fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Hey Alexa, Help my Child Keep Learning?
By: Julie Daniel Davis
Tags: Alexa, Virtual Learning, Edtech, Co Vid 19, Voiceedu

Some families are navigating from face-to-face to virtual learning options during this time. For some families, teachers have created daily resources and expectations so that the learning can continue but other families have less academic support. Regardless of your situation, there may be times when parents need to be doing their own work from home, they need a face-to-face break, or they are just looking for potential resources.

Alexa has some answers for you! In 2018, Voicebot.ai estimated that the immersion of voice assistants in homes was 18.8%. While the 2019 report has not yet been released, I feel certain that number has risen dramatically. The adoption of smart speakers has been faster than that of the iPhone. So how can you use Alexa in this current paradigm of social distancing?

If you have an Amazon account, you can have access to Alexa even without buying the device. Download the Alexa app and start using it to aid learning. As an educator, I am always looking for Alexa Skills that can enhance the learning. Here are my suggestions to immediately enable and start using with your children during this time:

Kids Quiz by Matchbox.io (poses new questions everyday for children to reinforce their learning and learn new things)

Music Bop Adventures by Adassa Innovations (interactive adventures that get kids learning and moving)

Bamboo Luminaries by Bamboo Learning (educational activity to learn about famous people in history)

Thinking Cap Math by Thinking Cap (aids students in mental math skills)

The Oddly Uncanny Fannee Doollee by Oxygen Box (word puzzle skill)

Bamboo Books by Bamboo Learning (reading comprehension)

STEM Party by Awesome Aariv (extend knowledge of math and science)

Story Maker by Cloudlands Dev (Alexa tells you 4–10 words and you use them to generate a story)

This Day in History by A&E TV Network Mobile (learn about a historical event that happened every day you check in)

Hinky Pinky by Word Nerds ( vocabulary brain teasers)

Freeze Dancers by Pretzel Labs (movement skill to dance in wacky ways and freeze when music stops)

State Capitol Game by Squoval Research Group (answer the name of the capitol that matches the city)

1–2–3 Math by Sermo Labs, LLC (elementary math challenge skill)

And may I suggest no matter how many children you have, enabling the skill “Kids Court” by Pretzel Lab might just help you solve the issue of too much together time by taking the issue to court!

I’ve tried to mention multiple skills that could be used on various days to extend learning or to take a quick break from other learning. Make sure you tune into next week’s podcast of Voice in Education (3.22.20 — Episode 61) where Rich Merritt and myself will be talking about this subject. If you need further ideas, let me know!
Getting away from it all: my paid sabbatical to Vietnam
By: Ivana Markovic
Tags: Benefits, Sabbatical, Talent Management, HR, Culture

I’m passionate about talent management and culture. My objective is to make Osedea the best workplace for our team.

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Our Right To Vote Is Uniting Us
By: Liza Donnelly
Tags: Vote, Election 2020, Democracy

Part of my job as a cartoonist is to get a sense of what’s going on. Today, I met the day with a lot of anxiety because I feared violence and chaos during election day. So far, this has not happened. What I am sensing is a coming together over the enthusiasm to vote. As I watch the returns tonight — whoever wins the election, I am encouraged by this.

No matter whom you support, we are united today over this cherished American right to vote. This election day may end up being historic in the number of votes cast — the turnout has been huge. I seems that Americans are proud of this right and we take it very seriously.

Although we may be divided, we are together on this.
Thick Skin
By: Bogdan Tiganov
Tags: Poetry, Smiling, Blue Insights, Corporate Culture, Thick Skin

I was born with

the skin of

a sperm whale,

which makes me

impervious to

corporate-speak,

sales pitches

and get rich quick

schemes.

Most importantly,

I take my daily dose

of bad manners,

poor communication,

apathy and

inconsistency

with a full,

dazzling

smile.
How to make exchange fully decentralize| Technology Solution Discussion|Toronto Blockchain Week
By: Fab Info
Tags: Exchangily, Fab, Blockchain, Toronto Blockchain Week, Bitcoin

In the past week, Toronto has successfully held 50+ events, from large conferences to small and medium seminars. It attracted blockchain and relative industries’ thought leaders from over 20 countries, as well as thousands of community talents and developers to join the Toronto Blockchain Week. The topics include Government s supports and adoptions, Size of Domestic market, Regulatory Clarity and Openness, Ecosystem Size and Health, Corporate Blockchain Implementations, etc.

eXchangily is a Decentralized exchange with the development team in Markham Toronto. On April 26th, 2019, eXchangily team successfully held an Open House event, co-held by FAB Foundation at Markham. Many professional people from social media companies, blockchain talents, and local investors joined the seminar to visit and discuss with team members of eXchangily.

Exchangily technology team lead also hold an introduction seminar to introduce eXchangily DEX technology solution and the future plans, which were recognized by the community.

For more information, please visit www.exchangily.com
Projekt Ilaiyaraaja Season 3–1/365 — Oru Raaga Devadhai
By: Sylvian Patrick
Tags: Tamil Movies, Projekt Ilaiyaraaja, Ilaiyaraaja, 365 Day Project, Tamil Music

Photo adapted from IMDB

I started Projekt Ilaiyaraaja as a 365-day project to introduce rare and unnoticed songs of Maestro Ilaiyaraaja to the world (also to get a discipline of posting every day). Season 1 was hugely successful endeavour but Season 2 didn’t work as planned as my website went down.

