fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
BuildACoin.net
By: Dave Craige
Tags: Etherum, Blockchain, Bitcoin

It isn’t too difficult to make your own cryptocurrency. Here is a guide.

Crypto is blowing up. There are tons of great coins. But how do people make them? Well it isn’t too difficult. Let’s jump right in!

How

✅ Download www.TrustWalletApp.com ✅ Watch my buddy Viktor’s video and follow the instructions:

3. ✅ Success!

Building is fun

I encourage you to give it a try. Go ahead and download the Trust wallet and create your own currently. Set the parameters of how many coins you want and what the focus of your currency is. Experiment with what it is like to try to add value to something you create. It is definitely a challenge to do so. Begin to think deeply about what actually is a valuable currency, versus what is a useless coin.
Serenity announces new partner: brokerage house MaxiMarkets
By: Serenity Financial
Tags: Ethereum Blockchain, Forex Brokers, Forex Trading, Forex, Finance

We are pleased to announce our new partner — Maxi Services Ltd.

Maxi Services Ltd. is an emerging global market leader in financial trading. The company was established in 2008 and is now a rapidly growing brokerage house that enables retail and institutional investors (banks, hedge funds, high-frequency traders, brokerage companies) to trade Indices, Commodities and Forex. In order to provide the most favorable trading conditions and the best customer service, the Maxi Services Ltd. strategy is to partner with the leading financial institutions in each region the company operates in. Low spreads and the absence of any hidden commissions make MaxiMarkets an advantageous partner for traders.

According to MaxiMarkets, “Serenity is a new and different mechanism for the brokers and more importantly, for traders. We support Serenity efforts to build an environment that will ensure trading is being done at fair market prices. Also, transparency and safety that Serenity wishes to bring to the financial markets is the approach that we support here at MaxiMarkets”

Alexander Stanovoy, the CBDO of Serenity added “Serenity is thrilled to welcome onboard Maxi Services Ltd., a very popular brokerage house worldwide. Maxi Services Ltd. is a broker with spotless reputation. This is great that such technologically sophisticated brokers as MaxiMarkets partner with Serenity.”
The wooden ladder
By: Tyrone Graham
Tags: Poetryenmotion, Poetry, Prose, Poem, Poet

I stood at the foot of a tall wooden ladder

piercing a purple cloud in the green heavens;

all around the ground was bare except for torn

pages from books, conical piles of ash, picnic

baskets, used condoms and pyramids of people’s

clothes. Two crickets were in conference on a naked

branch; a gigantic beaver romped along a dry

river-bed; while a toad took snuff from a thimble.

Red sheets of flame rose up, coming closer and yellow

with age. It frightened me. Lightning cracked the sky

and peeled the green to fall in flakes. A tidal wave

hesitated, but remained poised with lazy composure.

I trembled. Words filled the air to be swept away by

the wind that turned nasty, smelled of disinfectant

and had a walrus moustache. There were hands beckoning

from everywhere, not monotonous, but of different

shades; many were not hostile. A great visionary white

bird consumed quantities of snakes. I wanted to climb —

up and higher into the purple cloud. Voices threatened

to put the sun in a box forever. I struggled to climb

because of the multitude of sinners washed up on shore

decomposing. Lepers converged on me in a phalanx with

bells. I was crying. But my big toes were nailed to

the ground on that day that the bronze Buddha

came to life and ran away.
How to Read Your Human Design Chart
By: Bingz Huang
Tags: Self Improvement, Personality Types, Astrology, Human Design, Energy

Your Type and Strategy, Inner Authority, and Profile

#1- Type and Strategy

There are five Energy Types that are determined based on how your Throat and Sacral energy centers are Defined/Undefined.

Each Energy Type has its specific Strategy, a correct way of approaching and navigating life.

Out of these five Energy Types, The Manifesting Generator and Generator types have the same main Strategy and are thus known as one Type here for simplification.

*The following descriptions are taken from the Jovian Archive website, which is the official Human Design website maintained by the founder Ra Uru Hu’s family.

Generators and Manifesting Generators — are the dominant Type on the planet, with nearly 70% of the population. They are the driving life force of the earth. Their Strategy is to respond, and through following their responses, they find satisfaction and avoid frustration. They have an open and enveloping aura and need to learn about themselves.

Projectors — are around 20% of the population. The Strategy is to wait for the Invitation to find success and avoid bitterness. They have a focused and absorbing aura and need to learn about and understand the other.

Manifestors — are about nine percent of the population. Their Strategy is to inform before they act to find peace and avoid anger. They have a closed and repelling aura and are here to understand their impact on others.

Reflectors — are without Definition and are just over one percent of the population. Their strategy is to wait for a full cycle of the moon before making decisions to find clarity, leading to a life of more surprises and less disappointment. They have a resistant and sampling aura and are learning to reflect rather than identify.

