fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Let Me Love You
By: Estrella Ramirez
Tags: Poetry, Healing, Twin Flame, Love, Vulnerability

Let Me Love You

A Poem

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Some days are harder than others

the way you push me away,

it hurts.

I’m open to you as

your favorite book,

to have and to

hold.

To read

to your heart's content.

But you, my darling, feel so closed.

Do I know you at all?

I thought I did.

Or was what I thought I knew,

just my projection

of who you are to me.

This doesn’t have to be so hard.

Just let me love you,

for all you are.

The good, the bad,

and every part

that you’re afraid of.

Because the only thing

that frightens me in this life

is living it without you.
Lost | Poem#5
By: M. Mollenthiel
Tags: Poetry, Literature, Fiction, Poem, Writing

There is a point at which I drown within myself; within my thoughts.

It is as if a cloud is hanging over me,

waiting to consume the cerebrations of collapsed limitations.

Trying to push, but falter under the bellows of an unknown…

A thing

It comes, then goes. Taunting me with pusillanimous edges.

Where am I? What’s become of me? Who am I?

Irrelevant questions where upon asking,

I am aware of their stupidity, yet still, I ask.

I suppose I am myself to blame.

Who else could it be?

This ghastly and corpulent impudence.

So I fight whence it came, but stop,

suddenly, halfway — confused…

Wishful thinking.
They try to fix me
Tags: Self Love, Poetry, Life, Self, Poem

Welcome to Lit Up -The Land of Little Tales. Here you can read and submit short stories, flash fiction, poetry - in brief, your own legend. We're starting little. But that's how all big stories begin.

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Apache Zeppelin for SQL Server 0.7.1
By: Davide Mauri
Tags: Apache Zeppelin, Data Visualization, Azure Dw, Sql Server, Azure Sql

Apache Zeppelin for SQL Server 0.7.1

Updated to match the latest Apache Zeppelin release

During this weekend I’ve updated the SQL Server version of Apache Zeppelin to match the latest released version 0.7.1.

Source code is in GitHub as usual. I also changed branch and tag naming to match the same used by Apache Zeppelin main repository. So now you can find “branch-0.7” where all work related to 0.7 version is done.

Each time a 0.7 version is released, a tag is used to tag the released version. In this case it’s 0.7.1

the master branch is always updated with the latest released version.

I’ve done so because, since I’m now quite confident with Zeppelin development, I would like to make the SQL Server interpreter part of the official distribution. I’ll work on this for the next release.

Both the Docker image and the Binary release has been updated too.

Docker Image

https://hub.docker.com/r/yorek/zeppelin-sqlserver/

Docker images followed the same name change done on GitHub, and if you want to get the latest development image for version 0.7 you just have to ask for the branch-0.7

yorek/zeppelin-sqlserver:branch-0.7

while if you want to get the image of the latest released 0.7 version, you can go for

yorek/zeppelin-sqlserver:v0.7.1

if you just want to have the latest released image of the latest available version, just will go with

yorek/zeppelin-sqlserver:latest

Windows 10

As told in one of the last post, it’s also possible to use Apache Zeppelin on Windows 10. The only problem I’ve found so far is that the python interpreter is not working as expected. Beside this, everything else works just fine.

The binaries are available here:

Enjoy!
How to Cut Your Time to Retirement by 5 Years
By: U-Ming Lee
Tags: Money, Retirement, Finance, Investing, Financial Planning

However, the 4% rule may not be a realistic depiction of retirees’ behaviour

The ubiquity of the 4% rule begs the question: does it square up with peoples’ actual retirement experience? I’m a little suspicious that the 4% rule doesn’t work as a blanket rule.

As many people with aged family members might tell you, seniors actually tend to spend less on most things as they age.

My mom’s an example of this phenomenon. She’ll be 80 next July. She’s still healthy and can live independently.

She doesn’t eat as much as she did in her younger years as her appetite’s not what it used to be. She says her taste buds aren’t that sensitive anymore, so she feels less motivated to go out to eat than she used to. So, her food bills are way down from where they used to be.

My aunts — my mom’s sisters — are the same. When they go out, they go someplace affordable, and they tend to order smaller meals than younger family members. They view going out as a chance to catch up with one another instead of fussing too much about the quality of the food.

Also, they go to places they enjoy near their homes. Thus, they spend less on fuel than they used to. My mom, for instance, only re-fuels once every two months.

They don’t feel like they need to impress anyone, so they spend less on clothing than they did.

The statistics suggest they aren’t outliers in their frugal ways. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey (“CES”), which surveys American households’ incomes and expenditures, the same pattern of decreasing spending with age can be seen.

According to the CES in 2013, overall expenditures drop with age. Expenditure peaks at $60,524 per year in the 45–54 year age group, falling to $55,892 (55–64), $46,757 (65–74), and $34,382 (75 and above).

Spending on items like food, housing, transportation, clothing, and entertainment drops substantially in each older age group. Spending on health rises — as we might expect — but not enough to offset falls in spending in the other categories.

