fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Don’t Let Grammarly Ruin Your Copy
By: Sah Kilic
Tags: Advice, Writing, Marketing, Blogging, Productivity

Don’t Let Grammarly Ruin Your Copy

Proper grammar is good — but so is writing like you talk

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

I love Grammarly. I’m a premium user, and it’s brought great value to me.

But Grammarly is a self-proclaimed writing assistant. Think “spellcheck on Word, but on a lot of illegal steroids.”

It’s got a lot of well-polished features that make it such a comprehensive tool:

An auto-detector for tone

Recommendations for synonyms

Tautology and passive voice detection

Removal of adverbs and other fillers

But here’s the thing: If you write like a human that’s trying to connect with another human, Grammarly will scribble and underline all your writing.

Why? Because when we speak, we naturally have fillers, gaps, we ignore the rules of the language, and we do it very frequently — well, at least I do.

This doesn’t mean your writing is bad. I repeat, this does not mean your writing is bad.

If I put my most popular article in Grammarly right now, it has so many mistakes and flags that it defies all odds of what a good article should be by Grammarly standards.

Screenshot from the Grammarly editor for my most viral article.

There you go, 1,100 words that are a bit bland, mostly clear, and slightly off. An article that til this day provides value to people, I’m happy to brag.

So if you read no further, at least do this.

Type away, tell the story, and convey the idea in its raw detail without letting Grammarly influence you with continuous suggestions — you can always edit later.

This is one of the big reasons why my article did so well. I didn’t let any suggestions stomp on the butterfly before it took flight.

I didn’t do this on purpose; I just didn’t have Grammarly at the time.

But I’m a greedy blogger, I want a perfectly intact butterfly and spellcheck on steroids, so I do a few things before I go off on my writing escapades.

Three things to be precise.

They’ve helped with editing in Grammarly tremendously, and I’m confident you’ll find some value in it too.
If Programming Languages Had Honest Slogans
By: Anupam Chugh
Tags: Programming, JavaScript, Java, Python, Startup

Java

We’re getting old and were always verbose. But pay us and we’ll give you long term support.

C

I might be the oldest, but you still have to allocate me space. Pointing at others is my favorite hobby.

C++

You can hate us, despise us, but we’ll find our ways into your framework. We believe in friends at work.

C#

I’m neither like my father nor a music note. I’d see sharper than Java, only if there was cross-platform GUI support.

Lua

Beginners love us because array indexing starts at 1. But arrays aren’t arrays and objects aren’t objects as we view everything as tables.

JavaScript

We promise, this isn’t a script for Java or derived from it. By the way, Apple’s Safari engine still calls us back.

Python

We’ve made it possible to write pseudo-code in real even if you don’t understand it. Not a semicolon or a bracket but extra whitespace is all it takes to cause chaos.

Go

Google wasn’t only lazy with my name — they robbed us of generics and lambdas. But we have the best anthem.

PHP

You needn’t learn much to use me but one missing bracket is all it takes to hate me. We offer no naming conventions or styles by default and are only as bad as you make us look.

Swift

We’re easy on the eyes, concise, and faster than many. Not as confusing as Objective-C until you run out of memory.

Kotlin

We’re the language every Java developer deserved. Saving you from the dreaded NPEs and verbosity while running on the good old JVM. But you can’t have fun .

Rust

Not as outdated as my name, I provide memory safety, avoid possible race conditions, and am averse to garbage collectors. I love borrowing and am stronger than “C” only if you have time to learn me.

COBOL

We resurrect every few years and even today the whole unemployment system depends on us. Besides, we are hiring.
How to Find Your Mutual Connections on Medium
By: Anupam Chugh
Tags: Python, Marketing, Medium, Programming, Writing

How to Find Your Mutual Connections on Medium

With a Python script and instructions — no coding knowledge required

Photo by Perry Grone on Unsplash

Facebook explicitly shows you who are your friends. Instagram subtly lets you know if someone you’re following follows you as well.

While Medium does display a list of followers and people you follow, you may wonder how you can retrieve a list of “mutual connections” —a term I’m using users who are following each other (analogous to Facebook friends).

The boring, tedious, and time-consuming way to find mutual connections is to look through your ever-growing list of followers, hoping to stumble across those green ticks (or black if you’re on a web browser). But this won’t be easy if you’re browsing through someone else’s profile — you have to note down the people who are common to the followers and followings lists of a Medium user.

Luckily, you can save yourself some effort and automate these tasks with a small piece of code. Best of all, you don’t need to be a programmer to understand how it works or run the program.

The logic we’re going to use is based on that fun concept we all learned at high school — Venn-diagrams.

Here’s an illustration of how to find your mutual connections on Medium:

To put this Venn diagram into action, we’ve already written a script in Python (a popular programming language) that pings a URL. In return, we get a list of followers and following of that Medium user.