#2- Inner Authority

Our Inner Authority is a body-based knowing that precedes the cognition of the mind, and thus accessing it requires us to become more embodied and to listen better to our bodies.~ Jovian Archive

Decision-making is such a tricky process! Knowing your specific Inner Authority can help you honor the way you instinctively make the best decisions for yourself.

Almost 50% of us have Emotional Authority, which is indicated by a Defined (Colored) Emotional Solar Plexus center. People with Emotional Authority have fixed internal waves that keep oscillating between high and low moods. They need some time for their emotional waves to pass so that they have enough clarity to make better decisions for themselves.

I will be sharing more on other forms of Inner Authority in future articles.

#3- Profile

Your Profile is like a costume you wear while learning to play specific roles. By understanding your Profile, you get to appreciate how you learn and interact with people around you.

There are 12 possible Profiles in the form of fractions with Lines 1–6. Each Line represents a specific theme. The 1st Line (numerator) is part of your Personality, and the 2nd Line (denominator) shows your Design.

I will be sharing more about the various Profiles with actual case studies in future articles.
Software Engineering Techniques— Avoid leaking sensitive information with a tripwire
By: Joseph Gefroh
Tags: Technology, Programming, Software Development, Engineering

Software Engineering Techniques— Avoid leaking sensitive information with a tripwire

Avoid the all-to-common developer mistake of leaking sensitive information in an API.

A problem I’ve seen a lot is the back-end controller accidentally serializing and returning confidential data to the front-end.

Sensitive things like password hashes, API access credentials, etc. may accidentally be serialized by magic framework defaults.

Promiscuous serialization

It’s quite easy to accidentally do, especially on a large team with multiple projects. A lot of frameworks put convenience over security, serializing all fields by default in the absence of a whitelist.

As a result, common developer errors may contribute to hidden security vulnerabilities.

In Ruby on Rails, for example, not specifying a serializer when returning an object from a controller will simply return all of the attributes for that object.

class UsersController < ActionController:Base



# If there is no UsersSerializer, this method leaks sensitive data def show

user = User.find(params[:id])

render user

end end

This might happen in a lot of situations. A developer may forget to add the serializer. You may be working with a name-spaced model and the auto-magic resolution doesn’t kick in just right.

Even if you do specify a serializer, you’re not entirely safe. If that serializer uses relationships in the serializer, those relationships will have all of their attributes serialized as well:

class UsersController



def show

User.find(params[:id])

end end class UsersSerializer



attributes :id, :name

has_many :secret_notes # leak! end

You can see there’s a lot of potential for data to be leaked — on larger teams it is inevitable for something to happen eventually.

How do you have secure defaults in an environment that fights against you?

Simple — use a tripwire.
Checkmate But Shouldn’t We Both Win?
Tags: Relationships, Poetry On Medium

Checkmate But Shouldn’t We Both Win?

A Poem

Photo by Syed Hasan Mehdi from Pexels

Two nights ago, you visited me, lips against my neck

your long, strong fingers drawing lines down my silhouette.

You gripped my thighs and ran your fingers through my hair

and I enjoyed the thrill of aching for you yet again,

waking up and believing you were next to me, arms around me

but eyes wide open while you watched me watch you,

and like a ghost, you disappeared

because you were never really there.

Why must we both be feral?

Children of the salvage and the forage,

you thought I was too good for you, too innocent

and now you’re shaken

knowing how similar we are.

And it’s a shame.

Because you still owe me dances,

and I still owe you companionship

you pretended you didn’t want

but fought so hard to get.

We don’t owe each other anything

except the truth to each other’s faces

yet we’re both still so busy

at our chessboard

calculating all the risks.
The Festival Of Light
By: Sylvia Wohlfarth
Tags: India, Poetry, Life, Hope, Festivals

The Festival Of Light

Diwali

Oh, India, land of the many concerns

you could have directed the light

of a brave new world to shine in the nooks

and crannies of the impoverished.

A country so like my Nigeria

which, too, like you broke off the shackles

of the darkness of colonialism with the promise

of enough sparkle for all, only to be syphoned

off into plenty for the few.

Like many before and after you

you had the chance to share the light

in the name of humanity and failed.

India, a land of diverse beauty entwined

in the ceremony of Diwali once a year

to brighten all lives with the festivity of light.

A spiritual moment of belief for the majority

— poor — to clutch onto a gleam of hope.

A brief moment in their lives assigned

to forget the leaden pain of despair

and join in celebrating the joy of colour

and brilliance as do the fortunate few.

Diwali a resplendent ceremony of colourful

light, the bright and half-light.

Happy Diwali!
Acknowledging the Value of Women:
By: Mickey Costa
Tags: History, Crypto, Token, Women Empowerment, Financial Inclusion

Acknowledging the Value of Women:

The Faces of an empowered economy should reflect the Faces of those that got us here and will drive it forward.