Although a lot of Indians and every Tamilian will know about Ilaiyaraaja, the mainstream media and radio stations are stuck in the warp of his most famous albums. My project is an attempt to unearth unnoticed songs that people can enjoy.

Note: There is no commercial consideration with respect to these posts, and these posts will not be part of Medium distribution. This series comes from my pure unfettering love for Ilaiyaraaja’s music.

I wanted to start with the background score of Psycho but it would be better to start with something more cheery in this dire situation. So I am going with this peppy number from Innisai Mazhai. Also, Innisai Mazhai means “rain of music” and the song invites people to enjoy the music.

Innisai Mazhai was directed by Shobha Chandrasekhar and one of the unnoticed fun albums from Ilaiyaraaja. Guess who was credited as the producer of the movie? Yes, you are right, Joseph Vijay :)

Song: Oru Raaga Devadhai

Movie: Innisai Mazhai

Singers: SP Balasubramaniam, S Janaki

Lyrics: Vaali

Director: Shobha Chandrasekhar

Video Version
Why Doesn’t Anyone Want to Talk to me Anymore?
By: Leann Zotis
Tags: Talktome, Technology, Tech, Robots, Automation

Full disclosure — I’m a big fan of conspiracy theories — I must confess to that. And I definitely have one when it comes to the proliferation of canned communications in the world at large.



Everyone wants to streamline their efforts, regardless of what their product or service may be. They want to do it with the least amount of hassle possible. And, they don’t want to have to spend time and money doing rework.



A great way to avoid rework is to limit the amount of access a potential customer has to a business. Ideally, once they have placed an order or scheduled an appointment, all that business really wants is to close the deal. If you make the robotic, automated system complicated and annoying enough, people may stop trying to cancel, change or modify whatever it was they contacted the business about to begin with.



Using my doctor appointment as an example, given the options of continuing to try to call and cancel the appointment, being a “no show” and getting billed for not cancelling in time or just going to the originally scheduled appointment and getting it over with, I might have been tempted to stop aggravating myself and just go to the appointment.



Whether I go to the appointment or don’t go and get billed as a “no show,” the doctor’s office wins either way. They collect a fee and did not have to spend time with me trying to change my appointment.
Forgotten
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Believe, Ghosts, Spirit, Paranormal, True Story

Forgotten

The tale of the girl between the two doors

(See below article*)

“Between the two doors,” she’d said to my grandmother. And for days, the words echoed in her mind as she tried to make sense of it. What’s between the two doors? Which two doors? But no answer came; all was quiet for days. And then it came to her. The attic. The attic was the only place in the house where there was a space between two doors — the door at the bottom of the stairs, and the heavy trap door we had to push up to get into the airless space.

Armed with a flashlight and determination, she trekked up to the second floor once the children were off to school. It was an old house, full of cracks and nooks and crannies. She searched for nearly an hour and was about to give up when she heard the voice in her mind once more. “Between the two doors.” In desperation, she cried out loud, “There’s nothing between the two doors!”. This time an answer came. One word. “Look.”

She sighed and sat on one of the worn wooden steps, and then she saw the gap — how had she not seen it before? There was a gap, wide enough to slide her slender arm in. With the beam of the flashlight, she illuminated the web and dust-filled space until the beam landed on a square piece of yellowed paper. She could barely reach, but with the tips of her fingers, she managed to grab the edge and pull it up.

Her breath caught in her throat as she turned it over and saw it was an old photograph.

A small black and white print of a young girl of about three or four, with white-blond ringlets, sitting with her arms around what appeared to be her baby brother — a little boy of about one, in shorts and suspenders. What broke my grandmother’s heart was that the corner of the picture was torn, removing the baby’s head. Her breath caught as she swallowed the tears, and the words were barely a whisper. “This is you.” There was no answer, but she knew it to be the truth.
Becoming Root Via a Misconfigured PATH
By: Vickie Li
Tags: Linux, Cybersecurity, Technology, Programming, Software Development

Becoming Root Via a Misconfigured PATH

Linux privilege escalation by exploiting a misconfigured PATH variable

Photo by Kevin Horvat on Unsplash.

Welcome back to the Linux Security Series! In this series, we’ll discuss security issues that affect Linux systems and common misconfigurations that lead to them. Let’s get started!

Privilege escalation is a way that attackers can escalate their privileges on a system. For example, let’s say that an attacker has gained access to your web server, but only as a low-privileged user. They cannot read or write sensitive files, execute scripts, or change system configuration. How could they compromise your server and maintain their access there?

If they can find a way to trick the system into thinking that they are the root user, the attacker can carry out more powerful attacks like reading and writing sensitive files and inserting permanent backdoors into the system. And this is where privilege escalation comes in.

Today, let’s talk about how attackers can exploit a root user with a misconfigured PATH variable to run scripts with root permissions.
LEDU Token Swap: LEDU Tokens on Gate, Bibox & Bitforex to be Excluded from Swap
By: Dr. Michael J. Garbade
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Ethereum, Tokenswap

A new LEDU token smart contract will be released to replace the current smart contract. Education Ecosystem will be conducting a token swap which will see our current ERC-20 Education (LEDU) token converted into another ERC-20 token to be used on the Education Ecosystem platform.

