fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
How to connect BeagleBone Black development board to PC using USB-to-TTL serial cable
By: George Calin
Tags: Beaglebone Black, Embedded Development, Putty, Usb To Ttl Serial, Development Board

Introduction

BeagleBone Black is an excellent board for starting your practice in embedded development. This will likely extend as an invitation into a long, but rewarding adventure.

BeagleBone Black is simple to configure, easy to use and gives you lots of possibilities for trying out. Along the way, it provides you with the much needed sense of progress.

Problem with starting over as a newbie in embedded world, there is an ocean filled with pieces of information available out there on the world wide web, but each and every piece of information is cryptic . I got myself in this position, as I am switching from C# and .NET.

Masters of embedded trade tend to forget that themselves were beginners at some moment, and they keep on pouring the jargon within most of the tutorials, as if you were knowing half of the question you already asked.

This is where my posts will try to help you. At some point we all are beginners in something, and we should not forget that knowledge builds up with patience and linearity.

I will help you figure out the much needed linearity to build knowledge in areas, where I had the same problems as a beginner.

Note to self: Behind every specialist there was a courageous beginner.

Connect BB with PC via USB-to-Serial TTL

There are multiple possibilities to connect the PC with the BeagleBone, in this tutorial I shall present the manner of interacting via a USB-to-Serial TTL cable.

Bill of Materials:

4 Pin PL2303 USB-to-TTL cable

PuTTY application (for Windows) or

Picomon application (for Linux)

4 Pin PL2303 USB-to-TTL cable

Particular wires explained:

Step 1: Connect the USB side of the TTL cable to your computer

Step 2: Connect the wires to the J1 headers on your BeagleBone Black

Black wire to Pin 1

Green wire to Pin 4

White wire to Pin 5

Actual photo of connecting wires to BB board

Step 3: Establish serial communication with BeagleBone Black

Windows Operating System: use PuTTY (or equivalent, I shall explain how to do it with PuTTY)

Linux Operating System: use Picomon (or equivalent, I shall explained how to do it with Picomon)

How to set up Putty to connect with BeagleBone Black

Download and install PuTTY from https://www.putty.org/

Open PuTTY

1. In the PuTTY Configuration dialog box, select Serial.

2. Type 115200 in the Speed field.

Get the name of the serial port used by the PC for communication

Open Windows Device Manager : Press Windows+R, type devmgmt.msc, and press Enter. Get the name of the port: The name of your BeagleBone’s serial port is listed below Ports.

Get the id of the COM port the serial cable is using

3. Type the name of your BeagleBone Black’s serial port.”COM?”

4. Eventually, save session’s settings for later use.

Click on “Open” to start serial connection with PuTTY.

How to set up Picomon to connect with BeagleBone Black

Install picomon tool
How It All Happened at the ‘Everything of Foresting’ Meetup at DeCentre Blockchain Caffe
By: Williams Nana Kyei
Tags: Events, Blog, Cryptocurrency News, Blockchain Technology, Meetup

How It All Happened at the ‘Everything of Foresting’ Meetup at DeCentre Blockchain Caffe

DeCentre Blockchain Cafe in Gangnam

Over 100 blockchainers and crypto enthusiasts turned up for the maiden Foresting Meetup, held at the DeCentre Blockchain Caffe in Gangnam, last Tuesday. Titled ‘Everything of Foresting,’ the event aimed at unraveling everything that Foresting is about, to a teeming audience.

The Caffe happens to be the first blockchain-themed coffee shop and coworking space to be opened in Korea. It is a safe and cool space for the general public, especially crypto-maniacs to meet, share knowledge and talk blockchain. The floor is very spacious enough to accommodate over 100 people for startup and blockchain events.

Participants at the Meetup

The Foresting Meetup brought together blockchain industry experts, ICO advisors, token investors, and enthusiasts to learn more Foresting’s services, but more importantly, the 1st Public ICO Pre-sale which will end on Friday, August 24, 2018.
Echoes
By: J.W. Parr
Tags: Poetry, Memories, Love, Haiku, Grief

Sign up for The Story Box

By Scribe

The Story Box is a lovingly written newsletter featuring delightful stories and all updates from the publication. Every Sunday, just for you. Take a look
Cre8tor.app partners with CopyrightBank to register songs on NEM Blockchain
Tags: Music, Announcements, Nem, Blockchain, Copyright

Cre8tor.app (formerly known as RecordGram), the music collaboration app, will utilise the CopyrightBank platform to register originally produced beats and songs on the NEM blockchain.

The CopyrightBank platform was recently launched to enable owners of digital works to digitally-fingerprint and timestamp their work on the NEM blockchain as a form of copyright protection. It is one of the first few companies to successfully receive funding from the NEM Community Fund.

David Oh, CEO and founder of CopyrightBank

“We are looking forward to partnering with RecordGram to ensure that the Intellectual Property rights of content creators are recognized, especially in the entertainment industry.”

RecordGram App

Grammy Award winner and co-founder of Tune Token, DJ BlackOut, registered his first song via CopyrightBank on the NEM Blockchain.

The partnership was initiated right after conversations took place at Consensus 2018 in New York City, one the world’s largest blockchain technology summits.

