fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Where Were You Election Night?
By: Future Now Usa
Tags: Politics, Elections, Statesmatter, Giving, Fundraising

Democracy is not a spectator sport, even on Election Night. Just ask Amy Rowland and her friends in One State at a Time (OSAAT), a Future Now Fund Giving Circle. They were with us, watching the returns roll in on races in which they had made a big impact.

That’s why The New York Times was there too, to profile the power, and empowerment, of Future Now Fund Giving Circles.

Before the 2016 election, Amy had donated to political campaigns here and there. But as she grew more and more distressed about the state of our country, Amy wanted to do more.

So Amy called her friends. They knew that the more traditional giving to the highest-profile national races wasn’t moving the needle enough — and so they decided to do something a little unconventional: They started a Future Now Fund Giving Circle to help change the direction of the Michigan state legislature.

It may be surprising, but it makes a lot of sense. In fact, in 2018, 30 Future Now Fund Giving Circles were formed by people like Amy, pooling donations with family, friends, neighbors and colleagues — and the numbers are in:

$1.35 million total raised by Giving Circles in 2018

total raised by Giving Circles in 2018 $45,000 average fundraising per Giving Circle

average fundraising per Giving Circle +1,000 individual members

individual members 80% of members are women

The Giving Circle started by Amy and her friends helped elect six new lawmakers in Michigan.Their work was central to these wins. In fact, three candidates won by less than 3 percent!

Amy and Megan prepare to knock doors with FNF endorsee / Rep.-Elect Matt Koleszar and State Rep. Yousef Rabhi.

Now, inspiring candidates in Michigan will be heading to Lansing to fight hard for clean water, better schools and healthcare — and to shift dynamics in the House by forcing real compromise on issues central to the lives of the people of Michigan. While the job isn’t done yet, these are groundbreaking strides that will have a long-term, material impact both on the state and the national political landscape

And this Giving Circle is not stopping now: they’re already working toward the 2020 election. So what makes for a great Election Night? Join or start a Giving Circle and see for yourself.

PS: A major shoutout is in order for Hali Lee and Eliza Rossman, two members of the FNF Giving Circle community. Their work with charitable giving circles was also highlighted by the NYT!
Literacy Educational Leaders & Change Agents Meet in California
By: Mcgraw Hill
Tags: California, Curriculum, Education, Literacy

Resources, ideas, and stories for PreK-12 educators. We focus on learning science, educational equity, social and emotional learning, and evidence-based teaching strategies. Be sure to check out The Art of Teaching Project, our guest blogging platform for all educators.

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Casa Node Update — 1.14.19. The Refresh button is so 2018
By: Nick Neuman
Tags: Bitcoin, Product Updates, Lightning Network, Cryptocurrency, Crypto

Casa Node Update — 1.14.19

The Refresh button is so 2018

Today we’ve got a big update for Casa Node owners! Over the next few weeks we’ll have a lot of new features and user experience improvements to the Node, and we’re super excited to be kicking it off this week with some huge dashboard improvements!
Not Quite Culture Shock
By: Fsi Student Programs
Tags: Tecfsi, Travel, Stanford, Fsi Students, Brussels

About the author: Sarah Myers ’21 is an FSI The Europe Center intern at the Lisbon Council in Brussels, Belgium.

Since arriving in Brussels, I’ve found myself consistently feeling just a bit disoriented. I’ve never experienced culture shock before, so this might be it. On the other hand, culture shock is supposed to have phases and be fairly noticeable, and I’m not sure my confusion reaches that threshold. At most, my bafflement is a low-level background feeling, and it’s not a particularly negative feeling. But it is very much present.

Sunset at Mont des Arts, Brussels

It’s true that I arrived in Belgium having never studied French, so I did not entirely set myself up for success. I’m grateful that people here almost always speak English or are willing to work with me using Google Translate. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I never find myself on the wrong side of the language barrier.

Brabo’s Monument, Antwerp

Figuring out a new public transit system is always a challenge. Figuring out Brussels’ system, which combines metro lines, bus lines, underground trams which are separate from the metro, and street cars, was more than a bit frustrating. Grocery shopping can take quite a while. Having naively arrived here without bringing enough toiletries for my entire stay, I discovered that there isn’t really an equivalent to CVS in Belgium. You can buy Nivea face wash and moisturizer in the grocery store or go to a pharmacy and try your luck with European brands. Pharmacists, in my limited experience, are uniquely unwilling to use translating apps (and are very direct about diagnosing what they think your problem is).

The Flying Nun (Flemish edition), Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent

Much of my confusion has faded after two weeks, probably because I’m no longer spending so much time and energy simply trying to navigate and understand what’s going on around me. It probably also helped that the heat wave hanging over my first week here finally moved on. Having other Stanford students in the city definitely helped. Oddly enough, I think taking day trips to other Belgian cities (so far I’ve visited Ghent and Antwerp with a friend from Stanford) also helped. Something about throwing myself into an even newer, more unfamiliar situation made Brussels feel not quite as new. Either way, even the worst of my confusion couldn’t outweigh the excitement of being here and experiencing a new culture.
A New Intuit Open Source Release: Trapheus
By: Social Ac
Tags: Software Development, Intuit, Open Source, Tech

Intuit engineers Rohit Kumar and Namita Devadas are excited to launch Trapheus. Trapheus automates restoration of Relational Database Services (RDS) database instances from snapshots into any dev, staging or production environments. It also supports snapshot-based restoration for individual RDS instances (such as Oracle, MySQL, MariaDB etc) as well as Amazon Aurora cluster instances with read replica support.