Denominations of money are implicit validations of who has ‘value’. Over time, these values are subconsciously engrained into the collective psyche and become self-reinforced norms.

Historically, men have overwhelmingly dominated such denominations and have thus been designated as having the most value. However, this is simply false on its face.

It is well-settled consensus that the best way to increase economic productivity is through empowering women. Women and women’s groups are the engine of underserved economies as well as the driving force powering their growth.

Their continued perseverance in the face of the inherently exclusionary rules of traditional economies is all the proof one needs to forecast who will drive growth and innovation in a new permissionless economy that is free to set its own rules.

As such, the denominations of ACX will be ascribed to the names of some of the most empowering women in human history.

Introducing Our 10 Denominations

Below is a look at ACX’s 10 denominations, from largest to smallest. We chose to name our units after empowering, brave and powerful women who inspire us and represent the heart that we hope for our community to embody. We include a short blurb on their dedication to taking risks, breaking rules, and challenging the status quo in order to empower others.

You will notice that we are leaving 2 denominations blank to be voted on by ACX Network participants after launch. During our community rewards program we will be incentivizing open submissions for the top 5 candidate choices, that will later be voted on by the network to pick the final 2 women.

There will be 6 Billion ACX.

1,000,000 ACX = 1 Kit (Kittur Chennamma, India)

Kittur was one of the Indian female rulers to lead an armed rebellion against the British East India Company in 1824. The resistance ended with her arrest and she became a symbol of the independence movement in India.
What’s our take on Fiat-Crypto Trading Pairs!
By: Sumit Gupta
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Bitcoin

Edit: The article has been modified as CoinDCX is also bringing Fiat-Crypto pairs now after we managed to have bank accounts for deposits/withdrawals. Even though there are some complications in managing current bank accounts but we will try our best to ensure you have a seamless trading experience at CoinDCX. We have taken this decision considering multiple requests by our users to bring fiat-crypto trading too. Read here for details —https://medium.com/coindcx/adding-fiat-crypto-pairs-on-coindcx-a24c2b1a9792

Dear Traders,

We have started CoinDCX with the vision to build India’s most trusted and advanced cryptocurrency exchange. The two main pillars for success of any crypto exchange are:

Trust from the users that their funds are safe

Core Technology behind the exchange (Security, Speed, Trading Engine etc.)

You might have noticed recently that all major Indian banks are not supporting bank account for crypto exchanges at the moment. Though there are some tweaks we can do for INR deposit/withdrawals as other exchanges are doing it but this is bit manual process and we will launch INR pairs at the right time. Operating an cryptocurrency exchange bank account in improper manner is risky and we will do it once we figure out the right ways to do it. As an exchange, we will always aims to do a clear, fair and transparent business which is the key to gain your trust.

Secondly, the team wants to focus on our core technology and provide the best trading platform and seamless trading experience. Hence we choose to give technology a priority and launch fiat-crypto model at the right time where we can assure you a seamless experience and provide faster and seamless deposits/withdrawals to our users.

So, we will be launching promising altcoins with BTC/ETH pairs so that our users have maximum options to trade in seamlessly and securely and launch fiat-crypto trading later when we’re ready with it.

We’re very close to our launch now! Hope you’ll enjoy trading at CoinDCX.

Happy Trading,

The CoinDCX Team
PixieDust gets its first community-driven feature in 1.0.4
By: David Taieb
Tags: Apache Spark, Data Visualization, Data Science, Pixiedust, Jupyter

PixieDust gets its first community-driven feature in 1.0.4

Now with time series data, the fairy tale continues

Last month I announced the availability of PixieDust 1.0. Since then, community adoption has been fantastic. Based on repo stars and on feedback at conferences and events, more developers and data scientists are using PixieDust as part of their work in Jupyter Notebooks.

Today, we’re releasing version 1.0.4 on PyPi, but what’s noteworthy is that this version is getting a new feature that has been prioritized by the community: time series data. (Personally, there’s no better feeling than working on a feature that users are clamoring for.)

The PixieDust fairy tale continues with time series data.

Once upon a time [series]

PixieDust now supports display of time series data for bar and line charts. Previously, when loading data into PySpark DataFrames from data sources that required schema discovery (CSVs, JSON, etc.), datetime values were often converted into strings. This caused problems when visualizing the data (sorting, formatting, etc.). Fixing it required complicated massaging of the data.