By using the fundamentals of sets, we create an intersection of followers and following and export the mutual connections list to a CSV file. Here’s the Python script, which you can download to your system:

We can run this program in two ways:
Adding User-Interactivity to AWS QuickSight Dashboards
By: Engineering Zenofai
Tags: AWS, Big Data Analytics, Data Visualization, Big Data, Cloud Computing

Filter

filter data fields

A filter allows you to remove unwanted data in a field provided with a condition. It will only allow that data which satisfies the condition or vice versa.

You could add one or more filters to a visual, or create a filter and apply it to all visuals or maybe specifically choose certain visuals; it all depends on the use-case. I recommend exercising all the above options to better understand them.

Filters are applicable at a dataset level. So, any visual using that dataset will be affected.

Let’s create a filter for the Population by Year visual to the year field.

Select visual & open filter

This will open the Applied filters window for selected visual. It shows the list of all filters applied for that visual.

Let’s add a filter and choose the Year field.

Adding a filter for year field

You would see different settings under it, like Filter type, Use parameters, Exclude nulls, etc. For each filter type, the settings would change accordingly, I recommend you to exercise all options and choose your best fit.

Edit filter properties

In the above example, the year is a field of type date. So, the range is the best fit for it. We shall set a range for the date, in the above case (2012 — 2015) using Start date and End date fields in the Edit filter settings window.

Apply filter properties

Once filter properties are applied, only the data that is in the given range is visualized. This can be seen in the above image.

Filters can be of different forms based on the datatype of the field chosen. For instance, in the case of date datatype, it is a range, it might be different for a string or number.

Scope of a filter

We could choose to apply a filter to all visuals or specifically choose certain visuals.
Logic and Sequence in Artificial Intelligence
By: Sarah Mason
Tags: Machine Learning, Python, Artificial Intelligence, AI, Programming

Photo by Gabriel Crismariu on Unsplash

An underlying principle of programming or coding, is logic. Determining logic is in the combination of key words, variables, entities, to create a flow for a goal. A classic is Hello World, print(“Hello World”), from Python resulting in a display of Hello World. Displaying a phrase in a command line is a very simple and rewarding goal. So are solving problems using classification and clustering for real world problems.

Classification is categorization of where to place an object or device and most commonly supervised learning with labeled data. Example from Scikit-Learn for Random Forrest.

Clustering is a way to order data points by grouping together by similarity or proximity on a graph and usually unsupervised learning with unlabeled data. Example groups results together in three categories.

Training is a portion of dataset reserved for generating rules common in classification techniques like Random Forrest.

Test is the selected dataset to use in generating a solution in classification or clustering.

Algorithms are apply to handle scalable datasets to apply learning to problem solving and hypothesis testing. The clustering was created using random generated data to show what the learning does. The machine will plot and then group by proximity forming a shape around data points. Random Tree is an algorithm that pares a test to a Boolean output branching like a tree finishing in a hypothesis test and suggested output.

Conclusion

Logic is important to build cases for analysis in Machine Learning supervised or not supervised. This created solution to a puzzle by recognizing patterns and creating association in sequence for results that provide insight similar to finishing a puzzle by fitting pieces to gain a larger understanding based on data.
A User Experience Guide to Clubhouse
By: James Futhey
Tags: Design, Startup, Podcast, Apple, UX

What is Clubhouse?

The most talked about startup of early 2020 is Clubhouse, an audio-based social network where people can spontaneously jump into voice chat rooms together. You see the unlabeled rooms of all the people you follow, and you can join to talk or just listen along, milling around to find what interests you.

A single, black and white image of a human face, sets the tone for Clubhouse, giving it a unique vibe not found elsewhere on the App Store.

An iOS and mostly AirPods exclusive experience, Clubhouse brings a combination of live-streaming and podcasting to a select group of already-popular influencers, mostly in the startup and tech community.

Clubhouse centers around individuals, most of whom have done something remarkable or noteworthy. They represent existing cults of personality (at least, in a more humble, silicon valley form), typically with tens of thousands of Twitter followers, and a pre-built audience.

You notice this when you sign in to the app, and view a list of rooms, centered not around topics, but individual influencers. A Room is defined by who is currently speaking. So, you may receive a notification to join a room where Sahil, Drew, and Tyler are speaking. No profile pages, or lengthy explanations as to who’s here. Either you’re in the know, or you aren’t.

Novel User Interaction, or just Phone Calls?

From a bare-bones user interaction point-of-view, Clubhouse shouldn’t be unique. It’s a group call. iOS supports this natively. As does WhatsApp, FaceTime, Discord, and a countless number of community chat platforms.

But what makes a phone call toxic in 2020, and Clubhouse refreshing?

This boils down to community, curation, and interaction.

Why Voice Works

Video Calls have glued us to our seats. Mobile apps may exist for Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet — but the culture that developed around using these apps in an office setting is preventing us from using them casually.

Moving from our MacBooks to our phones and AirPods, gives us mobility. Removing video reduces friction, and removes the need to “prep for a call”, giving us more flexibility to decide how to hang out with others.