Trapheus is a tool for anyone who wants to automate restoration of RDS instances from snapshots, for recovery or other use cases. As part of Intuit’s QuickBooks Online Advanced team, project creators Rohit Kumar and Namita Devadas use this tool to enable daily restoration of the QuickBooks Online database from a golden snapshot inside their performance environment to maintain data consistency. Trapheus was picked up by other teams working on QuickBooks Online to do the same in their performance environments, which caused Rohit and Namita to start thinking about how this automation could apply to a variety of other use cases.

Trapheus is modeled as a state machine with the help of AWS step functions, which executes different steps to restore an existing database from a snapshot. It also supports snapshot-based restoration for individual RDS instances (such as Oracle, MySQL, MariaDB etc) as well as Amazon Aurora cluster instances with read replica support.

Concept to realization

Trapheus uses the following tech stack: Python, Python unit test framework, Boto3, AWS step functions, Lambdas, RDS Lambda layers.

State Machine Visualization

Technology Stack

As a universal restoration solution, Trapheus can be applied to multiple use cases, including benchmarking and disaster recovery. Prior to Trapheus, no available concrete tooling ran with all RDS instances. When Rohit and Namita opened up Trapheus internally, it was quickly and easily adopted by other QuickBooks Online teams and microservices platforms. “We asked ourselves if this can be open sourced for the benefit of the community,” wrote Rohit and Namita.
Switch版『アウター・ワールド』をしっかり攻略してみる#3
Tags: ゲーム, Nintendo Switch, 旅行, 日記, Videogames

in In Fitness And In Health
Amazon Wants to Go Beyond Just Book Stores
By: Lucy Jade
Tags: Retail, Ecommerce, Technews

If I ask you to name any e-retailer that is highly popular, the first name that may come to your mind is Amazon. Amazon has crossed the boundaries when it comes to its business and has reached globally. Now it is planning to move beyond just being e-retailers of books. Its sources confirm that the e-retailer aims to open not just more bookshops, but also other types of retail stores in the future.

The Amazon retail store initiative is being led by Steve Kessel, a longtime Amazon executive whose team launched the first Kindle e-reader and who is very tight with CEO Jeff Bezos. He joined Amazon in 1999 and left in 2011 or 2012 to take a sabbatical. He started working on this initiative when he came back. The specifics of Kessel’s project had been an internal secret for a long time, but his group has attracted more attention since it opened up Amazon’s first brick-and-mortar bookstore in Seattle in the fall.

Though Amazon has plans to expand its business in the future, it is not taking any initiatives as of now. It has reportedly brought back veteran execs for the retail initiative, starting with Steve Kessel who’s now serving as its head honcho. The publication calls him a low-ego leader with greater emotional intelligence. He is one of Amazon’s more compassionate bosses. It needs more like him, if NYT’s report in 2015 detailing brutal working conditions within its premises, is true.

Kessel’s team is in the midst of experimenting with technologies written in the company’s retail store patent application for other types of retail shops. A possible feature is the ability to automatically charge people’s credit cards on file when they walk out the store — no need to pass through the checkout counter.

We hope Amazon actualizes this dream, as it sound so exciting.
Friday the 13th wear a mask…
By: Andy Anderson
Tags: Humor, Face Mask, Comics, Friday The 13th, Funny

There’s more to laugh at here: AndyAndersonCartoons.com

If this cartoon made you laugh, share the laughter with a friend, and follow AndyAndersonCartoons publication for new cartoons each week.
Why Bitcoin outperform Visa
By: Lukas Wiesflecker
Tags: Bitcoin, Economics, Decentralization, Banking, Finance

With a new record high of over US$25,000, Bitcoin’s market capitalization is now larger than Visa’s.

On December 25, Bitcoin (BTC) climbed above the US$25,000 mark on crypto exchange Bitstamp, setting (yet another) new record high. At the same time, the market-leading cryptocurrency thus reaches a larger market capitalization than payment giant Visa.

According to Yahoo Finance, the leading payments group Visa has a market value of $460.06 billion as of today, Dec. 26, whereas Bitcoin now stands at more than $462 billion.

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer (P2P) based blockchain protocol, while Visa is a for-profit commercial enterprise. This might lead the reader to conclude that a comparison between the two is not valid.

Nevertheless, the comparison of the two “payment systems” has a symbolic value, as the current market capitalization makes Bitcoin currently the thirteenth-largest company in the world (see above).

Institutional investor interest in Bitcoin has received a significant boost in 2020. Demand from large investors is now growing exponentially, and with the cryptocurrency now outpacing another major “competitor” in the form of Visa, institutional investor confidence could be further boosted.