In the example below, I want to display stock values over time. Unfortunately, Spark converts the date values to Unix timestamps, and the results are not visualized correctly:
Captive State (2019)
By: Jeffrey Bricker
Tags: Movies, Film, Review, Culture, Science Fiction

Wyatt uses a variety of techniques to endow Captive State with a gritty, realistic feel. Again it’s not about spaceships and laser guns, and there’s no glossy shine to the film giving you a sense of hope or the assurance mankind will triumph in the end. Hope that is the scarcest resources in Wyatt’s film. Filming on location in Chicago, rather than on studio backlots, only adds to the sense of realism. A careful eye for detail was applied to almost every scene and the effort serves things well. From the Wicker Park neighbourhood to iconic Soldier Field, Captive State draws you into a place that’s hauntingly familiar yet disturbingly strange.

For Wyatt, this is familiar turf. His biggest movies to date, Rise of the Planet of Apes (2011) and The Gambler (2014), are both rather bleak affairs. He seems to be drawn to projects that tell stories about how the worst of our human instincts and desires lead to our undoing. In some cases this unravelling is personal (see The Gambler), but sometimes it’s global (see Apes). In many ways, Captive State blends both together.

At its core, this is a story of human beings, not aliens. The importance is in how we adapt and respond to authoritarian rule and a desire for freedom that dwells in the soul of mankind. It’s making too big and too serious of a social statement to be a work of popcorn science fiction, with chaotic battle scenes around US landmarks. Audiences usually have to seek out a film like this, not knowing what they’re getting into. Certainly, today’s audiences don’t expect to be talking about themes and social implications afterwards.

Captive State is not a fun movie, but fun isn’t really the point. It’s striving to be a thought-provoking social commentary on the human condition. Wyatt uses the sci-fi setting to talk about much larger issues. Unfortunately, I think most audiences will miss the point. Captive State would have likely done better on SVOD, where audiences could have discovered it organically. In the multiplexes today, it’s perhaps doomed to fail and most won’t be able to appreciate Wyatt’s work until its Blu-ray release.

There’s a reasonable criticism the story needed more time to be told. The constraints of a two-hour runtime hurt character development and leave too many threads dangling. One can’t help but wonder what Captive State would’ve been if given the time to expand its narrative across several seasons as a television series. It’s an intelligent alternative for a genre too often filled with visually stunning movies that lack true vision. Captive State has all three of these and, if anything, leaves you wishing for a sequel we’ll likely never see.

Cast & Crew

director: Rupert Wyatt.

writers: Erica Beeney & Rupert Wyatt.

starring: John Goodman, Ashton Sanders, Jonathan Majors, Machine Gun Kelly & Vera Farmiga.

Originally published at www.framerated.co.uk on March 27, 2019.
Goats are taking over the steppe…
By: Robert Ritz
Tags: Data Visualization, Data Analysis, Mongolia

Goats are taking over the steppe…

This headline is a bit of hyperbole. However it isn’t far off.

There is quite a lot of discussion of land degradation, desertification, and climate change in the past several years in Mongolia. One theory about this change is not climate change but the number and type of animals that roam the steppe of Mongolia.

Sheep, goats, cattle, horses, camels, oh my!

Under communism (before the shift to democracy) nomadic herders were limited in the number and type of animals they were allowed to raise. If a herder had a great year and they had a higher number of animals than allowed, the state would take them to be relocated or slaughtered. Since 1990 and the shift to democracy in Mongolia limits on nomadic herders for the amount and type of animals they can posses have been eliminated. This led to a dramatic increase in the number of herd animals in Mongolia. Today there are nearly 70 million of these herd animals. That is more than 23 animals for every human.

As part of this discussion on the changing environment is the phenomenon of dzud. This term refers to a type of natural disaster in Mongolia where a harsh winter causes a large number of animals to die. The record for dzud in Mongolia was the 2009–2010 winter, where 8 million animals died (17% of the population).

To get a better handle on this I put together two visualizations that put this explosion of animals in perspective. The first shows the percent share of each of the five herd animals from 1970 to 2017. The second shows the total number of herd animals over time, with dzuds annotated.
WYPIS? [what’s your place in space?]
By: Diem Jones
Tags: Equanimity, Poetry, George Clinton, Music, Wisdom

Sun Ra led us on a chant, “What’s Ur Place in Space?”…and so it went that the message went by without the fullest of ingestions, thus we have to say it again, with different window dressings…

Mind Time was my journey to restate the question, 10 years ago…enjoy the journey.

…sanity is the notion and the motion has gotta be the path home…it’s your mind to save…a mind is terrible thing to waste..tomorrow needn’t be a replay of yesterday unless you are happy with the newscast…the price of gas is too high, but you keep on driving…who dunitt to your mind…don’t loose the time to get sane…don’t you want to go home?

Can you feel me?
Want to Produce More Quality Work as a Software Engineer?
By: Edward Huang
Tags: Software Development, Advice, Productivity, Careers, Programming

Want to Produce More Quality Work as a Software Engineer?

Change your schedule

Photo by Lucian Alexe on Unsplash.