The current LEDU smart contract will be locked soon and when it is locked no LEDU tokens can be moved. If you want to move your LEDU tokens before the smart contract is locked, do it now. Make sure you are holding your LEDU tokens on a private wallet address before the token swap. A private address is an ERC20 compatible address where you control the wallet key.

Gate, Bibox & Bitforex are not authorized to trade or hold LEDU tokens. LEDU tokens on these exchange will be excluded from this swap. When the token swap happens, all LEDU tokens on the Gate, Bibox and Bitforex exchanges will become worthless as they will be issued no new tokens! THERE WILL BE NO EXCEPTION MADE TO THIS RULE. If you still have LEDU tokens on these exchanges your best option is to move them before the smart contract is frozen. In certain cases, Gate, Bibox or Bitforex originating tokens will be asked for additional KYC verification. We are advising all LEDU token holders to move their tokens away from their Gate, Bibox & Bitforex wallets before the tokens are locked.

The new token issuance will be done in a way that current LEDU token holders that follow the steps above have no additional work. The new LEDU tokens will be sent automatically to their address.

Get LEDU Coin

Get LEDU coins now on LATOKEN, Exrates, Livecoin, Mercatox and IDEX or use the LEDU OTC Trading program for large purchases. Read more about LEDU coins on our project page and ask any questions you might have on our Twitter page.
LGBTQ Neighbors and Victim Mentality
By: James Finn
Tags: Religion, Equality, LGBTQ, Love, This Happened To Me

What’s a neighbor? As in “Love thy neighbor.”

I’ve been thinking about that. It’s funny how differently people react to stories. When I write, I work hard to bring feeling to life, to paint a picture you can dive into and explore with me. I want my stories to vibrate with humanity and empathy.

Why? Because too many people don’t think of LGBTQ people like me as their neighbors. We’re too different, too other.

Sometimes it works. A young woman once commented to me about on a semi-humorous but serious advice column I write for LGBTQ youth —

It’s infuriating that we still need articles like this! Thank you for helping take care of people in need.

LGBTQ people are my neighbors

This I know. We share struggles. We share obstacles. We understand each other’s challenges in ways other people often don’t “get.” We feel it in our bones.

We have to care for all of our neighbors

We LGBTQ people have to be neighbors to one another, because sometimes nobody else will be. But it doesn’t stop there. I was thinking about neighbors not so long ago when Sam’s sharp guard-dog bark startled me. A neighbor from down the street was in trouble!
Taraxa Weekly Update — Week 46
By: Olya Green
Tags: Taraxa Community, Taraxa Weekly Tech Update, Taraxa

Taraxa Weekly Update — Week 46

Taraxa Testnet up and running in public mode, new fixes to PBFT & DAG.

Taraxa testnet has been live for about a month, you can check out the block explorer here: https://explorer.testnet.taraxa.io/ This week we’ve merged new fixes to the consensus layer and VDF integration. On to the updates!

Consensus and PBFT:

Debugged the delegated boot node issue where a node couldn’t resync after rolling restart on the public testnet;

WIP: implementing the executor module that is asynchronous with the PBFT manager to get the EVM execution async with PBFT.

DAG-VDF:
Not all Body Parts Dangle Equally
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Equality, Humor, Feminism, Culture, Sexuality

I am trying not to blink or burst out laughing.

There are two of us sitting opposite each other in what is now a mostly empty carriage on a British commuter train on a warm day.

As always, I alternate between sticking my nose in a book and looking up every now and then to daydream and appreciate the scenery. The train is traveling down to the South Coast where I live, going through Kent — the garden of England — and West Sussex, all lush, green rolling hills.

The man sitting across from me is also enjoying the journey, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he has been flashing me since we left London.

Sir looks very comfortable indeed. His legs are crossed with one ankle resting on the opposite thigh, just above his knee, the supporting leg perpendicular to the floor. This position allows his nether regions to get as much air as possible and presumably avoid a case of what Brits fondly refer to as “betty swallocks.”

Those shorts are wider than they are long and the family jewels are spilling out, something that is quite impossible to ignore as they are at eye level. Much as I will spend the rest of the journey trying to avert my eyes, I cannot unsee what I have seen; this is why I still have perfect visual recall all those years later.

Because this is England and I am much younger, the stiff upper lip prevails and I do not trust myself to blurt out a heartfelt “Put it away, love.”

Alerting him to an underwear malfunction would be pointless as he has clearly elected not to wear any.
My Guilty Pleasures
By: Daman Sandhu
Tags: Poetry, Poems On Medium, Poetry On Medium, Poem, Guilty Pleasure

Credit — Unsplash by Jennifer Pallian, Dollar Gill and Vitali Chernoplyski & Edited by Canva

From my guilty pleasure kitty,

Cheesy & Crunchy Pizza pleasure is salivating my palate,

Caressing of gooey cheese,

Temptation of crunchy base,

Churning my tummy out,

But, I don’t care!

From my guilty pleasure kitty,

Velvety & Yummy Chocolate pleasure is hypnotizing my senses,

Sensation of velvety goodness,

Richness of yummy darkness,

Sending me to sweet coma,

But, I don’t care!

From my guilty pleasure kitty,

Sappy & Corny Romantic novellas pleasure is capturing my soul,

Emotions of sappy happy endings,

Cliche of corny dramatic stories,

Fueling my reading bugs,

But, I don’t care!

