fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Build a place
By: S.F. Kurlek
Tags: Politics, Poetry, Society, Change, Passion

Build a home

Build a place

A place for peace

A place that’s free

Free from Kings,

Free for all.

All becomes good

All are now one.

One it grows power

One it lays rules.

Rules that are cool

Rules that are cruel.

Cruel starts to fester

Cruel starts to grow.

Grows to take over,

Grows to take hold.

Hold in their hands

Hold of their lives.

Lives on the line

Lives out of sight.

Sight the desperation

Sight out the hurt

Hurt in the heart

Hurt on the back

Back of the mind,

Back of what’s black

Black as a sentence

Black is a human.

Human. A person.

Human, we are?

We are just people.

We are not god.

God, you pretend

God made the rules.

The rules are still cruel

The rules have screwed you.

Screw you for not changing,

Screw you for your lies.

Your lies have unraveled,

Your lies eat a life.

A life may have fallen,

A life is still worthy.

Worthy of movement,

Worthy of change.

Change that must happen,

Change they scream now.

Now it must happen!

Now! It screams out.
What’s happening in my LSTM layer?
By: Sam Black
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Data, Machine Learning, Data Science, Progamming

The data

The input to any LSTM layer is going to be a 3D Tensor, that looks something like this:

Image by Author

t_0 through t_6 represents your ‘window.’ This could be the length of your sentence, or a window from a time series.

v_1 through v_6 represent your ‘features.’ In the case of a univariate time series, you will only have v1. If you are using embeddings, v_1 through v_N will represent the embedding, with N being the embedding dimension. For a multidimensional timeseries, each v represents a feature.

The image above represents a “batch”. You rearrange a time series of values into batches of features of a window size.

e.g. 100,000 samples of 6 features

[100000, 6]

with a window size of 6 turns into

[16666, 6, 6]

If we imagine a time series, this process looks like this

Image by Author

So there’s the data. Now, let’s move on to the layers.

Implement and inspecting a PyTorch LSTM

See attached code for a follow along. Also handy, the documents for the LSTM layer: https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.nn.LSTM.html

PyTorch allows a lot more flexibility, but with that flexibility comes extra responsibility. I’ve implemented a vanilla LSTM that doesn’t include any embeddings or fancy operations so you can see the bare minimum of what’s required. I’ve included some diagrams that show you what’s happening under the hood so you can actually understand how to architect more advanced networks that take advantage of the hidden states and the cell states, etc.

In order to understand what the LSTM is doing, we need to ‘trace’ our Tensor from end to end. This means understanding the transformations that happen to each Tensor in the batch until it reaches the final output (or prediction).

A brief terminology primer
Martin Luther King Jr. Stares Towards the 16th Street Baptist Church
By: Jillian Ada Burrows
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, MLK, Racism

May we endeavor to understand the society we’ve created and our part in shaping the experiences of those around us. If we have privilege, may we examine if we hoard it and don’t lift others up and how to change that. May we endeavor to build a bright future for all our children, one that doesn’t favor anyone for their skin color or culture. It’s going to take constant work and it will not be easy. But let us strive for it anyway, knowing that it is good work that we do.
Heart Cliffs
By: Sara Grace Stasi
Tags: Creativity, Poetry, Art, Culture, Writing

Heart Cliffs

a poem for the crashing waves of words

I.

It hurts to hear some people

talk about poetry —

it’s too new on the tongue.

Their hearts are learning to break

with the rhythm of the words.

But what of those with heart cliffs

where waves of words

have crashed for years?

Who studied the masters

and only saw how they should be,

dragging themselves through

masochistic streets at dawn —

loving the ones who are mad as fireworks?

Who looked at the red wheelbarrow

and saw the water droplets,

still as time, reflecting eternity?

Who could not breathe at the wonder of the hens,

their feathers white and ruffled?

What of us? We have poems in our hearts

and tongues. What of us?

II.

I want to do it so I try —

failure is a blank page,

and I look toward it.

We cry at unsurprising things

even though we know about death, now

we know some things must end —

we take the empty vase

and throw it at a wall.

Can you turn this pain into a poem,

a pearl, a valuable thing?

III.

Should we deal in imperfection?

Yes — the prize

is in the process.

The glory is in creating —

the outcome

come what may.

If you want to write poems, do it.

If you want to wear all black, do it.

O’Keefe only wore one color

so everything else could shine —

she could feel the vibration

of the colors around her,

the brushstrokes on the canvas

breathing their own life.
Visualizing Feature Maps and Filters
By: Harsh Mittal
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Keras, Python

Hey there, how are you doing?

Photo by silvia maidagan on Unsplash

Have you ever wondered about visualizing the outputs of intermediate layers or filters of a Convolutional Neural Network? If yes, then this the right article for you, also I’ll show you how you can access the filters and bias terms of CNN with the help of Keras.

Keras is a High-Level Deep Learning API that works on the top of Tensorflow. It is very powerful and very easy to use. You can easily build any Deep Learning model with some line of codes.

Check out my previous articles on Convolutional Neural Network.