In a 2004 interview, famous novelist Haruki Murakami discussed his daily habit: He would wake up at 4 a.m. and work for five to six hours. Then, Murakami would go for a swim, listen to music for the rest of his day, and go to bed at around 9 p.m. He said that he would hold on to such repetition to keep up his artistic sensitivity. Another great writer, Ernest Hemingway, had a daily routine whereby he would write every morning from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. because that was when no one disturbed him. He could have a deep focus on his work.

Novelists aren’t the only ones to keep such an uncommon schedule. This applies to software developers too.

In his book (Masters of Doom) about a game development company, David Kushner reflected on ace coder John Carmack’s unconventional working style. To increase his productivity and find a break from distraction while working on his breakthrough Quake engine, Carmack adopted an aggressive approach: He began gradually shifting the start of his workday. Eventually, he was starting his programming in the evening and finishing just before dawn.

On the other hand, the schedule of entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk is broken down into tiny slots, mostly comprising meetings, which can be as short as three minutes long. He will make calls, post content on various social media platforms, and resolve issues within his company during those meetings. In short, his daily schedule consists of managing, organizing, and booking schedules.

We tend to read or hear about the schedules of people we admire and learn from them by waking up early every day or skipping breakfast to become as productive as they are. However, we often miss one indicator that these people have different types of work. Thus, their specific schedule and routine are what bring them those improved results.

We can fit the work that we do into two types of schedules: maker and manager schedules. If you want to become productive and offer high-quality work as a software engineer, you will need to know how to switch between these two types of schedules during your day-to-day activities.
Why didn’t I love the movie Soul?
By: Kern Carter
Tags: Creativity, Movie Review, Depression, Soul

A short commentary on the movie Soul.

Image by Berk

The trailer to the movie Soul got me excited. Inside Out is one of my favourite Pixar movies and the Soul preview gave me that same kinda vibe. And although the animation kept me in awe the entire film, I thought it missed an opportunity to dive deep into the emotional dangers and social isolation that comes with trying to live your purpose. More plainly, the execution of the story idea was good, not great.

The plot was straightforward enough — their’s meaning in simply being alive and we need to move beyond the belief that we have a singular purpose. Soul tries to show how damaging the purpose narrative can be to our mental health if it’s exchanged for the cost of actually enjoying life.

I got all that, and the movie touched on some heavy topics in a clever way. Its commentary on lost souls is brilliant and was one of the only times my heart and mind were communicating in ways I anticipated would be happening throughout the entire film.

But for me, those moments were rare. I’ve read commentaries that have suggested some racial blunders. Not sure I’d take it that far. The case of one of the souls mistaking Joe, a Black man, with another Black man felt insensitive. And if you really turn up your racial lens, I can maybe see how what could be interpreted as a white woman speaking in the body of a Black man for a large portion of the film can be off-putting. But I didn’t view it that way.

I actually thought that race was incidental to the film and not meant to be considered as part of its theme, at least not a primary one.

For me, I think there was an opportunity to dive deeper into the relationship between the lost souls and the lack of purpose. They teased it well, and at the end of the movie we get glimpses into how that relationship can quickly descend into depression. But a tease is all we got, and instead the plot centred more around what it means to appreciate life.

I also thought the film could’ve had Joe, the main character, interact more with his family and friends on earth. The barbershop scene was a standout moment. When Joe finishes his haircut and asks the barber why he’s never told him about his life, the barber says, “because you never asked.” That’s when Joe first started to realize that there’s more to life than just jazz and that maybe the fixation on his purpose had made him selfish.

The conversation he had with his mother about supporting his passion is another moment that tugs at your heartstrings. I could’ve watched three or four more scenes like that. The relatability of those moments were powerful and gave glimpses into how much more moving this film could’ve been.

That said, this is an animated movie meant for children. My feelings as a mid-thirties viewer should be taken with that preface. And to be honest, I liked the film, I just didn’t love it. I’m curious to see what others have to say about it as more people start sitting with its messages.
Mistakes — A Handful of Observations
By: Ed Newman
Tags: Life Lessons, A Few Words, Mistakes, Ideas, Quotes

After it is all over, as stupid a fellow as I am can see that mistakes were made. I notice, however, that my mistakes are never told me until it is too late.

— Gen. Robert E. Lee
Android Automation: A super simple guide to create your first Espresso test
By: Dmitry Yarygin
Tags: Android App Development, Testing, Mobile Testing, Android, Automation

What is Espresso, anyway?

No, it’s not a drink that you drink every day to have an energy boost. Espresso is an open source test framework developed by Google that allows to perform complex UI tests on either a real device or emulator. Will it take a while to wrap your head around writing complex tests on Android?

Maybe. But nothing stops you from making a first move and educating yourself how to write simple test cases for Android using Espresso framework.

Tell me more about automation?

