fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Deploying Machine Learning Models as API using AWS
By: Tharun Kumar Tallapalli
Tags: Deployment, Machine Learning, Data Science, API, AWS Lambda

Building SageMaker Model EndPoint

Let’s build an Iris Species Prediction Model.

Note: While training SageMaker classification models, the target variable should be the first column and if it is continuous then convert it into discrete.

Dataset Structure

1. Creating and Training and Validation data to train and test the model.

2. For Training, the Model, get Image URI of the model in the current region.

Creating xgboost model estimator.

3. Set the Hyperparameters for the model (you can get the best hyperparameters for your model using the SageMaker Auto-Pilot experiment or you can set your own hyperparameters manually).

Hyperparameter Tuning.

4. Fit the Model with train and validation data.

Model Fitting.

5. Now create an Endpoint for the Model.

Endpoint Creation.

You can view the Endpoint Configurations in SageMaker UI.

SageMaker Endpoints

Creating Lambda Function

Now we have a SageMaker model endpoint. Let’s look at how we call it from Lambda. There is an API action called SageMaker Runtime and we use the boto3 sagemaker-runtime.invoke_endpoint(). From the AWS Lambda console, choose to Create function.

Create a New Role such that Lambda Function has permission to invoke SageMaker endpoint.

Lambda Function initial setup(Photo by Author)

Lambda Function(Photo by Author)

2. ENDPOINT_NAME is an environment variable that holds the name of the SageMaker model endpoint we just deployed.

Environment Variable(Photo by Author)

Deploying API

1. Open the Amazon API Gateway console. Choose the Create API, select REST API (as we send a post request and get the response).

(Photo by Author)

2. Name your API and choose endpoint type as Regional (as it should be accessed within your region).

Creating REST API(Photo by Author)

3. Create a Resource choosing from the Actions drop-down list, giving it a name like “irispredict”. Click to create resources.

Creating Resource(Photo by Author)

4. When the resource is created, from the same drop-down list, choose Create Method to create a POST method.

Adding Post Method(Photo by Author)

5. On the screen that appears, do the following:

For the Integration type, choose Lambda Function.

For Lambda Function, enter the name of the function created.

Connecting Lamda Function with API Gateway(Photo by Author)

6. API Structure will look something like the following image:
4 Practical Ways to Apply Philosophy That Will Change Your Life
By: Mighty Knowledge
Tags: Life Lessons, Self Improvement, Philosophy, Personal Growth, Ideas

4 Practical Ways to Apply Philosophy That Will Change Your Life

Application is what matters

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

Philosophy is the study of how one can live through wisdom. That includes important things like learning the best ways to think, make decisions, and act in different situations of your life.

Unfortunately, philosophy tends to be taught quite poorly in schools. It is seen as more of an abstract discipline where everyone thinks theoretically, without consideration for real-world application.

But the philosophers of old weren’t monks or sages that locked themselves up in the library to ponder theories. They were practical students of life, and they created many of their own ways of applying philosophy in the real world. The application really is the only way to bring out the best that philosophy has to offer.

Today, we will look at 4 practical ways to apply philosophy that may very well change your life. From there, we can get the best that philosophy has to offer and ultimately improve our wisdom.
Buy a Private Second Line with Bitcoin on Coincards.com
By: Mike Olthoff
Tags: Burner Phone, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Hacking, Privacy

FreeRange gives you the ability to add a secondary line to your phone without the need for a sim card. The secondary line can be used for phone calls and SMS as long as your phone is connected to a mobile data network or Wi-Fi.

FreeRange is the perfect solution for bitcoiners looking to seperate their personal phone number from their bitcoin services. Use FreeRange mobile for your services that require SMS 2FA and avoid the dreaded sim-swap attack vector.

In this Demo, we are going to assume you have already purchased a FreeRange top-up code from Coincards.com.

Note — Although only purchasable in CAD, these vouchers can be used to purchase USA phone numbers and therefore is perfect for ALL customers.

Start off by downloading the FreeRange Mobile app from either Google Play or the App Store.

Once installed, open the app and select I have a code to redeem. Enter the Code that Coincards.com emailed to you upon payment of your purchase and Submit Code.

You will also be asked for an email address. We suggest using an email address not associated with you, such as a ProtonMail address.

Once you have entered your code and email, you now can pick a new number. For this demo, we allowed FreeRange to pick one for us by clicking I don’t care, pick for me!

FreeRange will assign your phone number and ask to confirm your email address associated with the number, use the one you just entered as they will send a confirmation code later on. Click Create Account, then click Let’s Go to finish the setup process.

FreeRange mobile will email you a 4 digit passcode, this is needed to activate your account. Check your email and Enter The Passcode then hit the Verify button.

Your account setup will finalize and your number will be created. You will be asked to confirm your code redemption.

Finally, you will need to agree to the End User License Agreement.