Erik Mendelson, RecordGram and Tune Token CEO

“We are excited to work with CopyrightBank because they already have a working product that allows users of our platform to register their songs on the NEM blockchain. One of the biggest challenges facing the music industry is ensuring that the rights to the songs are properly recognized so that the creators are properly paid. Through CopyrightBank, we’re able to ensure that songwriter attribution is registered on the NEM blockchain which provides our users with a time-stamped proof of ownership amongst other features.”

RecordGram with their blockchain-based ecosystem, Tune Token, will be utilizing NEM for their token sale and will be exploring incorporating NEM’s technology to power its platform.
Brightness
By: Giulia De Gregorio Listo
Tags: Poetry, Life, Love, Life Lessons

Found on Google Images

The sun was selfish and unwilling to share the world

His tight hands grasping the warmth and squeezing it

The sun was the only beholder of every beautiful thing

And denying anything else that glistened

Until she appeared.

She smiled once and the blocked hands of the sun trembled

Her hair reflecting his light and making the day brighter

Her voice echoed with heat and endearment and he could not

Believe it was possible to be good and warm and golden altogether.

But there she was, proving the sun wrong.

Making the world beautiful with love in a way the sun never could.

And the sun, at the apex of his eternity, was demystified

By a girl with a big smile.
The best feature selection technique for text classification
By: Amruthjithraj V.R
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Code, Naturallanguageprocessing, NLP

A simple code for feature selection!

Before we jump into the code lets first understand a few things about feature selection

What is Feature selection?

Feature selection is the process of reducing the number of input variables when developing a predictive model. It is desirable to reduce the number of input variables to both reduce the computational cost of modelling and, in some cases, to improve the performance of the model.

2. How does feature selection work?

Feature Selection is the process where you automatically or manually select those features which contribute most to your prediction variable or output in which you are interested in. Having irrelevant features in your data can decrease the accuracy of the models and make your model learn based on irrelevant features.

3. Importance of feature selection in text classification.

Feature selection is one of the most important steps in the field of text classification. As text data mostly have high dimensionality problem. To reduce the curse of high dimensionality, feature selection techniques are used. The basic idea behind feature selection is keeping only important features and removing less contributing features.

Issues associated with high dimensionality are as follows:

1. Adds un-necessary noise to the model

2. High space and time complexity

3. Overfitting

The feature selection technique we will talk about today is the Chi-Square feature selection.

The Chi-square test is used in statistics to test the independence of two events. More specifically in feature selection, we use it to test whether the occurrence of a specific term and the occurrence of a specific class are independent.

Without any further ado, let's jump into the code

# Load libraries from sklearn.feature_selection import SelectKBest from sklearn.feature_selection import chi2 # N features with highest chi-squared statistics are selected chi2_features = SelectKBest(chi2, k = can be any number) X = chi2_features.fit_transform(X, y)

The first two lines of the code are just importing the packages needed for chi-square feature selection. SelectKBest function is used for selecting the K number of top features based on the Chi-square score. K can be any number depending on the number of features you are dealing with.

For example, if you have 50,000 features(columns) after creating bag of words. In such a case, you should try keeping the K value from 40,000 to 10,000 and check which value gives the best results. Once you find the optimal number that gives the best accuracy you can finally set it as default K value.

This article is for people who are starting with NLP and are stuck with the question of which feature selection technique to use and how to implement it. Feature selection for text cleaning can be a headache in most cases. This code can help you with the most basic feature selection techniques for text cleaning and can be used straight away.

Thank you for reading; I hope you learned something new!

Cheers.
“My Fair Lady” is not community theatre
By: Holly Bechiri
Tags: Art Criticism, Culturedgr, Arts, Theatre

Every single actor goes beyond convincing, whether it’s the lead roles with Eliza and Henry Higgins (John Girdlestone) or less prominent but important characters like Eliza’s good-for-nothing drunk of a father Alfred P Doolittle (Charles Hutchins) and Henry’s mother Mrs. Higgins (Leigh Levine). Strong acting runs through the cast, not least of which in the ensemble characters.

Which brings us back to that shockingly good costume scene that got its own round of applause, with the ensemble blowing us away in the Ascot Opening Race song. The costumes, designed by Robert A. Fowle (I just want to recognize him once again, if you will indulge me), follow the black and white color scheme lead of the costume designer for the movie, Cecil Beaton. Fowle’s version is a work of genius, as he puts his own dramatic visual touch with his rendition.

What will stick with us, as much as the costumes, is the sheer mastery of the acting in this scene in particular. The music, staging, lighting, and everything else that is necessary to fully support a storyline is put firmly in place. Saturday night, we saw the actors leaning into the stage set for them and making it all shine.

There’s something breathtaking about watching anyone take delight in their own mastery of their work—no matter what it is they do, from acting to singing to cooking to engineering.

These actors were having fun. They were completely in control of the huge presence behind their restrained movements. They knew they were knocking it out of the park. It’s a gift to watch a person enjoy their own mastery, to revel in it, to be in that moment, fully aware, fully in control, fully sharing their talent with their community.

“This is not community theatre,” Cirivello insisted at intermission. And she’s right. It must be noted: that term “community theatre” merely means the actors aren’t paid.

This community theatre—our Grand Rapids theatre community—once again has upped the ante and shown us that budgets are no barrier to mastery.