Simply put, adding video introduces more friction to the call experience than it’s worth. Clubhouse introduces a new mode of interaction that can be more spontaneous, casual, and frequent than a Zoom call.
7 Books I Read More Than Once
By: Anangsha Alammyan
Tags: Creativity, Books, Fiction, Reading, Writing

7. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Genre: Non-fiction

Why read it: It will teach you to apply logical reasoning in whatever issue you face and give you a better understanding of where we as a species came from.

Image: Goodreads

This is a brilliant, well-researched book tracing the history of humankind from our foraging ancestors to the current generation of humans who build supercomputers and smart cities. The author does a brilliant job of dissecting our origins and analyzing why we behave the way we do. There are clear ties and links to show how seemingly “millennial” problems like craving for sugary food or being unable to be faithful to your partner aren’t, in truth, new at all. Ancient homo sapiens have been facing the same problems and our reaction to them is imprinted in our DNA.

This book taught me that every human behavior we are familiar with today has its roots in the fight-or-flight response of our ancestors. Even the concept of happiness can be tackled with cold logic. If you break it down to merely the interplay of chemicals in your brain, you will stop holding so much value to it.

“Happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations.”

Why I read it more than once

Nearly every behavioral trait of every person around you can be traced back to their origins. All you need is a little bit of logic and you can read into the behavior of a person like an expert.

The next time you’re arguing with someone and feel an insatiable need to prove yourself right, understand that this comes from the innate need to fight and prove yourself the “Alpha” of the pack. The moment you realize that the other person probably wants the same and that’s why they are arguing so hard, you may no longer feel compelled to continue. Thus, you will save precious time you can now use to pursue your goals.

When you feel anxious or stressed, understand that this is just a response of your body and it’s telling you you’ve probably bitten off more than you can chew.

Once you let go of emotions and look at every scenario with cold logic, you will be surprised at how simple it becomes to deal with problematic situations.

The key is to detach emotion and examine the problem objectively.

Purchase this book here.
Why This Matters
By: Save Journalism
Tags: Newspapers, Google, Facebook, Journalism, Big Tech

Over the last 10 years, newspaper newsrooms have declined in size by 45%, and in 2019 so far, the media shed more than 2,400 jobs. From massive cuts at HuffPost, Vice, and BuzzFeed to local layoffs at Cleveland’s Plain Dealer and Gannett newspapers across the country, one thing is clear: news publishers are facing an existential threat. Since 2003, more than 1,300communities have lost all local news coverage, and nearly 20% of all metro and community newspapers have shut down. Two-thirds of U.S. counties have no daily newspaper, and 5% of U.S. counties have no newspaper coverage at all.

It has to do with big tech and digital advertising. Since the transition to digital media over a decade ago, newspapers’ advertising revenue has collapsed by two thirds. Google and Facebook dominate the digital world with control of more than 60% of all digital advertising revenue. Companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google are using their tech muscle to monetize news for their own profit, but at the expense of the newswriters. Traffic to online news sites is the highest it’s ever been because of digital advertising, but revenue from that traffic is no longer going to news publishers — it’s ending up in Google and Facebook’s pockets instead. Google and Facebook already gobble up a majority of the revenue from our digital world, and with no regulation or oversight, they have an unrivaled capacity to tighten their stranglehold on the market and demolish the journalism industry as we know it.

Big tech has monopolized the digital marketplace. The monopolistic power of big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple is destroying the economic model of the entire journalism industry, whether it’s traditional circulation newspapers or digital news outlets. Google and Facebook have made acquisition after acquisition, gaining a monopolistic position that lets them dominate the digital advertising landscape and distribute massive amounts of content from news publishers on their platforms without paying to produce the content. If big tech’s unilateral control continues to go unchecked, newsrooms across the country will continue to close their doors, journalists will continue to be laid off by the hundreds, and local news coverage will continue to decline. In order to save journalism, we have to stop big tech from crushing it.
AWS — Deploying Vue App With NodeJS Backend On EKS
By: Bhargav Bachina
Tags: Software Development, AWS, Kubernetes, Cloud Computing, Programming

AWS — Deploying Vue App With NodeJS Backend On EKS

A step by step guide with an example project

AWS provides more than 100 services and it’s very important to know which service you should select for your needs. Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) is a managed service that makes it easy for you to run Kubernetes on AWS without needing to stand up or maintain your own Kubernetes control plane. Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

In this post, we are going to deploy the Vue application with the NodeJS environment. First, we dockerize our app and push that image to Amazon ECR and run that app on Amazon EKS.

Example Project

Prerequisites

Dockerize the Project

Pushing Docker Image To ECR

Create a Cluster and Worker Nodes

Configure kubectl to use Cluster

Deploy Kubernetes Objects On AWS EKS Cluster

Summary

Conclusion

Example Project

This is a simple project which demonstrates developing and running Vue application with NodeJS. We have a simple app in which we can add users, count, and display them at the side, and retrieve them whenever you want.

