Directors approved a 4-for-1 stock split decision. At the end of the day on August 24, shares will be distributed amongst shareholders, and then trading on the split-adjusted basis will start on August 31.

A stock split is actually quite simple. Let’s stay that one share of Apple stock is worth $400, and you own one stock. A 4-for-1 split just means that a single $400 share becomes four separate $100 shares. Now, you have four shares of Apple stock instead of one, but these four shares still add up to that original $400. Overall, it’s the same deal.

Although you don’t lose or gain value from a theoretical stock split alone, the events surrounding a split will have a real impact on the stock performance in the near future. Let’s discuss this further.

What This Means For Investors

This is not the first time Apple has done this sort of thing. Apple did a 7-to-1 stock split in 2014, bringing over $600 per share down to around $92. For Apple to do this again in 2020 is definitely a positive benchmark for current investors. Right now, Apple is seeing a positive price surge, likely due to the stock split news and the general positivity surrounding the stock.

There are two things happening here. One, there will be more shares available to the world (around four times more than before). Indeed, Apple shares will be less scarce. Two, Apple likely wants to make each share less expensive in order to attract a larger number of investors. More people will feel like an Apple share is within their affordable budget, so they’ll want some.

At first glance, the result is unclear. There will be a greater supply of shares but, at the same time, a greater demand for shares. It’s difficult to tell which of these opposite factors will outweigh the other. Other market factors, like overall economic conditions in the United States, will likely have the largest impact on the stock’s performance in the near term.

However, current investors may see a lot of hype behind this stock when it splits. More buyers will want to pick up shares at the lower price, and that demand will likely have a ripple effect, making even more people want to buy. That great amount of demand will drive the value of the stock upwards.

For people that are interested in investing in Apple in the long run, it doesn’t really matter if you buy the stock right before or right after the split. If you’re convinced that the stock split event in itself will make the price go up, it’d be notable to invest sometime between now and right around the split event. That way, you will have purchased those new shares before the newly-priced share prices get boosted.
At school today I learnt a lot Of hard and complex words.
Tags: Poetry, Hurt, Literally Literary, Sad, Bullying

At school today

I learnt a lot

Of hard and complex words.

Like Math and Science,

and literature,

Will sit with me at lunch.

I pass my tests

I’m pretty nice

Yet still don’t understand

Why I’m the constant

victim of

their cold and cruel words.

I try my best

to act so tough

but it’s like they also know

as soon as I

walk out the door,

I’ll go and cry at home.
GRN1 Cancellation Announcement
By: David Vorick
Tags: Grin, Mining, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Obelisk

Due to a lack of interest and funding, Obelisk has had to cancel the GRN1 project. All who purchased the GRN1 directly from Obelisk will be receiving a full refund for their purchase. Refunds will be provided in the form of BTC equal to the USD value of the amount paid at the time of purchase. If credit was used, the credit will be added to the amount refunded. If coupons were used, the coupons will be returned as coupons.

Obelisk picked Grin as our next mining project because we saw great potential in the coin. There was a lot of early hype, and the social and political fundamentals for Grin’s development appeared to be more decentralized than any other cryptocurrency besides Bitcoin. This was very exciting to us, and is something that we felt made Grin substantially interesting among the newer cryptocurrencies.

An ASIC project is incredibly expensive, and we hit several barriers to getting enough funding to finish the project. One of the biggest barriers was the split block reward. The Grin devs determined that the best approach to creating a healthy mining ecosystem would be to split the block reward three ways, with one chunk going to GPU miners, one chunk going to a lower memory requirement Cucaktoo31 algorithm, and one chunk going to a higher memory requirement Cuckatoo32 algorithm. This split, combined with the fact that the Grin project has yet to gain substantial traction in the cryptocurrency marketplace proved to be an insurmountable barrier.

Of the three algorithms, Obelisk chose to target the the lower memory requirement Cuckatoo31 algorithm, with an intention of making a second generation of hardware to target the Cuckatoo32 algorithm before the transition to Cuckatoo32 kicked in. We felt that this approach would give us the strongest edge over the competing manufacturers. This strategy comes with a protocol enforced deadline though for getting the first generation hardware out, and due to fundraising constraints we were not able to make the deadline. Rather than delaying the shipping date and trying again, Obelisk is forced to abort the nearly complete project.

This is of course a disappointing outcome for Obelisk and its customers, however we are glad to be able to refund all of our customers in full, and we are also glad that we will be able to move on to the next project.
Offensive Love
By: Jodi Cowles
Tags: Life Lessons, Grief And Loss, Motherhood, Love, Parenting

In the past couple weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about my brother. And you know what surprised me? He was with us for almost five months, but I only have a handful of memories of him. I have more memories associated with his death and the days following than I do of his life. Somehow his memory file holds nothing but sorrow.