Eliza Doolittle (center, Alyssa Bauer) with ensemble cast. Photo credit Ashley Wierenga, courtesy Grand Rapids Civic Theatre.

“My Fair Lady”

Grand Rapids Civic Theatre

30 North Division Avenue

Through March 18

Tickets available here.

Get ready for next season with two kinds of season pass options here.

Join the culturedGR members for future art adventures for as little as $5/month. Details here.
Smiling’s My Favorite
By: Charlene Marron
Tags: Poetry, Acrostic, Christmas Spirit, Elf, Christmas

Smiling’s My Favorite

An acrostic tribute to Elf, a modern holiday classic

Photo by Tyler Delgado on Unsplash

S preading Christmas cheer

M ail room table top dancing;

I n search of his dad

L iving in New York,

I n need of a family;

N o angry elves, please!

G imbels department

‘

S tore hosts imposter Santa,

M uch to his chagrin;

Y ou stink! he tells him.

F rancisco — that’s fun to say!

A crush on Jovie,

V oice of an angel

O verheard singing one day;

R eally tries hard to

I mpress her on date;

T akes all things literally —

E ver innocent.
Goodbye Medium, welcome to the Lisk Blog!
Tags: Blockchain Development, Lisk, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Blockchain

Recently, we have made the decision to stop crossposting content to Medium and with that leave it behind.

Why Lisk decided to move away from Medium?

With the recent new website launch, we want to focus all our efforts on the new lisk.io website. This means that we want to drive all our traffic to the Lisk blog.

While doing this, it gives us three interesting benefits:

Better analytics and insights into the blog performance.

All content hosted in one place.

Reduce workload.

Therefore, we hope to see you at the lisk.io blog! This Lisk Medium blog will continue to exist but no new content will be posted here.
Foresting PTON coin first entry into the fast-growing Mongolian blockchain market
Tags: Social Media, Content Creation, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Listings

Dear friend,

We are excited to announce PTON coin listing on Bit Mon Ex

Foresting PTON/ BTC trading pair will be available today, June 19 10:00 (KST) on Mongolia-based global exchange, Bit Mon Ex.

Bit Mon Ex, represented by Foresting’s advisor and Bit Mon Ex Chairman Unenburen Ulziiburen, is a cryptocurrency exchange with an API 3.0 version of Bittrex. (1) By partnering with Bittrex, Bit Mon Ex has access to all cryptocurrencies and digital tokens available on both the Bittrex and Bittrex International platforms, enabling it to offer its customers one of the largest selections of digital assets.(2)

In addition, Bit Mon Ex is drawing attention by developing blockchain infrastructure in cooperation with the Mongolian Government and Mongolia’s largest bank.



Mongolia’s central bank authorized a local telecom operator to issue the digital coin, which is now licensed as a state-approved financial instruction. Mobicom, also known as “Candy”, is “considered a ‘non-cash payment instrument’ whose value is pegged to Mongolia’s fiat currency, the tugrik.”(3)

Mongolia is a potential blockchain “tidbit” due to its blockchain-friendly government policies as well as an early stage of growth of its blockchain market.

Most recently, we are seeing a meaningful act from Mongolia in becoming the next country to try and enter the blockchain world. The country has just announced a partnership with Terra, a blockchain payment system that is backed by exchanges such as Binance and Houbi.(3)

Foresting is making inroads into such an attractive market and creating new demand for PTON. Since capturing the Mongolian market is a key strategy for advancing into other growing markets and forwarding into the whole global market, this PTON/BTC market pairing on Bit Mon Ex is even more meaningful. (3)

Foresting PTON coin is to be listed on 3 exchanges until July.

Stay tuned!

Resources:

- Forbes’s Mongolian Entrepreneur Unenburen is an Advisor of Foresting

(1)https://bit.ly/2ImRxUR

- Bit Mon Ex partnering with Bittrex to develop Mongolian crypto exchange platform

(2)https://bit.ly/2IUjCC4

- Mongolia Starts Off 2019 With Its Eyes on Crypto Payment Adoption

(3)https://bit.ly/2KUHHv8
UpToken Now on Over 50 Coinme ATMs Across United States
Tags: Startup, Financial Services, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin

As spring is starting to heat up and make way for summer, we are excited to announce that thanks to the continued deployment of Coinme ATMs across the U.S., UpToken is gaining a broader reach as it is now being earned and used on 51 Coinme bitcoin kiosks across the United States!

Coinme ATM number 51 in the Valley Mall in Spokane, WA

Since January, thousands of Coinme customers across the country have been earning 1% cash back in the form of UpToken for all their transactions at Coinme ATMs. Additionally, when UpToken holders purchase bitcoin at a Coinme ATM, they have the option to use UpToken to pay for their transaction fees and receive a 30% discount! That makes Coinme the ONLY bitcoin ATM provider in the country to offer a rewards program on their kiosks.

Coinme is also continuing the most recent ATM expansion: over 20 new kiosks being placed in California, Utah, Texas, Colorado, and Washington in the coming weeks. This means an increased base of UpToken holders who will help further the mission of Coinme to utilize the power of digital currencies and help us all RISE UP!