Example Project

If you want to practice your own here is a Github link to this project. You can clone it and run it on your machine as well.
Become a Better Writer: Blog Every Day… on Paper
By: August Birch
Tags: Writing, Books, Journaling, Creativity, Life Lessons

So, about the journaling

I used to journal for years. I wrote daily from age 13 to 25ish. No one told me to. I never shared the stuff with anyone. I had thousands and thousands of pages. Nothing worth keeping. I threw it all away as I got older. I didn’t want to share it, because the words didn’t matter.

The act of writing is what mattered.

I learned to observe people. I eavesdropped on conversations and catalogued human behavior at coffee shops. I wondered what people were thinking. I wrote shitty poems. I wrote anything that came to mind.

Journaling helped me through some very hard times.

Fast-forward 15–20 years. I write every day, but my writing efforts go towards books and articles. I also carry paper notebooks with me, because I don’t want my entire life to be digital stardust.

Five days ago I dedicated another pocket journal to daily observations.

Maybe I’ll go to a doctor’s appointment, or I’ll notice something about a cashier in the check-out line. As soon as I get a chance I’ll record the best observations in my little notebook.

The idea is that I’ll re-write each entry as a longer piece, maybe 300 words that I can repurpose in appropriate places to emphasize my work. And although this is non-fiction I know the observations will help my fiction dialogue as well.

This is the David Sedaris method.

David Sedaris, the bestselling satire/memoirist chronicles everything interesting that happens in his life. He takes notes in little pocket journals and re-types them the following day.

David Sedaris blogs every day on paper.

I’m using this method not only to capture interesting things that happen to me, but also to record my outsider’s opinion of the components of the observation.

I’ve become an amateur journalist for micro events in my life.

The pocket journal isn’t anything fancy. I make my own using beer box for covers, copy paper in the middle, and three staples as the binding. When we think our tools are fancy, we’re afraid to use them up.

I have so many notebooks I’ll never fill them in my lifetime. I love little notebooks. But I don’t think any of them are sacred — it’s the ideas on the page that are important.
Does Imposter Syndrome Keep Writers Honest?
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Creativity, Self, Psychology, Inspiration, Writing

Does Imposter Syndrome Keep Writers Honest?

Self-doubt forces you to write better

Photo by Ryan McGuire on Gratisography

Imposter syndrome is the bête noire of the writing world.

Achieve a modicum of success and suddenly you’re expected to rise above it, pretend you know what you’re doing, appear invulnerable. All the while, you’re probably still second-guessing yourself in secret but heaven forbid anyone should know.

Not every writer will openly admit to tangling with imposter syndrome, and yet it is universal.

Instead of raw honesty, some will entice you with woo-woo quick fixes and shortcuts in listicle format promising instant reward so you sign up to some mailing list. Or buy their course or writing software so you can replicate their success, as if good writing were a matter of knowing the secret or having the right equipment.

They posit their success can be scaled and replicated ad infinitum while ignoring one crucial point: We all have a different voice. This means we all use language differently. Sure, you could turn yourself into a clone of someone you admire but then you’ll never find your own voice or style.

And unless your business is ghostwriting, why would you want to sound like somebody else?
Light on Serotonin, Heavy on Creativity
By: Melissa Boles
Tags: Art, Life Lessons, Mental Health, Storytelling, Creativity

Day 86.

I’ve been unemployed for 16 days. I’m upset and frustrated. I want to go out to my favorite restaurant with my friends, order one of their on-tap cocktails and some ricotta doughnuts and stay until the waitress that somehow always manages to serve us has to remind us they are closed.

I try watching Designated Survivor. I want a political show but I need a break from The West Wing so I try Keifer Sutherland and Kal Penn but suddenly I’m weeping and can’t place why (this seems to be happening a lot). I scroll through Netflix and then there it is. Twister.

It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve watched the movie, I’m always pleasantly surprised to recall that Cary Elwes is in it and by the end my knees are curled up near my chest and I’m yelling at the screen for Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton to get their act together and work out their marriage and get Dorothy set up in time and goddamnit, run!. There is adrenaline and desperation and a deep ache to see things turn out alright.

At least I’m not crying.
5 Strategies To Accomplish Consistent Publishing During The Pandemic
By: Dayon Cotton
Tags: Self Improvement, Writing, Self, Mental Health, Productivity

Redefine Publishing

Staying consistent during a pandemic is ridiculously hard to do. It can feel like a massive uphill battle to publish anything on a routine basis, but today’s conditions can seem herculean.

The internet cycle of 2020 has been a constant barrage of increasingly bad news. Unemployment has skyrocketed to depression-era levels, there is a seemingly unending global virus wreaking havoc on society, and the news cycle is filled with enough negativity that even fluffy kittens can’t fix.