Once you click Agree, you will be brought to the main app where you can now make Phone Calls, Send SMS Messages and check your account days remaining.

Congrats, you are now using your private second line!
The Capital Of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region Is Under Fierce Bombardment Right Now
By: Sylvia Wohlfarth
Tags: Ethiopia, Poetry, War, Children, Fear

The Capital Of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region Is Under Fierce Bombardment Right Now

A Poem On The Days Before

Child, do you notice the shuttered fear in your parent’s eyes

The hushed whispers and the abruptness of their words

The breaks in conversations when you happen by

The increased shaded looks up into the sky

Do you wonder what it is that they fear might appear

And do you hope it will pass, and not come too near

The gathering of people around phones, the unison sighs

All this you have noticed, I know, or else you would ask why

What is it the grown-ups are preparing themselves for

Have you heard the word whispered, the mention of war

Better not ask and continue to play and hope the spectre

Which haunts your family will soon disappear

Life once sunny and carefree is tightening its grip

A darkness is looming to be read on the lips

Food, a joy to be shared and however scant all were fed

Is being stocked and piled high even under the beds

Your grandmother holds you in her arms and you notice a tear

A rocking chair movement, as she comforts both you and her fear

Memories of dark times are filling her heart unknowing to you

And you wonder is there anything for her you can do

There are movements outside and you hear voices shout

Not friendly but grim and through the door you look out

Soldiers march by hastily along the dusty streets

Rifles glued to their bodies, your heart skips a beat

This doesn’t look good, oh why can’t they talk and you tell

That there’s nothing to worry about, and that all will be well
Cryptocurrency Weekly Market Performance Report (6th August — 12th August 2018)
By: Joel Smith
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Crypto, Cryptocurrency News

Written by Abhy Singla.

Cryptocurrency Market Performance

Previous week’s overview (23rd July ’18–29th July ’18)

All the major cryptos are trading in the red. In recent weeks, it had seemed that digital tokens like Bitcoin were finally coming out of a long-standing slump. BTC, which had tended to float between about $6,000 and $7,000 for many weeks, finally managed to rise up above that upper threshold, even ascending beyond $8,000 last week.

According to data from CoinMarketCap, every one of the top 10 digital currencies by market cap has declined in value across this week. BTC is trading at $7,010.94 at the time of writing.

Around $30 billion has been wiped from the total market capitalization of top 10 cryptocurrencies over the week.

Current week’s overview (30th July ’18–5th Aug ’18)

Like the previous week, this week also brought dismal news for crypto investors. Some of the largest and most popular digital currencies in the world saw declines overall, with nearly all of the top 20 coins and tokens dipping this week. Bitcoin, which just recently ascended the $8,000 mark, dropped below $7,000 on 6th August and further went down below $6500 mark towards the end of the week (12th July).

As of this writing, BTC is hovering just above $6,300. All the other currencies like Ripple, Ethereum and others ended the week in the red as well.

Possible reasons for market movement

Some of that decline was likely the result of news out of the SEC both last week and this week, which signaled trouble with the approval process for the first Bitcoin ETF.

On August 10th, SEC had to reveal its decision on the petition for a Bitcoin-linked ETF by VanEck and SolidX. In spite of recent rejections of Bitcoin ETFs, including a second failed attempt by the Winklevoss brothers last week, many analysts have seen VanEck’s fund as uniquely likely to meet SEC approval. On 11th August, though, the SEC revealed that it was pushing back the decision which further delayed the approval of BTC’s ETF.

Also, a new study from Yale University explained the erratic and unusual price movements of Bitcoin. Although much of the initial hype among the mainstream investment world has settled, the world’s largest digital coin by market cap is still prone to massive volatility. The study, which tracked 7 years’ worth of price movements, suggests that momentum and investor perception are key influencers on the price of BTC. If the price of the currency goes up or down by a significant margin in one week, that movement in and of itself makes it more likely to continue in the same direction the next week. In light of this, last week’s decline in BTC may have also contributed to this week’s movement downward.

Developments over the week in Cryptomarket
The Feminine Is Awakening
By: Urszula Humienik
Tags: Inclusion, Liberation, Women, Equality, Rage

The Feminine Is Awakening

And the first order of business is rage

Photo by Hush Naidoo on Unsplash

People aren’t generally used to women’s anger. At least not the glass shattering, lion roar stemming from years of hurt, deep wounds, fissures in the Earth. Women’s anger and rage are needed.

The feminine has been under attack for centuries, and the time’s come for anger and rage. The Earth is covered in storms of never before seen strength and power. The feminine is awakening. And the first order of business is rage.

Rage against the abandonment, mistreatment, abuse, belittling, sexual violence, assaults, harassment, name-calling, and all sorts of ways the feminine is mined for (and undermined of) its resources. Just like the Earth, the female body has endured much abuse.

Women are rising up. And yes, we’re angry — angry every time someone says: you’re exaggerating, you’re too sensitive, that can’t be true, it must be your fault… This list could go on and on and on.