Click here for location details on Coinme’s ATMs and make sure to comment below with where you would like to see a Coinme ATM with UpToken next!
Meet Stijn, our Head of AI!
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, Mathematics, Mountaineering

After Stijn received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Leeds (UK), he started his career as a Data Scientist at Starmind in June 2013. In the meantime, he is Head of AI and leading the Data Science team. Stijn’s expertise in machine learning and natural language processing have been a major contribution to Starmind’s status as a leading innovator in AI.

What was it about Starmind that made you join our team?

As my PhD research turned out to be a little too abstract and specialized for my taste, I started looking for a job where the impact and usefulness of my work would be more directly visible. In my role as a Data Scientist I can still put my mathematical skills to use, while also making an immediate impact in the real world. Moreover, Starmind has a passionate team of people who are not only dedicated to their work, but also like to have fun together.

What do you look forward to most about going to work every day?

As Starmind has grown over the years, I’ve been able to build up a team of Data Scientists with complementary backgrounds and skills. Every day is an opportunity to learn something new from each other. Moreover, while of course there is a strong focus on delivering value to our customers, we still have room for more fundamental research as well, allowing us to work on some really innovative projects.

What are your key learnings from the almost six years at Starmind?

When I started at Starmind, I was part of a small software engineering team. Now we have a dedicated Data Science team. In the early days, I learned a lot about professional software engineering from my close interactions with the developers, knowledge which I can now pass on to my fellow Data Scientists. When it comes to machine learning, I’ve learned the importance of a pragmatic attitude: always jumping on the newest hypes usually does not pay off, often a simpler approach works better.

How did your PhD in Mathematics prepare you for your role at Starmind?

The topic of my PhD was computability theory and algorithmic randomness, which is not something that comes up in my daily work. However, the general skills that I acquired as a mathematician (for example logical thinking or understanding complex systems and ideas) are still very useful to me. My mathematical background helps me to critically evaluate new ideas and methods in machine learning, really understanding whether they have value for us or not, without being misled by any hypes.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

During the weekends, you’re more likely to find me in the mountains than in the city. Zurich is an amazing base for exploring the Swiss Alps. In winter I like to do ski touring while in summer I’m always planning my next hiking, climbing and mountaineering trips. When the weather stops me from heading out, I like to practice foreign languages or I try to get better at the board games of Chess and Go.
So, You Want to be a Stripper? Advice from a Former Exotic Dancer
By: Erin Taylor
Tags: Sexuality, Psychology, Self, Work, Feminism

So, You Want to be a Stripper? Advice from a Former Exotic Dancer

And why your reason for wanting this job matters.

Photo by LOGAN WEAVER on Unsplash

Iwas an exotic dancer for three wonderful years (the fourth year was a miserable one) after I finished business school in my twenties. I traveled the world, paid off my student debt, got in the best physical shape of my life, and briefly dated a semi-famous actor. I let go of my conservative roots and found my inner sex goddess through exploration and sexual liberation. I also developed a hardened sense of self to handle the emotionally exhausting aspect of being a sex-worker, made poor judgment calls in the people I let into my life, and had sex with men who did not respect me.

All of these experiences occurred before my 26th birthday.

If there is one thing I know about stripping, it is that this job ages you emotionally and physically. It forces you to deal with situations and relationships most people don’t deal with in their twenties.

But strippers don’t have a choice; if you heard the stories I heard and met the people I met in the club — the cheating boyfriends and husbands, the pimps and undercover cops, the wives who invite 21-year-old strippers for a threesome to save their marriage — you’d grow up fast too.

While I had my fun traveling and having exhilarating sex with beautiful people I never saw again, I always kept my end goal in mind:

I’m here to build a foundation for my future as a businesswoman. I’m making 6 figures a year on my own schedule, and I refuse to waste this opportunity by spending my money on designer bags, flashy cars, and drugs.

I’m forever grateful that I kept good company — seasoned sex-workers with financially responsible mindsets — who were cutthroat in reminding me to be smart with my money when I thought about leasing a luxury car for $900 a month or buying a $3,000 bag.

“Your car works just fine. Don’t be stupid.”

“Didn’t you buy a Louis Vuitton bag this year? Did it stop working? No? Then, you don’t need a new one.”

If you go on another vacation, what do you have left to put into your savings this month?

Yes, I had a business background, but when you make that much money on your own at 23, it’s easy to look the other way, You’ll find a way to justify spending your hard-earned money on stupid shit, and you have to work on keeping yourself humble, responsible, and realistic.

And if you can’t manage that, I’m sorry to say that stripping may not be the right job for you.

And full disclaimer: if you clicked on this article hoping to read a tell-all by a former stripper to warn other women about the dangers of sex work, you’re in the wrong place. I’m a sex worker lover and supporter not just because I used to be one myself, but because sex workers are incredible people giving themselves emotionally and physically in a way that only they can do.
想考空服員？那你一定要熟悉這些機上廣播詞英文用法。
By: Wuwow Team
Tags: 線上英文, English, Work

三、廣播詞範例 Sample Announcement Scripts

起飛前 Before Take-off

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of WUWOW Airline, it is my pleasure to welcome you aboard flight 168 to Paris, France. Federal regulations require that carry-on items are stowed prior to closing the aircraft door. Your items may be placed in an overhead compartment, or completely under the seat in front of you. Use caution when placing items in or removing them from the overhead compartment, and let us know if we may assist you. In order to expedite the boarding process, please be seated as quickly as possible after stowing your carry-on items. Take a moment to review the “Safety Instructions” card in your seat pocket. If you are seated in an exit row, you may be required to assist the crew in an evacuation. If you are unable or unwilling to perform the functions described on the card, just ask to be re-seated. Thank-you.