With so much going on, it’s easy to give up on your publishing schedule and give in to the madness around you. It can be exhausting, and no one will blame you for wanting to take a break.

However, your publication routine can survive if you’re willing to adopt a new perspective.
Introduction
Tags: Poetry, Creativity, Mental Health, Self-awareness, Inspiration

Introduction

Hi, I’m wormwood.

Author’s favorite glass

The clouds have parted.

Blinding at first, the glow is starting

to soak into these rigid bones

and draw me to the buzz of microphones.

I have a voice — I swear

it’s rising from the depths

of my own personal hell, beware:

I’m an introvert who’s been hurt, and

I have no idea what it’s gonna share.

A rich mine, bejeweled with a lifetime

of untapped, untainted, dark inner-world; hilarious

and about to be unfurled; my tongue

the red carpet (so to speak).

It will stumble and may sound meek

for now — be patient.

Soon…this weirdo will howl.
Video: Big Data on Kubernetes - Make It Flow (Hebrew)
By: Riskified Technology
Tags: Airflow, Engineering, Big Data, Videos, Kubernetes

Big Data on Kubernetes: Make It Flow — Lior Winner

Apache Airflow is a leading framework for managing data workflows. It’s pretty good out of the box, but we think running it on K8s makes it even better! It takes out the tedious work and lets you focus on orchestrating and scheduling pipelines.

In this talk, Lior shares our story of how we chose and deployed Airflow on k8s, the challenges we faced along the way, and all our insights from behind the scenes.

Lior is a Big Data Engineer at Riskified, responsible for collecting, processing, aggregating and storing large amounts of data. He is a true asset player to every team — engineers data in Riskified’s big data team, scores in Riskified’s soccer team and plays the drums in Riskified’s own band. Lior is driven by a passion for technology, and he always challenges it to the max.

*Talk is in Hebrew
Write, I Must — And So Must You!
By: Pamela Hazelton
Tags: Productivity, Publishing, Creativity, Writing, Writing Tips

Write, I Must — And So Must You!

A new publication incorporating solid foundations and modern fun

Design by the author

I’ve been writing professionally for 30 years — back when guidelines were requested by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope and waiting a few weeks. To say the process of publishing has changed some would be a massive understatement. It’s been rebuilt to take advantage of current technologies.

Over the years, I’ve seen Medium writers come and go. I’ve watched publications grow from the ground up, and I’ve wondered how some ever survived. But one thing has never changed: the writing world is ever-growing. Advances in technology have made it super affordable and possible for all types of people to enter the game, even if only for themselves.

Write, I Must is a publication for all types of writers. The goal is not to replace Medium’s best writing pubs. Rather, it’s to embrace what we can learn from old-school writers, editors, and publishers, and mix it up with modern tech and lots of fun. Aside from actionable tips and compelling stories, Write, I Must will feature weekly challenges and writer spotlights. And while we’ll do our best to be nicey-nice about things, some of the challenges and voting sessions will be raw and public. Because who really learns from their moms reviewing their work?

Publication features

There will likely be some adjustments as we grow, but here are some of the key focuses of this publication.

Forget the time caps

Write, I Must is more about actionable content and compelling information than certain read lengths. We’re about taking as much space as necessary to provide valuable insight. Sometimes this takes just a few hundred words; sometimes, it results in a 15-minute read.

Take the challenge

Weekly challenges are designed to provide writers education and inspiration. Some will be difficult; some will be fun. Hopefully, you’ll see them all as a little of both.

Remember (or learn about) when

Newer writers missed out on some amazing products and practices of yesteryear. We’ll shine the spotlight on awesome memories of longtime writers.
Considering Writing a Book? Answer These 6 Questions First
By: Elizabeth Dawber
Tags: Creativity, Book Writing, Productivity, Advice, Writing

Extra tips and tricks

If you’ve decided that a book is something you want to write after answering these questions, then here are some extra things that may help you, which I use and have found to be very helpful.

Journaling

More writing! Yes, but for an excellent reason. Journaling helps you identify anything that is preventing you from achieving your book writing goals. Keep a record of how you feel and what is currently going on in your life, ideally daily. Reading back over your journal at the end of each week or month will help you pinpoint anything you didn’t realize was a problem, but actually is.

I identified that by leaving my novel writing until late in the day; I was then more likely to want to watch TV rather than write. In my head, this only amounted to a few incidents, but my journal told me it actually happened 2–3 times per week. As a result, I switched to writing in the morning instead and found this worked much better. My journal showed that over the course of the next month I had missed no writing days at all; a massive improvement on the previous month.

Overachieving

This sounds like a positive rather than a negative; writing more than you have planned to. However, what I found was that I then gave myself a day off from writing the next day because I was ahead of target. This, unfortunately, led to me having several more days off and then I fell behind schedule. Now, when I have a productive day, I think about how I’ve brought my end goal closer, and make sure I use that momentum to continue being productive.