Some of the best meaning people can inflict major damage when they belittle what a woman says or does when they don’t believe her experience, her point of view.

The feminine is inside us all. It’s our life-giving mother, Earth. We need to heal the deep wounds. To start, we must examine our own history of violence against the feminine.

It’s time for balance, but it will be brought about with rage.

Anger and rage are often mistaken for violence. They’re not. They can cause a person to act violently, but they can also inspire great movements.

We’re now in the midst of a great movement — the liberation of the feminine. Today’s world desperately needs the feminine in its entirety. And we’re ready.

Brace yourselves.

*Author’s note:

I use the words women and the feminine not to indicate cis women, but a more umbrella term that is beyond anatomy or social constructs.
Three Money Mindsets That Will Transform You From Hoarder to Investor
By: Aaron Nichols
Tags: Money, Mindfulness, Happiness, Inspiration, Investing

In late March, I threw 90% of my savings into the stock market. I was 27 and had just been evacuated from the Peace Corps, with no job lined up. The world was spiraling deeper into panic mode. The stock market was plummeting.

This was the most uncertain time of my life. I was freaked out. Was I ready to become an investor?

Luckily, I’d trained for this. My financial gods and heroes had drilled “buy low, sell high” into my head until it became a mantra. I gritted my teeth and bought 200 shares of Vanguard’s VTI Index at $122.30 a share.

I checked the price every day after that, for two weeks. Horrible thoughts ran through my head.

“This took you two years to save, what if it all goes away?” “What if this recession is so bad, Vanguard goes out of business?” “What if money ends up losing its value altogether and I’m forced to fight for scraps in the wasteland?”

Spoilers! None of these scenarios happened (this article’s existence may have keyed you in). As I write this, Vanguard’s VTI is trading at $191.30 and has returned $10,554.34 to me since March.

Aaron Nichols Vanguard

This could all go away tomorrow. I’m not writing this to be cocky. I’m writing to tell you why I was prepared and how you can develop mindsets that will allow you to transform from a hard-shelled money-hoarding chrysalis into an investing butterfly when your time comes.

I was in a great position when the market plummeted back in March. I had money saved, and I knew that I was ready to invest. After reading Mr. Money Mustache and discovering the FIRE movement, I came close to investing everything back in August before I left to go traveling. I held off.

When the recession hit, I was in a position to make moves.

These are the mindsets that prepared me (told as a story).
It’s Hard to Bury the First Woman You Ever Loved.
By: Mika Y.
Tags: Life, This Happened To Me, Life Lessons, Relationships, Love

Like many human beings on this earth, I started out with one (1) mother. The same woman whose genes I copied happened to raise me for my first eighteen years of life. Such a person has quite an impact on you, especially since some colourful things happened throughout those eighteen years.

My mom entered the workforce at a time when college was a social requirement. So, being the excellent student she was, my mom went to med school. Many years and one child later, she had a PhD in Pharmacology. Impressive, truly.

But maybe, if she hadn’t married my dad, the next few years might have been more rosy for her. You see, my dad was in the medical program with her, but he decided to become a practising surgeon rather than go into academia. And he loved it. He used surgery to fill the holes left by his fucked-up childhood, a childhood which, I believe, made his marriage a difficult one.

Look, I lived with these fuckers for eighteen years, so I know a thing or two about them even though I don’t know jack shit about anything. And one of the things I notice is that they are seemingly unaware, or just unaccepting, of their own faults. That screws them over because they don’t know how to compensate for something they do not know is at play.

My mom has lingering emotional dependence issues that she carried from a male-dominant, traditional Malay, patriarchal family. And my dad just doesn’t feel things the same way most people do, and thus cannot relate with, let alone care for, another human being in a healthy way. I think he’s had to turn off his soft, fuzzy kind of love to endure all the shit he’s been through. So what we have is a lady who needs constant external reassurance to feel like she’s worth something, paired with a dude who cannot express any of his feelings in a way that connects with anyone.

Maybe it’s just because I’m fucked up, but that last sentence sounds kind of funny right now. I actually chuckle every time I read it.

What’s unequivocally not funny is this: the result of being raised by two troubled parents is – surprise, surprise – troubled kids. Look, I’m not blaming them for anything. At this point, I’m a legal adult and I can handle my own shit. But at the same time, I’m not denying that the parenting environment I was in heavily influenced many of the traits I have today.
Can We Be Free Of Suffering?
By: Andrew Furst
Tags: Life, Self Improvement, Religion

Question: Can we ever be free of suffering?

Response: I’ll answer your question by looking at a slightly different question.

Can we achieve world peace?

I think most people would have to answer no. It’s the practical, realistic answer. Why is that? Well peace is the opposite of (or compliment to) conflict. Can you imagine any point in time where there are living beings and there is no conflict? Each being, having unique and varying interests will invariably come in conflict with others. It will be over resources, love interests, property, right of way, or who gets that last piece of pie.