各位先生女士早安。本人很榮幸代表WUWOW航空，今天歡迎各位登機，本航班為168航次飛往法國巴黎。聯邦法律規定登機行李應在機艙門關上前放置妥當。您的物品可以放置在頭頂的置物櫃中，抑或完全放在您前方的座位底下。當放置或是移動您的物品時請務必小心，需要的話，您也可以請我們協助。為了增快登機的速度，請在放置好您的物品後盡快就座。花一些時間來複習放在您座位前的安全指示卡。若您坐在緊急出口那一排的話，您可能會需要在撤退的時候協助機組人員。若您無法或提供協助的話，請告知我們改座位就好，感謝。

安全帶指示燈 — 開啟 Fasten Seat Belt Sign — “ON”

Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned on the Fasten Seat Belt sign. Please be seated and check to see that your seat belt is securely fastened.

各位先生女士，機長已經開啟了安全帶指示燈，請回到您的座位上並確認您的安全帶已系上。

安全帶指示燈 — 關閉 Fasten Seat Belt Sign — “OFF”

Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned off the Fasten Seat Belt sign. For your continued safety, WUWOW Airline requires that you keep your seat belt fastened at all times while seated.

各位先生女士，機長已經關閉了安全帶指示燈。為了您的安全，WUWOW航空需要您在座位上時安全帶保持系上。

降落 Descent

Ladies and gentlemen, we have begun our descent into Paris, France. Please turn off all portable electronic devices and stow them until we have arrived at the gate. In preparation for landing in Paris, be certain your seatback is straightened up and your seat belt is tightly fastened. Please stow your carry-on items and tray table, and pass any remaining service items and unwanted reading materials to the cabin crew. Thank you.

各位先生女士，我們已經開始降落到法國巴黎了。請關閉所有攜帶式的電子產品直到我們抵達登機門。在準備著陸時，請確定您的椅背是收起的，以及繫緊您的安全帶。請收好您的隨身物品、收起您的餐桌、並將任何不需要的讀物交給空服人員。謝謝您。

抵達 Arrival

Ladies and gentlemen, WUWOW Airline welcomes you to Paris. The local time is 17:26. For your safety and the safety of those around you, please remain seated with your seat belt fastened and keep the aisles clear until we are parked at the gate. The Captain will then turn off the “Fasten Seat Belt” sign, indicating it is safe to stand. Please use caution when opening the overhead compartments and removing items, since articles may have shifted during flight. On behalf of WUWOW Airline and the entire crew, I’d like to thank you for joining us on this trip and we are looking forward to seeing you on board again in the near future. Wish you a pleasant journey, thank you!

各位先生女士，WUWOW航空歡迎您抵達巴黎。當地時間為17:26。為了您以及您周遭的安全，請留在您的座位上，保持走道淨空直到我們抵達登機口。 機長會關閉安全帶指示燈，及代表您可以安全地站立了。因為航班行進時您的物品可能有移動，在開啟頭頂艙門移動物品時請多注意一下。感謝各位蒞臨也希望各位在不久將來再次見面。祝您旅途愉快，謝謝。
My Dogs Save My Life Every Day
By: Anne Hartt
Tags: Chronic Illness, Life, Health, Dogs, Happiness

They accept me

Regardless of my state of being, my dogs shower me with affection, compassion and unconditional love. Every single day. Bad day. Good day. Showered. Not showered. Angry. Frustrated. Tired. Depressed. None of it matters to them. They accept me for who I am and love me. Without fail. That kind of blind devotion and acceptance is soul healing.

They bring me joy

My dogs fill my heart with joy and make me laugh and smile multiple times a day. When you live with chronic pain and a multitude of other health challenges, laughter and smiles are at a premium. On my worst day, these three gingers can make me belly laugh. That is an unimaginably precious gift.

They help me forget

Even if it’s only for a few minutes. When I watch them frolic in the snow, chase each other around, play fetch or even just cuddle each other, the world around me stands still. I get overwhelmed with gratitude. I spend long moments just watching and appreciating them. Their beauty. Their innate love. The simplicity of their happiness. It’s infectious.

They know when I need them

I recently took an unplanned break from writing. I spent nearly two weeks in bed with nausea and dizziness so severe I could hardly do more than use the bathroom. I was worried my youngest would go stir crazy. Instead, he spent the entire time either curled into my legs or my belly. He kept me warm when I shivered. He nuzzled my face when I needed to smile. He licked my hands to remind me he’d be by my side through it all.

And right now, as I type this article, he’s curled around me with his head nestled on my belly. The warmth of his body seeps into my hip and the spot on my tummy where I’ve had a strange, sharp pain for days. It makes typing awkward, but I don’t push him away. He knows better than me what I need.