Further, this trend isn’t restricted to the US. The UK’s Office for National Statistics data shows the same result. In 2018, families headed by 30–49 year-olds spent £666.30 per week. The equivalent spending for households headed by 75-year olds, and above, was approximately half, at £336.10 per week.
Rudolph’s Wonderings
By: Sabine Vekemans
Tags: Poetry, Scribe, Rudolph, Hope, Scribexmas

Rudolph’s Wonderings

A poem

Foto door Barry Tan via Pexels

Rudolph

started his day

moping downtown

around a Christmas Tree

just after having checked in

at his Airbnb

His red nose

glistening even more

than on ordinary days

Scratching his antlers

in disbelief

over this mystery

He’d traveled all this way

out of his beloved snow

to get caught

in this drizzling rain

What had happened

to all the festivities

Having lived off the grid

for a year

high up the North

He could only wonder

about this lack

of seasonal activity

Where were they

the Christmas Carolers

in the shopping streets

and the children

dancing with sparkles

in their eyes

As Rudolph

wandered down

the empty roads

passing closed stores

one by one

his heart sank

Is this how

mankind

had evolved

In isolation

of each other

of communal gathering

By now

Rudolph was tearing up

with compassion

for these human creatures

without the magic

to warm their hearts

Feeling gloomy about

his contribution this year

he trodded

into suburbia

dreading the spirit there

even more

But to his surprise

all around

were twinkling lights

dangling in doorways

and from the roof gutters

spreading joyous vibes

Behind the windows

of each house

his beloved Christmas Trees

radiating

the message of

hope, love, and light

Peeking inside

stirred his heart even more

small gatherings

of family or dear friends

iP’s put aside

gathered around tables

For board games

and heartfelt conversations

so long yearned for

but put off

because of the speed

of modern times

Blessed be

the children of this earth

Rudolph thought

There is hope

for a better world

after all

With a jittery hop

and satisfied heart

Rudolph headed back

to his Air for the night

A Merry Christmas indeed

Ho Ho Ho

©️ Sabine Vekemans 2020. All Rights Reserved.

What a wonderful challenge Thomas, thank you! I had so much fun writing.
The Most Common Questions K12 Educators Have About Design — Maker Spaces and Design Thinking
By: Ariel Raz
Tags: Makerspaces, Education, K12, Design Thinking, K12 Education

In this second article in the Q&A series we’ll talk about how to integrate maker spaces and design thinking. Responses are from Sandee Bisson, Maker Educator at The Brandeis School of San Francisco and edited by the Stanford d.school. You can read more from Sandee on her Make Wonder blog.

Can you help me understand the intersection of making, maker spaces, and design thinking?

I think of design thinking as the engine that drives our K-8 maker education program. My classes talk about design thinking a lot, but we don’t go through the whole cycle for every project, there’s just not time. Within each step of design thinking there lives dozens of discrete skills that, when thoughtfully taught and practiced, help our students to become better problem finders, problem solvers, and global citizens. Empathy is a big one. Yet it is a hard concept for many adults, and, undoubtedly, for a six year old. We practice empathy in how we ask each other questions about our work, in how we listen to each other, and in how we interact with books that inspire our projects. We practice empathy by examining our own biases and by becoming more aware of how they affect our ability to truly be present for others. Practicing empathy with fictional characters, stuffed animals, or puppets makes the idea more accessible and tangible for younger students.

Making allows students to take their ideas and give them form and shape. Design thinking empowers them to make things that matter.

Generally, I try to pair one or more aspect of design thinking with each big maker project we undertake during the school year. Last spring, I offered an elective to design and build a model shipping container home community. We used our brainstorming skills repeatedly with this elective: first when we were thinking about the placement of container homes within the community, then when thinking of the utilities and amenities for the community, and again when designing the interiors of our individual homes. Prototyping and testing are constantly at play in our maker space. I have many students who are perfectionists, and through this process, learn that their creations are not expected to be perfect and complete the first time around. This is liberating for them and it frees them from being afraid to take risks they might not have otherwise attempted. I aim to do a more extensive designing thinking project, one that goes through the whole cycle and tackles an authentic problem, every other year or so.

A wide view of the shipping container prototypes.

I am not really sure how to separate design thinking and making. The two are so intertwined. Making allows students to take their ideas and give them form and shape. Design thinking empowers them to make things that matter. In our maker space, the marriage of the two has resulted in students who love to create and who see the challenges of our world as things they have the power to change.

Re-visit our first article of the Q&A series.
Dart: Different types of functions in Dart To Help You Write Your Flutter app.
By: Tiya Chows
Tags: Flutter App Development, Software Development, Software Engineering, Programming, Flutter

Dart: Different types of functions in Dart To Help You Write Your Flutter app. Tiya Chows Follow Sep 18 · 2 min read

A quick low down on the different types Dart functions you might come across.