Shush!

My kitty has some more pleasures,

Which are buried beneath my soul?

Which are partners of my grave?

Which are part of my sins?

But, do I care?

Thanks Dennett for yet another amazing prompt!

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

To Follow My Journey Connect -

📍 LinkedIn -

http://linkedin.com/in/daman-sandhu-75498a135

📍 Instagram -

https://www.instagram.com/daman873/
What are Cryptocurrencies?
Tags: Ripple, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Bitcoin

To warrant security, cryptocurrencies operate on a Blockchain to oversee all transactions in an open and decentralised ledger. Although generally praised and acknowledged, there are some opposing opinions on the effectiveness of a decentralised ledger.

Pros:

· Reduced reliance on financial institutions:

Close presence of banks and financial institutions is not only a major convenience, but also a large privilege. Using cryptocurrency for payments can diminish or completely erase fees and also allow access to banking anywhere in the world, such as it is in the case of Stellar, where the provision of financial services to the unbanked is its social mission.

· Precaution against scam:

The role of miners also encompasses a constant maintenance and monitoring, hence fraud can be spotted quite easily and appropriate action made accordingly.

· Quick Transactions:

The speed of transactions is along with absence of fees, one of most prominent benefits of using decentralized ledger for payments. It usually takes days for banks to process transactions. Conversely, blockchain made payments take mere minutes, are safe and accurate. Fast monetary movement will undoubtedly benefit businesses worldwide and potentially change the way we obtain goods and services.

· Government meddling:

As mentioned before, cryptocurrencies operating on a blockchain are working without the intervention of a third party and are not under control of any prominent financial institution or government which allows them to avoid issues such as artificially created hyperinflation or currency devaluation.

Cons:

· Volatility

Cryptocurrencies experience extreme instability and price fluctuations of tens of percent from day to day. This unpredictability makes it difficult to foresee the viability of investment and future returns, and may make cryptocurrencies seem untrustworthy and unverified for the general public.

· Lawbreaking

Committing crime can seemingly be easier due to anonymous nature of blockchain users. A digital black market that used mostly Bitcoins for transfers “Silk Road” is one of many examples. It was very prosperous and profitable until discovered by the FBI in 2013.
Nora’s abode of dreams
By: Ranjana Reghunath
Tags: Nature, Home, Poem, Travel, Love

Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

Amidst the bed of sunflowers and sunshine,

Stretching beyond the power of sight,

Nora lay exploring the vast,

As the fuzzy clouds meandered the sky.

She keenly watched the sunflowers smile,

Sunflowers they blush, rather an orange than rust,

They bend their heads with a beatific grin,

As the adoring sunbeam sparkled their lives.

Her world so small yet boundless,

Unlike the shack she survived her night,

She mused and pondered the tiny dots of life,

For imaginations crossed the barriers that lied.

Off from chore at the reaping and sowing,

She found her haven in this bed of dreams,

Days were long for stooping hurt,

But the sunsets eased the pain that’s worth.

She dreamed of an abode here amid the blooms,

Where the twee petals swayed along her prance,

Where the blossoms yearned for the resuming sun,

And where she owned her freedom like the flitting songbird!
Compojure & Clout Tutorial
By: Functional Human
Tags: Clout, Compojure, Ring, Clojure

Compojure & Clout Tutorial

A super cool routing library for Clojure’s Ring web framework

Once of the great philosophies in the Clojure community is to build small independent specialised libraries which can be nicely composed to solve problems. So rather than build solutions from massive complex web frameworks with various tradeoffs and opinionated solutions, Clojurians’ prefer to pick the right tool for the task at hand.

There are a few different options out there for routing, including gudu, bidi, Reitit, and playnice, as illustrated in 10+ Frameworks For Building Web Applications In Clojure by Nordic API’s. However, in this article we will be looking at Compojure — a small routing library that works nicely with Ring, which also happens to be the most widely used routing library by Clojure developers.

We will look at at how Compojure matches ring requests to an appropriate route to start with, before going on to examine how we can pass and parse query string and path parameters using Ring’s parameters middleware.

Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash

Compojure helps us to easily create Ring request handlers

Compojure is often used with Ring, Clojures popular http server library. Its purpose is to take a ring request map, match a route and call the appropriate request handler. The Compojure repo provides the following example:

(ns hello-world.core

(:require [compojure.core :refer :all]

[compojure.route :as route]))



(defroutes app-routes

(GET "/" [] "<h1>Hello World</h1>")

(route/not-found "<h1>Page not found</h1>"))

The defroutes macro is part of the Compojure library and returns a function, app-routes, which we can use for routing.

As you can see from the example, we can use the defroutes macro to define route handlers for our application. Specifically, the macro actually combines all of the route handlers into a single ring handler.

Each handler passed to defroutes uses clout, a small library written by the Compojure team to match requests. Let’s first take a look at some of these handlers to get a feel for what clout does for us.
2018 By The Numbers!. Here are some numbers for our 2018…
By: Vaibhav Bhandari
Tags: Cybersecurity, Education, Infosec, Cyberpatriot

It's hard to summarize an eventful year, so we took a shot by using just numbers as our year highlights. Maybe next year we will do a word cloud!