Rewards

Writing a book is tough and time-consuming. I’ve found that small rewards help keep me motivated when I reach a goal of every 10,000 words. Treating myself to a fancy hot chocolate and a slice of cake in my favorite cafe or buying (more expensive than I would normally buy) bath salts gives me the little boost to keep going.

Set yourself small goals and reward yourself with something when you hit them. Alternatively, if you think you’ll be more productive by having a bigger reward in mind when you complete the whole book, then do that instead. Whatever works for you.
Your Unabridged Guide to Making a Passive Income on Medium
By: Brianna Bennett
Tags: Medium, Creativity, Ideas, Productivity, Writing

In a lot of ways, discovering Medium can be like walking onto a red carpet. (At least, this is what I imagine it must be like.) You’re dazzled, overwhelmed, excited, and ready to vomit all at once.

Finally, you have an outlet for your writing, one that pays you! And, look at that — tons of people have made Medium into their full-time jobs! How incredible would that be?!

And then you start to come up with all of these dream scenarios; you’re filled with idealized hope that is exacerbated by the previously mentioned success stories. You become intoxicated by the possibilities. Perhaps tangentially related, you may start thinking rashly and make decisions you come to second guess later on.

How do I know?

That’s exactly what I did when I started on this site in February 2019. I learned about Medium through a podcast and I did some research. (Not nearly enough, mind you.)

As I detailed above, I allowed the idea of ‘making it big’ wash over me like a tsunami, but I wasn’t at all prepared for the destruction that would follow. (Perhaps the use of the word ‘destruction’ is a bit melodramatic, I still had a roof over my head and food to eat, but things have been tight for me financially for the last year or so.)

Anyway, within a few days of learning about Medium, I made the impulsive choice to quit my part-time retail job and throw myself into the site wholeheartedly.

Not because I felt financially comfortable enough to do so; but because I wanted out of that place and I saw a chance to make that happen. That job made me miserable, but when I look back, I wish I’d stuck it out just a little bit longer.

I can’t go back and smack my former self upside the head, so I’ll take the lessons I’ve learned and keep them in my pocket for the future. Hopefully, they help you as well.
Faster way to use faster RCNN : using detectron2
By: Yuan Ko
Tags: Deep Learning, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Facebook, Machine Learning

We can get pretrain model in model zoo of detectron2 for training.

I believe that using model pretrain by coco dataset to detect PCB error will not get a good performance. However, I get 64 in AP value with only 3000 epochs. We could get 75 in AP value if we train for 30000 epochs. It’s better than I expect.

Here is the results of prediction.

tensor([0, 4, 3, 2, 1, 5], device='cuda:0')

Boxes(tensor([[289.1584, 326.0847, 325.2099, 358.8866],

[233.4901, 118.8735, 262.8138, 149.5809],

[106.2966, 181.0337, 140.5350, 211.7205],

[259.9618, 240.3079, 288.6585, 271.2735],

[500.9987, 334.7750, 527.8199, 374.0154],

[347.2850, 146.7405, 395.6854, 180.7809]], device='cuda:0'))

Although, its resolution isn’t quit well, you can find that model recognize the error on PCB and get right classification. We can’t know how well this model is, so we use the evaluation from coco to figure it out. In detectron2, it is quit easy to use evaluator to get AP, AP50, AP75.

| AP | AP50 | AP75 | APs | APm | APl |

|:------:|:------:|:------:|:------:|:------:|:------:|

| 64.318 | 93.136 | 79.455 | 62.998 | 65.486 | 70.000 |

[01/16 06:41:56 d2.evaluation.coco_evaluation]: Per-category bbox AP:

| category | AP | category | AP | category | AP |

|:-----------|:-------|:-----------|:-------|:-----------|:-------|

| open | 59.408 | short | 50.631 | mousebite | 63.177 |

| spur | 65.522 | copper | 77.720 | pin-hole | 69.452 |

OrderedDict([('bbox',

{'AP': 64.31825163056139,

'AP-copper': 77.72030131795276,

'AP-mousebite': 63.177111687191676,

'AP-open': 59.407758192556805,

'AP-pin-hole': 69.45151146413728,

'AP-short': 50.63100208959249,

'AP-spur': 65.52182503193735,

'AP50': 93.13612566723208,

'AP75': 79.45463612126157,

'APl': 69.99999999999999,

'APm': 65.48557070350444,

'APs': 62.997574669449286})])

Its results is better than the paper I read A VGG-16 Based Faster RCNN Model for PCB Error Inspection in Industrial AOI Applications. It should not being compared with AP values only because we use different data set and different kind of backbone model, but we get 75 in AP values in only 30000 training epochs. You can realize how powerful resnet is.

Detectron2 can also customize the backbone model by your own. If you find that isn’t VGG16 in model zoo, you can create one by yourself. I didn’t do it, so I wouldn’t show it to mislead you guys.
One Psychological Superpower I Wish I Had
By: Jason Gutierrez
Tags: People, Mindset, Motivation, Psychology, Self Improvement

I wish I didn’t feel so obligated to help people.