Types of functions:

void functions e.g

void greeting() {

print(‘hello’);

}

2. functions with a return type e.g

String greeting() {

return ‘Hello’;

}

3. functions that take parameters

i. mandatory parameters e.g

void greeting(@required String greeting){

print(greeting);

}

ii. optional parameters

optional positional parameter e.g

void details([int telephone]) {...}

optional named parameter e.g

void details({String firstName, String lastName}) {...}

optional parameter with default values e.g

void details({int age: 30}) {...}

a function with all possible types of parameters:

void details (int id, [int telephone],{String firstName, String lastName}, {int age: 30}) {...}

and you could call it with:

details(1001) details(1001, 078787878787, firstName: John, lastName: Ham, age: 50)

4. Getters and Setters

Special methods that provide read and write access to an object’s properties.

class Car {

String make; Car({this.make}); String get make => make; void set make(String name) => make = name; }

to call:

Car myCar = Car(‘Porsche’); print(myCar.make);

Different Function declarations:

Regular function e.g

void greeting {

print(‘hello’);

}

2. Lambda function/arrow function is a short form of a regular function that can only return one expression. (Arrows instead of curly brackets). e.g
Invisibilize Data With JavaScript
By: Mahdhi Rezvi
Tags: Technology, JavaScript, Programming, Encryption, Web Development

Both images are the same. Or are they?

No, they aren’t. The image on the right is the original image while the image on the left has been encrypted with a secret message(Top and Bottom if you are using the Medium application)

Feel free to download the above image and use it in the demo link I have attached below. Try reading the secret text from the file.

CryptoStego Demo link.

Amazing isn’t it. It looks exactly the same to the human eye, but contains a secret message! This is possible due to something called Steganography.

What is Steganography?

It is the art and science of hiding messages or other secret information in a bunch of carrier information. This is not something new. It has been practiced since ancient times. Letters containing text with secret ink is an example of Steganography. We all remember the science experiment where we created invisible ink. That is a form of Steganography too.

In this article, we will speak about modern-day Steganography.
Measuring the weight of clouds
By: Rob Cullen
Tags: Resistance Poetry, Free Verse Poetry, Ecology And Environment, Climate Change, Environment

foto©robcullen02102020.

fotocredit©fionacullen150819.

…

He stands, watching steam rise

from the boiling water of the open pan,

and clasps his hands together

to catch a cloud of steam somehow.

And it is moments like these,

men in their madness dream

of measuring the weight of clouds.

…

The man stands, his mouth wide open,

and tries to catch a cloud of steam.

A black blind owl sits in a tree,

listening with care to the words of the man

standing above the boiling pan.

This wise bird can clearly hear

each movement the man makes

to grasp and gather a cloud of steam,

and it is at times like these

that man becomes dangerous.

…

On the mountains top,

a child lies on her back in the grass,

watching clouds stream past,

the effortless changing forms,

and sees to the time ahead,

when oceans seas will rise

and cover the land again.

Men stand watching steam rise

from the boiling water of the open pan

and see nothing, hear nothing,

not even the sound of time,

breathing hot breath

at the back of their necks.

…

And while the flames burn,

And the sea waters rise,

it is at times like these,

life is on edge -.

measuring the weight of clouds.

…

©robcullen02102020.

foto©robcullen02102020.

And so the land gets drier — tinder dry —

and the wood litter builds,

the hot winds blow,

hotter than a blacksmiths bellows

…

And the rains stop falling

the rain stopped falling

long, long ago

and what then

…

what happens

when the lightning sparks the blaze

or the drunken fools light a fire

and its out of control

…

the wind keeps blowing

and the rain doesn’t fall

and what then…?

what then…?

…

all we’re left with is who to blame

and we are the ones to blame

what then?

…

©robcullen051020.

fotocredit©fionacullen150819.

fotocredit©fionacullen150819.

fotocredit©fionacullen150819.

fotocredit©fionacullen150819.
Capital Has Wounded Me
By: Catrina Daimon Lee
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Poetry, Justice, Culture, Poem

Capital Has Wounded Me

Culture is oppression

Photo by doorkeepers on Unsplash

Capital has wounded me

The state is its gun

I am forever bleeding

The day I was born till now

Culture is oppression

The vague disease of your faith

All people want to disembowel all other peoples

For power or for race

For skin, for race, for sex not the same

Me against you, seeking who to blame
How much left?. If you don’t leave the time to do what…
By: Joseph Emmi
Tags: Life Lessons, Mindfulness, Life, Time, Journal

If you don’t leave the time to do what matters to you, no one else will. I an ever noise and fast moving world, where days, at times seem to carry you along the week without even you noticing.

At least that’s how I’ve been feeling the last couple of days, where no matter how much I try to leave on the side and focus on the important, there’s something that happens to eat my time. Like no matter what I do there’s never enough to be spent on the right things. Why?

I don’t know, but I will keep asking this until I find. because the last thing I want to do, is to continue to be carried by it until there’s nothing left…
TV-TWO: Early May Update. Just A Few Weeks To Go!
Tags: Television, Ethereum, ICO, Bitcoin, Blockchain

So you’ll have seen the announcement that we will start the TV-TWO token sale and pre-sale distribution on 24 May. We’ve had some great support from our community, so we just want to say a quick thank you to all of you who appreciate the lengths we’re going to create the Future of Television! We want the ICO to begin in an ideal market situation, and the bulls are already returning!