I slide the laptop further down and take a break from writing to let his cuddle fill my soul with love and peace. The pain seems to fade into the background as the weight of his head soothes the ache. It makes writing slow, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

They keep me moving

Regular walking is often touted as one of the best therapies for fibro. I haven’t found much relief from it, but I can’t discount the benefits to my spirit from getting outside on the regular. The pups know when I’m too ill to move and when Mom’s just being a shit. These beautiful balls of fur motivate me to get outside to either play fetch or walk. I know they need it. They know I need it. And we keep each other accountable.
Home truths
Tags: Dstbtd, Distributed, Culture, Remote Working, Work From Home

When I tell people I work from home, the most common response, is “oh, I could never do that”, to which I think, is probably not really true. You really could, it’s not that hard. I do it every day.

Actually, pretty much everyone who works at Distributed, works from home. Often in places much more glamorous than the North of England, but that’s not the point.

The second question I get asked is usually, “omg, do you like it?” and the answer is, yes I really do. I’m not sure if people are jealous or just dismiss working from home as some kind of gypsy behaviour (no offence to gypsies) — but really, it’s the future.

When business’ start to realise, and some already have, that you can get the same or more value from an employee when they work from home, this will become the norm. Saving on office space which in London and in the UK in general is expensive, I reference some articles below where you can see for yourselves.

Many traditional companies fear that letting their employees work from home would cause their productivity levels to drop. However, this fear is unfounded, according to Vodaphone who undertook a study recently. They found that:

3 in 4 employees say that flexible working boosts their job satisfaction

54% of employees surveyed said that flexible working makes them more productive

So that’s pretty good. From my own experience, it is true, I put in a lot more hours than I would if I was commuting to the office everyday. Working from home, means you save all that commuting time and effort, and since you might as well, you just end up starting earlier and working later.

I’ve realised actually that my focus and attention is at it’s best, around 6–9pm. And many days, this is when I get my best work done. And since I worked til 9pm the previous night, I don’t feel bad if I start a little later the next day, or go to the gym at 10, or pop down to the shops to get some dinner for that night. This all results in less stress, less stress results in happier and more productive people.

I’ve even started going to the gym, something which I swore I would never do. The fact I don’t have to deal with going before work, taking a change of clothes, showering etc, or going after work when you’re already exhausted. I’m healthier because I work from home.

I eat better. I don’t have the temptation to go our and buy lunch somewhere.

I save money. No commuting costs, no expensive lunches/breakfast/coffee.

No road rage. I used to get this, it was bad. Now I don’t. Happy days.

So all these things add up, to making the home office a pretty sexy way to work. However, there are some bad things.

Now I’m expected to do more chores around the house so the house is always much cleaner You miss out on the office banter/friendships. Okay, nothing good about that. But it does force you to be more social in other ways. People think you’re weird because you talk to your cat a lot.

And that’s really all the bad things I can think of. So to recap:

Employers save money and gain productivity. Employees save money and gain productivity.

It’s a no brainer people.
We’d Like to Thank Our Members
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Thanksgiving

We’d Like to Thank Our Members

For your support, your belief in us, and your creative ideas aboout the future of Permission.io, we want to thank you.

We wish you the happiest Thanksgiving with your family and friends!

We couldn’t be more thankful for each and every one of our Permission members. Without your belief in Permission.io, we wouldn’t be realizing our vision of empowering people all over the world.

It’s been quite a journey, from lauching our beta mobile app at SXSW 2018, to transforming into a progressive web app last July, and now counting down to the token going live! Through the sharp turns and bumps in the road, our members have proven to be loyal and passionate about Permission, holding on and enjoying the ride.

We have so many people to thank that have made this journey possible.

We want to say thank you to our Telegram warriors, who helped us answer our most frequently asked questions over the last few months.

We want to thank our members who care enough about the platform to interact with us online, whether by active participation on social media, emailing us your feedback, or even talking about us in your videos.

We want to thank our members who shared Permission.io with friends to help grow the value of this network.

And of course, we want to thank our new members for having faith and joining the Permission family!

To show our gratitude…

We are giving you and your family and friends more rewards and opportunities to earn this holiday season!

To kick off the season of giving, we want to give you extra tokens throughout the Thanksgiving weekend. From Thursday ’til Sunday, you can earn 3,000 Permission tokens per person you refer! Your family and friends would definitely appreciate it if you clued them in on the best way to earn cryptocurrency. They even get 300 tokens just for signing up with your code. Don’t forget, the token is going live at the end of the year!

Stay tuned tomorrow for Black Friday specials in the app, too! Avoid the crowds and earn while you shop on Permission.io.
Whatever Makes You Feel Good
Tags: Marriage, Freedom, Guard, Heart, Boundaries

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do” — King Solomon.

Photo by Aahnee on Pixabay.com

One of the slogans for the last sixty or seventy years in Western culture has been to do whatever makes you feel good.

Sheryl Crow encouraged everyone that if it makes us happy, then how can it be that bad. Leon Bridges ensured us that if it feels good then it must be. In bucket-list postmodernity, people should be free to pursue their desires, express themselves and just go for it.

I want to suggest that this may not be entirely correct and that real freedom actually means boundaries. True happiness means not going after everything we see. Now, that might sound a bit 1800s victorian England but hear me out.

The illustration of marriage is maybe not the best one, but people do still get married nowadays and when we do, we still hope that we will stay happily together and love each other for the rest of our lives. Although the reality of that ideal may seem inconceivable to some, a little far-fetched to many, we still want it to happen. But for a marriage to actually achieve this goal, both partners will have to put self-imposed limitations on their desires and needs.