More and more institutions and large investors are entering the crypto market through Grayscale, a large asset management firm, and the bitcoin futures of CME Group’s options exchange. Grayscale’s assets under management are now already close to $17 billion, while the CME bitcoin futures’ open interest is consistently above $1 billion.

Ironically, Visa has shown increasing interest in the crypto market in recent months, after two major payment service providers and competitors, Paypal and Square, also started betting on Bitcoin.

For example, Wirex, a company that issues Visa debit cards for cryptocurrencies, has been named a strategic partner of Visa Europe. Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s senior director of cryptocurrencies, says in this regard:

“Digital currencies have the potential to extend the value of digital payments to even more people and regions. We’re excited to partner with innovative fintech companies like Wirex, which enables their customers to pay with digital currencies at more than 61 million retailers in the Visa network.”

I share more intimate thoughts in a monthly newsletter that you can check out here. Please let me know in a comment and join me on various social media platforms:

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WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT WITH LOVE AND PASSION!

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When albatrosses fly south
By: Mick Champayne
Tags: Student Loans, Education

💸

One of my biggest goals in my adult life has been to pay back my student loans. It’s been a huge albatross around my neck, squawking anytime I have extra cash or want to do something fun. In the past few years, it’s felt like it’s prohibited me from a lot of typical next-stage-of-life things, like buying a house or having babies or saving extra for retirement.

I’m constantly running “what if” scenarios through my head—like what if I hadn’t gone to a private art school at $30k/year, or what if I’d looked into other schools; what if I’d applied for more scholarships, read the fine print when I signed my name over to the devil? Or what if I lost my job and had to defer? Or what if I became friends with an elderly widow with no family who lived in the big beautiful house on my street and she bequeathed her estate to me? (“Hey, it could happen. McWoooooorrrrld!”)

I think I see my debt in black and white, and I really oughtn’t. I’ve read how my debt might be a “hidden asset.” If I zoom out and take a broad view of my life, did that huge student loan actually give me an incredible education that I’m so grateful for? It’s afforded me experiences and friendships and strength I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
【EOS 生態週報】2019W13
Tags: Eos Taiwan, Eos, EOSIO.contracts v1.6.0, Eoshexagon, Weekly Report

in In Fitness And In Health
Throw Money at the Problem
Tags: Life Lessons, Goal Setting, Money, Goals, Success

If it is important to you, throw money at whatever is stopping you from pursuing of your goals.

What do I mean by this?

If you want to go back to school, but cannot because someone needs to watch the children, hire a babysitter.

If you want to start exercising every morning, but it takes up the time you spend cleaning your house, hire a cleaning person.

If you want to write that book, but simply cannot focus at home, buy a cup of coffee at a coffee shop and ‘rent’ the space for an hour of writing.

As you start reading these, you might realize that you do not even need to spend the money I am suggesting.

Maybe it is more of a matter of willpower, proper organization of your priorities, effective time management or support from loved ones, which is needed for your endeavour.

Spending money to pursue your goals can be a great catalyst for success.

Why?

If you are spending your hard earned cash on a meal delivery service, so that you can write the next great novel, but do nothing, other than scroll through Instagram for the evening, then perhaps it is time to re-examine the goal you think you so badly want to achieve.

However, if you do take the hour a day, which you usually spend meal prepping, with your butt planted in a chair, keyboard clattering away, losing track of time, watching the word count and pages grow, then that meal service will pay for itself in the future.

Throwing money at the problem might sound frivolous to you, but to me, it is everything.

It shows me that I am committed to the completion of the goal, not just the idea of it and I am willing to make big sacrifices for said goal.

If you are willing to allocate your money to help you reduce the distractions or obstacles, which are preventing you from achieving your goal, you are acting in accordance to reaching said goal.

Where we spend our money, what we spend it on and how we spend it, say a lot about us.

If you are sitting here, stuck in a rut, with a decent paying job, a slightly higher than expected mortgage and bills, which make you sigh with defeat, but there is that thing you want to do and think about all the time, you will find the time, money and energy.

We are some of the lucky ones.

We have a roof over our heads and at least five extra bucks a month to spend, so you have cash to spare, I am sure of it. Before you start rambling at why you cannot spend the money, make the time or whatever else you excuse may be, ask yourself why it is easier to explain the reasons why you are not doing, rather than expending said energy on doing.

Five minutes a day adds up.

It all adds up, so you can choose to either pile up your excuses, like the steaming pile they are, or start making the sacrifices.
Are we still feeling fine?
Tags: Social Media, Data Visualization, Paperposts, Art

It’s been well over a decade since Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar created the We Feel Fine project. This book of the project is from 2009 but the work started way back in 2005 when they first built the system and started to collect the images and statements from personal blogs. Remember this was pre Twitter, it was all personal blog sites, MySpace, early Facebook. We were in the ‘golden age’ of social broadcasting when we still talked about the ‘blogosphere’. Back then it was about personal content creation and publishing more than conversion and social response.