Word Cloud of 2018 (Credit: Adobe Images)

Here are some numbers for our 2018 Summer Programs

2018 In Numbers
At Dark
By: Jessica Lee Mcmillan
Tags: Nature, Prompt, Paganism, Winter, Ritual

After the wind — friction red — torn through evergreens, the air is crushed with pine.

I scavenge along the wet highway, bending like branch, searching for broken boughs.

Bare hands, numb with fractured nerves, I gather cedar branches gritted with rain and earth.

Inside has grown stale for vow of green belief

so I collect these promises.

I linger under the injured branches until astronomical twilight makes purple alert to bones.

Gathered evergreens, slung on back in punctured black plastic bag, the passing headlights lead me back.

Home casting light outside

like winter planets in the vast,

my heart aims in the dark.
Stop Using REST For APIs
By: Harsha Vardhan
Tags: API, Web Development, Programming, Software Development, JavaScript

Simple Example Comparing Both

Let’s say, for example, we are displaying a user’s feed with a list of the user’s post and his/her followers. In our case, we have to display the author of the post, the posts as well as the followers for that user.

If we were to use REST, we would have made at least 2 or 3 requests, similar to this:

/user/<id> to get the User(Author) details likely the name.

to get the User(Author) details likely the name. /user/<id>/posts to get the list of posts posted by that user.

to get the list of posts posted by that user. /user/<id>/followers to get the list of followers for the user.

But in all these cases we are over-fetching the data. For example, in the first request, we need only the name, but we get all the details about the user when we use this approach.

This is when GraphQL shows it’s power. We need to specify the query and we can get the desired output. To achieve the same using GraphQL, we can use a query similar to this:

query {

User(id: '123') {

name

posts {

title

}

followers {

name

}

}

}

By using such a query we will be able to get a JSON response with the following properties. Neat and Simple, isn’t it?
A Little Love
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Pets, Humor, Relationships, Dogs, Comics

Written by

Daily comic by Lisa Burdige and John Hazard about balancing life, love and kids in the gig economy.
hope is an act of profound courage, or profound foolishness (a One-Line Poem response to “Everytime…
By: The Alleged Kat
Tags: Poetry, Love And Relationships, One Line, Romance

hope is an act of profound courage, or profound foolishness

(a One-Line Poem response to “Everytime i see a wishing star”, by Kathy Jacobs for Chalkboard)

heart-shards in your gentle hands: dread the fall, the familiar fall
Then & Now
Tags: Relationships, Dating, Love, Happy

Then started out innocently enough.

High school love-

too young to call his bluff.

College came,

And Then went.

Our relationship soon became a game.

Then became distant

Hardly around

So unkind and so inconsistent

He spent more time building his biceps

Than our relationship

I begged for affection

Oh, silly me

Didn’t you know nothing hurts more than rejection?

Then shaped me into an

Unrecognizable shape of a person

Looked like me,

Sounded like him

But eventually he left, and

then, I was alone

But Now

Made me realize

That I can be loved as me

By him

Not an anniversary goes by

Or a tear unnoticed

That Now doesn’t remind me

How much he cares about me

Now is the man

That my children will look to

When their pants get yucky

Now is the man

That others will say,

“How did she get so lucky?”

I am happy now.
General Election 2017: A manifesto guide
By: Tom Mcarthur
Tags: Politics, Jeremy Corbyn, Theresa May, General Election, Tim Farron

The Labour Party

Jeremy and Theresa are polls apart… (image: PA)

Next up; Her Majesty’s Opposition. At Bradford University, Jeremy Corbyn said Labour’s manifesto is “for the many, not the few”.

The Labour leader says in the foreword: “Let’s build a fairer Britain where no one is held back. A country where everybody is able to get on in life, to have security at work and at home, to be decently paid for the work they do, and to live their lives with the dignity they deserve.”

Key points:

Those on more than £80,000 a year will pay more tax

Hire 10,000 new police officers, 3,000 new firefighters

Major nationalisation programme, including railways, energy and water

Boost the NHS’s annual funding by over £6 billion and ring-fence mental health budgets

Abolish university tuition fees

To consider:

Labour released costings for their manifesto, but the figures match exactly — a little too convenient perhaps? Would nationalisation actually solve the problems of the UK’s ageing rail network?

What the press says:

The Guardian say Labour’s programme may not persuade floating voters, but it could fire up already loyal supporters; The Financial Times goes as far to call it a “radical alternative”; but The Economist claims it “raises the bar for [election] suicide notes”.

Fun fact:

The ‘mainstream media’, arguably, is giving Jeremy Corbyn a hard time, but he is fairing well with underground Grime artists and their fans.
Lone Incumbent
Tags: Poem, Poetry

She had three monitors, like all crustaceans,

Under clouds and the moon during the day.

The windows didn’t open due to ancient paint,

But her hand twisted the latch at every angle.

The effort was exhaustive: hagfish on bones.

Everyone dropped everything to find the spider,

And their peripheral vision splayed out

As if God himself wanted tabs on all goings-on.

Screen to screen to screen with seamless ideas

That might do some good in the world,

She ignored an email about mountain gorillas.

It made its way way down in the queue

Where nobody ever comes out, nobody in.