Even if everyone were enlightened, compassionate, selfless people, conflict would arise. World peace is practically impossible, because peace as a permanent condition is not possible.

Now let’s reflect on the original question in the light of the one on peace. Can we be free of suffering? From a Buddhist perspective, freedom from suffering requires a delicate balance. This balance supports the transcendence of suffering.

But we also must contend with impermanence. All balances are dynamic, and suffering and freedom from it is no exception. Even the great sages have ups and downs, good days, bad days, and so on. We are constantly traversing the stages of dependent arising, moving from suffering to cessation of suffering and back again.

We have to adopt the practical answer to the question. There is no end state of freedom from suffering. It is not a permanent condition. We will suffer on some days and other less so. Can we achieve freedom from suffering? Yes. Will we regress into suffering? Yes. Just like the weather in New England. If you don’t like it, wait 5 minutes.

If you enjoyed this post, please like and share.

Originally published at www.andrewfurst.net on November 2, 2015.
Windblown Sand
By: Paul Mulliner
Tags: Poetry, Philosophy, Poetry On Medium, Life, Self

What thread was woven

to decide,

which dice was thrown,

or compass needle pointed,

casting a direction?

Which restless winds,

blowing sand

could point the way?

What echo entered

into the unknowable

underlying the everyday?

And raised a pointing finger

toward here and now,

today.

What choice was made and when,

that brought our life and heart

to this present moment, now?

Could it be, that every day

our choices weave,

into a living tapestry

of interwoven circumstance,

that vibrates and resonates in a dance,

with chaos and intelligence

in the Universe?

And there’s always windblown sand,

in our heart and in our life?
Spiritual Love, the Greatest Love of All
By: Shirley Willett
Tags: Spiritual Love, Spiritual Saturdays, Nature, Darshak Rana, Universe

Spiritual Saturday

A section from my poetry book, “Do You See What I See?”

After my spiritual awakening in 1975, I began a search to understand Love and its connection to spirituality. In 1985 and writing a poetry book, “Do You See What I See?” I explored many things through poetry that I could not say directly about my inner developing spirituality. “What Is Love?” was a section in my book, and it shows the struggles I was going through, as I defined various kinds of love, from relationships to family to spiritual.

It was when I discovered Spiritual Secrets by Darshak Rana, that I found a home for the meandering spiritual mind that I was deeply involved in studying. When he suggested a prompt of “Spiritual Love” for this Spiritual Saturday, I reflected on “My Greatest Love of All”.

The greatest love of all is deep within my soul.

With an outbreath I release some love-energy.

It mixes with other outbreaths into a harmony –

Of vibrations of love-energy that support the Universe.

In other words Love supports everything else, here and in other worlds. Nature’s Love, even with ups and downs, we must learn to synchronize, as part of the “Greatest Love of All”.

Thanks for reading. My deepest love to all of you.
5 JavaScript Style Guides That Will Have You Coding like a Pro
By: Harsh Patel
Tags: JavaScript, Web Development, Front End Development, Coding, Programming

Nowadays you heard how much JS is used by the top leading IT companies, Whether you’re a pro JS coder or just a beginner you need to be aware of some useful guides. If you do a bit digger dip on the style guide, you find there are N number of style guides out there, which will help you to improve your coding standard because it was well documented by the highly professional developers and they published that as open source. So, the one like us gets to know more. So, I don’t intend to do anything new here but go through the style guide engineers who use Airbnb, Google, the jQuery community, and many other organizations that use them to write beautiful JavaScript code

First thing first Do You Really Need a Style Guide? Yes, you need a strong and perfect style guide because in the same organization your code can be sent to many devs out there for additional changes or improvements. So it should be easily understandable.

Use a standard style guide helps to ensure that the code is easily shared between developers and any new developer can speed up with a piece of code provided in no time. Open-source community communities like jQuery, Dojo, etc make and publish standard style guidelines so that code written by anyone in the community is understood and updated by everyone, as needed, easily.

Let’s start with the most famous and useful JS style guide,

1. Airbnb Style Guide

JavaScript Airbnb style guide is my favorite and I am at the top of my list of all coding style guides. Published by Harrison Shoff of Airbnb back in 2012 as an open-source under MIT license. Airbnb calls it the “most logical JavaScript method”.

Since its release, the Airbnb style guide has gained popularity and is one of the most followed and complete packages of JavaScript encoding standards.

The best thing I like about the Airbnb style guide is that it covers all aspects of JavaScript coding directly from flexible announcement manuals, tasks, events, test code to performance-related tips. For more visit https://github.com/airbnb/javascript
We’re Waves in the Ocean
By: Paul Mulliner
Tags: Self Improvement, Life, Mindfulness, Personal Development, Philosophy

Each one of us is like a wave in an ocean that joins all living beings everywhere throughout the Universe.