They can’t just go after everything they want. They will often have to put the other person first. Faithfulness may seem like an old-fashioned word but not a lot of marriages survive affairs and even if they do, it’s a long road to recovery. A long, loving, happy marriage, the ideal for many people, is only possible if we say no to certain things and do things we don’t always want to do. It means ensuring our feelings and desires will actually lead us in the right path.

Even though that flies in the face of what we hear on the radio every day, digest in our daily magazines and newspapers and most current schools of thought, I reckon King Solomon was right when he urged his readers to guard their hearts above all else. That’s living wisely.

Thoughts and Ideas is now on Substack! thoughtsandideas.substack.com
Day 93: FIRST & FOLLOW
By: Tomáš Bouda
Tags: Algorithms, Programming

If you plan to implement own parser for a context-free grammar, construction of FIRST and FOLLOW sets will be the first algorithm you will have to spend your time on.

And since definition of formal languages and grammars is much more complicated than we need at the moment, I’ll stick to the intuitive explanation.

Context-free grammar is a set of production rules that consists of terminals and non-terminals. Terminal is a “physical” character that may occur in the parsed text. Non-terminal is a “meta” character that must occur on the left side of production rule.

In the grammar above, S, A are non-terminals, while 1 is terminal.

We start with a starting symbol S and repetitively rewrite non-terminals using production rules. Once the sequence contains only terminals, we get a word that is accepted by the grammar.

Notice that this grammar is different from the first one, yet, it produces the same language.

Due to the second rule in each grammar, the first one is called left-recursive and the second one is called right-recursive.

The third grammar also describes the same language. It is both, left-recursive and right-recursive [which is not a good thing]. And what’s worse, it is ambiguous, since it can produce the same word by a different productions.

Ambiguity is very bad and there are different types of parsers that deal with these kinds of problems in a different ways.

This last grammar is able to generate any finite word with matching parentheses.

If you know regular expressions, you are probably aware that it is not possible to write regex that would match any number of parentheses. This is what makes context-free grammars so important for compilers — it is the simplest grammar that is strong enough to describe syntax of programming language.
And so it begins. The back story.
By: Mary Lucus-Flannery
Tags: Storytelling, Ketogenic, Ketosis, Health, Weight Loss

Every story has to start somewhere.

It’s not really the beginning. The BEGINNING happened over 44 years ago when an egg cell met a sperm cell and the the story of me began — biologically speaking.

But we have to start somewhere. TODAY is the entry point this story.

I am 44 years old. I am a in *good* health. I have zero health issues.

BUT — I have issues propelling me on this journey.

BUT

I am overweight (by about 30 pounds).

I am stressed (just in that normal “got a lot going on” way).

I worry that at some point (no idea when but ugh) I may start to experience poor health.

I know that many many diseases are lifestyle related. I don’t want to sit and wait to see how that sneaks up and bites me in the ass.

I want to look good (ego — I know. But it’s true.)

I want to have maximum energy. I have so much I want to accomplish!

I want to know that I am doing the work of creating a healthy expression of me.

This is not the first time I have tried nutritional ketosis. About a year ago I followed a ketogenic diet for three months and had great results. I felt great. I had tons of energy. I lost nearly 20 pounds. It felt like a great way to proactively take care of myself.

And then life drifted in and I lost focus. I would go in and out of ketosis (because I was eating more and more “treats”). Every day out made it harder MENTALLY to get back in. I told myself it did not matter and I was healthy. and within six months I had gained all the weight back. I lost the joy and the energy.

This is a KETO reboot. A SUPER REBOOT!

Track my stats daily. Not just what I ate (my macros) but what worked, how I felt. Emotions are big for sustaining lifestyle changes. Accountability matters. Weekly check in with weight and photo update (ugh). Track the big picture. Zoom out. What I’m learning. I love to research and gather information. I’ll post all the good stuff here so I can find it, and you can find it.

Read: What the hell is a Ketogenic Diet?
A Tickle of Delight
Tags: Rejoice, Poetry, Nature, Scrittura, Delight

© Dennett 12/17/2020

Saturday Scrittura Prompt/Reason to Rejoice

A Tickle of Delight

Rejoicing is too much

Rejoice is an absent word in this year,

as it should be. Can we rejoice in the midst

of so much pain and fear?

I cannot. I have no religion to whitewash

the horrors I see, no fantasy to erase

the charcoal of reality.

Still, I have moments tickled with delight,

a softer form of rejoicing not weighted

with the heaviness of gods.

The felicity of discovering a

full bloom of survival after nights

of killing cold.

A smile for a deformed blossom that

whispers spring when spring

feels so far away.

© Dennett 12/20/2020

Nature cares not for the heaviness of hearts

or the emptiness of bellies,

she continues on in glorious ignorance.