Could I make him laugh? How can I not remember that? No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to access the happy memories.

Did he eat solid food? Did he burrow his head into my shoulder as my daughter does? I remember my mom couldn’t breastfeed for very long because of the pain. But how long? Did I ever feed him? I must have changed him more than once, but once is all I remember — the time he peed on my shirt in that long and glorious baby boy tradition.

My parents still remember my brother on his birthday. They usually go to lunch and then up to the cemetery to stand by the tree that has grown taller than I could have imagined on that cold day when we put him in the ground. The tree was so small then. My brother had been so small.

I remember the weight of his dead body. He was so heavy. In life, he’d never been that heavy. He was always moving, squirming, smiling.
Conversation with My Wife (179.2)
By: Jack Herlocker
Tags: Paging Martha Stewart, Catalog Sales, Humor, Strange T Shirts, Weird Elf Cookies

Conversation with My Wife (179.2)

As the retail sales community continues in its drive to support the US Postal Service through catalog mailings.

We like to read catalogs over breakfast.

DEB: Are we shaving our foil before we use it?

ME: Ummm… no? Why?

Deb points to the catalog in front of her.

DEB: “The Best Gentlemen’s Foil Shaver.” It’s a thing now.

Elf cookie (top); elf cookie cutter (bottom). This is like those Sunday comic “How to draw the Mona Lisa in three steps,” where Step 1 = draw the eyes, Step 2 = draw the mouth, Step 3 = fill in the details and voila! The Mona Lisa. 😠

ME: Apparently I’m not a gentleman? Oh, and I can’t do elf cookies.

DEB: Was I asking?

ME: No, but maybe you hadn’t gotten to this catalog yet. It has cookie cutters in the shapes of elves, reindeer, polar bears, and fir trees, which you somehow miraculously turn into cookies that would make Martha Stewart die from envy.

DEB: I saw those, I thought they had too much sugar for you. I did think about this t-shirt for Aunt Norma, though: “I am currently unsupervised. I know! It freaks me out too. But the possibilities are endless!”

ME: Actually, that would fit both of you when you’re together. Oh, same page, lower: “I do all my own stunts. But never intentionally.” I could wear that when I’m doing yard work?

DEB: I have seen you do awesome recoveries, Jackster. Here you go: “It takes real skills to choke on air, fall up stairs, and trip over nothing. I have those skills!” On the other hand, here’s me in retirement: “MY BODY IS A TEMPLE. Ancient and crumbling. Probably cursed or haunted.”

ME: On the contrary, my love, you have toned up beautifully since retiring! And dropped thirty pounds!¹ Oh, but here’s something to counter that: a “home moonshine kit. Comes with peach, apple pie, and cherry flavorings; just combine with your favorite grain alcohol.” Wait… the purpose of making moonshine is to get fruity flavors you can’t get with regular vodka? How does that work?

DEB: I thought you were more a rum person? Oh, here’s one for you, honey: “Sometimes understanding what a woman wants is difficult for a man. It’s like trying to figure out what color the number seven smells like.” Am I that hard on you?

ME: Oh! Look! “Bookmarks are for quitters!” That fits you, Debster!

DEB: With some of my mysteries, you bet! Fine, just dodge the question. Ah, here are two that fit me: “Day 12 without chocolate. Lost hearing in my left eye.” And: “Another wine bottle with no genie at the bottom. I’ll keep looking.”

ME: “I had a hen who could count her own eggs. She was a mathemachicken.”

DEB: Puns at breakfast? Really?

ME: (pointing to another t-shirt) “Bad puns are how eye roll.”

DEB: (eye roll) “Sometimes I wish I were a nicer person. But then I laugh and continue my day.” So many reminders of my old job…

ME: And now you can use this one: “FUN FACT: I don’t care.”

DEB: And this fits that: “You think it’s bad now? In twenty years, our country will be run by people who were homeschooled by day drinkers.”
MHS Basketball gives thanks for a memorable season
By: Kelly Flynn
Tags: Win, Athletics, Seasons, Sports, Community

MHS Basketball gives thanks for a memorable season

In a letter to the community, the program extends their thanks.