I hope some of you are thinking, why the hell am I writing this article on the visualization of feature maps or how accessing the filters or bias term will help?

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Well, It’s fun to see, how CNN works internally and how it converts an Input Image to the final feature maps by applying multilayer Convolution operations.

I think you should play around with this to understand more about the architecture since APIs like Scikit learn and Keras is just like a black box since it’s so easy to implement complex algorithms but most people don’t understand the actual working of these algorithms at the backend.

Look at the packages to import first.

from tensorflow import keras

import numpy as np

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import cv2

from tensorflow.keras.models import Model

from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split

from keras.utils import to_categorical

import os

Here’s our CNN model that takes an input image of shape 300*300*3, While it has 2 Convolutional layers.

classifier_model= keras.models.Sequential([

keras.layers.Conv2D(input_shape=(300,300,3), activation='relu', kernel_size=(5,5), filters=32),

keras.layers.MaxPooling2D(),

keras.layers.Conv2D(activation='relu', kernel_size=(5,5), filters=64),

keras.layers.MaxPooling2D(),

keras.layers.Flatten(),

keras.layers.Dense(128, activation='relu'),

keras.layers.Dense(64, activation='relu'),

keras.layers.Dense(32, activation='relu'),

keras.layers.Dense(2, activation='softmax')



])

classifier_model.summary()

The output shape of the first CNN layer is 296*296*32 (See in the model’s summary). let’s see what’s the intuition behind this shape. So after the first convolutional operation, there are 32 2-D tensors, those are stacked on each other with a size of 296*296.

First, let’s see with the help of layers attribute you could access the names of the layers of the architecture, as it returns an instance that can further use to find the other information about the layers. Here name attribute can be used to print out the name of the respective layers of a Convolutional Neural Network.

for layer in classifier_model.layers:

print(layer.name)

Now let’s see other attributes to see the Input and Output shapes corresponding to every layer with the help of input and output attributes.
Learnings made: John Calian from T-Labs
By: Stefan Perlebach
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Interview, ICO, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

What is your role in the Blockchain universe, where is your expertise?

I lead the R&D labs of Deutsche Telekom (T-Labs), and one of our focus topics is blockchain. For one a year now our team has taken a deep dive into this technology, primarily focusing on the core software that makes up ledger networks, such as bitcoin, ethereum, IOTA and Sovrin. In addition, we are developing MVPs in relation to a few use cases for telco: wholesale roaming contracts and IoT device management and security.

What is the biggest misconception about Blockchain?

That blockchain networks all consume too much energy. This is true of cryptocurrency networks like Bitcoin, which rely on a proof of work consensus mechanism, but does not extend to the variety of ledger networks that we are exploring for use in enterprise software design.

Can you name 3 use cases where Blockchain technology creates value?

Digitizing contracts; securing telco networks; universal identity.

How do I know whether or not Blockchain technology could improve my business?

Ask yourself these questions about the software your business relies on:

Would the systems we currently use benefit from

1. the data being immutable?

2. The data being transparent to multiple parties?

3. The data sets being decentralized?

4. The data entered into a ledger via a consensus mechanism

If you can answer yes to two (2) or more, then maybe you need blockchain based systems for your business to evolve and modernise.

What would you recommend projects, who are planning to do an ICO?

Go for it, its a great way to raise money.

What are common mistakes Blockchain projects make?

The same mistakes any project can encounter: is the team functioning well? Is the team executing according the the vision? Is the software project meeting the needs of the customer(s) and their problems? Does the team have enough funding to reach the right milestones?

What was the biggest learning you made during the last year?

Hire people you instinctively feel right about, and don’t hire someone if they might help you progress a project, but don’t fit your instincts.

What’s the best advice you’ve recently received?

Think about finding peace, not happiness.

Which industries will be disrupted by Blockchain in the next 5 years?

Financial, supply chain, energy distribution.

Who is your favorite super or real life hero?

Real life: Anthony Bourdain, for he lived as honestly as he could.

🚀 Interested in Tokenized Securities? Check out our newest project: STOCheck.com
JavaScript Best Practices: More Things to Avoid
By: John Au-Yeung
Tags: Technology, JavaScript, Software Development, Programming, Web Development

Misusing the For…in Loop

The for...in loop shouldn’t be used to iterate through arrays and array-like objects. For example, if we have:

const arr = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'];

for (let i in arr) {

console.log(i)

}

We get back:

0

1

2

3

4

However, this is a misuse of the for...in loop since it’s supposed to iterate through the enumerable properties of an object and its prototype rather than looping through the indexes of an array.

The order of the enumeration isn’t guaranteed, so we might not loop through the array in order, which is bad.

The for...in loop also loops through inherited properties that are enumerable, which is another problem.

For example, if we have:

Then we create an object with a prototype object with the foo property. The for...in loop will loop through both the enumerable properties of obj ’s prototype and obj .