We Feel Fine, like all great ideas, was a simple one. Crawl the blogosphere and collect any sentence that contained “I am feeling“ or “I feel” in the post. If there was an image in the post overlay the sentence on the image (yep, it was pre Instagram too). You end up with a dataset that captured how (those who felt they could post it online) were feeling. So simple, it’s beautiful.

The site they created to explore the data was one of the first truly wonderful pieces of social analytics. The mix of deeply personal content with a very rich dimensionality made it fascinating to delve into, but it was the scale that was most surprising. They captured almost 13 million feeling statements from over 2 million individuals and they had a wealth of metadata attached to each of these. This is a long time before you could easily access large social media datasets by API or find a dump of one to download. It’s still online at http://wefeelfine.org/ but needs Java to run (which dates it almost as much as needing Flash), but you can look at the summary data without it here: http://wefeelfine.org/findings.html. It’s a great example of designing data to engage the user and drive exploration.
MAS 90 4.3 now available too
By: Alok Tyagi
Tags: Sage Software, Accounting Solutions, Erp, Mas 90

Now MAS 90 organization delivers next release of MAS 90/200 to manufacturing earlier this week. This release has several customer value features; usability enhancements; business insights improvement; improved integration; and others. It has lot of appeal and value to the customers and prospects.

One of the theme for this release is encouraging our customers to go green, save time, money and the environment by utilizing paperless office and direct deposit functionality. Now save paper, toner and postage costs, conserve office space used for storage, and reduce the time and energy spend in finding archived documents, as well as printing and mailing communications. A relevant theme for the world we live in today helping make world a better place — one small step at a time.

Like an African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” — hearty congratulations to Eliott, Scot, John, Scott, Becky, Jim, Steve, Doris, Linda, Anna, Maria, Debi, Kevin, Karen, Erika, Roberta and everyone in the organization involved in delivering another quality product to the marketplace!

What a prolific year for the MAS organization!!! Keep it up team.
10 tips to create SEO friendly content for your Website or Blog
By: Narender Rawat
Tags: Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, SEO, Content

The foremost thought one should keep in their mind while writing for SEO (search engine optimization) is that the web page is for the people and not for search engines. It’s all about what words, titles and heading are used to get people’s attention, so that the readers can easily find it when they search for something like for example on Google. I mean, who has time to put an effort to look up for things. It can be challenging, but thou shall not fear my friend as these few tips can help you achieve the goal.

1. Write Relevant Content

Don’t fool around!! It will eventually be found, it’s always better to stick to your topic and the relevance. People are not fooling you see and if you are caught, it will only bring down your rank or worse, you can be banned, well we don’t want that. Also try to link your content to work which have been done previously.

2. Content should be organic and unique

That does not mean that you say something new, all it means that it should be fresh and not a copy paste from another source. Open your horizon, be friendly and funny, whatever suits you. Use words that do not require an Oxford dictionary because it’s no English class. Choose the words that will appeal to the readers, the longer they stay the better for your site.

3. Must Include Images and Alt tag

Seriously, who likes a dull and boring page, catchy images play an important/essential role in making SEO friendly, haven’t you heard that people are more visual, but don’t just put up a random picture, the image should have some relevance to the content. Using different fonts can have a remarkable effect as well (beautify the text) but DO NOT overdo it, no one wants a web page which looks like a school project. Bonus point try to select an optimal size for all your images. Too large images make the page becoming slow to load, thereby damaging your SEO.

Alt text is called alternative text, also known as “alt attributes”, “alt descriptions,” and are used within an HTML code to describe the appearance & function of an image on a page. Search engine does not read images without alt tags,So for search engine crawling its better to include “alt tags”.

4. Don’t forget to link!

Make sure to include external links to 3rd party source and internal links which points to other related important articles in your blog or website, by doing this we can pass some better link juice from one link to another.

External links makes your piece of content more relevant,appear authoritative, and therefore results in better seo results, and your reader will find you more trustworthy too.The above image from Moz.com shows that linking to your own website is less valuable than linking to completely external sites, as it shows authority to what you’re saying, and search engines look to promote the most reliable content.

TO READ FULL ARTICLE Visit Original Page :

https://www.seo-guruji.com/how-to-create-seo-friendly-content-for-website/
The Fountain Of Youth App
By: Chris Hedges
Tags: Tsunicorn, Microfiction, 50 Word Stories, Aging, Regret

We’re a Bad Influence because we INCITE change through inclusion, thought and creativity. We imagine a world where people can think critically, express themselves, and thumb their nose at the status quo, together.

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The Mommy-Shaming Has to Stop
By: Kelsey Jane
Tags: Mothers, Motherhood, Parenting, Fatherhood, Children

The Mommy-Shaming Has to Stop

C’mon Mamas, let’s start lifting each other up.

Photo by Colin Maynard on Unsplash

From what we feed our children and how we put them to bed at night to how we discipline them and occupy their free time, it seems there are so many parenting rules to follow that it’s impossible to do anything right.

The moment we find out we’re pregnant, we’re inundated with directives of what we should do and shouldn’t do. The unwarranted advice about sleep training, the silent judging of our child’s public tantrum, the sideways glances we receive at the park when we pull out our cellphone while our children play alone — we’ve all felt it.