Earlier this morning, while playing a game of League of Legends, I dove headfirst into the losing side of a 2 vs 5 after my jungler (the guy who “floats” around the map) fell for a bait.

If you don’t know what a ‘bait’ in LoL is, it’s when an enemy player tricks you into thinking they’re alone or at a disadvantage. When you take the bait and try to secure the kill, his teammates, waiting closeby in the shadows, jump your ass and make you feel like a fool.

An experienced player can smell a bait from a mile away. I tried telling the guy, “stop, don’t do it.”

But he went for it anyway.

Not surprisingly, the rest of the enemy team came out of the woodwork and started to chase him down. I threw myself into the mix in a feeble attempt to turn the tides.

We both died. He flamed me. LoL is great.
Welcome to the Creators Hub
By: Medium Creators
Tags: Creativity, Writing Tips, Medium 101, Productivity, Writing

Medium 101

Welcome to the Creators Hub

A new blog for Medium writers

Over the last few weeks you’ve seen quite a few updates on Medium, including a move toward a Medium that is more expressive for you, and a Medium that focuses on the connection between you and your audience. And there’s more to come. Today we’re launching the Creators Hub, a new Medium blog where you can find resources to hone your skills in writing, editing, storytelling, and audience growth. You’ll find best practices, guidelines, writer spotlights, and creative resources from Medium staff, as well as advice from writers across the platform.

We are launching with a collection of stories on creativity and writing with the help of the team from Medium’s personal development publication, Forge:

How can you find ideas for stories that will resonate with your audience? Senior Editor Michelle Woo shares an approach, bringing you an inside look at a fundamental question that helps her team decide what articles to publish and why.

that helps her team decide what articles to publish and why. We share a tried and true checklist for how you can edit yourself from Forge Editor in Chief Indrani Sen in “ A Self-Editing Checklist. ”

Finding time to write is an ongoing challenge to maintaining a writing practice. Senior Editor Amy Shearn offers a quiz that’ll help you discover the best time to write, based on your creative habits.

is an ongoing challenge to maintaining a writing practice. Senior Editor Amy Shearn offers a quiz that’ll help you discover the best time to write, based on your creative habits. Writing expands far and wide, be it tweets, emails, viral stories, and more. What are the best practices across these formats? Ross McCammon, Executive Editor shares a guide in Forge’s eminently useful package on how to write anything.

In the coming weeks, you’ll find Q&As, submission guides, inspiration, and more. Stay tuned!

Thanks again for writing,

Kawandeep Virdee and Shaq Cheris, Creator Success
Treating Her Bad
By: Agnes Laurens
Tags: Storytelling, Writing, 50 Word Stories, Short Story, Psychology

50-word Story

Treating Her Bad

His bad past.

Photo by Enzo B on Unsplash

“The only thing I can think about is that I have treated her badly?” James said.

The Man didn’t say anything and walked through the window. Then he waved to James to come over.

They went through the other cracked door. A shadow came again. There was someone else there.
More Of The Violin Taste
By: Agnes Laurens
Tags: 350 Word Story, Storytelling, Writing, Short Story, Music

350-Word Story

More Of The Violin Taste

Episode #6

Image by Bairyna from Pixabay

Vivianne smiled when she had that violin in her hands. It felt so natural like she had done this for ages. As Vivianne smiled much more because of touching the strings better and better every time she tried playing a string.

She saw her mother smiling too. That is what a mother always wanted for her child. Her child being happy. Maybe it is the spirit she has on her shoulders that she could afford one lesson, and then see what is possible for Vivianne.

The teacher was also very nice, which is a bonus for children. not too strict and not too nice. David also saw that Vivianne has some talent. She and her mother need to do something with that talent of Vivianne. That must be cherished. He also saw that she loved playing the violin.

“Your daughter is a very talented violinist. You should encourage her to stay playing the violin.”

“Can I talk to you for a second, without my daughter?”

David was surprised that she wanted to talk to him privately. Was that appropriate to feel something? He was young, but he might become her daughter’s teacher. That will give him some trouble. He might be single, there is also his child that gives him a hand full of issues.

“Why without me?”

Disappointed and with a sad face, she walked out of the room. her thoughts were that she was not allowed to continue playing the violin. A few tears came over her cheeks. She felt somehow disadvantaged that she was not allowed to listen to what was said. Wasn’t it right? Was she a bad violinist?

When Vivianne was out of the room, Harriette turned towards the teacher. His eyes sparkled a little bit while he turned his whole body towards her. When he turned towards her, she felt a sparkle in her stomach. Why now? She didn’t want to feel this. She didn’t have any time for a relationship. She started to stumble upon the words.