To avoid looping through the properties of its prototype, we can use Object.keys instead:

for (let prop of Object.keys(obj)) {

console.log(prop);

}

We can loop through the key-value pair of obj without anything from its prototype, we can use Object.entries :

for (let entry of Object.entries(obj)) {

console.log(entry);

}

For looping through arrays and array-like objects, we should use the for...of loop instead:

const arr = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'];

for (let a of arr) {

console.log(a)

}

Then we get the entries of the array.
Ice Cream, My Drug of Choice
By: Ann Litts
Tags: Life, Ice Cream, Family, Self-awareness, Habits

Photo by Cera Chiu on Unsplash

I can live without a lot of things in this life. I was Catholic for a while there and every Lent found me ‘giving up’ a whole litany of stuff from swearing (yeah, THAT went well) to alcohol. But I will confess, I never, not once, ever considered giving up ice cream.

Ice cream — in my family — is a necessity, a nightly ritual, and damn near proof of life. If you are too ill to eat ice cream — its time to call 911. If you deny your children ice cream, no matter how badly they misbehaved, this is grounds for DSS notification. Ice cream is Sacred Stuff.

For many of us, the fascination with ice cream took hold on my aunt’s farm when we lined up and pulled duty turning the crank on one of several churns of homemade ice cream. When I talk to my cousins, I find we all have a preference for fruit flavored ice cream. I believe it to be those fresh peaches, strawberries, blueberries and bananas which went into the mysterious soup and magically became ice cream and thus tempered our taste buds.

My absolute favorite of all time is banana. If I find banana ice cream in the grocery store these days, I stock up. It isn’t easy to come by, believe it or not, so I usually settle for peach or strawberry. It’s not much of a hardship, those are really yummy too.

When I was expecting my kids, I would have gladly lived on ice cream. We were poor back in those days, and I remember hunting around the house for spare change to go to a soft serve shop and get a cone as a ‘treat’. Today I buy it by the half gallon, usually, a buy-two-get-three-free “deal” and stock up my freezer. I’m divorced and my kids are grown. Yes, that means its all for me.

Most every evening ends with me sitting in bed with a few scoops in my special bowl contemplating my life and all previous bowls of ice cream which have come before.

Am I an addict? Likely.

Hello. My name is Ann…

Namaste.
by Martino Pietropoli
By: Martino Pietropoli
Tags: Mondays, Comics, Fashion, Cartoon

First thing in the morning: a glass of water and a cartoon by The Fluxus.

Follow
An Assembly of Political Scientists
By: Fsi Student Programs
Tags: Political Science, Fsi Students, Conference, Stanford

About the author: Elisabeth van Lieshout is a PhD candidate in political science and an MA candidate in economics at Stanford University, she is a recipient of an FSI Conference Grant.

During the last week of August, political scientists from all over the country descended on Boston for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Waiting at the gate during my layover, I could already hear political science discussions going on around me among others with the same destination. It was the special welcome signs at Logan Airport that truly made me realize just how large of a gathering this was going to be.

Between the three hotels, dozens of rooms, and hundreds of talks, it was a dizzying experience, especially as this was my first time attending an academic conference. I spent three days learning about the new and interesting research being done. I also got the chance to meet people at other institutions working on similar topics, as well as catching up with old friends. Since this was also my first time in Boston, I even managed to squeeze in a bit of time for political-science-relevant sightseeing of some American Revolution sites.

Finally, on the last day, the very last session, it was time for me to present. My co-author and I had been working on this paper for over a year, so it was exciting to finally share it with others. We got valuable and insightful feedback from the discussant on our panel as well as the other panelists and audience members. We are now hard at work to see how we can incorporate these ideas into a next iteration of the project. I would like to thank FSI for their generous support, which helped make this inspiring experience possible.
Register Now & Save the Date for the 2018 Priority University (U) Roadshow in Nashville, Tennessee
By: Priority Payment Systems
Tags: Continuing Education, Music City, Client Conference, Nashville, Payment Processing

The 2018 Priority U Road Show is back by popular demand with one unforgettable client event in Nashville, Tennessee on September 25–27!

At the Priority Road Show you’ll not only learn about the latest advancements in payment technologies, connect with like-minded leaders and payments experts, but you’ll also enjoy the ultimate in southern cuisine and live entertainment in exciting Music City USA.

Venue: Music City Center

From incredible live music to eclectic southern cuisine, Nashville has

something to offer everyone and this year’s Priority U Roadshow venue, the Music City Center, is right in the center of it all.

Accommodations: Cambria Hotel & Suites

We have secured a block of rooms at Cambria Hotels and Suites for

conference attendees at a discounted rate of $179/Night + applicable taxes. Rooms are available on a limited first come, first served basis through our conference reservation link (provided in your registration confirmation

e-mail). To take advantage of this special rate, please make your hotel reservations by September 4, 2018.

“Nashville may be best known as ‘Music City’, but its food and drink scene is starting to have just as much soul and rock’n’roll swagger.” — The Guardian, Rosie Birkett

Ready to Hit the Road?

To register and for event details, please visit priorityroadshow.com

Have questions?