And, who seems to be enforcing these “rules” most frequently?
Am I a Man?
By: Shain Slepian
Tags: Nonbinary, Gender Identity, Sexuality, Transgender, Gender Expression

*Dear family members: please don’t read this. Nothing personal.

Photo by Karina Carvalho on Unsplash

“Hey, I’m totally a man, right?”

The question was clearly getting irritating. What was a fun joke during a slumber party was evidently becoming a sp-edy tick that I couldn’t shake. Girls were dumping chocolate spread and syrup on pancakes and groggily answering calls coordinating pick-ups. And I was having the beginnings of a mild form of gender dysphoria.

I don’t remember whatever game or topic of conversation had led to me being reimagined as a man by a group of 11 years-old girls. What mattered in the moment was the sensation of being labeled in a surprising way. And liking it.

I know that this isn’t exactly a sentiment cis women are excluded from. Plenty of lesbians want to express themselves in butch-coded ways. In Bechdel’s Fun House, Alison and her father bond over the gender non-conforming aspect of their homosexuality in a moment that almost paints such expression as inherent to being gay. Some women pack, and bind, and use he/him pronouns. And for them, that’s just a part of being a woman who loves women.

I can’t help but think that this has something to do with our gendered expectations for who we are meant to be attracted to. If you’re a woman attracted to women, and all the cute girls you meet throughout your childhood drool over big, muscly jocks, you may unconsciously develop an association between yourself and those kinds of dudes. You may imagine yourself to be one, even begin to map this imagined body over your own.

But I wonder if it works the other way around, too.
Old Heat
By: Giulia De Gregorio Listo
Tags: Touch Prompt, Poetry, Passion, Love

Old Heat

A poem about the effects of your touch

Art by Destiny Schaefer

My skin has a different color where you used to touch it

It has been healed and burnt over and over

Each time your hands made their way up my back.

Even my spine has been impaired for years.

My magnetic field lost its balance with your absence.

North was anywhere you set your eyes on.

My mouth has a smirk it never had before.

That shy, discrete place you’ve deposited kisses,

Without anyone knowing. Our own secret.

You’ve changed my expressions in tiny bits.

Just now I’ve noticed how you made an impression

Inside me.

You had the most inflammable stroking.

I’d be in instantaneous combustion with every goodbye.

It became so cold after you left, nothing else heats me the same way,

The exact way that you did.

You had me going, moving, flowing better than ever.

The tides inside me would comply with your phases,

So upset when you hid behind the clouds and so envious

Of the Sun, closer to you than I could.

But little did he know, you had me burning,

Inciting my most vigorous fires,

Making my skin yours to keep.

I’ve grown used to the scars you’ve left,

Starting but never ending this inflammatory process,

And it still consumes me.

You’re a never-healing fever.

My limbs are becoming ashes, like the ones

You’d left abandoned after a cigarette.

I should’ve known better you wouldn’t linger enough

To make me a Phoenix.

You only touch what you can blow into the wind.

I’ve been a shot of nicotine, warmth amidst winter

And a full breath.

You were a whole lifetime to me but, for you,

I was just easy heat in a pack.

Light me up again.
OneMasjid.com is live now, Masha’Allah!
Tags: Mosque, Onemasjid, Masjid, Muslim, Islam

As’Salaamu Alaiykum —

After a year of hard work, finally, by the grace of Allah, OneMasjid.com is now available for the community and the Masajids to make use of.

The main mission of OneMasjid is to help improve the interaction between Masajids and the Islamic community.

We envision that by making it easy for Masajids to maintain quality websites that are rich in information that benefits the community, and by providing quality mobile apps the community can use to “follow” and keep track of all the Masajids they care to hear from, the communities and the Masasjids can be better connected, in this digital age.

Alhamdulillah, we spent almost a year now to get the website ready and we are now focusing more on the mobile apps. And we hope to have the mobile apps available soon insha’Allah.
Cryptocurrencies will become part of the economy in all countries
By: Casper Api
Tags: Bitcoin, Token Sale, Crypto, ICO

Commissioner of the American Commodity Future Trading Comission (CFTC) Rostin Benem is sure about that.This statement was made by Benem at the BFI summit in new York in early June.

“Digital currencies will become part of the economic practice of any country, anywhere. These currencies will not go anywhere, they will spread to all economies in all corners of the planet. The survival of some places, small countries, can become dependent on virtual assets….We are witnessing a technological revolution. Perhaps we are witnessing a modern miracle, “ said Benem.

The Commissioner also expressed the opinion that now the US regulators also recognize that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies “will become part of the economy of any country”.

Benem believes that cryptocurrencies can be an effective tool to reduce poverty and corruption through open access technology and a distributed registry.

http://casperproject.io
Cryptocurrencies already changed the world
By: Yakko Majuri
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Technology, Finance

Cryptocurrencies already changed the world

You blinked and you missed it

Source: Alex Wong/Getty Images

I know, I know. It’s a bold statement.

Blockchain as a technology has a long way to go, and yes, it is true — crypto is mostly used for speculation.

However, despite still being at a very early stage, cryptocurrencies have changed the world in a way that there’s no coming back from: they’ve shown us that there is an alternative.

Will they be disruptive? Maybe. Will they be the main form of payment in the future? Possibly. But those things aren’t here yet.

What is here is the following: a way to keep the system in check.

I recently spoke at the European Central Bank about crypto and what I realized is that the banks and Central Banks are rushing to get involved because they are suddenly exposed to something they did not know before: external competition.

The financial system is under constant competition from within itself, but its authority has never been questioned by an outsider. And even when they slipped, we know exactly what happened.

The famous headline included by Satoshi Nakamoto in Bitcoin’s genesis block

Except now there’s a little guy in the back just waiting to be put in the game. He’s no starter yet, but he has some skills — he’s mastered cross-border payments, for example.

So maybe cryptocurrencies never take over, or maybe they morph into top-down rather than bottom-up systems. But the fact that they came up from internet forums to snatch a few hundred billions of dollars in market cap shows that there is a viable alternative.

Finally, when the line gets crossed, we know there’s another option we can turn to. By itself, that’s enough to keep bankers in check and sleeping with one eye open.

If crypto will eventually disrupt the system I don’t know, but at a minimum it has and will continue to force it to be more efficient and inclusive.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is change like we’ve never seen before.
How ThreatQ Works with Visualization Tools
Tags: Threatintel, Cyber Threat Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Visualization Tool, Data Visualization

In this blog series, we’re focusing on how ThreatQ and ThreatQ Investigations augment and integrate with modern security tools and are able to replace legacy processes and systems. We accomplish this through our Open Exchange that includes a software development kit (SDK), easy-to-use application programming interfaces (APIs) and a comprehensive set of industry-standard interfaces to fully integrate with the equipment, tools, technologies, people, organizations and processes that protect your business.

We’ve previously discussed how we work with SIEM and ticketing systems, as well as orchestration and automation tools. Here, we’ll look at how ThreatQ and ThreatQ Investigations work with your existing visualization tools.

ThreatQ and visualization tools are designed with different use cases in mind. Visualization tools are normally data focused for analysis. Leveraging the ThreatQ Threat Library™, a central knowledge base for all threat data relevant to your organization, ThreatQ Investigations focuses on providing powerful, integrated, threat data visualizations that enables the coordination of the investigation between multiple team members.

When these solutions are used together, you can query the Threat Library™ from your visualization tool. You can link data between adversaries, campaigns, indicators, files and events for a more complete picture of the threat. The Threat Library combines both external and internal threat data from a virtually limitless set of sources to provide context for a deeper understanding of the threat and relevance to your specific environment. You can score threats based on relevance so that security teams can stay focused on high-priority threats. Using ThreatQ Investigations you can assign tasks and see actions unfold across people and teams.

Integration with your data visualization tools enriches ThreatQ as well. Data visualization enhances the ability of your analysts to understand a threat. Additionally, by publishing threat data back to ThreatQ you can augment and enrich the Threat Library, further customizing it for your environment.

To learn more, download our Visualization Tools Technology Partnership Brief and visit our integration page for information on other tools we work with.
Which Activation & Loss functions should be used in Multi-Class Classification Problems?
By: Murat Karakaya
Tags: Multiclass Classification, Loss Function, Keras, Activation Functions, Accuracy

In this tutorial, we will focus on how to select Accuracy Metrics, Activation & Loss functions in Multi-Class Classification Problems.

First, we will review the types of Classification Problems, Activation & Loss functions, label encodings, and accuracy metrics.

Furthermore, we will also discuss how the target encoding can affect the selection of Activation & Loss functions.

Moreover, we will talk about how to select accuracy metric correctly.

Then, for each type of classification problem, we will apply several Activation & Loss functions and observe their effects on performance.

We will experiment with all the concepts by designing and evaluating a deep learning model by using Transfer Learning on MNIST dataset.

In the end, we will summarize the experiment results.

If you would like to learn more about Deep Learning with practical coding examples, please subscribe to my YouTube Channel or follow my blog on Medium. Do not forget to turn on Notifications so that you will be notified when new parts are uploaded.

You can access this Colab Notebook using the link.

If you are ready, let’s get started!

PARTS

Part A: Binary classification

Part B: Multi-Class classification

Part C: Multi-Label classification

You can access all these parts on YouTube in ENGLISH or TURKISH
Why Kids Shouldn't get Social Media Until they are Eighteen
By: Rachel Sample M.Ed.
Tags: Relationships, Advice, Parenting, Technology, Social Media

Comparison

With children’s young and immaturely developed brains, this can be a real issue. Around the preteen age, children want to fit in and be accepted.

We all know that when you go on social media, you are only seeing people’s highlights and not their everyday living. Comparison is a problem for everyone but especially at this young age.

Another issue is that many people embellish their life on social media. It is a lie and not their true self. Instead of the young person developing their authenticity they feel pressure to be someone they are not.

It can stunt their growth and maturity when they feel like they always have to perform to get “likes.”