We’re not actually separate from each other, we just appear to be.

However, the reality of living in a separate human body is usually so at the center of our mind that it persuades us that our conscious awareness is also separate.

This sense of separation can be dissolved though when we pay attention to the conscious space inside us.
What is a Hash?
By: Anthony Albertorio
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Security, Ethereum

What is a Hash?

… simply explained

What is a Hash?

A hash is the result of taking in an arbitrary set of data/bits (be it a single character, an video, or the entire Library of Congress) and using an algorithm to transform the input into a fixed size output of data/bits, usually a hexadecimal number.

So, regardless of the amount of information that is placed into the hash, you will always get a unique hash of the same length.

Anything goes in and fixed-length hash comes out.

More in-depth, this algorithm is a one-way function that takes in data in one direction and outputs a wildly unique string of hexadecimal numbers on the other. One change in the input data results in a wildly different output string.

It’s very unlikely that you can guess the output of a hash from its input. It’s even less likely that you can guess the input from the fixed-size output.

The same data will always have the same unique hash. However, collisions are unavoidable when working with large data sets. When two inputs have the same hash, this results in a collision.

Not enough room for all the pigeons.

Why do collisions happen? This is explained by the pigeonhole principle. Simply explained, the pigeonhole principle is defined as trying to place n + 1 items (or pigeons) into n spaces (pigeonholes). Logically, there will be at least 1 instance where 2 items (or pigeons) are in the same space. Try doing this with 3 crumbled up pieces of paper (n + 1) and 2 wastebaskets (n). You will find that at least one wastebasket with two pieces of paper.

So, every hash has collusions. However, good hashing algorithms provide make it hard to find such collisions, also known as collision resistance. Collusion resistance does not mean the absence of collisions, just that they are hard to find.

Some people try to break hashing algorithms with brute force attacks, which is basically computer making really fast guesses. This type of attack is called a hash collision attack. As computing gets faster and cheaper the risk of older hashes being successfully attacked becomes more likely, like those found by Google Researchers for the SHA-1 hashing algorithm in 2017.
Rating Agency Targeting Crypto is Laughable — Daily Uncrypt Digest — 1/25/18
By: Will O Leary
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Crypto

Weiss needs to see me after class.

When you tweet about something and wake up thinking about it, you know it was either a pretty damn good tweet (nope) or the topic just demands greater exploration so that we can stomp on some stupidity.

Yesterday, Weiss Ratings, released the first ever ratings report on cryptocurrencies. If you’re not familiar with Weiss, that’s because it’s a company that trails not only market leaders Standard & Poors and Moody’s but Fitch Ratings in an industry that generates a fair amount of eye rolls. As a former employee of S&P (though admittedly not in ratings), Weiss’s attempt at news-making gave me flashbacks I’d prefer to forget.

Reading through Weiss’s comments on different cryptocurrencies shows a student that strolled into school ready to present a book report, only forgetting to glance at the book. Weiss treats coins with a one-size-fits-all approach — Ethereum scores points for doing things that companies do, while Bitcoin suffers because it “has no immediate mechanism for promptly upgrading its software code.”

Financial leaders who have actually taken the time to educate themselves aren’t fooled by Weiss. Ari Paul of BlockTower Capital points out that Weiss’s report “suggests a misunderstanding of the core value proposition of cryptocurrency, however, as they seem to overvalue transaction capacity, and undervalue protocol stability, security, and decentralization.”

The crypto world should be thrilled that traditional finance is taking such a weak stab at institutionalizing crypto — this is how disruption starts. Read the whole article here, courtesy of CNBC.
Study Finds Bad Web Design is Killing Us All With Stress
Tags: Internet, Technology, Web Design, Stress

It’s a devil’s bargain to be a tech tester. Sure, you get to see the latest and greatest things, but you also are essentially being digitally poked and prodded to measure everything. This new study by Cyber Duck UX Agency out of the UK went further with digital torture to measure stress levels.

Participants were placed in front of a website designed (by Cyber Duck) to be filled with some of the worst user experience (UX) elements we encounter online. Images not loading, weird animations, and buttons that don’t work were just a few of the 10 categories.

Each category of web torture had 110 participants, so 1,100 people aged 20 to 58 total were part of the study altogether. Researchers measured each person’s systolic blood pressure (the amount of pressure in arteries during heart contraction) as the participant used one of three of the custom-built sites. Normal blood pressure measures at 90 to 120, elevated is 121 to 129, and hypertensive stage one is 130 to 139. After that, you’re in the high BP category; higher than 180, you’re in crisis. No participant had any known health conditions; they also didn’t have any IT or web UX background.

The results speak for themselves and indicate exactly what you should not do in any website design. The chart above shows the offenders, with the items on the left being the worst. Slow-loading pages (taking 8.8 to 10.5 seconds to fully load) caused a 21% spike in blood pressure, while multiple pop-ups and auto-play music were almost as bad, causing a 20% increase each. Items such as 404 broken pages and non-clickable buttons were just middling annoyances in comparison.