Please contact marketing@pps.io
Stay in Your Pods
Tags: Safety, Covid 19, Health, Humor, Comics

Written by

Almost famous cartoonist who laughs at her own jokes and hopes you will, too.
I Just Wanna Be Happier
By: Aurellia T. Elisha
Tags: Poetry, Life, Self, Poem, Happiness

I wanna be happier, but it’s dark

The abyss can’t afford to show light

It’s too busy hiding the streets

And even the sun knows it

But it gives nothing short of a hug,

Killing my courage to leave

I wanna be happier, but it’s muffled

No matter where I turn,

The sound of support is a bee

It’s pushing through to find me

But the air surrounding me is stronger,

Intensifying my loneliness

I wanna be happier, but it’s sly

The fox knows after all,

Where to go to curb the light

And how to use my intruding thoughts

But it’s also cruel,

So it uses affection to lure me in

I wanna be happier, but it’s me

I can’t seem to seek the black pixel

Forcing me to stand by the white ribbon

Halting me from reaching my happier self

But knowing doesn’t help,

So my head dreams to cope

I just wanna be happier,

It’s too much of a request, I know

What’s my wish compared to cure?

What’s my wish compared to life?

But maybe Santa decides to breathe this year,

And it’s time to grant what I’ve longed for,

To be happier.
Baidu to Train 100,000 AI Talents in Three Years
Tags: Ai Training Program, Education, Baidu, China, AI

At a tech conference in Beijing yesterday, Baidu Vice President Yaqin Zhang plotted a bold course for the search engine giant. In response to a growing shortage of AI talents, Zhang announced that Baidu will train over 100,000 AI talents with expertise in engineering and product development over the next three years.

Trainees can learn AI, data analysis, and cloud computing skills on the Cloud Intelligence College (云智学院), an education platform launched by Baidu last year that offers online and offline courses, and awards specialized certificates to graduates.

“Our mission, on one hand, is to improve the employment competitiveness of trainees, and on the other hand, to ramp up companies’ product R&D capabilities,” says Zhang.

China is facing a shortage of five million AI talents. While the country is an AI business deployment leader with well-financed startups, its AI educational infrastructure is lagging. The US has six times more AI education institutions. Meanwhile, high demand has sent AI engineer salaries skyrocketing in China.

Earlier this month China’s Ministry of Education issued an action plan aimed at energizing Chinese universities’ capabilities in AI technological innovation, talent cultivation, and global cooperation. The action plan also pledges to educate 500 teachers and 5,000 students over the next five years in a joint effort with Sinovation Venture and Peking University.

* * *

Journalist: Tony Peng| Editor: Michael Sarazen

* * *

Subscribe here to get insightful tech news, reviews and analysis!
The importance of domain knowledge
By: Nadine Amersi-Belton
Tags: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science, Domain Knowledge, Image Classification

Classifying x-ray images using deep learning

In this project, I chose to apply deep learning to classify chest X-ray images as belonging to a patient with pneumonia or healthy. The key takeaway from this experience is the importance of domain knowledge to shape your decisions. It is relatively straightforward to apply a model but the true value comes in questioning your decisions and careful evaluation.

The dataset was obtained from Kaggle and can be downloaded here. It contains 5860 images. The first step was to divide the data into training, validation and test sets. Here comes the first decision where domain knowledge comes in. Depending on the industry and type of data different splits are preferred. We chose a split of roughly 80% training, 10% validation and 10% testing.

We then explored the distribution of the images and noted that we had almost 3 times more images of x-rays of images with pneumonia than healthy ones.

Here is the next area where domain knowledge would help. How much data imbalance is reasonable? How easily can we obtain more data to compensate? For now, we did not make any adjustments but it is an avenue we would investigate further.

For preprocessing, we scaled the data to 100 x 100 pixels, as we want to be able to run the models locally using CPU. By doing so we lost some of the aspect ratio.

Preprocessing complete, I tried various neural network models. A key question is deciding which metric to use for evaluation. Here again domain knowledge would steer what is the required level of accuracy for a model to be useful and implemented. We also need to consider other metrics such as recall and F1 score. In particular it is important to minimise false negatives as these are cases where the model predicts that a patient is healthy when in fact they have pneumonia.

In the end, the chosen model was a Convolution Neural Network with dropout layers and the confusion matrix was as follows (on the unseen test data).

With only 3 false negatives, our model has high recall and thus maximises patient safety.

Whilst we would prefer an overall higher accuracy, our focus is on recall as this metric is particularly important for patient safety and to minimise the legal risk.

We would recommend the following actions:

1 — gather additional data, this classification was undertaken on a small sample size of around 5k images and served as a proof of concept

2 — address class imbalance to seek to improve performance using say oversampling techniques

3 — use this tool to support medical professionals whilst it is further improved on
Asleep
Tags: Poetry, Life, God, Weird, Religion

When i woke up in the middle of the night,

God was asleep.

i asked him to help me find my missing sock

He seemed cozy,

and i couldn’t blame him.