Sure. Automation is a way of making test execution faster, more efficient and scalable. Manual testing is important, but having an established testing is much better option going forward.

There are primarily two types of testing frameworks:

Frameworks that don’t need an access to a source code and are not integrated as a part of the project. Examples are WebDriver, Appium, QTP. Frameworks that need an access to a source code. Espresso, KIF (Keep It Functional) are good examples.

Espresso is type of framework that needs access to a source code and that’s why in order to automate it we need to have an access to our project’s source code. Since we need to have a project to work on, let’s create one!

Main components of Espresso

There are three kinds of methods available in Espresso framework:

ViewMatchers — allows to find an object in current hierarchy of view ViewAssertions — allows to check a state of an object and confirm that the state matches the criteria ViewActions — this method allows to perform an action with an object.

Let’s dig deeper and see how it works in real life scenario.

Creating a simple application for automation

First thing we need to do is create a sample app that we need to automate. Go ahead and create an Android Studio project. Of course, Android Studio needs to be installed on a machine.
Colorado Will Set National Bar on Student Data Privacy Protection
By: Suzzette Abbasciano
Tags: Data, Education, Privacy

Yesterday, on May 5th, the Colorado House unanimously passed House Bill 1423, which prohibits educational software and app developers from collecting data that can be be assembled and directly linked to an individual student. The use of algorithms to piece together information and reassemble a student’s profile falls under the preventative measures. The Student Data and Transparency and Security Act takes into consideration what technology companies will be able to do with student data in the future, addressing parental concerns in the new digital age. Colorado’s legislation is considered to be path-creating since it addresses the continuous evolution of software and application capabilities.

The state board of education, department of education, school districts, boards of cooperative services, and charter schools are given additional responsibilities unter the bill that are aimed to increase the transparency and security of student personally identifiable information. Furthermore, apart from when required by state or federal law, information cannot be collected that is linked to a student’s juvenile delinquency records, criminal records, medical and health records, social security numbers, biometric information, and information concerning the political affiliations or the beliefs or attitudes of students and their families.

Student data is also prevented from being transferred to any other federal, state, or local entity, including to bodies or institutions outside of Colorado. Exceptions to the data transfer regulations include if the student enrolls in an out-of-state institution or is classified as a “migrant” for federal reporting purposes.

Denver-based journalist Joey Bunch follows the political scene in the state’s capitol, and will likely report on the outcome of the bill after the Senate vote.
These are the Top 3 Features I Want from Data Studio in 2020
By: Patrick Strickler
Tags: Data, Google Analytics, Data Visualization, Business Intelligence, Google Data Studio

What’s becoming an annual tradition (see 2017, 2019), the list below encompasses the top 3 features I want from Google Data Studio in 2020. As a reminder, this list comes from a place of love — Data Studio has become my tool-of-choice over the past few years, and these are all improvements that would make it that much easier to recommend.

1. Detailed Visualization Controls

Google Data Studio — Visualization Controls circa 2020

While Google has made strides in this space over the past year with additions like custom visuals, conditional formatting, and label fine-tuning, Data Studio is still behind other platforms in this area. I think this statement I made last year still holds true: I would prefer to see a concerted effort from the Data Studio team to really nail down the basics (data labels, color by metric, size by metric, axis padding, individual axis toggles, etc.) before offloading the work onto the community [via custom visuals].

“…data labels, color by metric, size by metric, axis padding, individual axis toggles, etc.”

2. Proper Data Blending

Google Data Studio — Data Blending circa 2020

Sadly, my hopes from 2019 have not been answered. When it comes to data blending, I would still love to see it move to a dedicated space in the dataset interface so that 1) I can do all of my data blending before I even start messing around with visualizations, and 2) I can save/reuse/share/manage my blended datasets like any other dataset in Data Studio. This is how most tools are setup and it’s more logical than trying to do everything in the dashboarding interface. While we’re on the topic, blended data calculations need to be updated. As of today, you can technically create a blended data calc, but it’s a mess and it doesn’t scale.

“I would still love to see [data blending] move to a dedicated space…”

3. Functions, Parameters, and Grouping

Google Data Studio — Function Editing circa 2020

Keeping with the theme here, my third feature request is identical to 2019. The team at Google made their first updates to the function library last year, but Data Studio has a long way to go to catch up to some of the hard-to-live-without functions available on other platforms (e.g. FIXED, SUMX, RANK). Related to functions, parameters and grouping are two other features that have been noticeably absent since 2016. Tableau has the best implementation of parameters and grouping I’ve used to date, so hopefully Data Studio can copy what Tableau has already done.

“Data Studio has a long way to go to catch up to some of the hard-to-live-without functions available on other platforms”

What do you think? Are there any features that you’ve been waiting to see implemented in Data Studio? Feel free to get in touch.
Vandals and Good News
By: Stevie Adler
Tags: Writing On Medium, This Happened To Me, Blog, Vandalism, Good News

Photo by Liana De Laurent from Pexels

Vandals and Good News

Blog: 01 September 2019: Vandals and Good News

I have been distracted, but there is some good news in the pipeline.

Vandals

Two windows on the side of my house have been smashed by some bright spark vandals.

The first time was a couple of months ago so I promptly called someone out to board up and repair. He quoted a total price but would have to come back the next day to do the work. I should have realised something was up when he kept complaining that it wasn’t a double glazed window!

Anyway I agreed to the total but instead of boarding he taped over the cracks and suggested I pay for the work so far because it might be a different person that comes in the morning. So I paid £75 (+ tax = £90) for up to one hours work (5–10 minutes), expecting to see him the next day.

Needless to say he did not return, obviously was looking for more than a single £75 an hour. I did try other glaziers, but couldn’t find anyone else in my area, so, just gave up.

Fast forward to a few days ago, over a weekend another vandal smashed another window. Learning, I boarded it up myself and saved £90!

This experience does make one want to consider Do-It-Yourself glazing.

Bit of the Country in town three feet from window number 2 (Stevie Adler)

All the police do is take down the details, over the phone, and file it. Though this time I did get a visit from the Crime Prevention Officer to give some leaflets and offer advice. One part of her advice was, The Broken Windows Theory:

The broken windows theory is a terminological theory that states that visible signs of crime, anti-social behaviour, and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes.

So, the suggestion is, because I didn’t get the first window fixed, it could have attracted further anti-social/criminal behaviour! There might be some truth to this… I’d better fix these windows pronto. Another police suggestion is to use reinforced glass. Providing more of a challenge to the evolving vandal.
Verifiable Credentials on the Blockchain
Tags: Learning, Higher Education, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Education Reform

The world needs a new system to record, house, curate, secure, and distribute evidence of learning. That new system is the global blockchain and every individual is a lifelong registrar.

The MIT Media Lab and Learning Machine have been working on a collaborative project for issuing official records to recipients, and anchoring them onto the Bitcoin blockchain. We’ve just open-sourced the first version of that project and named it Blockcerts. It allows education providers, employers, and others to issue official certificates that supply proof of membership, completion, or achievement. These certificates can be collected by individuals and shared directly with anyone who requires official documents. The Bitcoin blockchain is currently being used as the secure anchor of trust to ensure that each certificate is authentic, unchanged, and still valid. If another open, immutable data store is proven reliable — for example, Ethereum’s public blockchain — issuing to those resources can easily be included.

Our goal is to help create an entirely new environment where individuals are the custodians of their official records and can easily share those records with others.

The example below was created to illustrate how the verification process works. Ultimately this verification process wouldn’t only be a button on the certificate display, but also verifiable through independent service providers.
Questions UXers should ask in Job Interviews
By: Michael Schofield
Tags: UX, Organizational Culture, Job Interview, Podcast, Hiring

In this episode of Metric, we talk about questions UXers should ask during job interviews, and what about that interview or organization are red flags.

In the gloss, look for chatter about the origins of our usernames, how to pronounce “schoeyfield” (and how that’s not my last name!), and a game recommendation for Ninja Theory’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.

Yes, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is that dope. It’s a masterclass of design work.

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Miles to go before I sleep….
By: Bilal Zuberi
Tags: Education, Pakistan, Immigrants

My good friend Adil brought this to my attention via his blog pakistaniat.com. It is a TV advertisement for a mobile phone company in Pakistan. But that is probably the least of what it is. It totally rocked my world. I have heard over and over again for the past hour or so. And I can’t seem to stop. The song, the video, the story has such a strong message — for people like me who left their country of birth in search of a better future, but who have so much they still owe to the country and people they left behind.

I am also reminded of my favorite poem (by Robert Frost):

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suC2rTtxvo&feature=player_embedded#]

also “still trying to figure out what to make of it. As a song. As a video. As message. As an advertisement.” But I know what it is asking of me…from so many of us. I am reminded of my favorite poem by Robert Frost:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.
Huobi DM Launches Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Contracts
By: Huobi Global
Tags: Trading, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin, Huobidm

More coins are on the way for Huobi DM and cumulative trading for the crypto asset contract service has exceeded USD $92 billion.

Users now have even more flexibility and choice on Huobi Derivative Market (Huobi DM). Bitcoin Cash (BCH) service has gone live on the crypto asset contract service and two more coins are scheduled to be launched before the end of May.

Inclusion on Huobi DM means traders will now be able take both long and short positions on BCH, allowing for arbitrage, speculation, and hedging. Since 2017, Bitcoin Cash’s value has fluctuated between $75.08 and $4,355.62.

In addition to BCH, Huobi DM currently offers weekly, bi-weekly, and quarterly cryptocurrency contracts for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and EOS (EOS), Litecoin (LTC), and, as of last month, Ripple (XRP). Since its launch in late 2018, Huobi DM has grown rapidly, recently exceeding USD$92 billion in cumulative trading volume.

Features of Huobi DM:

· Competitive fee structure for BCH: 0.02% to open or close for makers and 0.03% to open or close for takers.

· Superior risk management: including Price Limit, Order Limit, and Position Limit.

· Superior risk control: with our sophisticated price limit mechanism, no claw back has occurred since its launch.

· Real-time risk supervision: we constantly monitor contract prices, index prices, abnormal transactions, and positions.

· Newly raised open position limits for all crypto contracts to up to twice their previous level and order limits to more than double their previous level.

· User protections: To cover the societal losses attributed to unfilled liquidated orders/settle incidents in contract trading, Huobi also has a dedicated Risk Management Insurance Fund for each trading pair.

Disclaimers: Digital assets are innovative trading products, and prices fluctuate greatly. Please rationally judge your trading ability and make decisions prudently. Please note that users must clear the requisite KYC checks and assessments prior to commencing usage of Huobi DM. Huobi DM is not available to users from the United States of America, Singapore, Israel, Iraq, Hong Kong (China), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Malaysia, Syria, Samoa Eastern, Puerto Rico, Guam, Bangladesh, Ecuador, and Kyrgyzstan.

For more information on Huobi DM, please visit www.hbdm.com
North Carolinians Stand Up to Voter Intimidation
By: Anna Lynch
Tags: Voting, White Privilege, Election 2020

North Carolinians Stand Up to Voter Intimidation

Defending every person’s right to vote.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Last week, I committed to working on voter safety with organizations across North Carolina at the early voting polls. I am humbled to do this work with over 4,000 others who are rightfully concerned that voter intimidation may happen at their polls. Additionally, each of the political parties will have up to two poll watchers inside the polls and a poll watcher outside. While I am a white person who has the privilege of going to vote without worrying about harassment, many North Carolinians have great trepidation about exercising their right. Living in North Carolina, where we have many different factions of white supremacist groups along with President Trump’s call for his supporters to go watch at the polls, there will no doubt be some places where there may be attempts at voter intimidation. Our state has a history of voter intimidation, including in the spring primaries this year, so we need to be especially vigilant.

Our specific coalition will provide PPE, activities for children, food, chairs for those who need one, and keep an eye out for any signs of voter suppression or intimidation and report it to election officials. Because we anticipate long lines, it is important to keep people comfortable and engaged as they wait. This is a huge undertaking with 16 days of early voting to cover. While we cannot be everywhere at once, we have identified places with a history of white supremacy activity and have focused our efforts at those polling sites.

While I am excited to do this work and do what I can to help make our elections safe and secure, I feel a profound sense of sadness that this work is necessary. So many people are having to put so much energy into making sure that everyone has the ability to exercise their right to vote without intimidation. What does this say about the state of our democracy? It saddens me that the divisions are so stark that we expect bad behavior. If each volunteer works a 5-hour shift, that is 20,000 hours of time given to guaranteeing a safe election. What if the collective hours that these people are putting into creating safe elections could be put toward tutoring, supporting the homeless, or other civic causes?

The fact that these bad actors can cause such fear and disruption in our electoral process tells me that the implementation of the anti-voter suppression laws is not strong enough to deter the practice. We need to be serious about prosecuting those who break the election laws and cause fear in Americans who simply want their voice heard.
Perceptron Algorithms for Linear Classification
By: Edwin Tai
Tags: Machine Learning, Binary Classification, Supervised Learning, Decision Boundary, Perceptron

The basic perceptron algorithm was first introduced by Ref 1 in the late 1950s. It is a binary linear classifier for supervised learning. The idea behind the binary linear classifier can be described as follows.

where x is the feature vector, θ is the weight vector, and θ₀ is the bias. The sign function is used to distinguish x as either a positive (+1) or a negative (-1) label. There is the decision boundary to separate the data with different labels, which occurs at

The decision boundary separates the hyperplane into two regions. The data will be labeled as positive in the region that θ⋅ x + θ₀ > 0, and be labeled as negative in the region that θ⋅ x + θ₀ < 0. If all the instances in a given data are linearly separable, there exists a θ and a θ₀ such that y⁽ⁱ ⁾ (θ⋅ x⁽ⁱ ⁾ + θ₀) > 0 for every i-th data point, where y⁽ⁱ ⁾ is the label.

Figure 1 illustrates the aforementioned concepts with the 2-D case where the x = [x₁ x₂]ᵀ, θ = [θ₁ θ₂] and θ₀ is a offset scalar. Note that the margin boundaries are related to the regularization to prevent overfitting of the data, which is beyond the scope discussed here.