While we wait for miracles,

she creates them,

one bloom at a time.
Venezuela’s Two Presidents
By: The Nib
Tags: Latin America, Maduro, Venezuela, Venezuelan Politics, Comics

Sign up for Taking Stock of COVID: New comics from The Nib

By The Nib

New comics from Matt Lubchansky, Keith Knight, and Niccolo Pizarro. Plus How Seniors Are Living With COVID-19. Take a look
Chairs and Experience
By: Wolfie Bain
Tags: Self Improvement, Relationships, Life, Poem, Love

Chairs and Experience

A Poem

not a single word, a single word — and writing it down’s impossible too

the chairs hear better than the dogs, they’ve absorbed entire books

modeled on our lounging forms, your elbow when Dostoevsky slept

sweet in turbulence, cry out loud and swallow, and swallow smiling hard

because the chair you made warm gossips about me, to me of all people

sitting in it, a striped towel after a cold shower when I looked out the window

and for a minute wished I could do better by you why would the chair say this

what have I done to the chair except bring it, the pair, home for a living life

I ran down the streets in old shoes with holes lapidary out randy as eyeballs

in the streets, a monk who retired retired was selling fresh basil and advice

fell off his eyelids like sweat, rich, dirty, and full of magic and songs of god tea

love is a bloom is a vegetable is a storefront is a word processor is a tongue

listen to it, it is silent, and dance, dance, it is noise, and pause on it as it breaks

love will break over your heads like eggs and there’s nothing to do about that

you must have faith now go home pay me for your herbs and scatter all doings

that was an encounter my hearts said and two in me stirred hope, that flower, flower, often mocked and painted with broad stripes of disguised sorrows

I hoped anyway and hopped about in my shoes chanting your name, fox, fox!

that was so long ago, foxy fox, and I feel better the chair has found obscurity

and broadcasted the memory for some mystery it kinda is punking me today

and I sense tomorrow’s cream and errand boy he get firey and hallowed out

a dream, a disaster’s relief, an inscription in a shirt collar wearing funny noun

this a bird, a comet, a notebook, a coffee, a name, a ghoul, a stone, a program announces out loud, doorways you pass through, and through, walks love
“Black women defy trend of declining life expectancies. What explains this miracle?”
By: Jess Brooks
Tags: Racism, Health, Black Women

“With black women being disproportionately overweight, overworked, overlooked and underpaid, you’d think they would be on the verge of extinction.

“What we are seeing is that the message about the importance of health is getting through to black women,” said Linda Goler Blount, president and chief executive of Black Women’s Health Imperative, a national health advocacy nonprofit based in the District. “The data show that the majority of us know that we need to improve and are working on it. We also understand the importance of having a positive attitude. When black women are asked to define what good health means, we say things such as ‘being calm’ or ‘being at peace.’ We don’t use diseases to define it. We don’t let a condition like obesity define who we are, even though we work on getting into shape.”

How the black woman managed to escape such a widespread decline in life expectancy borders on the miraculous. Not only did they hold on to an average life span of 78 years, other recent studies show that black women are also the most optimistic.”
Prediction at Scale with scikit-learn and PySpark Pandas UDFs
By: Civis Analytics
Tags: Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning, Data Science, Pyspark

scikit-learn is a wonderful tool for machine learning in Python, with great flexibility for implementing pipelines and running experiments (see, e.g., this Civis blog post series), but it’s not really designed for distributed computing on “big data” (e.g., hundreds of millions of records or more).

A common predictive modeling scenario, at least at Civis, is having a small or medium amount of labeled data to estimate a model from (e.g., 10,000 records), but a much larger unlabeled dataset to make predictions about. In this scenario, one might want to train a model on a laptop or single server with scikit-learn for ease of use and flexibility, but then apply that model to the large unlabeled dataset more quickly by distributing the computation with PySpark. Using PySpark for distributed prediction might also make sense if your ETL task is already implemented with (or would benefit from being implemented with) PySpark, which is wonderful for data transformations and ETL.

PySpark has functionality to pickle python objects, including functions, and have them applied to data that is distributed across processes, machines, etc. Also, it has a pandas-like syntax but separates the definition of the computation from its execution, similar to TensorFlow.

One issue is that passing data between a) Java-based Spark execution processes, which send data between machines and can perform transformations super-efficiently, and b) a Python process (e.g., for predicting with scikit-learn) incurs some overhead due to serialization and inter-process communication. One solution for this is the User-Defined Functions (UDFs) in PySpark’s DataFrame API. You can use the DataFrame API to perform most operations efficiently in Java (without having to write Java or Scala!) but then call Python UDFs that incur the Java-Python communication overhead only when necessary.

Normal PySpark UDFs operate one-value-at-a-time, which incurs a large amount of Java-Python communication overhead. Recently, PySpark added Pandas UDFs, which efficiently convert chunks of DataFrame columns to Pandas Series objects via Apache Arrow to avoid much of the overhead of regular UDFs. Having UDFs expect Pandas Series also saves converting between Python and NumPy floating point representations for scikit-learn, as one would have to do for a regular UDF.

The PySpark documentation is generally good and there are some posts about Pandas UDFs (1, 2, 3), but maybe the example code below will help some folks who have the specific use case of deploying a scikit-learn model for prediction in PySpark. We’ve found this sort of workflow very promising for multiple use cases recently at Civis (see, this SciPy talk), and hopefully you will, too.

As a final note, I’ll mention that it’s worth considering PySpark as an alternative to Pandas for a dataframe implementation and/or Python’s concurrent.futures for parallelization. PySpark works on small datasets with only a little extra effort but can much more easily be scaled up if needed.
La verdad sobre los algoritmos, según Cathy O’Neil
By: Anselmo Lucio
Tags: Español, Animation, Algoritmos, Algorithms, English

in In Fitness And In Health