So i went without.
So, There You Are
By: Eileen Vorbach Collins
Tags: Grief And Loss, Poetry, Mothers And Daughters, Spiritual Weekly Prompt, Connection

POETRY

So, There You Are

Connection

Photo by the author

Your life began in my body

Where I loved you as you grew

Thumbs and toes and elbows

And became my daughter

Though I thought you were a boy

And named you Elliot or Aviel

And when finally,

I met the real you

You looked at me and said,

So, there you are, mother

I heard you singing

And felt your hand

Upon my back

When I kicked you

To wake you from your slumber

To get your attention
3 Lessons We Learned From Rebranding Gusto
By: Jason Marder
Tags: Branding, Product Design, Accessibility, Craft, Design

So what’s a brand? And why does it matter?

Well, it turns out to be incredibly elusive, so buckle up. Is a brand a logo? A mission? Your website or customer support? The last interview your CEO did?

It’s every one of these things and so much more.

Brand is in every choice a company makes and how people experience those choices.

The irony of such a concise definition is that it shows you just how big the scope of brand really is.

So let’s make it a little more tangible.

If you’re a clothing company, your brand is not just the style of your garments. It’s the fabrics you use, where they came from, your packaging, your website, the return process…

If you’re a restaurant, your brand is not just your food. It’s the plates and silverware, your staff, your physical space, your menus, your bathrooms…

If you’re a physician, your brand is not just your license to practice medicine. It’s your communication style, your empathy, your office’s interior design, your staff, how often appointments start on time…

Does it make more sense now? Brand = product and product = brand.
Implement a Debouncer in Swift
By: Samarth Paboowal
Tags: iOS, Swift, Programming, Mobile, Swiftui

Implementing a Custom Debouncer

Let's understand how this has been implemented!

Line 3 : This is the time interval of the debouncer. If no action has been taken for this time interval then the method will be called

Line 4 : We are using a timer to make sure method is not called before the time interval is finished

Line 6,7 : This is a handler closure which will be called when the time interval has ended. Inside this closure, we can implement the code to run, or the code to be debounced.

Line 9 : This is a custom init which takes time interval as parameter. We cannot have a debouncer instance without a time interval

Line 13 : The renew interval method is used to renewal the debounce time interval. If the user is pressing ten keys without pausing the interval will be renewed ten times to ensure we’re checking for time interval from the last user action. Every time this method is called we’re creating a new Timer which will call a function after time interval is finished.
How To Prevent Krampus From Dragging Your Asshole Kid To Hell
By: Sara Zadrima
Tags: Satire, Saint Nicholas, Krampus, Humor, Christmas

HOLIDAY HUMOR

How To Prevent Krampus From Dragging Your Asshole Kid To Hell

Some St. Nicholas Day’s Eve Advice

Photo by Alessio Zaccaria on Unsplash

Happy Krampusnacht!

Everyone knows Saint Nicholas comes to town to bring gifts to children in December, but did you know about his demonic counterpart, Krampus?

On the Eve of his very own Name Day, Lil ol’ Saint Nick arrives to stuff little gifts in the shoes of the angelic kiddos of the world. His lesser-known, half-goat, half-human, horned companion Krampus trails closely behind bearing birch twigs for whipping and an empty sack containing enough room to snatch the children who are beyond salvation. He famously takes them to his lair in the fiery depths of hell.

So, if your kid is a little shit, but you still want to keep them around after Krampus makes his yearly romp around town, you best heed my advice.

Some defiant kids can be convinced to act buttoned up for the season. Try giving them a nice little spook and show them the photo of Krampus up above. Tell them they can continue on their path of bad behavior and be visited by the heathen who will take them away forever, or repent and get a boot full of sweets and treats from Saint Nick. They should come to their senses.

If your child’s devilish behavior is beyond reparation yet for some reason you still plan on keeping them around even though Krampus would gladly take them off your hands, this calls for more desperate measures.

First, chain the sleeping asshole to their bed, and chain the bed to the ground. Cover up the windows and fill the rest of the room with good things to counteract the sinful energy.

Leave out a bottle or two of schnapps and several fancy brandy glasses to tempt and distract. Krampus will gobble that shit down, and hopefully ignore your demonic little shit in the process.

If desperate times call for desperate measures, prepare yourself with some wooden stakes, preferably coated in the blood of God himself. If you’re willing to sacrifice your life to prevent your little devil from being dragged to Hell by the son of Hel himself, then buckle up! This is what you signed up for.

Stake out your kid’s room, and pray to Saint Nick that when you go wake them up for Saint Nicholas Day they’re just sitting there confused as to why they’re strapped to the bed and Krampus has spared them for another year.

Happy Saint Nicholas Day! ’Tis the Season to not be dragged to hell.
Think you know what the Bible says about sex?
By: Jonathan Poletti
Tags: Christianity, Bible, Sex, Sexuality, Gay

Think you know what the Bible says about sex?

Think again.

Two years ago I started what became a deep investigation of the sexual teachings of the Bible. Everything I thought I knew came under question, and often was simply disproven.

Along the way many scholarly papers were helpful, but some made me sit up and say, “I didn’t know that” — then have to figure out what to believe after that. Here’s a few.
What Would You Rather Do?
By: Tochukwu Okoro E.
Tags: Creativity, Life, Success, Mindset, Growth

I like to use my thoughts as topics when I write because, in case you‘ve not noticed, 90% of the content I put out on Medium are conversations I have with myself.