Dear Moorestown Community,

On behalf of the Moorestown boys basketball program, we wanted to take this opportunity to extend our sincerest gratitude to the staff and students of the Moorestown Township Public Schools and the entire Moorestown community for all of your support during our historic 2018–2019 season. We especially appreciate everyone’s energy and excitement during our playoff journey. From our sold out home games during our run to the sectional championship, to the more than 2,000 fans that cheered us on as we won our first state championship in 60 years, our team was inspired by your passionate support. We would also like to thank the Moorestown Fire Department and their volunteers for welcoming us home from our state championship game, with a fire truck escort down a fan filled Main Street. Our program, and especially our senior athletes, will remember the support of this community for the rest of their lives. Our greatest hope is that our historical run will inspire all of our youngest fans to never give up on their dreams. Hopefully, one day they can wear a Moorestown basketball jersey and win a championship of their own.

Thank you again for a memorable season. Go Quakers!

Shawn Anstey and the Moorestown High School basketball program
Join Us at Binance Blockchain Week
Tags: Binance, Hackathon, Blockchain, Conference, Singapore

Binance will hold the first Binance Blockchain Week in Singapore from 19 to 22 January 2019.

With 2,000 attendees expected from around the globe, Binance Blockchain Week will highlight two large-scale events over the four days: a two-day hackathon known as the Binance SAFU Hackathon, followed by the Binance Conference.

Binance Blockchain Week will bring together industry-leading regulators, investors, academics, entrepreneurs, and technologists to discuss today’s blockchain ecosystem and encourage sustainable growth in the industry. The event will prime the international stage for a global exchange of the latest blockchain knowledge and expertise among high-profile figures in the space.

Binance Conference

Held at the Sands Expo & Convention Centre in Marina Bay Sands, the Binance Conference will feature more than 70 speakers, including industry thought leaders, high-level executives, academics and heads of state, in an action-packed program filled with keynote speeches, panel discussions, fireside chats, and exclusive networking events.

The first wave of confirmed speakers include:

Genping Liu, Partner at Vertex Ventures

Justin Chow, Head of Business Development, Asia at Cumberland

Sonia Bashir Kabir, Managing Director at Microsoft Bangladesh

Eric van Miltenburg, Senior Vice President of Global Operations at Ripple

Justin Sun, Founder of TRON

Da Hongfei, Founder of NEO

Patrick Dai, Founder of Qtum

Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Founder and CEO of Binance.

More speakers will be announced over the coming weeks.

“We are thrilled to host the first-ever Binance Blockchain Week in Singapore, the finance and technology hub of Asia,” said CZ. “Gathering the most notable players and thought leaders in blockchain, this will be a defining event. We look forward to many thought-provoking discussions and debates on how we can further work together to move the industry forward.”

The Binance Conference expo floor will feature more than 50 booths for sponsors to showcase the best of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies.

Binance SAFU Hackathon

The first-ever Binance SAFU (Secured Assets For Users) Hackathon will be held at PwC Singapore, Marina One East Tower from 19 to 20 January. Themed SAFU, the Hackathon aims to seek innovative blockchain solutions to secure crypto assets.

Binance SAFU Hackathon will feature an esteemed panel of judges including PwC, Tribe Accelerator, and Binance Labs.

Individuals and teams interested in participating in the Binance SAFU Hackathon can submit applications from 10 December to 6 January. 20 developer teams will be selected via pre-hackathons and direct registration on the event website. Pre-hackathons will be held from December and early January around the world, and winning teams will be given free passes to the final SAFU Hackathon in Singapore. The final hackathon winning teams will share a prize pool of $100,000 in BNB offered by Binance.

Registration for the Binance Blockchain Week and the SAFU Hackathon will open soon. For further updates, do follow Binance on Twitter at https://twitter.com/binance.
Hold ITC and Win an ITC T-shirt or Hoodie
By: Iot Chain
Tags: Iot Chain, IoT, Announcements

How to participate?

1. Those who wish to participate must have held ITC tokens for the past 90+ days.

2. To qualify, send a 0 ETH transaction to specified contract: 0x3F1412ab2b9E82Dab8d1B5D6e7a3515411ea4800

3. Fill this google form https://goo.gl/forms/EztAXeW2DG6nzaBk2 with the ETH address you sent the transaction from, your delivery information, and your preference of a T-shirt or hoodie (including size).

4. The team will confirm whether you are meet the criteria above. The first 15 community members to successfully complete the requirements will win their choice of a T-shirt or hoodie.

Time:

The contest will run from July 1st to 15th, 2018. Due to unpredictable international delivery time, please allow up to one month to receive your prize.
Motion
By: Robert Trakofler
Tags: Poetry, Life, Art, Motion, Writing

Motion

A pause for some poetic thought

Artist unknown from my collection (circa 1940's)

I have an obsession with waves this is my sketch of motion… AS always thank you for reading and or listening to my poem it means the world to this old poet. Audio link at the bottom of my poem:)

I gesture in the regard of a sunset smile

As I passage my inscription of minutes

In the grace obscured by the mundane beguiled

I was once told “young man, don’t race through the visit.”

I’m the old man now, contemplative is my pace

I strike motion in the reverence of fascination

The adoration of prosaic bloom is my chase

In the interlude movement of conversation

In the trickle of peach juice dripping down my face

I crawled,

Tottered,

Walked,

Dashed,

Danced,

Paced and limped

And soon I will crawl again

But I never learned how to move

Until I learned how to pause
Resourceful
By: Jobber Group
Tags: Life Lessons, Traits, Macgyver, Solutions, Resourceful

When I think of Resourceful, I think of MacGyver. We’ll illustrate why in the story below but for now let’s look at what all Resourceful people have in common:

They are very open-minded, willing to embrace a variety of possibilities, ideas and diversity of people and thought;

they believe wholeheartedly in themselves that they can come up with a workable solution to any problem;

they use their imagination to develop new ideas and solutions but also to come up with new ways to do old things better;

they are NOT procrastinators;

and they never give up because they are hopeful and positive that there is a solution to every problem.

Take a look around your office, at your team — who represents a Resourceful person? I bet you immediately looked at one or two people. They are invaluable because they value a strong team to help them be more resourceful. They love to learn and network and are never afraid to ask a question. All of that information and knowledge of where to find information is exactly what makes them so Resourceful. “If there’s a problem, yo I’ll solve it!” is there mantra!

MacGyver

I was trying to find one of MacGyver’s resourceful moments that might translate well to the workplace. Here is the closest thing I found:

Using candlesticks, microphone cord and a rubber mat, MacGyver cuts the microphone wire, attaches it to the two candlesticks, wraps them with the mat to keep himself from being electrocuted… and then, using this homemade defibrillator, resuscitates his friend who was implanted with a remote-triggered heart attack-causing device by evil Soviet spies.

Talk about Resourceful! Sure, this seems absurd to some people, but it’s the thinking behind it that we all recognize very clearly in some of our co-workers, right? A new problem presents itself and everyone around the conference room table is stuck trying to come up with the solution. In walks your “MacGyver” who just has a knack for knowing a guy who once used this one line of code to instantly stop a process so that the rest of the team could get into the database and find and fix the problem. Your “MacGyver” has this way of connecting dots that most of us didn’t even know were able to be connected.

Having Resourceful people in your company is obvious; keeping them may be harder unless you provide enough knowledge and opportunity to learn from others to keep their information banks loaded. That investment will most certainly save you once, if not many times, when problems arise.
Why London Needed Another Turkish Restaurant
By: Valentina Valentini
Tags: Turkish, Food, London, Restaurant

Demir’s attention to detail — from where he sources his meat to how many pomegranates he uses as garnishes (just the right amount) — is evident in the flavors of the dishes. The lamb chops encrusted in pistachios imported from Turkey are so tender and soft in their flavor that they don’t even taste like the lamb that many of us are used to. (I’m not particularly fond of lamb, so this is a revelation for me.)

“When you go to a Turkish restaurant,” says Demir, “usually they pile up the rice and put the meat on top. But we want to refine it. For our lamb shish — where most restaurants will use the shoulder and the leg, which is a bit cheaper cut, we only use the fillet of the lamb. We rest it on the bone in the refrigerator for a day. Then we carve it, then we rest it for another day so that all the juices run out of it, then we marinate it for another 48 hours to get the tenderness. It’s a five-day process before it gets to your table.”

All the traditional Turkish ingredients are there at The Mantl, but Demir likes to play with the flavors. They maintain the tradition of cooking over an open charcoal grill, but Demir claims they use only the best ingredients, and experimentation with the starters is key.

“It’s a playground in the kitchen, and we create dishes that we hope people will find fascinating,” he says. “The tarhana crisps, we make that out of [traditional Turkish] soup. We bake it and fry it to make it crispy. We used burnt yogurt; we hung it ourselves. The baklava, we try to give a twist to it by making it lighter by deconstructing it and using less sugar.”

The Mantl has been open now for nearly three months, but the restaurant is busy and popular already. Most of their customers are walk-ins, which was Demir’s hope. Its name comes from the mantelpiece , and though its been updated in the of-the-moment trend of removing vowels from words , his heart is in the right place.

“The mantel is in the house in the kitchen,” Demir says, pointing to the dozens of mantels stacked in rows on the walls. “You gather around that, and it’s where you eat and cook and have a good time with family and friends. It’s the warmth of a home. All these mantels represent different cultures coming together at the heart of the home.”