So much has been happening and if you’ve seen recent updates, you’ll know that not only have we been growing our increasingly impressive roster of advisors — welcome Christopher Obereder, Philip Rottschäfer, Cody Lamson, and Harold Kim! — we’ve also been

perfecting the product, doing our bit to create even more buzz, and pitching like crazy.

Our four new advisors!

It feels like things are finally paying off. Our Telegram community is now over 10,000 subscribers, our ratings are improving, and we even scooped a €25,000 prize at last month Crypto Conference in Berlin.

So what’s next? Well, for one we’ll keep pushing product development forward. We’ve already overcome the Ethereum blockchain’s scalability issues by using µRaiden; have implemented an incentivized survey system for the proof of attention; and launched a test user base for product feedback — which is already earning tokens on the Kovan Testnet.

Take a look at our latest product demo here: https://tv-two.com/documents/TV-TWO_Demo.mp4
Ensemble Learning Relation With Bias and variance
By: Ashish Patel
Tags: Bias Variance Tradeoff, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Ensemble Learning, Ml Research Lab

Ensemble learning series…!!!

Hey Folks, After so long i am coming back again here with most important and demanding topic of machine learning which will give you how to design proper model for production.So, I thought to write whole series of Ensemble learning. after reading this series you know

What is Ensemble learning and relation with Bias and variance.

Ensemble learning types with practical example.

We try to cover deep learning with ensemble learning integration in this series. So Stay tuned.

In this article, We discuss the bias and variance relation with ensemble learning. So let’s Begin….!!!

Ensemble learning Series — (Happy Learning…!!!)
Coronavirus: Varför du måste handla nu
By: Tomas Pueyo
Tags: 1st, Coronavirus

If you want to receive more articles from me, subscribe to my newsletter.

Translations below. For the updated list, see the bottom of the original article.

French

Spanish

Italian

German

Portuguese (and alternative version and another on)

Traditional Chinese

Simplified Chinese

Bulgarian

Russian

Turkish

Ukrainian

Czech

Slovakian

Greek

Arabic

Norwegian

Vietnamese

Catalan

Hungarian

Mongolian

Lithuanian

Serbian

Estonian

Persian

Polish (and alternative translation)

Romanian (partial translation)

Hebrew (alternative translation outside of Medium, for Hebrew formatting)

Special call out for Argentina, diving into its numbers, as an early warning
Productivity Apps Won’t Make You More Productive
By: Itxy Lopez
Tags: Self Improvement, Life, Self, Productivity, Work

As someone who works from home, I’m continually looking for ways to improve my productivity.

For the past three years, I’ve tried productivity apps like To-doist, Wonderish, Trello, different types of calendars, reminder apps, and more.

Not one productivity app made me a more productive person.

I thought there was something wrong with me. It wasn’t the apps; I was lazy. But then I bought a (real) calendar, and I realized there was nothing wrong with me — I’m just not a digital person.

A note before we start: Productivity apps might work you

This article isn’t about how productivity apps don’t work.

I know some people have been able to work more or organize their time better with apps. Every person is different.

However, if you’re like me, and you’ve tried a bunch of apps because none of them work for you, digital might not be your answer.

You’re not a lost cause. You just haven’t found what works for you yet, but you will.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Why productivity apps won’t make you more productive

I have one main problem with productivity apps: They’re on my phone, and phones are distracting.

I leave my phone upstairs when I work so that I don’t get distracted.

However, when I’d use a productivity app to keep my to-do list, I would keep my phone beside me to check what I had to do next and what not.

Since my phone is right beside my laptop for easy access, it’s just as easy to open another app and get distracted quickly.

I could keep my phone flipped down, so I didn’t glance at it every time the screen lit up with a new notification, but at some point, I’d have to flip it back around to go to my to-do list app.

If notifications littered my screen, I was going to check them.
MCE OF LaDMA PRESENTS COMPUTERS TO RANGOON CLUSTER OF SCHOOLS
Tags: Education, Edtech

MCE OF LaDMA PRESENTS COMPUTERS TO RANGOON CLUSTER OF SCHOOLS

In order to promote ICT in schools, Hon. Rita Odoley Sowah donated 10 computers, 2 printers and 4 UPS to Rangoon cluster of schools in the La Dade-Kotopon Municipality. The donation forms part of the MCE’s commitment in raising the standard of education in the municipality.

Before the presentation, the MCE had visited the school and had been informed of the school problems. Presenting the items, the MCE said the key to a successful story of any person who wants to make it in life is education and that is the hallmark for every government to transform its economy for a better future. According to the MCE, it has been her dream to provide every school in the municipality with a Information Communication Technology (ICT) laboratory.