The question: what would you rather do? Comes to my mind when I feel like quitting, and somehow it keeps me going.

I’m really thankful that I write here because it’s like a public accountability buddy for me. Because when I talk about being consistent and trying to stray away from being consistent, it reminds me not to be a scam and actually put in the work, and trust me; it has helped me a lot.

What would you rather do?

Let’s say you’ve been into that particular craft of yours for months, and because you do not see any results, you try to quit to do something else.
The Reign
By: Agnes Louis
Tags: Short Story, Life Lessons, Life, Fiction, Power

The Reign

And those two will sit in their thrones for a while. Sigh…

Photo by Alvin Mahmudov on Unsplash

The man in the grey three-piece suit smokes his cigar and chuckles. “Look at all these fools, G,” he says to another man who’s wearing opened button black shirt with dark blue suit and pants in matching color.

The other man, G, smirks while sipping on his whiskey. “Yeah. You would have thought that they have realized it all by now. But nooooo. Hundreds of years and they are still at it.”

“Yeah. Through so many decades, so many changing eras and evolution. You would think that they would have already figured it out.”

“Do you think they will ever? Figure it out that is.”

“To be completely honest with you? I was actually a little worried with the emergence of a few wise ones. For a second, I really thought that that was it. That was the end of us. But fortunately for us, those who are ignorant and too proud to listen outnumbers those who truly listen and finally understand.”

G gives a nonchalant smile and for a while, they just sit in silence. One enjoying his cigar while the other, his whiskey.

In front of the two gentlemen, is a massive moving image.

The two had been enjoying the gory spectacles before their very eyes.

Humans.

Harming and killing each other. Stabbing, mutilating, lying, stealing. All to seize something they don’t quite grasp. All in the name of something they don’t quite understand.

If only they stop for a minute, second even, and ask themselves what they are truly fighting for…

No. They just keep feeding the fire. The fire that consumes their world and feed the very beasts who are now sitting and enjoying the inferno.
Is Ethereum going to overtake Bitcoin?
By: Token News
Tags: Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Token, Blockchain

‘The Flippening’ explained…

Last year, we heard a lot about ‘The Flippening’, the point at which Ethereum overtakes Bitcoin as the world’s largest cryptocurrency. But as of yet, it’s failed to materialise.

It’s back in focus since Roger Ver, whose involvement in the crypto space over the years earned him the moniker ‘Bitcoin Jesus’, thinks technologically superior cryptocurrencies like Ethereum are going to see strong gains over the coming months.

Roger Ver said, “I see it happening, and I believe it’s imminent… Ethereum could overtake Bitcoin by the end of the year”. He cites issues with Bitcoin’s core technology, while its devs have seemed slow to react to criticisms of slow transactions and incredibly high fees.

Over the past year or so, we’ve seen Ethereum make steady gains on Bitcoin after the cryptocurrency market blew up last year. When you look solely at the numbers, the last twelve months has seen Bitcoin go from $1,700 to $9,360 (that’s an increase of 450%). In the same period, Ethereum saw gains of 1,000%.

It should be noted, though, the price of Ethereum is still a long way off Bitcoin’s — but this may have more to do with the fact that there’s five times more in circulation. In terms of market cap, Ethereum is just under half of that of Bitcoin’s.

While it’s still unclear when, or even if, the Flippening will happen — it’s clear that Ethereum is still punching well above its weight. We’re excited to see what the coming months will hold for Ethereum and the wider project.
Book Coach Success Spotlight: Terri Thayer
By: Terri M. Leblanc
Tags: Freelancing, Coaching Skills, Success Story, Coaching, Writing

Celebrating a book coach’s success

Author Accelerator is on a mission to help writers write books worth reading. We do that by training book coaches to support writers throughout the entire creative process. Meet Terri Thayer, one of our recently certified book coaches. Terri got her first paying client.

Q: So tell us, Terri, how will you be helping this client (what service did they sign up for)?

Terri: We are working twice a month on two things: the point of her novel and the Inside Outline.
lost.
By: Efe Nakpodia
Tags: One Line, Poetry, Relationships, Love, Chalkboard

Opportunity

took him by the hand:

together, they strolled

through the pebbled grounds

of her garden’s maze,

lost in the comforts

of a wildly adventurous

but risky love, for romance.
99.99%
By: Sankaet Pathak
Tags: Banking, API, Financial Services, Payments

Our goal at Synapse is to provide a highly scalable infrastructure layer to our customers.

To ensure we have strong business incentives to deliver on these goals, we have added some interesting non-standard provisions in our legal agreements over time. They are:

90 day money back guarantee

Up until 90 days after you sign the agreement, you can terminate at any time for any or no reason. We will refund to you the SaaS fees paid. No questions asked.

No suck clause

You can terminate the agreement at any time if you are not satisfied with our services. We ask for a 15-day period to improve ourselves based on your feedback before termination.