“Actually, I don’t have any money for violin lessons. So, I don’t know what to do.”
How to Impact Consumer Behaviour with a Help of Color?
Tags: Marketing, Design, Colors, Entrepreneurship, Conversion Optimization

The effect of color on user’s behavior can’t be overestimated, especially when it comes to web design. The virtual user can’t touch the product or service physically, therefore well-chosen colors and user-friendly interface based on user experience are the most powerful tools of online communication. Which colors will help to increase website conversion and the mobile apps popularity?

Color psychology

Studies show that it takes 90 seconds for a customer to form the opinion about the project and 90% of this opinion is influenced by the color. Two out of three consumers will make a large purchase only if they like its shade, and almost 93% of people primarily perceive visual information. That’s why so many people love infographics — it is much easier to perceive the same data visually:

Creating a pen portrait of the target consumer

Depending on the age, gender and impulsivity of actions users have different reaction on colors and shades.

Age

The optimism of the youth — young audience loves vibrant saturated colors. As for older consumers, you should be careful with bright colors — too vibrant can decrease the conversion. Mature users, often think garish bright colors repulsive.

Men vs Women

Color perception research shows that men prefer bright, contrasting colors, while women prefer softer shades. Both men and women like blue and green, but many women adore purple meanwhile, this color repels men.
Why a 4-Minute Read is the Sweet Spot on Medium
By: Brian Rowe
Tags: Success, Medium, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Writing

Your Medium story can be short, long, or somewhere in the middle.

And you should absolutely write your story to the length it needs to be. I’ve written and published poems to Medium, which are usually 1-minute reads (sometimes they’re as short as 40 or 50 words!). My stories about fiction writing and writing for Medium are typically 3-to-5-minute reads, with only the occasional outlier.

I’ve also published short stories and personal essays and analyses of books that run anywhere between 7-minute reads and 15-minute reads. I’ve tried pretty much every length imaginable (well, maybe not a 60-minute read, but never say never!).

To some extent, the length of your piece doesn’t necessarily prevent it from being a success. I’ve seen short 2-minute how-to pieces that have 1,000 or more claps. I’ve seen 39-minute reads that got 5,000 claps. I’ve seen it all throughout my many months writing for Medium.

Don’t ever think that you have to write a 4-minute read every single time. Feel free to experiment with the lengths of your stories and see what works best for you.
How AI Could Have Prevented the “Great Google Outage”
By: Frederik Bussler
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Google, AI, Servers, Information Technology

How AI Could Have Prevented the “Great Google Outage”

The Black Mirror-esque Google outage.

Still from Black Mirror.

Google went down for millions, if not billions of people on December 14th, 2020. Using a Chromebook, I was locked out of my laptop, and couldn’t access any Google services on my phone. In attempts to recover my accounts, I was told that none of my Google accounts existed.

As it turns out, the Great Google Outage impacted many countries.

For many, this was a wake-up call to how dependent we are on Google. Without access to the Internet, it feels like that Black Mirror episode where people can be locked out of society at the click of a button.

Why Outages Happen

Outages are nothing new — it’s just surprising when it happens to a behemoth like Google.

That said, Google suffered a 5-minute outage back in 2013, causing Internet traffic to drop by 40%. Most of the outage was solved in just 1 minute. Before then, one of the last outages was in 2009.

There are many potential causes of outages, including:

Server power supply failures.

Hardware problems like overheating.

External actions like malware.

How AI Can Prevent Outages

Google is an enormous network, with literally millions of servers around the world. It’d be impossible to have manual oversight into the status of these servers. At that scale, automation is needed to predict outages and monitor server status.

Machine learning is great at finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. Given historical server performance data, including a column on outages, you could train a machine learning model to predict outages, allowing companies to reduce maintenance costs and prevent these catastrophes.

With automated machine learning tools like Obviously.AI, companies can build and deploy AI systems in minutes, rather than the months it would traditionally take.

Google’s Great Outage could indeed be used by Google as “training data” to make predictive AI models more accurate. AI finds patterns in data, and with more historical data to look back on, it can more accurately find patterns.

Binary Classification

This is an example of a binary classification task in machine learning, as you’re predicting a binary outcome: Server live, or server down.

This has been commonly used for tasks like predicting power grid outages, and the same concept applies to servers.

Potentially predictive data attributes include processor usage, memory usage, disk read/write, latency, throughput, network bandwidth, and more.
Essential Roles and Responsibilities of Successful Business Leaders
By: Dr Mehmet Yildiz
Tags: Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Technology, Writing

Essential Roles and Responsibilities of Successful Business Leaders

Innovative Leadership is my research interest. I studied prominent traits that attract us to exceptional leaders. I have been researching leadership in various settings for several decades.

In one of the leadership and business articles, I introduced “Remarkable Leadership Traits for Technology Executives”. My research revealed the difference between ordinary and distinguished leaders.

In this post, I want to share 11 essential roles and responsibilities of exceptional business leaders.

Learning these roles can provide useful insights to aspiring business leaders and entrepreneurs.

You can find more of these stories on my News Break profile.