It creates poor mental health.

Social media can negatively affect teens by distracting them, disrupting their sleep, and exposing them to bullying, rumor spreading, and peer pressure, according to the Mayo Clinic.

There are also correlations between high levels of social media use and anxiety and depression among teens.

There is something so sweet about young people hanging out, talking, and being creative together. Instead, a lot of what I see today are youth sitting together in groups on their individual phones. How is that connecting?

Young people need to learn good and healthy social skills that will last them a lifetime, and adolescence is a crucial time for them to learn. If they do not learn this skill, they can become socially stunted as they enter adulthood.
How to show your current Firebase project name on the command line prompt to prevent dangerous errors
By: Thang Minh Vu
Tags: Terminal, Zsh, Bash, Tech, Firebase

Firebase

When working on a project with multiple stages (development, staging, production), developers use the command firebase use to switch between projects. It’s very easy to run a command on the production environment instead of the development. This is very dangerous.

Command to switch between firebase project

Note: You can always find the latest script at my GitHub repository.

Normally, developers only work on the development project. They only switch to production in case of checking or doing a hotfix. There have been a few times when I forgot to switch back to the development project. I accidentally changed the database without thinking that it could impact the actual users.

Digging into the firebase CLI, I found that it uses configstore to manage local configuration. All config is saved in a JSON file and reads easily. I created a small script which is intended to show the firebase project name on shell prompt.

How to set it up

Bash

Add the following script to the end of ~/.bash_profile :

Add script to ~/.bash_profile

Then run source ~/.bash_profile or open a new terminal window:

Firebase project name is displayed as dev-project, stage-project and prod-project

iTerm2 with oh-my-zsh

Oh-my-zsh is a popular open source framework for Zshell. I like it because it has many beautiful terminal themes and many useful plugins.

Here, I will make an example with the agnoster theme:

Edit ~/.oh-my-zsh/themes/agnoster.zsh-theme

Script for oh-my-zsh

and then add prompt_firebase to build_prompt functions:

Change build_promt function

For the final step, run source ~/.zshrc or open a new terminal window:

saas-cs-deploy-taguro-5c55e is displayed as last text in terminal prompt

I hope this can help you prevent the an unexpected (and bad) situation.

Note: You can always find the latest script at my GitHub repository.
Notice: Hiveterminal Users Must Withdraw All HVNs by December 20!
By: Gal Jakič
Tags: Small Business, Hiveterminal, Hvn, Fintech

The Hiveterminal team is disabling the withdrawal functionality on December 20 in order to comply with the regulatory requirements of entering the German and Swiss markets



All withdrawal requests must be entered into the system in the next 11 days; more specifically before December 20, 11:59 p.m. CET. If your withdrawal is on time, we will ensure it gets processed prior to the launch of the new release.

How to withdraw your HVN tokens?

Step 1: Make sure you have HVN tokens available for withdrawal

If you have any Hiveterminal Tokens (HVN) available for withdrawal, the number of tokens available will be displayed on the top of your screen.

Step 2: Navigate to the Funds Withdrawal section

Click the Wallet icon in the left sidebar and then switch to the “Withdrawal”tab. If you don’t have an Ethereum wallet entered into the system, add it via the “Add new address” button.

The information about the Ethereum wallet can be entered and stored by clicking the “Save” button. The added wallet will be automatically selected as the default withdrawal option.

Step 3: Create a withdrawal request

Enter the amount of Hiveterminal Tokens (HVN) you wish to withdraw and create a withdrawal request by clicking “Submit”.

Bear in mind that 50 HVN tokens are still necessary to view the invoices on the market. If your withdrawal balance would fallow below that amount, you would lose the ability to view it.
V minus 17 days and counting
By: Ginger Mcmurray
Tags: Gender Identity, Plastic Surgery, Transgender

GRS Fast approaching!

I’ve been ramping up to have my gender reassignment surgery since January and now it’s almost here! July 19th!!!

Don’t care about my experience? Scroll to the bottom for a list of recommendations the nurse made for things to buy before recovery. 😃

I’ll be talking about the prep process throughout the next few weeks. Once it’s over and I’m through the haze of pain killers I’ll dive into the aftermath. For now, here’s the skinny on what got me here and where I’m at now.

Why

This is the hardest question to answer. Thankfully, I’ve already done a deep dive into what dysphoria feels like for me.

What

I’ll be having penile inversion vaginoplasty. Want to know more? Check out this animated video. For the record, I’ve never watched this or any of the other videos all of the way through. I know how things work and what the results should be.

Other than that, I don’t want to know how the sausage is unmade.

When

July 19th!!! I’ll wake up well before the crack of dawn and head to the surgical center. I’ll stay that night with the surgeon’s private nurse then go to a friend’s house where another nurse will stay for a bit, then visit at least once daily for a bit more.

Where

The American Institute for Plastic Surgery. They have two doctors with a lot of experience in this area. One of them takes my insurance. Bonus: the office is less than 15 minutes from my house and less than 10 minutes from my job.

Who

Dr. Alan Dulin. I’ve met with him a couple of times and really like his bedside manner. I’ve talked with a couple of ladies who had their surgeries with him and enjoy the results. My primary doctor has seen his work up close and personal. She’s the one who recommended him.

Bonus: Prep recommendations

I had a very long talk with the nurse who will be doing my aftercare. She has her own private agency now but has worked for Dr. Dulin in the past and has experience with GRS recovery. Here’s some of the things she recommended I get:
by Martino Pietropoli
By: Martino Pietropoli
Tags: Humor, Comics, Illustration, Cartoon

First thing in the morning: a glass of water and a cartoon by The Fluxus.

Follow
Welcome Malaika Jabali to GEN!
By: Michelle Legro
Tags: “Watching the Police” , Police, Police Brutality, Police Reform, Justice

Welcome Malaika Jabali to GEN! Her new column, “Watching the Police” will examine how police reform is playing out in cities across the country. First up, the race for D.A. in Atlanta — where both candidates are cozying up to police unions.

As conditions for the poor and working-class have declined in Atlanta, Black people are asked to celebrate the mere existence of Black elected officials, mirroring the vapid optics of national politics.

Black women are expected to be proud of a Fani Willis, or a Keisha Lance Bottoms, or a Kamala Harris, regardless of their policy record. Striving is inherently good, and “Black excellence” in any form — even if it’s won on the broken backs of our country’s Black working-class masses — is lauded.
How to Swiftly Launch a Free Website With GitHub Pages
By: Stephen Vinouze
Tags: Git, Jekyll, Website, Static Site, Github Pages

Hook Your Visitors

Retention should be one of your priorities. You’ll compete with the whole internet in trying to make yourself heard through the crowd. What makes someone visit your website? Better yet, why should they stay and come back?

You may have heard about SEO. Unfortunately, I’m not qualified to help you with this topic. Rest assured, you’ll find many articles to give you a lift. Several templates are said to be SEO-optimized. I wouldn’t count too much on that.

Aside from SEO, you could invite visitors to stay tuned to your upcoming articles. You’ll find several mechanisms to achieve this. A popular one is called Mailchimp. Just as with Disqus, you can embed an HTML form that will notify your users when you publish an article. And many themes already include Mailchimp. Sweet, right?

Sadly, configuring Mailchimp is not straightforward. I spent a non-negligible amount of time wandering inside their dashboard.

My theme required me to add a subscription list link from Mailchimp. I’ll assume you have the same requirement. I’ll guide you through the configuration steps.

Like with Disqus, create an account, choose the free plan, and answer the questions.

Now, select “Audience.” You’ll find on the right side a panel named “Manage Audience.” Toggle it and press “Signup forms.”

Pick the first item called “Form builder.” You’ve reached the place where you can conceive your subscription forms. That’s the page your users will see when they click on your website’s “Subscribe” button. You’ll want to add a personal touch to it.

Mailchimp allows you to change the layout of the form as well as the fields you want your users to fill. If you don’t want to scare them off, make it as light as possible. A single email field is enough to hook them.

To connect your form to your website, copy the short link displayed in the “Signup form URL.” Open it in a browser to see what your form looks like. You can copy-paste the full URL into your project to finish this part.

If you want to go further, you can customize your other forms. On that same page, locate the “Signup form” panel at the top above the checkbox. This dropdown list shows all the forms your visitors will see when interacting with your mailing list.
Dragon Tales NaNoWriMo Log:
By: Danielle Nolan
Tags: NaNoWriMo, Creative Writing, Writer

Week 3 Check in

Word count so far: 40180

Word count required by today: 37500 (I am still ahead of the target!)

NANO theme song: Black Suit by Super Junior. All of Super Junior’s back catalogue is working surprisingly well as writing music.

Beverage of choice: Iced salted caramel coffee.

Soy melt in my burner: Frangipani.

You know that you are a serial procrastinator when:

- You rediscover afternoon napping.

-You start binge watching episodes of TV (at the moment it is Big Little Lies).

-You jump back into your neglected exercise routine. This has actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise for I have been coming up with some terrific material while I have been going on my walks.

You know you are a pantser when:

-Your scene stealing dragon from last week decides he would like a role in this story too.

- One of your important characters confesses at the last minute that she has a crippling fear of dragons. A few short scenes later she is required to fly upon one.

- For no other reason except to annoy my dragon rider captain/chef, the other characters start moaning about what is being served to them for dinner.

Story progression so far:

Summer’s Song: 3/4 done. Summer and Jespa have rescued their friend Ophelia from the pyrofay controlled Fireheart and have retreated with the riders to the dragon sanctuary in the mountains, Skyhaven. Summer needs to decide whether they should return home and put Jespa at risk at living under the same roof as their dangerous grandmother (who fears his pyroseer powers) or whether they should accept the offer of a new home with Sky and Millicent.

Favourite line of the week: Floating across the sky, surrounded by the twinkling stars was magical.

Immediate goals:

Start Dragonfall (Scarlet’s story) Perhaps get back to writing a story that features my main character (in this particular episode Katie only has a cameo as an adorable toddler).