Support and uptime SLAs on all products

We provide SLAs to you with no cap on credits that you may receive each quarter.
If you’re a developer transitioning into data science, here are your best resources
By: Cecelia Shao
Tags: Software Engineering, Machine Learning, Data Science, Career

It seems like everyone wants to be a data scientist these days — from PhD students to data analysts to your old college roommate who keeps Linkedin messaging you to ‘grab coffee’.

Perhaps you’ve had the same inkling that you should at least explore some data science positions and see what the hype is about. Maybe you’ve seen articles like Vicki Boykis’ Data Science is different now that states:

What is becoming clear is that, in the late stage of the hype cycle, data science is asymptotically moving closer to engineering, and the skills that data scientists need moving forward are less visualization and statistics-based, and more in line with traditional computer science…: Concepts like unit testing and continuous integration rapidly found its way into the jargon and the toolset commonly used by data scientist and numerical scientist working on ML engineering.

or tweets like Tim Hopper’s:

What’s not clear is how you can leverage your experience as a software engineer into a data science position. Some other questions you might have are:

What should I prioritize learning?

Are there best practices or tools that are different for data scientists?

Will my current skill set carry over to a data science role?

This article will provide a background on the data scientist role and why your background might be a good fit for data science, plus tangible stepwise actions that you, as a developer, can take to ramp up on data science.

Want to see the latest data science roles? Subscribe to the biweekly ML Jobs Newsletter for new data science job openings in your inbox.

Data Scientist versus Data Engineer

First things first, we should distinguish between two complementary roles: Data Scientist versus Data Engineer. While both of these roles handle machine learning models, their interaction with these models as well as the the requirements and nature of the work for Data Scientists and Data Engineers vary widely.

Note: The Data Engineer role that is specialized for machine learning can also manifest itself in job descriptions as ‘Software Engineer, Machine Learning’ or ‘Machine Learning Engineers’

As part of a machine learning workflow, data scientist will perform the statistical analysis required to determine which machine learning approach to use then begin prototyping and building out those models.

Machine learning engineers will often collaborate with data scientists before and after this modeling process: (1) building data pipelines to feed data into these models and (2) design an engineering system that will serve these models to ensure continuous model health.

The diagram below is one way to view this continuum of skills:
SOLID Principles using Typescript
Tags: Software Development, Software Architecture, Best Practices, Design Patterns, Typescript

Liskov Substitution Principle

Description

Imagine you have a class S which has subtypes S1 , S2 , S3 . In object-oriented terms, assume a class Animal which is extended by subclasses like Dog , Cat etc. The Liskov Substitution Principle states that any object of type S (Animal in our case) can be substituted with any of its subclasses ( S1 , S2 , S3 ). Since this type of substitution was first introduced by Barbara Liskov, it’s known as the Liskov Substitution Principle.

Now if our Animal class has a walk method, it should work fine on instances of Dog and Cat both.

The Challenge

Suppose we’re building an Error handler for a particular web application and the requirements are to perform different types of actions based on the type of error. In this scenario, let’s just take 2 types of errors:

Database Error Connection Error

Both of the above error classes extend an abstract class called CustomError

Custom Error abstraction using Typescript

Now, the ConnectionError class implements the CustomError class using a constructor and two abstract methods — createErrorMessage and logError .

Connection Error extending our CustomError class

But the DatabaseError class is also implemented similarly, except for one requirement change wherein the database error — being critical in nature also needs a createAlert method.

DBError extending CustomError class

Where This Fails

The above example clearly violates the Liskov Substitution principle. Using a subclass of DBError can be an issue when you try to use it in a common error handler function:

Workaround for Liskov Substitution Principle

In the above example, line 41 is a code-smell — because it requires knowing the instance type beforehand. Extend this case to future errors of APIError , GraphError and so on, and it results in a series of never-ending if/else cases. The problem arises because of the overgeneralization of use cases.

Solution

Predicting the future of these types of classes is where the problem exists. It is better to be defensive in such assumptions and go for “has/a” class type instead of “is/a” class type. Let’s take a look at an example to understand this better:

Liskov Substitution Principle in action

Considering our example of error handlers again:

One approach can be to compose our logging method with an alerting mechanism. The AlertSystem is now used in composition and added to DBError’s logError instead. Another viable approach would have been to completely decouple the AlertSystem from both the errors.

When compared to our previous examples we do not have any more if/else conditions on the type of class instance.

Summary

In my opinion, the Liskov Substitution principle should be treated as a guideline and not as a strict rule because in practice this principle is the hardest to keep an eye on during development. This could be for a number of reasons— implementations might be in the different codebases, use of an external library in the codebase etc.

The key focus should be on 2 ideas-
The Letter I Received from House Rep. Matt Cartwright
By: David Kain
Tags: Nonfiction, Covid 19, Democrats, Written Tales, Healthcare

MATT CARTWRIGHT

8TH DISTRICT, PENNSYLVANIA

December 11, 2020

Mr. David Kain

(Personal address redacted)

Dear Mr. Kain,

Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding H.R. 1384, the Medicare for All Act, a bill I am proud to cosponsor. As your Congressman, reducing the cost of health care is one of my top priorities. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to respond.