Other problems include multiple image sliders-so slideshow carousels weren’t that bad, huh?-causing a 10% increase in blood pressure and disorienting animations at a mere 5% increase.

So clearly, if you want to murder someone, find them the slowest webpage full of pop-ups and make them surf.

For an interactive version of the chart above, see below. You can blow it up to full-screen size for easier reading, to spare yourself a little stress.
A Glimmer of Hope for One Young Man
By: Paul Kist
Tags: Rehabilitation, Homeless Youth, Education, Kenya

My last trip here, working with Maboyz, I made mention of 3 younger guys, who were basically kids, living on the street. Of the three, we’ll call him “Tony”, has gotten off the streets, while the other two are still not ready. I saw one of the ones who still lives behind the local mall and he looked terrible. He’s running away from people and I don’t blame him, can he really trust anyone to help him? After all the abuse and neglect he’s suffered through in his life. As he explains it, he’s just more comfortable where he is.

It’s so hard to see those who aren’t ready to make that step out; it’s all in time.

Tony is shining bright like the sun! He’s like a different person from when I met him. We spent the last two days working on some posters for this big AIDS Day rally tomorrow. Such a sweet spirit that kid has, and such a determination. When he speaks about what he wants for his life, there is power and fierceness in his eyes. It will not be easy, but I believe he can make it, if he stays his course.

Making posters for World AIDS Day march in Nairobi

They say the likelihood of a youth in a developing nation to get off the streets is close to impossible, but my friend Chris told me on my first trip, that when working with these kids, the only thing that can limit them is our expectation of them. That we have to dream big and hope for the best, I’ve stuck by his words, and I’m not quitting.

The young man shines today, and on Saturday, we’ll take him for his first school interview, in the nearby lake town of Naivasha. Say a prayer, send positive energy, and transmit some good vibrations towards this part of the world. I saw another old friend today, he also stays with the other one, behind the mall and he didn’t look so good either.

I guess we can’t make changes unless we’re ready to.

That goes with everything. The first time I quit smoking, it lasted maybe 7 days? I knew deep down that it wasn’t the time, yet, even though part of me wanted to quit, it just wasn’t happening.

And the days continue on, and we’ll see what happens.
Merchants can reduce transaction processing costs by 70% with crypto payments
Tags: Payments, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Crypto

For the sake of simplicity, we will look at transactions made in bitcoin. The average bitcoin transaction needs 6 confirmations from miners to process. Depending on traffic on the bitcoin network, this can take anywhere from 15 to 90 minutes. As block confirmation is determined by the network, the likelihood of a quicker confirmation can be increased by raising the mining fee. This is a small reward offered to miners on the network to perform the first confirmation. Historic mining fees can be viewed here, and in April ranged between $0.20 and $2.15.

The bitcoin transaction process is as follows:

1. Once the payment is initiated from the customer’s to the merchant’s wallet, the transaction goes into a pool of unconfirmed transactions.

2. Bitcoin miners, distributed across the globe, will choose a transaction from this pool and put it into a block of transactions.

3. The miners then solve a cryptographic puzzle (Proof-of-Work). This requires computing power (and thus electricity) for the miner, hence the incentive of a transaction fee for processing. This mining fee is a flat fee that isn’t dependent on the size of the transaction.

4. The transaction is then confirmed by other agents on the Bitcoin Network.

5. The block is then added to the blockchain, finalizing this process. The merchant will now have the bitcoin payment that has been confirmed to not be double spent.

But what about volatility?

One of the primary concerns for merchants is the volatility of cryptocurrencies. After all, the $990 worth of bitcoin that they receive today might be worth more or less tomorrow. Depending on how risk averse the merchant is, there are a few scenarios to consider:

The merchant holds onto the bitcoin, converting it to fiat at a later date. The merchant immediately converts the bitcoin into fiat currency. This will incur a fee of 1% + $0.15. See our last article for the table laying out these fees. The merchant immediately converts the bitcoin into a stablecoin that is nominally pegged to a fiat currency, such as Tether. This helps to address the volatility issue, but stablecoins do have their own problems.

Payment processor CoinGate launched a pilot program for Lightning Network (LN) payments last summer and now allows LN payments on all stores that use its payment gateway. LN allows for near-instant transfers of bitcoin and litecoin without requiring the normal network confirmations.

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Blockdata offers a new way to understand the digital economy, starting with blockchain. We publish objective information about the companies, projects, products, and tokens that comprise the blockchain ecosystem. It was founded in 2018 by three friends frustrated by the cumbersome process of conducting blockchain research.