The bush plane had its regular fumes,

As if it held no grudges or new feuds,

A hominid chorus looked up in unison,

Figuring the future and an expectation.
2020 Q2Q3Q4 Bitcoin Market Newsletter
By: Ishibashi Toshinori
Tags: Blockchain, Finance, Ethereum, Money, Bitcoin

Trader’s Digest

Lucrative consumer trading apps and the prolonged socioeconomic disruptions from Covid-19 lockdowns have transformed the trend of stock trading. Cherished Robinhood and E*Trade traders have timed the market perfectly since March, with Dow Jones Industrial Average knocking the $30K milestone on November 24th, 2020. Unsurprisingly, many suspected this rally as the direct result of the quantitative easing programs from Covid-19 stimulus injections worldwide, with over 20% of all existing U.S. dollars having been created in 2020 alone.

Bitcoin Digest

During this period, Bitcoin price rallied positively along with many stock indices. 1-year Bitcoin-S&P500 realized correlation hit 45.9% and 1 month realized correlation hammered an unprecedented 78.8% in July.

Source: skew, data available as of 22 November 2020

Real magic happened between September and October.

September 4th, global markets retraced slightly, and Bitcoin followed the fall with a 16% dip.

September 14th, MicroStrategy announced its acquisition of additional bitcoins totaling ₿38,250.

October 1st, the U.S. Department of Justice and the CFTC filed charges against the infamous crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX and its owners for violating several regulations: KYC and anti-money laundering rules (following the news, BitMEX experienced an exodus of withdraws nearing ₿60,000 or 0.3% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply (illustrated below)).

Source: BTC:BitMEX Netflow, CryptoQuant, data available as of 25 November 2020

October 8th, Square, an American payment company owned by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, announced a $50M purchase of bitcoins.

Then, bitcoin price broke its range and started heading towards its multiyear high $19,900.

Sentiment suggests that this was a price rally fueled by a series of institutional investor interest, positive news, and bitcoin’s re-recognition as both a hedge against inflation and a store of value.
A Vessel of Love
By: Jessica Archuleta
Tags: Pomprompt, Poetry, Love, Food, Culture

Empty white ceramic bowl

plain and simple in design

crafted by an artist’s hands

vessel ready to pour love in

Little one has a cold

needs his mama’s magic

onions, ginger, garlic

chicken noodle soup

Trusty white ceramic bowl

I fill you to the brim

help me heal my little one

with love and nourishment

He slurped up every warm drop

I wash you clean and dry

return you to your spot to serve

to be a vessel of love once again
🚫 KYC Warnings 🎒WTF is blockchain? — Cryptos for the Rest of Us
By: Shan Han
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Fraud, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

KYC Warning

What’s the Story?

Many ICOs have started to operate in a semi-regulated manner. As a result, they are asking for KYC documents such as passport scans and selfies from interested investors. Handing over this information can be risky and this information can be sold and/or used for identity fraud.

What KYC (Know-Your-Customer)?

Most financial regulations require operators to know and verify the identity of their customer. This is to prevent financial fraud and money laundering.

With regulations encroaching on cryptos, we’re seeing ICOs require prospective investors to be ‘whitelisted’ before they can participate in the token sale.

This usually requires customers to upload a selfie of them holding their passport or identity document. Sometimes this is fully automated, sometimes it is verified by a human operator through a video call.

What’s the risk?

The average price of a digital passport scan on the dark web is $15. If you add proof-of-address or proof-of-identification then that prices jumps to $61.

If an ICO is simply a scam, then they can earn a whole lot more money by selling this information through the dark web.

Once the information is out there, identity theft becomes very easy. In the crypto world, this can mean hackers reseting users’ passwords to their KYC-verified exchange accounts. Exchange’s with two-factor-authentication (2FA) often allow 2FA to be removed through KYC verification in case the token generator is permanently lost.

Outside of the crypto world, one of the most common scams is to take out multiple loans under the fraudulent identity. Often, victims only realise years after the fact when they get rejected for a loan, or find their credit score ruined.

How can I protect myself?

Ideally, you would never have to give such information out.

If you do, spend time researching which KYC platform the ICO is using. If the KYC is handled internally that’s a big red flag.

There are many third-party, blockchain based solutions cropping up these days. If the solution is a well-regarded operation that somewhat lowers the risk.

When submitting this information it can be useful to watermark the photos you upload with the name of the provider/s and purpose of upload. This makes is much harder to use the documents for anything other than their intended purpose.
Can We Undo Space Force Now?
By: Ryan Nehring
Tags: Politics, Finance, Space, Government, Military

Among the litany of terrible, awful choices made during Donald Trump’s tenure as President of the United States, Space Force is undoubtedly one of the most ridiculous. An entire military branch dedicated to the protection and armament of a place we can barely get to, to the tune of nearly $16 billion a year, is an outlandishly expensive bit of vanity and bravado exceeded in its absurdity only by its redundancy.

The United States already has an extremely competent (and well-funded) Air Force, which for years has already housed the Air Force Space Command, a department being reassigned to the absolutely unnecessary Space Force.

There is no good, clear argument for why we need a Space Force. The entire premise hinges on a sort of vague “in case” sentiment that seems to suggest an impending threat that does not exist. Beyond spy-satellites and ICBM’s that can exit and re-enter the atmosphere, there is no threat or battlefield in space. It’s important to note that those satellites and missiles have existed for decades now and have been monitored and counter-programmed against effectively by our Air Force. The “state of play” has not changed in any way requiring a new, and expensive, branch of our military.