The MCE promised that she would make sure the dilapidated school block will be renovated and be equipped with modern teaching and learning materials. Thanking the MCE for the gesture, Mrs. Bernice A. Addae, the municipal director of education said the donation of the ICT equipment was very timely because most of the schools study ICT without computers. She urged the pupils to put the items into good use.
Plotting a Line Chart With Tooltips Using React and D3.js
Tags: JavaScript, D3js, Data Visualization, Programming, React

Plotting the Chart

We will now be adding the logic to draw the chart. Let us define some constants first inside the drawChart() function.

const margin = { top: 50, right: 50, bottom: 50, left: 50 }; const yMinValue = d3.min(data, d => d.value);

const yMaxValue = d3.max(data, d => d.value); const xMinValue = d3.min(data, d => d.label);

const xMaxValue = d3.max(data, d => d.label);

Here we are adding the SVG element as well as the tooltip element:

const svg = d3

.select('#container')

.append('svg')

.attr('width', width + margin.left + margin.right)

.attr('height', height + margin.top + margin.bottom)

.append('g')

.attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`); const tooltip = d3

.select('#container')

.append('div')

.attr('class', 'tooltip');

We select the #container element and append an SVG inside it and a g element to group other SVG elements, and translate it, leaving the left and top margins. We also append a div element which will contain our tooltipContent .

Let us define the axes scales and the line/path generator next:

const xScale = d3

.scaleLinear()

.domain([xMinValue, xMaxValue])

.range([0, width]); const yScale = d3

.scaleLinear()

.range([height, 0])

.domain([0, yMaxValue]); const line = d3

.line()

.x(d => xScale(d.label))

.y(d => yScale(d.value))

.curve(d3.curveMonotoneX);

d3.scaleLinear() maps any given number within the given domain to the given range. These scales will help us find the positions/coordinates on the graph for each data item.

Now let’s draw the gridlines (you can skip this if you want to), the X-axis, and the Y-axis as well as the data line:

svg

.append('g')

.attr('class', 'grid')

.attr('transform', `translate(0,${height})`)

.call(

d3.axisBottom(xScale)

.tickSize(-height)

.tickFormat(''),

); svg

.append('g')

.attr('class', 'grid')

.call(

d3.axisLeft(yScale)

.tickSize(-width)

.tickFormat(''),

); svg

.append('g')

.attr('class', 'x-axis')

.attr('transform', `translate(0,${height})`)

.call(d3.axisBottom().scale(xScale).tickSize(15)); svg

.append('g')

.attr('class', 'y-axis')

.call(d3.axisLeft(yScale)); svg

.append('path')

.datum(data)

.attr('fill', 'none')

.attr('stroke', '#f6c3d0')

.attr('stroke-width', 4)

.attr('class', 'line')

.attr('d', line);

First, we append another group of SVG elements that will contain the gridlines along the Y-axis. We set the tickFormat as empty strings because we don’t want any labels drawn with them. The height of these gridlines is set equal to the height of the chart, but we add the — so that they are drawn above the axisBottom and not below it. Similarly, we draw the gridlines along the X-axis.

Next, we draw the actual axes as well as append the line path. At this point, you have already created the line chart!
Unleash an Avalanche of Insights with Snowflake and Tableau
By: Orlando Perez
Tags: Tableau, Analytics, Data Visualization, Big Data, Snowflake

Modern Data Architecture means enabling companies for faster, easier and more flexible access to the massive amounts of data that the most innovative organizations now treat as strategic assets. Slalom‘s signature interactive approach, combined with the wealth of modern SaaS platforms at our fingertips, is a sure bet for intelligence everywhere.

the challenge

A Data Warehouse is meant to be a single source of integrated historical data derived from many different sources and data formats. As a central component of Business Intelligence, a Data Warehouse enables enterprises to support a wide range of business decisions, including product pricing, business expansion, and investment in new production methods.

Cloud Computing represents a switch for businesses from a traditional on-premise IT infrastructure to utilizing computer services such as servers, storage, databases, software and more — all over the Internet. The emergence of Cloud Computing over the last five years has significantly impacted Data Warehouse architecture, leading to the increasing need for scale and speed while lowering cost. Traditional enterprise architecture can no longer handle the workloads needed to drive businesses forward — they simply can’t handle the volume and different types of data at the rate that they are generated. Below are some of common challenges we see in a traditional architecture.
Why does Binance need an investment program?
Tags: Plasmapay, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, English, Blockchain

Binance Labs offers 10-week support programs for projects which are in their infancy. The company has already used this model in San Francisco.

Next year, all participants of the Binance Labs incubator will go on a three-week trip to Singapore, where the company’s headquarters is located, and will have one day to showcase their achievements.

Eight teams were selected from more than 500 applications to participate in the San Francisco stage ending this Friday. Each of the teams received $ 500,000. Ella Zhang, the head of Binance Labs, said they welcome new members from San Francisco who can become part of 2019 stage.

She expects the program for Hong Kong to be solution-oriented in the traditional finance sector. Next year, the projects will initially be provided with $ 250,000. The number of participants will be determined in the field depending on the quality of proposals and the number of applications. Then, in Singapore, 10 teams that receive additional funding will be selected.

Binance launches such incubation programs to make contact with the best projects. Their solutions can be useful for the company itself and its partners. It is also profitable for the startups — they get initial support and get acquainted with potential investors.
Hospitals are improving their approach to security
By: Alex Parfentiev
Tags: Security, Data, Medicine, Cybersecurity, Healthcare

As 2018–2019 reports show

Private health proves to be one of the most affected sectors

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has prepared a quarterly report which let almost every second Australian citizen acknowledge the fact of facing personal data exposure at least once.