For more information, please contact hello@blockdata.tech or request a demo.
The World As Their Witness
By: Special Olympics
Tags: Nonprofit, Weddings, Iceland, Engagement

Special Olympics Iceland Media Coordinator, Jon Bjorn Olafsson announces that two of our SO Iceland athletes got engaged at our World Games Opening Ceremony on Saturday!

“Shortly after the Icelandic Delegation had marched through the Kallimarmaro Panathinaiko Stadium during the Opening Ceremony at the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Athens Gudmundur Bjornsson and Aslaug Thorsteinsdottir had a surprise. Once the Icelandic Delegation was seated and other nations still marching into the ancient arena Gudmundur and Aslaug went into their pockets bringing out their brand new engagement rings. The inspiring speech of Mr. Shriver and the silky smooth duet of Vanessa Williams and Steve Wonder during the Opening Ceremony were memorable but the memory of Gudmundur and Aslaug and their little act of love will long be cherished by the Icelandic Delegation. It almost goes without saying that this engagement is a record breaking event in Icelandic engagement history, the couple got engaged during the Opening Ceremony of the biggest sporting event in the world. As all athletes the couple are in Athens to take part in something special and they will have to wait a while longer to celebrate their commitment together as they are separated in two different sports during the Games. Gudmundur in Bocce whilst his wife to be competes in Bowling.”

Check out the photo — CONGRATS Gudmundur and Aslaug!
Volatility of Fiat Currency Versus Bitcoin
By: Mike Co
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Money, Economy, Economics

Volatility: liability to change rapidly and unpredictably, especially for the worse.

Otherwise known as the Fear Index when applied to the S&P 500, volatility is defined in finance as the degree of variation of a trading price series over time as measured by the standard deviation of logarithmic returns. A measurement of violent price movements in a given asset, volatility correlates with and causes tectonic shifts across the Global Economy.

When investors are fearful, their actions tend to become erratic and illogical. While there is a maniacal focus on S&P 500 Volatility, a powerful metric of Global Uncertainty can be measured across Foreign Exchange volatility. Currency volatility can indicate turbulence and uncertainty in a given country, and the general world economy. Sometimes the trigger can be as simple as an erratic big fish swimming in a shallow pool of liquidity; Such as in the case of the AUDUSD and USDJPY flash crash of January 2019, which followed the S&P 500’s worst decline in a decade.

As a corollary for uncertainty, volatility can indicate and exacerbate financial meltdown and erode faith in an country’s economy. More importantly, such violent price moves can negatively affect the lives of millions of people and businesses within such an economy. While the 2019 flash crash in Yen and the Australian dollar was a mere 4% crash in a few minutes, such a seemingly minor drop can wreak havoc on the balance of the global economy.
Knowing the Universe
By: Paul Mulliner
Tags: Mindfulness, Meditation, Personal Development, Spirituality, Philosophy

photo by Kevin Noble on Unsplash

Knowing the Universe

Dissolving into the conscious space

We can sometimes find a calm awareness inside us, an inner space with a universal quality, something that seems to exist inside all of us.

Finding this calm inner space is useful to us. The realization of universal consciousness brings with it a sense that we’re part of something much larger than our everyday life might suggest.

It reminds us that we’re the human expressions of a conscious intelligence that exists throughout the Universe.

We’re the living expressions of a cosmic intelligence that’s transforming itself into the precisely orchestrated biochemistry of our bodies, allowing us to live life as a human being.

Whenever we want to, we can tune into and access the transformative power of this cosmic consciousness inside all of us. The universal conscious awareness has an unlimited capacity for change and evolution.

We can find an intuitive realization of the presence of this spatial conscious awareness, whenever we inwardly focus our attention.

In our busy everyday world, we can sometimes lose touch with the spaciousness inside us that allows us to realize this cosmic connection, and find ourselves getting snagged up in our thinking.

We’re not our thoughts about ourself however, we’re the universal conscious space in all of us that’s giving rise to thoughts. Our thinking appears in this universal space and tugs at our attention, distracting us from being consciously present.

Sometimes these thoughts can separate us from other people, tell us we’re separate from the world or make us unhappy in some way.

When we can tune in to an unlimited source of inspiration and intelligence inside ourselves, however, we don’t need to think ourselves into being unhappy, hurt or diminished by our everyday life experiences.

Tuning in helps us bounce back from unfortunate circumstances and makes us more resilient.

We can reach into the inner conscious space with our attention, and it dissolves us into itself. We can realize and know the cosmic space as one conscious awareness in all of us.

Knowing this unlimited cosmic intelligence inside ourselves, helps us find the intuition and insight to change our life for the better, if we need to.

Consciousness in all space is transforming cosmic energy into clusters of tiny resonances inside the living cells of our body, like three-dimensional music.

This conscious cosmic space looks through all of us and sees itself, appearing as a world. We’re consciousness in the Universe transforming itself into living beings.