I am not anti-Space. I’m an amateur astronomer, a member of the Planetary Society, and a massive NASA fan; under most circumstances I’m for anything that puts more money into exploring space. It’s important to note however, we already have a national organization devoted to doing exactly that, which has to fight tooth-and-nail to see its budget funded every year.

NASA and the Air Force already have all of the expertise necessary to account for and defend us from any potential threats originating from space, should any ever actually materialize. Space Force is a reinventing of a wheel that quite simply does not need to exist.
Catching Up with James
By: Mitchell F Wolfe
Tags: Gaming, Podcast, Super Jump Podcast, Microsoft, Nintendo

Catching Up with James

Super Jump Podcast: Season 3, Episode 18

It’s been a little while since the show has returned to its roots, so we made a point to have just James and Mitchell sit down and talk games. In this back-to-basics episode, we go over the last few weeks’ news items including Nintendo letting an indie studio use The Legend of Zelda, Microsoft’s exact plans working with other hardware makers, and Google’s foray into games streaming.

All this and more on this week’s Super Jump Podcast!

If you only want to hear this episode without dealing with a pesky podcatcher, that can be done here:

If you’re like me, however, and you LOVE pesky podcatchers, you’re in luck! The Super Jump Podcast is now available on iTunes and any podcatcher that picks up iTunes podcasts. Just search for “Super Jump” or follow this link to our iTunes feed. If you use another kind of podcatcher and we aren’t yet on its directory, you can still use it to listen to us. All you have to do is manually enter in the following URL:

Our theme and transition music is by Jamatar, who can be found here at his Bandcamp page.

Finally, if you’d like to write in to an episode of the Super Jump Podcast, you can do so at podcast@superjumpmagazine.com. You may be read on the show!

In our third season, we’ve explored a wide variety of gaming topics on the Super Jump Podcast, with the fun, enthusiasm, and positivity that we apply to the magazine itself. We really hope you enjoy the show as we continue into our third season — please take the opportunity to rate us on iTunes too, as it will really give us a boost.

Thanks for listening, and stay super!
Is Being Human Defined As Male Or Female?
By: Pierre Trudel
Tags: Poetry, Equality, LGBTQ, Love, Transgender

All being equal We share much more than we know- Female Male so what?

Food for thought is much more than words. It is being accepted and receptive to new ways of avoiding the status quo.
Americans Struggle with Graph Comprehension
By: Eli Holder
Tags: Data Visualization, Data, User Research, Data Science, Data Journalism

Americans struggle with Graphs

New research shows log-scaled y-axes confuse. But when communicating data to “the public,” how simple does it need to be? How much complexity can people handle?

(image via author + VectorStock)

Last month, Alessandro Romano, Chiara Sotis, Goran Dominioni, and Sebastián Guidi surveyed 2,000 people to demonstrate that “the public do not understand logarithmic graphs used to portray COVID-19.”

They found that only 41% of participants could correctly answer basic questions about log-scaled graphs (v.s. 84% accuracy for linear-scale).

But the problem is harder than log scales. As you’ll see below, much of “the public” struggle with even the most basic charts and graphs, let alone complex visualizations.

The Curse of Knowledge

A note in the comments stood out to me:

“As a former infographics editor at a major newspaper, I always thought one of my strengths was a lack of math skills. If I could understand a chart, perhaps readers could, too. And yeah, I never used a log chart.” — Robert B.

This raises more questions: How many data journalists think like Robert B.? Or, as Romano & friends suggest, do people in the mass-media “routinely” assume log scale axes are widely comprehensible? If it’s the latter, and they’re overestimating the world’s quantitative abilities, how many other important data stories are lost on general audiences?

I know from personal experience, this is an easy mistake to make. If a big chunk of your day is spent in a python notebook or your lunch conversations often veer toward what’s new on arXiv, you might be in the same boat.

Stanford/Duke professors Dan/Chip Heath call this the “Curse of Knowledge.”

“Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has ‘cursed’ us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.” — Chip & Dan Heath, Made to Stick

That is, if you’re highly numerate, it’s often difficult communicating with people who are not.

To cure the “Curse Quantitative Knowledge” and see the world of data through the eyes of a more typical, less savvy audience, we’ll look at 3 different studies that have measured numeracy and graph literacy at scale.

Their general findings are helpful, but to make it concrete, we’ll also look at 10 specific questions from those studies and I’ll provide estimates for 1) how accurately a typical user might interpret them and 2) what % of US Adults would be able to reliably interpret them correctly.

Armed with these benchmarks, hopefully you’ll have a more intuitive sense of how much a story needs to be simplified to be accessible to a wider audience.

When telling stories with data, if you want to make your (hard-earned) insights approachable, there’s no such thing as too simple.

tldr/takeaways:
Dear Republicans, the Trumps of This World Will Never Be Your Friends
By: Sikander Hayat Khan
Tags: Election 2020, Donald Trump, Politics, Government, World

The calls for “Making America Great” are never going to stop. The swamp will never have been “drained” enough. The Mexicans will always pose a “threat.”

Why? Because none of those things were supposed to come to fruition anyway.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret — certain crises are artificially constructed, others perpetually maintained — all so that you still have a reason to vote.