61% of the breaches are claimed to be deliberate whereas 34% are attributed to the human factor/error.

According to the results contact information gets compromised more often than other details, whereas human error is the most common reason for a breach in the health sector.

85% of all Panama citizens have got their data exposed due to the server security issues. Among the unprotected details there were personal records and patient information.

Phishing undermined the privacy of patients’ health information in Oregon which included names, dates of birth, medical record numbers, diagnoses and treatment care details. The source of the exposure appeared to be an employee who opened the message earlier in May.

The hospital is going to inform all the potentially affected patients by an email. It is unknown yet whether the information was copied and misused.

Facts and opinions

Sutter Health, the healthcare company based in California, dealt with almost 87 billion cyberthreats in 2018.

According to the chief privacy and information security officer Jacki Monson, “most organizations with an active cyberattack in their system don’t discover it for 18 months or longer”

Sung Choi, assistant professor at the University of Central Florida department of health management and informatics, claims that “data breaches increase a hospital’s 30-day mortality rate” which he proves with his research.

According to the report made by Protenus in 2018, 503 independent incidents were recorded in which more than 15 million patients’ data pieces were affected. 139 people who appeared to be the source of the breaches were insiders, whereas 45 of them violated the privacy deliberately. Half of the organizations surveyed stated that they don’t perform routine risk assessments.
The Effects of Roasting on Coffee Bean Hardness
By: Robert Mckeon Aloe
Tags: Espresso, Data, Coffee Roasters, Coffee, Data Science

The Effects of Roasting on Coffee Bean Hardness

Examining green and brown hardness

While doing some reading, I ran across some other research on examining green coffee bean hardness and density. At least in his sampling, he didn’t see a difference in density between bean varieties, but there was a difference in bean hardness. I was curious about bean hardness because I also home roast, so I set out to collect coffee bean hardness before and after roasting.

The change in hardness between green and roasted beans is big, but the interesting part I found was that there was a correlation between the hardness of coffee beans after roasting and the amount of weight loss due to roasting. Weight loss during roast is dominated by water loss.

Experimental Setup

Before and after a roast, I collected 30 samples of bean hardness using a durometer. So the sampling before and after are of different beans, but with a large enough number of samples, the distribution is reliable. To make data collection more efficient, I made a video for each round of measurement and then played the video back to manually record the numbers. Typically, it took 3 to 5 minutes to record a video, and about 5 minutes to document.
Like Water
By: Winston Bribach
Tags: Childhood, Fiction Friday, Microfiction, 50 Word Stories, Asian American

Photo by Chinh Le Duc on Unsplash

Bruce felt the fist hit him in the chest, knocking out his breath. He dropped to the ground and struggled for air.

“I thought you knew how to fight.” Ken, a new classmate, looked surprised. “But you’re just Asian.”

Never had Bruce hated his name more. The tears began flowing.
Set up Go environment correctly on Mac
By: Rain Wu
Tags: Technology, Software Development, Software, Software Engineering, Go

Continue from previous article Set up Python environment correctly on Mac, I will deal with Go environment for developing in this article. The abstract archtecture is very similar to Python, one layer for Go version management, and another for workspace isolation.

Fortunately, MAC does not pre-install Go, so we can save the effort for removing dependent tools. That’s fine, we can install the version manager directly !

gvm

gvm is a open source Go version management tool, the most powerful feature is helping you update related environment variables uniformly. When I am new to Go development one and a half years ago, I often suffer from env issues and spend plenty of time on searching for solutions.

$ bash < <(curl -s -S -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/moovweb/gvm/master/binscripts/gvm-installer)

This tool needs to be initialized before use, use the source command to run the script or append into ~/.zshrc for automatic execution.

$ source /Users/rainwu/.gvm/scripts/gvm

$ echo -e ‘source /Users/rainwu/.gvm/scripts/gvm’ >> ~/.zshrc

Now we can install the specified version of Go, but we need to install the 1.4 version first. Becauce all version greater than 1.4 is compile via Go itself, I’m not sure if there’s another tips to deal with it, but we need a base Go version or it may cause some compile error.

In my case, I will use the Go 1.14, and I think the version greater than 1.11 would be a better choice because of the go mod feature which I will demonstrate later.

$ gvm install go1.4 -B

$ gvm install go1.14 -B

Set the version you prefer and make it permanently via — default flag if you want, just like what you do with pyenv in previous article.

$ gvm use go1.14 --default

$ gvm list gvm gos (installed) => go1.14

go1.4



go mod

go mod is a workspace management tools that makeover the Go project management. Before Go 1.11 version release, the project must be a child directory of the GOPATH, go mod lifts this restriction and greatly increases the flexibility of project management.

First initialize the workspace via init subcommand and the module name you like, it is highly recommended to make the module name consistent with your repository hierarchical management.

$ cd Repositories/HelloGolang

$ go mod init Repositories/HelloGolang

Install any package you often use to make sure it works correctly, and take a look at the go.mod file.