We can reconnect every day with this cosmic awareness inside all of us.
A Marxist in Love
By: Aigner Loren Wilson
Tags: Sexuality, Beauty, Philosophy, Relationships, LGBTQ

Nothing breaks me more than a Marxist in love or out of love, which is usually the case. Those bastards who see any eye of affection as a blind one. Those up-all nighter’s who fear any form of want. Maybe it’s not fear but some other insidious emotion that makes them withdraw with horror.

You, fine young cannibals, make me want nothing more but to fix the things that keep you from me, but I ain’t no Superman, handyman, clean up your mess man, I’m just a queer soul looking.

I don’t want to mess with that casual effort of hiding how close I want you. I need to be able to say it without fear, and you can’t give me that, I know, but I want it anyway, so maybe that’s why you give me nothing.
How to Set Up End-to-End Encryption in an iOS App Using Apple’s CryptoKit
By: Matheus Cardoso
Tags: Programming, Mobile, Cryptography, iOS, Security

Step 2. Encrypting Data

To encrypt data for a user (recipient) you need to first fetch their public key from the trusted service.

The initializer Curve25519.KeyAgreement.PublicKey(rawRepresentation: Data) can be used to deserialize the public key coming from the trusted service.

Step 2.1 Deriving a symmetric key

Public keys can’t be used to encrypt data directly. They’re used by the two parties communicating to agree on a symmetric key for encryption, via a Diffie-Hellmann key agreement. To do this, we will use the sender’s private key and the recipient’s public key to generate a shared secret from which we can derive the symmetric key using the HKDF key derivation function.

The protocol salt is a value that alters the outcome of the symmetric key derivation. Choose one that will remain constant for your use case, for example: "My Key Agreement Salt".data(using: .utf8)! . If you wish, you can store this symmetric key for later using the same strategy Apple recommends for the private key; however, it should be discarded if any of the communicating users' key pairs change.

Step 2.2 Encrypting the data with the symmetric key

Now we can finally use that symmetric key to perform the encryption. This job can be done by one of the ciphers CryptoKit supports. In this guide, we’ll use ChaChaPoly, which can be three times faster than AES in mobile devices, according to Adam Langley and other researchers.
These Are My Marching Orders
By: Lizzie Finn
Tags: Self Improvement, Healing, Happiness, Life Lessons, Self

I had to learn many lessons the hard way. My pain, heartache, and tears transformed me into the person I am now — a person who no longer accepts things that are intolerable to my soul.

I have become a warrior determined to build a healthier, happier, more conscious world.

We all have a role to play in this radically shifting times. And we must all contribute in ways that feel best for us, and match our skills, desires, talents, gifts, passions, and purpose. This is not a one-size-fits-all scenario.

We thrive when we listen to the beat of our own unique drummers.

Change doesn’t require us all to march in the streets. External change always begins with internal changes. The most impactful work we can do in the world is the work we do on ourselves.

This requires we march first in our minds, hearts, and souls. Then we can follow our moral compass and stand up and march for what we believe is right, and align ourselves with people who share these values.

To me, MARCHING is about having a steadfast values system — and knowing where you are willing to make sacrifices and compromises — and where you definitely are not.
คนจะรวยช่วยไม่ได้ !!! มา Trade หุ้นด้วย Machine Learning กันเถอะ !!!
By: Peerat Pookpanich
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Stocks, Time Series Forecasting, Lstm

This publication consists of articles related to Data science and AI written from Botnoi’s data scientists and students.

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MySQL Best Practices
Tags: Programming, Sql, Data Science, MySQL, Database

MySQL Best Practices

How to write SQL queries that you can read after 6 months

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There is no doubt that writing code is more art than science. Not every coder can write beautiful code that is both readable and maintainable, even with experience.

In general, coding improves with experience when you learn the art of coding, like favoring composition over inheritance or coding for interface than implementation, but only a few developers able to master these techniques.

The same applies to SQL queries. The way you structure your query and the way you write it go a long way to communicate your intent to your fellow developers.

Whenever I see SQL queries in emails from multiple developers, I can see the stark difference in their writing style. Some developers write it neatly and indent their query properly, which makes it easy to spot the key details, e.g., which columns you are extracting from which table and what the conditions are.

In real-life projects, SQL queries are hardly one-liners. Learning the right way to write SQL queries makes a lot of difference when you read them yourself later or share that query with someone for review or execution.

In this article, I am going to show you a couple of styles that I have tried in the past, their pros and cons, and what I think is the best way to write SQL queries.

Unless you have a good reason not to use my style, like you have a better style or you want to stick with the style used in your project (consistency overrules everything), there is no reason not to use it.

By the way, I expect that you are familiar with SQL and know different clauses and their meaning in a SQL query. If you’re not, it’s better you gain some experience with SQL by joining a good online course like the following:

These are two courses I highly recommend to SQL beginners. They are great courses and teach you SQL basics.

It’s time to examine a couple of ways to write SQL queries and find out which one is the best way to express intent in quickly.