Let me show you what I mean. My country was ruled by democratic dictators for 30 years. And every single campaign was nothing more than promises of how they’d end corruption and poverty. But none of it happened. It wasn’t supposed to. You see, corruption directly affected the average citizen and they wanted it to be put to an end. But when the people making the promises were the ones doing it, how was it going to stop? Or take the other example, poverty. I truly believe it was systematically maintained nationwide. Why? For the simple fact that there would be no reason left for people to vote for them if that was taken care of.

Trump did the same. “No oil, no guns and no God.” That’s what he said would happen if he lost. But had he won, religion, the oil industry and the rights of Americans to bear arms would still have been “under threat.” You see, dictators need to make you feel like the things you hold most sacred are under attack. Why? Because it diverts your attention from their own evils. Because it drives you to the polling booths.

That’s how dictators win. They toy with your emotions. In their game, the people are pawns that they move around as and when they please.

And why do they do this in the first place? Greed, ambition, and an unmatched lust for power. When those are the only things driving politicians, they’re not going to come to you with policy initiatives. They’re going to come to you with grand statements, unrealistic promises and lies.

How do they do that? It ranges from telling you your democracy is under attack, the establishment is out to get you and everything in between. These tactics are tried and tested. I’ve seen dictators do this time and again and Trump is no different — he’s a case in point.
林貓王 2010–2019 十年最愛專輯
Tags: Dj, 中文, 排行榜

2010–2019 十年最愛：西洋專輯（有排名）

1. Arcade Fire / The Suburbs

2. Alabama Shakes / Boys & Girls

3. Destroyer / Kaputt

4. Yuck / Yuck

5. The Vaccines / What Did You Expect From the Vaccines

6. Spoon / They Want My Soul

7. The Drums / The Drums

8. Alabama Shakes / Sound & Color

9. The Tallest Man On Earth / There’s No Leaving Now

10. Beach House / Teen Dream

11. The Chemical Brothers / Further

12. Washed Out / Paracosm

13. Broken Social Scene / Forgiveness Rock Record

14. Arctic Monkeys / Suck It And See

15. Whitney / Light Upon the Lake

16. Molly Burch / Please Be Mine

17. The National / High Violet

18. O.S.T. / Submarine (by Alex Turner)
Mời bạn bè & Mừng lễ Quốc khánh với giải thưởng 5000 HT — Danh sách TOP 100 cuối cùng
By: Huobi Global
Tags: Vietnam

in In Fitness And In Health
Ode To Mary Oliver, Poet to attention
By: Thalia Dunn
Tags: Poetry, Nature, Mary Oliver, Birds, Poems On Medium

(please note that all italicized words are from her poems)

by Thalia Dunn

Through your simple words,

your odes to rocks,

whelks,

turtles,

and “whistling swans”,

I fell in love with nature again.

I was “just breathing and calling it a life”

until your West Wind blew.

You reminded me

to slow down,

to inhale deeper.

Mary, your poems led me

to the garden

so I could

listen to the flowers,

be steeped in their hues;

bathe in the morning dew;

to caress sun-drenched stones,

eons old, and ponder how they arrived

in my garden soil

and will still be here

after I turn to dust.

I fell in love with nature again,

thanks to you.

We share a love of goldfinches,

riding white waves in the sky,

and in my morning walks

I blow kisses to them as they fly

and swoop and call.

I join the chorus,

“wild, wild sings the bird”

and I don’t want to miss a single note.

You coax me to explore;

to relinquish my fears

buried within;

Ever so gently,

your words heal.

I can breathe.

Morning breeze tickles.

Beauty awaits.

I gulp for air, fling my arms out

and yield to the sky above.

You remind me

that trees are poems

and poems are trees,

rooted in life

yet reaching upward,

that poems

and trees

and birds

blend as one.

I fell in love with life again,

thanks to your words.
The Lessons I Learned After Jumping Into a Rebound Relationship
By: Carrie Wynn
Tags: Life Lessons, Relationships, Self, Advice, Dating

The first time Jake kissed me it was only one day after the worst breakup of my entire life.

For months, I had felt the love my ex and I had shared slipping out of my grasp. The phrase, “crying myself to sleep” was one I had never experienced until that relationship. Nights would pass where I slept in the bedroom we once shared while I sipped my wine glass, simultaneously sobbing on the couch.

Normally I could push away the self-reflective thoughts but this time they came in full-force.

“I’m not in a good place.”

Jake was fully aware of the situation. He had met me when I was dating my ex and we had been friendly acquaintances.

It wasn’t until the first night when I was out with my best friend at a bar, literally twenty-four hours single when I saw him again and we ended up catching up.

I had always thought he was cute and I wasn’t in the headspace for making logical decisions.

That first kiss was nice. It was warm and comforting. But in the back of my mind, I knew that I was making a mistake.

A week later it was my work Christmas party. I invited Jake to come as my date which surprised most of my co-workers who didn’t even know that I had ended my long-term relationship.

I proceeded to drink my weight in wine and leaned over to Jake saying we should leave early.

Once we got in his car I told him that I loved him…. keep in mind, we had been talking for less than two weeks at that point and I told him that I LOVED him.

When he didn’t respond saying that he loved me back (which was the appropriate response given our timeline) I took it very hard and broke down sobbing. He dropped me off at my friend’s and I ran inside hysterical.

You would think that’s where our story would end but no, Jake and I ended up dating for almost six more months.

It wasn’t until later that I was able to reflect on our relationship and all of the reasons Jake and I weren’t able to make it because of the fact I was emotionally rebounding.