$ go get -u github.com/gin-gonic/gin

$ cat go.mod

module Repositories/HelloGolang go 1.14 require (

github.com/gin-gonic/gin v1.6.3 // indirect

github.com/golang/protobuf v1.4.1 // indirect

github.com/modern-go/concurrent v0.0.0-20180306012644-bacd9c7ef1dd // indirect

github.com/modern-go/reflect2 v1.0.1 // indirect

golang.org/x/sys v0.0.0-20200509044756-6aff5f38e54f // indirect

)

And…let’s give it a test!

$ go run main.go

Hello Golang!

The Go environment was deployed sucessfully now, please give me some claps if this article is helpful to you :)
The Chinese Eunuch, Fake News, and a Coup
By: Andrew Cheng
Tags: Politics, History, China, Trump, Election 2020

Zhao Gao (died 207 BC) started his political career as a eunuch in Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s court.

It was mandatory for palace servants in imperial China to be castrated to prevent them from siring children with the emperor’s concubines. But the arrangement does come with its perks. The eunuchs had private access to the emperor’s children. When those princes and princesses grow up and fill positions of authority, their childhood eunuchs would remain by their sides as trusted confidants. The more ambitious ones would use their insider access to manipulate the courts. Some would even become kingmakers.

Zhao Gao was such a kingmaker. After Qin Shi Huang’s sudden death in 210 BC, Zhao Gao successfully forged the late emperor’s will to place his apprentice, Huhai, on the throne. He then eliminated his most significant threats, the previous chancellor Li Si and the former emperor’s general Meng Tian.

But Zhao Gao wasn’t satisfied. He wanted the throne for himself.

Calling a deer a horse

One day, Zhao Gao arranged a council between Emperor Huhai and the court officials. He presented his emperor with a gift, saying, “This horse brings great fortune, your majesty. Please ride it.”

Huhai squinted at the beast and scratched his head, “Perhaps you are mistaken, my dear friend. This is clearly a deer. Look at its antlers!”

Photo by Asa Rodger on Unsplash

Zhao Gao let out a hearty chortle. “It is you who is mistaken, your majesty. Why don’t you ask your court officials?”

There was a hushed silence in the chamber. Then one court official meagrely stepped up. “It is a horse, your majesty,” he said with a trembling voice.

Much to the emperor’s dismay, several other officials followed suit, insisting that the animal was indeed a horse.

But then a senior official stomped forward. “What are you all blathering about? This is a deer! Don’t you know a deer when you see one?”

The court broke into chaos. Some said the antler-endowed creature was a horse; others insisted it was a deer. Still, others remained silent (and looking rather pale).

Emperor Huhai could not believe his eyes. Perhaps it was he who was mistaken. No, that’s impossible. That beast was certainly a deer. It was as plain as day! But why were so many officials insisting it was a horse?

Huhai would get his answer several days later. Zhao Gao had every court official who refused to call the deer a horse rounded up and executed.

“To call a deer a horse” is now a Chinese idiom. It means to inverse the facts for one’s gain. The story was cute in my childhood picture book, but the reality was much grimmer.

Having eliminated all opposition, Zhao Gao would assassinate Emperor Huhai in 207 BC and replace him with another puppet monarch, Ziying.

But things did not end well for Zhao Gao. By this point, the central government had all but collapsed from years of mismanagement, and rebellions had erupted across the country. Ziying would turn on Zhao Gao, assassinate him, and surrender to a rebel warlord.
Currying in Java
By: Linas Naginionis
Tags: Blog, Java, Functional Programming, Currying

I’m all into functional programming nowadays. I’m learning new ways of thinking every day. I feel that thinking from functional perspective is very beneficial as it helps you to solve your problems in very elegant way. Of course, functional programming is not a silver bullet, there are some cases where better approaches are possible but overall it’s very strong paradigm with many benefits.

Currying and Java 8

If you practise or read about functional programming, you probably know what currying is. In short, currying transforms a multi-argument function so that it can be called in a chain of single-argument functions. Java doesn’t have currying built into the language but since we now have lambdas I thought it would be fun to try implementing it by myself.

After a few minutes it looks like it’s not so hard to do:

You can see from this example that we are currying concatStrings function providing only single argument to it (“Foo”). Then we can reuse this function as many times as we want and apply different arguments. If you don’t want to provide argument for a curry function, we can use overloaded version. Then the test will look like this:

First version looks a bit better imo since we don’t need to declare our intermediate function like this:

Function<String, Function<String, String>>

Function Arguments

What if we have a function which expects more than two arguments? Technically, there are no functions with more than one argument. We can always replace this function:

(a, b, c) -> d

with this one:

a -> b -> c -> d

So BiFunction is just a syntactic sugar to make our lives a little easier.

Final thoughts

In short, I think Java as a language is on the right path, it has gained a lot of power from all these features, borrowed from the functional languages. Now developers only need to start using these features and start thinking from the functional perspective more.
To Treat or Not to Treat: Hormone Replacement Therapy and Breast Cancer Risk
By: Isy Goldsbrough
Tags: Education, Health, Womens Health, Science, Women

To Treat or Not to Treat: Hormone Replacement Therapy and Breast Cancer Risk Isy Goldsbrough Follow Jun 9 · 5 min read

For many woman, the transitional process of the menopause is an extremely challenging time.