Medicare is an American success story. Medicare, an earned benefit, ensures that seniors will get the health coverage they worked a lifetime for. Due to its high success, many groups have called to enact a larger nationwide Medicare plan to solves America’s health insurance crisis. Although the Affordable Care Act significantly decreased the number of Americans without health insurance coverage, millions of Americans are still uninsured. According to the Kaiser Foundation, high premiums are the main barrier to access. One way to address lack of access and rising costs is to establish a publicly funded universal health care system, also referred to as Medicare for All.

H.R. 1384 would establish a privately-delivered, publicly-financed universal health care system. This bill would expand the Medicare program and provide universal access to care to all Americans. The program would be primarily funded by a modest payroll tax on employers and employees, a financial transaction tax, and higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans. I am proud to cosponsor this legislation and look forward to working with my colleagues to advance this important legislation.

For far too long, America’s health insurance system has made health care more costly, less accessible, and less efficient for families and small businesses. As your Congressman, I am working to improve the affordability of, and access to, health care for all Americans. You may be interested to know that this Congress I voted for H.R. 965, the Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples Act (CREATES) Act. H.R. 965 outlines the civil actions a product developer may bring against a license holder for blocking the production of a generic drug. If an eligible product developer prevails in a civil action, they are entitled to receive the product without delay along with monetary compensation. It is critical that we bring down drug prices and control our nation’s health care spending. That is why I was proud to vote for this bill when it passed the House as part of H.R. 987 on May 16, 2019.

Sincerely,

Matt Cartwright

Member of Congress

MC/EK
“There is more to life than aspiring things that’s bright”
By: Piyush Kamal
Tags: Life Lessons, Poetry, Life, Inspiration, Writing

There is more to life than aspiring things that’s bright Your perception is skewed by the limitations of your own sight Don’t get obsessed with your vision of all things that seems right Achievement of success is just a mere illusion of hollow might Accumulating things that you don’t need will burden your life

There is more to life than aspiring things that’s bright

You are not a clock that needs to be always right

You can spot the signs if you are willing to make things quiet

You can live the purpose by doing things that makes you excite

Creativity will help you see beyond the boundaries of your sight

There is more to life than aspiring things that’s bright Living by the rule will never help you live beyond the hype Challenging all your assumptions will give you the requisite foresight Your energy shouldn’t get dissipated in running after things that are finite What you choose to focus will indeed sharpen your surgical knife

There is more to life than aspiring things that’s bright

If you keep doing what everyone is doing don’t expect the spot light

Then just be content with restricted subscription to the application of life

Medium expressing best of your talent will solve your internal proxy fight

Internalizing this wisdom will launch you into a different orbit of satellites

There is more to life than aspiring things that’s bright.
drippy
By: Steve Wardrip
Tags: Comedy, Poetry, Humorous Life Lessons, Humor, Hacks

by steve wardrip

Just under the surface,

Is a place, a horizon,

The other side of land,

Where the sky begins.

I can take you there,

You will tread the same path,

The underworld treasures,

All upside down and transcended.

A bold achievement for the unknowing,

The ones who will never be able to know,

An atmosphere of uniqueness and original,

A veritable circus amusement all the way inside.

Lights on, engine fired, throttle up, stoked,

Reminiscent of Chapeau Cowgirl Hats,

Pinks, soft, puffy, proud, perky,

And glitter, oh my! Egyptian to the core.

Stone quartz geodes and fluorescent glow,

Black Light zone in orange and purple,

Never a zebra, domino piano, playing plain,

Worn marble steps descending to the Sun.

If ever you take a fancy or folly,

Random trolley a sort of port,

A sport for rollers and derbies,

Jammers, Blockers and support from within.

Ten on the track, referees and officials,

Flattrack misses on parade of x-rays,

Hundreds of teeth lost, broken noses,

Bones of mad mean mistresses who finished.

dippy took you there, battered, walled,

You are nuts, crazy coconuts, up a tree,

Insane in the brain, and a square snare,

Brown Booted thug from a jacked up lug.

Take it on down to your embattled shore,

Throw wide open the castle walled door,

Hit the gas with a smash and damn the dike,

Get the distressed, mashed up constable free.
Christians and conservatives who laugh at foes when they contract Covid-19
Tags: Christianity, Covid 19, Democrats, Love, Republican Party

Disgusting to see conservatives laughing on social media when a political foe contracts Covid-19. They have not guarded their hearts as the Bible warns us. Such arrogance God completely rejects. That behavior is not that of a faithful Christian, but one who assumes the right to judge and mock. Disgraceful. Sadly, saw much of it online today due to Colorado’s (liberal Democrat) governor’s diagnosis. One may disagree completely with their values and agenda without hating them. Such self-proclaimed Christians are far from evincing God’s love. One can reject and disagree vehemently without hating.

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. — Proverbs 4:23, KJV.

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. — Proverbs 16:18, KJV.

Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. — 1 John 3:15, KJV.