While the primary feature of the menopause is that women stop having their period, it is often accompanied by a variety of unwelcome side effects which can severely damage their quality of life. These include:

Hot flushes

Mood swings

Vaginal dryness or discomfort

Reduced bone density, osteoporosis, or joint pain

Sleep disturbances

Loss of libido (sex drive)

The advent of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in the 1940s provided precious relief for women suffering from these symptoms, and prescription of HRT subsequently grew, booming in the 1990s.

However, its popularity stalled in the early 2000s when two clinical studies by the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) published data reporting an increased risk of breast cancer in women receiving HRT. Prescription rates dropped by up to 68%, and have not markedly increased in the years since.

There is much debate between doctors on whether HRT should or should not be prescribed for the treatment of menopausal symptoms, and news articles on the subject are often confusing and sensationalist.

If you’re concerned about the risks of HRT (or are just curious), here’s a breakdown of the most recent science to help empower you in your decision-making.
Advanced Programming in Kotlin (Part 5)
By: Siva Ganesh Kantamani
Tags: Software Development, Kotlin, AndroidDev, Programming, Mobile

Improve Readability

In a language like Kotlin, we’ve more than a couple of ways to do the same thing. Two metrics make the difference: performance and readability. Many developers focus on performance and leave out the readability part.

As your product grows, so does your team, in which case it is essential to make your code at most clear and readable. Let’s see a simple example in which we’re invoking a function in a class that returns an object with two fields then assigning those values to the views. One way of doing this is as shown below:

The above code used with to accomplish the job. There is nothing wrong in using with in the view of the developer who implemented the code. But when other teammates see the code, it doesn’t make sense because they don’t know what the output of getAvangerTeams is or what the first and second are.

To make it a bit clearer, we can use let to explicitly mention the outputs as parameters in the lambda, as shown below:

simplifying with let

With this approach, it’ll be clear to the rest of the team that there will be two outputs, and it will make sense to them if we specify outputs with appropriate names.

This is better but not good enough. Or, to be frank: It’s much too Kotlin-y. I think it’s not necessary to use a lambda function. We can retrieve the outputs in the first statement and use them in the following steps. Have a look:

To my knowledge, it looks more precise and readable, even to a newbie in your team. Kotlin has the most powerful features to do this, but it doesn’t mean we have to use them. Sometimes it’s better to be simple than to dig deep.
Where Is the Rust Belt?
By: Lyman Stone
Tags: Economics, Politics, Midwest, Geography, Migration

Mapping the Rust

Let’s start with manufacturing. I have 3 key measures of manufacturing. The first county-level value of iron, steel, and sailing vessel production from the 1880 Economic Census. After 1880, data on this topic was no longer produced. 1880 is quite early for much Rust Belt development as it is pre-car. But it should at least give us a first pass of places that should definitely be included. Any county with ironworks gets 1 point.

Then we look at the manufacturing employment share of population in 1940. Any county with at least 1% higher employment in manufacturing that the national average gets a point. I then do the same for BEA’s 2016 county-level estimates.

So a county can get 3 points if it had ironworks in 1880, above-average manufacturing in 1940, and above-average manufacturing in 2016. I then give it another point if its manufacturing population share declined between 1940 and 2016 faster than the nation on the whole, and an additional point if it managed to complete a hat-trick of 1880, 1940, and 2016 manufacturing measures, basically as a way to single out places that meet all of my criteria.

Here’s the resulting map:

As you can see, there are at least 3 distinct manufacturing zones. In the south, we see the upper-south textile areas. In the northeast, we can see a zone around Massachusetts, which is also textile heavy, with a side of shipbuilding. Then we get a swathe from Pennsylvania, hrough Ohio, to Wisconsin, with a slash down the Ohio valley as well.

That is the Rust Belt. Remember my point about geographic continuity? I’m tossing out New England and the upper South. They may be Rusty, but they are not part of the belt. They are their own thing.

So next let’s look at another key question: coal mines! Heavy industry is key to the Rust Belt mythos, and heavy industry is heavily reliant on coal for energy. So anywhere with coal mines we should expect to be tied in to the Rust Belt Ecosystem.

This map includes some extra weighting for 1880 steelworks and for the overall manufacturing index, but is hugely driven by coal mines. You can see two major coal belts that tie into the Rust Belt: Appalachia, and the Illinois/Indiana/Western Kentucky cluster. The string through the Great Plains and the Mountain West mines are not of interest to me.

Finally, we can look at my indicator of cultural Rustyness: Lutheranism!

Here I dropped the binary to look at the actual data. Blue-green indicates more-than-national-average Lutheran share, brownish indicates less. As you can see, there are several distinct clusters of Lutherans. Down in Texas there is a cluster of Lutherans. There are a few smatterings in the Carolinas and the Great Valley. Then a very big group in Pennsylvania. Then not so many in western PA, but a very big group in northern Ohio, into northern Indiana. There’s another group in northeast Michigan. And then a vast clump of Scandinavians and Germans dominate the upper midwest.

The Carolina and Texas Lutherans don’t interest me. The others do!

So, when we combine all of our indexes together, we get: