fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Soliloquy
By: Ivan Yong Wei Kit
Tags: Ivan Yong Wei Kit, Writing, Poetry, Poem, Rondeau

Soliloquy

A Poem (Rondeau): The Voice of Your Sanity

Photo by Tom Morel on Unsplash

Soliloquy, a mastery of eloquence,

of vital consequence,

To instruct,

and to deconstruct,

matters of utmost importance.

Words of disapproval or acquiescence,

Always leading to renascence.

Increasing wisdom; never reduct.

Soliloquy.

Feign ignorance,

assume casual elegance,

when others eavesdrop and interrupt,

or seek to obstruct,

Your sanity’s cadence.

Soliloquy.
Chinese railway station police are now wearing face recognition glasses to catch criminals
Tags: Tech, China, Privacy, News, Surveillance

Chinese railway station police are now wearing face recognition glasses to catch criminals

Just in case you were wondering why that railway cop wouldn’t stop staring at you

This Spring Festival, police stationed at train stations in China are going to be sporting some fancy new eyewear, designed to catch criminals in transit amid the annual travel mayhem.

While these black-tinted specs may look like Google Glass, they are, in fact, government-developed facial recognition glasses that are connected straight to a police database. The glasses can screen passengers and cross-check their information with that of suspected wrongdoers on file.

People’s Daily published photos earlier this week of officers at the bustling Zhengzhou Railway Station in Henan utilizing these new surveillance accessories. According to the report, at least seven suspected criminals and 26 fake ID holders have been caught using the equipment since the beginning of this year.

The glasses also offer officers back at the station the ability to see what the officer at the scene is seeing. Wall Street Journal reporter Fan Wenxin provides an illustration of what one of these command centers looks like.

In China, facial recognition technology is currently being used for all sorts of tasks, from ordering food at KFC to acquiring toilet paper at public restrooms, however, its most significant application is in policing as the government is engaged in building a massive database of personal information taken from its more than 1.3 billion citizens.

Over the past few months, multiple international media outlets have ran reports about how China is experimenting with sophisticated facial recognition and spying technology in the western, restive region of Xinjiang, making it into perhaps the most heavily surveillanced region on earth.

Meanwhile, in December, police in Guizhou province showed off their own massive network of surveillance cameras to the BBC, managing to track down a reporter in the city of 4 million in just 7 minutes.

While China already has some 170 million CCTV cameras, it’s looking to install another 400 million or so in the next three years. These cameras will be able to match your ID card with your face and your face with your car, tracking your movements back one week, recording all of the people that you came into contact with. The network is targeted at not only preventing crime, but predicting it before it happens.

[Images via People’s Daily]
Moving from AI to IAI
By: Iskander Smit
Tags: AI

In a short post of Matt Webb he pinpointed the new Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is emerging. He refers to another article in the Wired of Stephen Levy were this specific new form of AI is spelled out: not the human brain is duplicated, the own computer generated intelligence is flourished.

I think this interesting stuff. And I like to connected it to a development Jesse Schell coined in one of his recent presentations: the Curiosity Gap. He stated that we develop to a situation where we all have easy access to all the knowledge we need, and the successful people will be defined by the level of curiosity to find the knowledge and be open for it.

Others have coined it the new You-web where knowledge will be relevant and connected to your profile. I use the term Impulse Shaped Services for some time now where services adapt to the context of that one user.

In all approaches you can see that we go from a so-called Artificial Intelligence to an Available Intelligence. Smart people use this available intelligence to relief non-critical tasks and distinguish from non-users. Available Intelligence is used ad-hoc and on demand, profiled. So we can say we will live with Augmented Intelligence.

The smart people are those that know which drawer to pull to use the available knowledge and transform this to value. The trick will be the instant character. The intelligence will be defined by the relevancy and of the knowledge and even the predictive character of it. Services will be providing us with the entrance to these source of instant intelligence. So we have a kind of Instant Available Intelligence.
Vue.Js Mobile Desktop Optimized Images
By: Ethan Ozelius
Tags: Vuejs, JavaScript, Performance, Photoshop, Responsive Design

Note: Photo editing and coding are similar in that it’s a good idea to make a copy that you can fall back on if things go south.

To optimize our images, open the original image in Gimp. To Scale an image in Gimp, go to Tools > Transform Tools > Scale

Once the Scale tool is active, click the image, and a dialog box will appear for you to set the new width and height. I always scale the height proportionally to the width, this can be done automatically with Gimp, but selecting the chain link icon in the scaling dialog box. Set the image width to 1600px, and the height will update automatically.

Once the image has been scaled to our desktop dimensions of 1600 x 1200 pixels, copy the image by holding Cmd + C, or Shift + C on Windows and Linux machines.

Next create a new Gimp image file with File > New. Set the width and height on the new Gimp file to 1600 x 1200 pixels and click OK. Once the new Gimp file loads, simple paste your scaled image from clipboard into the new Gimp image with Cmd + V or Shift + V.

Optimizing for mobile devices is much the same process, with a small caveat. Our mobile images will be portrait not landscape, so we need to select only a section of our original image that will look best on mobile devices.

To select a portrait section of our original image, go to Gimp Tools > Selection Tools > Rectangular Select. Once the rectangular select tool is active, drag across the original image until you find a portrait selection that looks good to you. Once you’ve got it, scale the selection to 500 x 750px, copy the scaled selection, create a new 500 x 750px Gimp image and paste the selection into the new file.
Posts on Google…the story so far
By: Victoria Black
Tags: Sports Marketing, Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, Manchester City, Search Engine Marketing

Posts on Google…the story so far

We went live with Google Posts a couple of months ago. So what is it and how are we getting on.

You Tube Post on he Man City Posts for Google

Bit of background

Anyone not familiar with Posts on Google, they were originally developed for presidential elections in 2016 to allow candidates to give personal messages — more long form and clearly from the actual candidates.

They have evolved since and a variety of business can request access: museums, sports teams, sports leagues, and movies.

Below is a screen shot of the search page for the term ‘man city’. As you can see below, Google allow a brand or business to have an area on the search page that is within their control. The rest of the page is subject to Google search algorithms.

This is where Google posts appear when you search for ‘man city’

What works on Google Posts

The posts can be imagery, video or text, you can add events in too which works well for forthcoming matches. Animated gifs can also be used and work well to catch the users eye.

Adding Posts isn’t automated at the moment, so no access to API’s to populate this from our CMS. It is a manual process and I do have to nudge the team to remember to add content on there too.

We have a number of different channels our editors service and the number is growing, so I’ll forgive them a few missed posts.

We’ve been using a mix of mancity.com news content and videos from the Manchester City YouTube channel.

Click rates vary, but we’re currently around 7% and we’re not publishing on here as much as we’d like to.

Editing

It’s all very simple and there are limited styling options. It makes for a clean, quick and simple user interface. Get content in there, publish (or schedule publish) and you’re done.

Posts for Google - Analytics…or lack thereof

It’s fair the say the analytics on Posts is somewhat…light touch.

There’s a weekly round up of impressions and top posts, but that’s essentially it. Google don’t provide insight for every post as yet, though they give you general tips on what works. It’s a shame, it would be useful to determine which types of video and text work better than others.

What’s next

We’re going to monitor the impact this has on the site and other channels to see how well this compliments the content we already produce.

If you have any feedback, please comment below or send us a tweet www.twitter.com/mancitydigital or www.twitter.com/vixmcfc.
Why I Watch Jeopardy!
By: Michael Sunderland
Tags: Lifelong Learning, Television, Success, Motivation, Education

2019 has been a notable year for Jeopardy! We learned that Alex Trebek has pancreatic cancer, which brought new levels of emotion and poignancy to the show. “Jeopardy” James Holzhauer brought a new style and dominance to the game before being taken down by librarian Emma Boettcher.

However, James recently got his revenge in the Tournament of Champions. Finally, we also got the exciting announcement of the upcoming “Greatest of All Time” Tournament in January, which pits Jeopardy James against legends Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

This got me thinking: Why do we watch Jeopardy? Why is Jeopardy the game show equivalent of chess to Wheel of Fortune’s checkers? The first thing I thought of was the competition. Yes, it’s fun to shout out the answers and show your intelligence and wide-ranging variety of knowledge, much like it’s fun to go to a trivia night.

I thought about my Jeopardy battles with my friend Matt in South Dakota, in which we would watch like 7 DVR-ed Jeopardy episodes in a row, record scores for each game, and compete in a year-long series. This could get pretty intense. There wasn’t a ton of things to do in South Dakota.

However, I feel like the appeal of Jeopardy goes beyond the competition. The show appeals to the concept of lifelong learning. Jeopardy makes it clear that there are always new things to learn, new areas to explore. Learning is a continuous journey that goes well beyond the classroom and school institutions. The show inspires me to become more engaged in the world and to pay attention to topics I might normally ignore or skim over.

“Maybe I should learn more about geography, especially outside the United States.”

“Maybe I should learn more about opera…or British monarchs…or anatomy…or current music…or rivers”

You name it. There is always more to learn, and Jeopardy reflects this quest for continuous learning.

Imagine a person who never had formal schooling but instead had an education based on Jeopardy. For years and years, they watched the show. Yes, their learning would be all over the place and seemingly disconnected. But imagine if that person undertook a self-guided course of study and reading each day based on the topics of the previous show.

Imagine not only the variety but also the depth of learning over time if that person was motivated to really explore the topics, not only through reading articles but through videos, documentaries, novels, plays, poetry, photographs, maps, multimedia, etc. Imagine that self-guided seeker of knowledge-making connections between historical movements, pop culture, and literature. Education by Jeopardy.

Call to Action

The next time you watch Jeopardy, don’t just watch it for mere entertainment or competition. Use it to learn something new and intriguing and to inspire you to go down the rabbit hole of that topic. Use Jeopardy as a dynamic tool on your quest for lifelong learning.
Nokia Lumia’ya eski telefon rehberini aktarmak
By: Evren Yildiz
Tags: Teknoloji, Lumia, Nokia, Akıllı Telefon, Rehber

in Both Sides of the Table
About Me— James A. (Jim) Mason
By: Jim Mason
Tags: Autobiography, Introduction, About Me, Philosophy

Photo by Linda Brown

I won the life lottery at birth, a lucky combination of good genes, raised by loving parents, with a smart older brother and an equally gifted younger sister (though I didn’t appreciate her enough when I was a child). Born an American in Iowa, I will die a happy Canadian — likely in Toronto, being the proud father of two fine sons, and having spent my later years in a loving relationship with my wonderful wife and partner, Linda Brown.

I decided long ago to spend my life learning as much as I could about what life is, and to try to pass on what I learned to other people. I was given a good start in that quest by a Unitarian religious education, which put wonder and awe before acceptance of, and submission to, specific answers. From what I have learned, our happiness as human beings depends entirely on how we cooperate with other people and other animals.

Here are two poems of mine.

I wrote the first one in late adolescence. I often think our human growth is like trees in a forest:

Up from a speck I grow,

Nourished by cultural broth,

Flexing and climbing on sunlight,

Out of a random potential,

Embracing, destroying, rebuilding,

An ever enlarging awareness

Encompassing immanent power;

But with it awareness of weakness,

The freezing entrapment of structure,

A gradual drain on potential,

Exhausting the limits of sunlight,

With roots binding fast in the culture,

As far from the stars as before.

I wrote the second poem about 25 years ago, as part of a larger, unpublished draft about “Tuning the Rhythms of Your Life”:

Inhale, exhale,

Inhale, exhale, …

Feel your heart beat in your chest …

You are an instrument in the symphony of life.

Work, rest,

Play, rest, …

Enjoy your rhythms of eating and drinking …

You are a player in the symphony of life.

Listen, talk,

Watch, perform, …

Pass the beat to those around you …

You are a conductor of the symphony of life.

Observe, reflect,

Explore, decide, …

Bring your rhythms into harmony …

You are a composer of the symphony of life.

Grow, disperse,

Live, die, …

Leave an echo as you pass …

You are a composition of the symphony of life.

I believe my composition is almost finished now.
Simple POST request on Android Kotlin using Retrofit
By: Sazzad Hissain Khan
Tags: Json, Rest Api, Retrofit, Parsing, Kotlin

Gradle dependency

You need to add below dependencies into your Android projects build.gradle (Module: app) file

API and raw JSON Request Response

Now let’s assume our server endpoint for your REST request is http://api.server.com/users and we want to add a new user in server using http POST method call. Server spec for request and response might look like,

Request body json:

Response body json:

We see, when we hit the endpoint with above request body, server inserts the user info into its database, creates a new user ID for that particular user and returns the same user including the assigned new user ID. We want to parse the response user into the client apps custom object.

Kotlin Data Model Class

We need to prepare model class UserInfo. As we see, json keys for request and response are not following coding convention of Android, so we need to add SerializedName annotation for keys so that when we use Retrofit it generates proper json with those keys. Using SerializedName we can map our property to jason key. Remember it is better to make the properties optional so that even if server does not response with all the keys we still able to create our rich object in client side.

Retrofit Workflow

Now, we need three components to work with Retrofit REST calls,
The Kindest Thing
Tags: Death, Blog, Writing, Fiction, Short Story

Wishing someone would die and stay dead is actually a wish rooted in kindness. Because what is the opposite? Wishing someone would die and not stay dead? What are you trying to tell me that after my death you want me to rise from the grave to live a non-life of zombie agony? Rude.

Or do you want me to not die at all? You want to curse me with an infinite amount of years? Even after the sun explodes you want me to keep on living? I mean what would I even do to pass the time? Literally nothing on Earth would exist after that…

So I say this with all sincerity. I hope you all die and stay dead. :)

❤

— — — — — — — — — — —

Another

Follow on Twitter

Eric Isaac on Amazon

Peace.
A Guide to Better Bug Reporting
By: Jeremy Ho
Tags: Debugging, Software Development, Programming

A Guide to Better Bug Reporting

How to handle bugs when they show up in your project

Software bugs are like real bugs: No one likes them, but they’re a fact of life, and you need a way to handle them when they show up.

While engineers are responsible for preventing and addressing software issues, anyone can take part in improving the apps they use by helping to report when things don’t work. Those who work at tech companies especially should recognize that helping to improve the product is part of being a good team player. “If you see something, say something,” as the saying goes.

The problem is, most non-technical folks are never really taught how to communicate with technical teams to get things fixed. This article was written to be the resource I’ve often found myself wanting to be able to forward: a guide on how to be more effective in this particular area of tech partnership.

I’ll share insights from the engineering perspective to give you an understanding of what makes a good bug report and why. Put these points into practice, and your issues will likely get resolved faster, you’ll have a better relationship with your tech team, and hopefully, we’ll all encounter fewer bugs in the apps we use.
Create a Commute If You Work from Home!
By: Bradley Allen
Tags: Life Lessons, Productivity, Self, Self Improvement, Life

Create a Commute If You Work from Home!

Fake it!

Photo by Tom Sodoge on Unsplash

Throughout my early twenties, I worked in the hospitality industry. Sometimes it was part-time while studying and other times it was full time. For those of you who have had the pleasure of working in a restaurant or pub, you’ll know that with those kinds of jobs comes a lot of walking. It was not uncommon for me to hit 30,000 steps in a day on a busy day. It helped that I’d also walk between 20 and 45 minutes to work (depending on the job and where I lived.)

Now I work from home, and my commute is the walk from my bedroom to my office… Which I’d guess is about 15 steps. Actually, hang on.

…

…

…

Ok, it’s 16 steps! Bonus step!

My point is that I’d gone from walking a hell of a lot to a very sedentary lifestyle. Also, since I moved in February I now live in a city centre, so everything is very close by. Even walking to the supermarket to buy groceries is only a ten-minute walk!

I was fast approaching the danger zone of laziness, but honestly, I’d been there a while, chilling on the sofa, eating cookies. Something had to change.

I decided to artificially increase my commute which is a fancy way of saying I got up of my ass and went for a walk at 6am every morning! I’d leave at the same time as my partner left for work, pretending I was also leaving for work. There are two benefits to treating this as an actual commute as opposed to just a walk.

1 — it becomes non-negotiable. If you worked in an office, you’d have no option but to travel to work. And technically I do work in an office. An office with a very relaxed dress code (hello underpants) and authoritarian control over the music. 2 — it means that once you get back from your ‘commute’, you know that it is TIME TO WORK BRADLEY! Not launch yourself down the rabbit hole of YouTube Recommended again!

Obviously, any exercise is good for you, but there are also specific benefits to a brisk walk first thing in the morning.
My First SaaS: Defining The MVP
By: Reilly Chase
Tags: MVP, Startup, Ubiquiti, SaaS, Unifi

It is important to limit and clearly define the MVP for your SaaS project. My goal was to launch https://hostifi.net in 30-days or less, and only build the minimum amount of features that would create enough value to be able to get my first few customers.

Even with a clearly defined, super simple MVP, it still took about 2 months to build it, and after hitting some roadblocks, I lost interest a few times and almost gave up along the way.

From the start, I had several features in mind for my UniFi controller hosting service — Let’s Encrypt SSL automatically installed, a nightly off-site backup script, and 24/7 monitoring agents on every server which would alert me right away to any problems that would come up. I considered all of them to be absolutely mandatory to be completed before launching.

But…I had read about the importance of building an MVP.

So I decided to launch the product with only a UniFi server installation…the self-signed SSL gave browser warnings, no backups were included, and there was no monitoring solution in place.

To my surprise, I was able to get my first 20 customers before completing those “mandatory” features, even though I felt the product wasn’t complete without them.

I was really glad that I had launched the MVP instead of the full-featured product. Those initial customers gave me a huge push in motivation to finish the features that I wanted to build. I don’t think I would have kept with it if I didn’t have those early customers depending on the service to be improved.

The decision to build and launch the MVP first was mainly inspired by Tyler Tringas’s Micro-SaaS Ebook, which I highly recommend reading all of if you are planning to build your first SaaS!

Timeline of HostiFi Launch and Features

May 24, 2018 — Launch. 0 customers. https://hostifi.net/

June 13, 2018 — Added Let’s Encrypt SSL. ~10 customers

June 28, 2018 — Added Zabbix monitoring. 18 customers

July 10, 2018 — Added nightly off-site backups. ~22 customers
Happy Flowers
By: Galit Birk
Tags: Nature Writing, Nature, Happiness, Poetry, Nature Photography

Flicker and Flight is a Poetry Publication that has married the art of Photography. This publication focuses on supporting Nature, Love/Unity, Spirituality, and Growth, through the beauty of Word-Play and Images.

Follow
Indelible Voices On The Political Front
By: Ramona Grigg
Tags: Opinion, Politics, Presidential Debates, Newsletter, Elections

Indelible Voices On The Political Front

And the stories keep on coming.

Photo by Sonder Quest on Unsplash

Good Friday morning. We woke up to the news that Donald and Melania Trump have both tested COVID positive, and I’m busy trying to reserve my thoughts until all of this makes sense. “Trying” is the operative word.

I’ve been over on Twitter spouting off, but hoping my anger is at least fair. I’ve already warned those on my Facebook family page that I don’t want anyone coming on there wishing for the Trumps’ death. I also don’t want us to be distracted from the things that are important to us as voters. Having COVID doesn’t negate any of the reasons that keep us working so hard to end this regime in November.
Old Money
By: Sam Kimberle
Tags: Blue Insights, Family, This Happened To Me, Memories, Poetry

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

There were pennies and nickels

and dimes

on the toilet,

but no change

from one generation

to the next.

Wealth

that made me crawl

around on the floor

so that I might not be seen.

I made my way to his lap

where I would sit

and silently watch him

as he counted money,

graphing and charting

he made predictions

without paying me

much mind.

I enjoyed the esoteric symbols

and the silence

that made sense

so many cents

between the two of us

even if

we never said a word.
How the Climate in Melbourne Changed Over a Century
By: Eneli Toodu
Tags: Environment, Weather, Data Science, Australia, Climate Change

A record long heat wave has been torturing the southern states of Australia. We thought to look into the weather data for Melbourne, it’s second most populous city, to see if there are noteworthy signs of climate change. For the analysis we used over a 100 years of data provided by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM).

To make it easier to access and work with the large BOM datasets, we first added them to the Planet OS Datahub:

We focused on two main parameters — maximum temperature and precipitation data, and we used the third dataset from the list above.

From the graph below and the more in-depth analysis in the notebook, you can see the changes in the mean annual maximum temperature in Melbourne. The overall average, 20.03°C for the period of 1911–2017 is marked with a red dotted line and the green line marks a trend.

We checked if the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has had any impact on the area, and discovered that during a vast majority of the El Niño years, the temperatures were higher than the overall average. Meaning that it has indeed been affecting Melbourne.
ডকার নেটওয়ার্কিং
By: Cyan Tarek
Tags: Bangla, Docker, Networking

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On Hollow Wings, We Rise
By: Zach J. Payne
Tags: Grief, Death, Family, Love, Poetry

for a.s.k.

Now time will twist your bones, a butterfly

will rise from shadows etched over your skin

and though the morning mourns, the sun sets in —

this lovely globe will take the tears we cry

and carry all the water to the sky

where things are made anew and time begins

to wrap our wounded grace with healing winds.

Now Faith is not essential but it flies

with what we know: the world will find a way

to turn our shit and diamonds into life,

some childish blossom grows ever anew.

and all is set aright: some hopeful days

with neither wailing, weeping, nor the strife

that hollowed out our hearts. We’re growing, too.
Death of a Fire
By: Grace Moore
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Family, Ninjabyob, Poetry, Poems On Medium

Death of a Fire

A Poem

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

My grandpa in a hospital bed

bones and skin and little else

but I remember him

when I was seven, and I asked him

what God looked like

because I thought God would have looked

a little bit like him

just bigger, and maybe mixed with

a little bit of Aladdin’s Genie:

all-powerful, kind, granter of wishes

He told me if God looked like anything

He would look like fire

an inferno so bright and powerful

you wouldn’t be able to look at it

Back in the hospital room,

I think maybe we were both

a little bit right

and a little bit wrong

because there he is right in front of me

and I can hardly bear

to look
Newspaper Cites to Ban the Box after Unknowingly Hiring Convicted Sex Offender as Education Reporter
By: Hire Image, Johnston, Ri
Tags: Appears, Convicted, Unaware, Criminal Justice, Education

When New Mexico’s Gallup Independent Newspaper hired Guy Priel as an education reporter, they were unaware that he had been previously convicted of two felonies–once for assaulting a child and once for possessing child pornography. After being hired, Priel was sent into a school for a story. Fortunately, he was observed during his visit and no harm was done to any of the children.

When the newspaper found out about Priel’s past, they pointed to the recently enacted Ban the Box law, prohibiting employers from asking about criminal history on a job application. In response, State Senator Bill O’Neill, who co-sponsored the bill, stated that the law does not change the employer’s responsibility to investigate criminal history.

This unfortunate turn of events represents the unintended consequences that may result from some reintegration efforts. While Ban the Box prohibits employers from asking about criminal history at the outset of the application process, we continue to encourage employers to run thorough background checks, including criminal histories, as a part of the process.

For more information about Ban the Box and whether it affects your state, please visit the Hire Image Resource Library.

Originally Posted:- https://www.hireimage.org/newspaper-cites-to-ban-the-box-after-unknowingly-hiring-convicted/
Ranchi Mall Internship Blockchain Contract Report — September 2018
By: Rohit Tripathy
Tags: Bitcoin, Ranchi Mall, Social Entrepreneurship, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

in Both Sides of the Table
Forever With Jo — Lifestyle 22/09/2016
By: Jo Mccowey
Tags: Work, Small Business, Work Life Balance, Remote Working, Business

I would like to share with you what Forever With Jo and the wider brand Forever Living Products has done for me and my life. I never thought that I would see my life change as much as it has to the point that I now have a lovely team working with me doing the save as me and everyone is flourishing in their own businesses. I am able to spend time with friends and family without having to justify how much time I have spent with them not working my business. I am also able to spend and 1 1/2 having lunch or coffee if I wish without the worry of being reprimanded by my boss for doing so when I can spend the time calmly talking about what I do with people who are genuinely interested in what I do and who would like to join my business either as a customer or as a fellow business owner which is great. I even have the ability to speak to people over seas via Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like when ever suits me and other people and help other people to have the same quality of life as I do making serious amounts of money and even being able to sack their boss. If you would like to join my team or know someone who would please do not hesitate to contact me by phoning 07434950716 or go to my website www.jomccowey@flp.com and click on contact me, leave your details and I will get back to you as soon as possible and I look forward to speaking with you soon to share the opportunity with you.
You’ll Know When to Build Systems Until Then, Enjoy the Ride
By: Nate Rutan
Tags: Systems Thinking, Business, Analysis, Engineering, Software

I think this might have something to do with our psychology and how we assume that simple means somehow unsophisticated.

Especially in our world today, algorithms and data science with unimaginable complexity seemingly make our lives easier at every turn.

While these things certainly make some things more accessible, they bring new challenges that we didn’t know existed until adding more pieces to the overall puzzle.

Consider the problem of exponential complexity. You don’t want the overall difficulty of understanding how your business operates to scale on an exponential curve.

That’s the one that looks like “J” on the line graph. This trajectory is a dream come true in your financial growth curve, but on the back end, where all the stuff plugs in, this could portend an untimely end.

If you start building systems too early, you’ll risk creating something that starts scaling into a monstrosity of tangled connections, much sooner than you’d like, and this will undoubtedly be a significant obstacle to your company’s fledgling growth.

A concrete example of this is when the platforms you use to try and upsell you to another tier. You might be tempted to think that this is something your business needs, though it’s just clever marketing.

You might also be lulled into thinking that these tier upgrades will somehow be the thing that drives you into success, that there is some magic sauce that gets unlocked just because you upgraded.

Today, this is an oft-used marketing tactic, using our sometimes thin familiarity of a subject’s complexities against us. We tend to hope that magical sounding capabilities might unlock something of a new level of growth without much interaction from us.

It’s not that this is always a wrong way of thinking. Some products and services can and will scale your company right out of the box. One example is using Shopify versus other, harder to use e-commerce platforms.

This situation is an example of using best-in-breed software products to your advantage. There is a relatively easy level-up experienced when you pick the right tools for the job out of the gate.

But once you’ve gone beyond the initial choice of platforms for primary usage, try to resist, at least in the beginning, the urge to go up a tier, or to install that new app because it seems like it might help.
Queer, Trans — And In Love With Islam
By: Izzy Kb
Tags: Transgender, Muslim, Religion, Queer, Islam

Queer, Trans — And In Love With Islam

How I went from being Catholic to Atheist to Muslim.

Image by Ayqa Khan

When I was in middle school, some guys from my wrestling team chased me into our locker room, held me down, and punched me over and over again. They called me a girl. They were right, but I screamed over and over again that I was not. They called me a faggot. They were right, but I screamed over and over again that I was not. For years after that, I wore a rosary with a big wooden crucifix around my neck; it was my only form of protection.

After my confirmation, my Irish Catholic grandmother proudly told me that my name would be put on a card and kept in a drawer in the Vatican forever. That is, my dead name, a name I hadn’t used for myself since I was 7 years old. My name has since been changed everywhere else, but sometimes I wonder if the old one is still there in that drawer.

The first time I went to a Protestant church, I was 15. They tried to convert me. They asked me to speak with God and listen for a reply. So I did. I begged Them to let me speak to a friend who had passed. For a minute, I swore I could hear her.

Two weeks after we came out to each other, He called me crying. I was 22. He was 17. He had not been to work in days; we were all beginning to worry. Later he told me a nearby church performed an exorcism on him. They locked him in a basement for three days; they fed him lies and hate constantly. They fed him food once.

One year ago, we lost him.

One year ago, I reverted to Islam.
The 4 Types of Memory Leaks in Node.js and How to Avoid Them (Part 1)
By: Md Ahad Hasan
Tags: JavaScript, Software Development, Nodejs, Programming, Node

The 4 Types of Memory Leaks in Node.js and How to Avoid Them (Part 1)

With the help of Clinic.js

Photo by Daan Mooij on Unsplash.

Part 2 — The 4 Types of Memory Leaks in Node.js and How to Avoid Them

It is very common for software to introduce bugs. How we manage them is the real issue. One of the most common bugs in the production environment is memory leaks, and Node.js is notorious for being prone to this. So if you are a software developer who is building Node applications in production, understanding how memory leaks can happen and how to tackle them is an uncanny skill.

A Node application is a long-running process that is bootstrapped once until the process is killed or the server restarts. It handles all incoming requests and consumes resources until these are garbage collected by V8. Leaks are the kind of resources that keep their reference in memory and do not get garbage collected. I won’t go into detail about how V8’s garbage collection works, but feel free to check out these articles on the topic.

Instead, I will focus on the four types of leaks that are very common and how to avoid them.
Wearing the Same Outfit Each Day to Save Time
By: Julia Appa
Tags: Fashion, Lifestyle, Productivity, Time Management, Minimalism

Is fashion tampering with our productivity?

Photo by Flaunter on Unsplash

Steve Jobs did it, Mark Zuckerberg does it and minimalist Matt D’Avella finally explains why they do it.

In his latest YouTube video, D’Avella suggests that wearing the same outfit each day has 3 major benefits:

1. Every day you get to wear your favourite outfit.

2. It gives you one less thing to think about each day.

3. Knowing exactly what you will wear that day allows space for things that matter.

It’s actually pretty straightforward. If you have the exact same clothes to chose from, you won’t be wasting any time picking an outfit and getting changed three times before you finally leave the house. Instead, you get up, get dressed and get on with your day. You could work on your book or do a quick workout before going to work. Alternatively, you could use the time saved to lie in.

Qutting fashion is practical. You will save time and money because you won’t be buying new clothes. Since you are happy with your wardrobe as it is, you don’t need to go to any shops or scroll any fashion websites to make new purchases.

“It’s not only about reducing waste, it’s also about reducing the amount of time that is wasted.” — Matt D’Avella

Shopping is a time killer. Many of us aren’t even aware how much time we spend online shopping. We were just looking for a new jumper and a new pair of jeans and suddenly, it’s 3 hours later and we’ve put more than 10 items in our cart. More than we actually wanted and way more than we need.

If you take into cosideration that most things will be out of style in the next season, shopping seems like a waste of time. Imagine what else you could have done in these 3 hours!

As D’Avella rightfully points out, there’s loads of stuff we never have worn. Most of these items were gifted to us or still have the tag on and will never ever be used. And the items you’ve just put in your cart? You probably won’t wear them either.

Buying things you don’t need is ridiculous. So is holding onto something you don’t use.

So why would we choose to keep these things and go down the rabbit hole of accumulating more and more things that sit in our wardrobe like an abandoned puppy?

Status. Out of the need to be admired.

Which is why saying “no” to buying more clothes and sticking with a single outfit can provide enormous benefits for one’s self-esteem. Letting go of the idea that you are what you wear and that fashion makes up your worth and identity is liberating.

Forget about “dress to impress” because there’s a wholelot more that matters in life than clothes. Besides, with many of us working from home or being on lockdown, there is no one to impress.
How to Build a Text Summarizer (TL;DR) With Simple Natural Language Processing
By: Assaf Elovic
Tags: Programming, Machine Learning, Python, Data Science, NLP

From Text to TL;DR

For parts 3 and 4, we’ll develop a method called summarizeURL :

def summarizeURL(url, total_pars):

url_text = getTextFromURL(url).replace(u"Â", u"").replace(u"â", u"")

fs = FrequencySummarizer()

final_summary = fs.summarize(url_text.replace("

"," "), total_pars)

return " ".join(final_summary)

The method calls getTextFromURL above to retrieve the text and clean it from HTML characters and trailing new lines (

).

Next, we execute the FrequencySummarizer algorithm on a given text. The algorithm tokenizes the input into sentences and then computes the term frequency map of the words. Then, the frequency map is filtered in order to ignore very low-frequency and high-frequency words. This way, it is able to discard the noisy words (such as determiners that are very common but don’t contain much information) or words that occur only a few times. To see the source code, head to GitHub.

Finally, we return a list of the highest-ranked sentences, which is our final summary.

The full source code is available on GitHub.
How Not To Apply To An Accelerator (part 4)
By: Andrew Ackerman
Tags: Poetry, Entrepreneurship

This is part 4 of my “self-defense essay”. If you missed the prior installments, start here with The #EpicNovelFail

The #TrustMeFail

(a.k.a. “The Hand Waver”)

We can’t evaluate an application without specifics. We want hard data and metrics — we want proof. What we don’t want is this:

Q: How big is the problem / how much “pain” does it cause? A: Huge problem causing lots of pain for customers Q: How big is your market? A: Huge / Billions

Tip: If you can answer the question with actual, relevant numbers, do it.

Next up: The #MasterOfTheObviousFail
What Happened When I Tried Viagra?
By: Carlyn Beccia
Tags: Life Lessons, Science, Feminism, Humor, It Happened To Me

What Happened When I Tried Viagra?

And why do men get to have all the fun?

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Jack* and I had a fabulous sex life. The kind of sex filled with quiet and loud moments. We found that sweet spot between serenity and suspense.

But as the months wore on, something came between us—something…persistent.

Jack had a neverending erection.

Ok, maybe not neverending. But as soon as he came…it was Lazarus dick five minutes later.

Now, I know what you are thinking. Groundhog Day sex sounds like a good problem to have, right? But who has time to have sex for three hours? I don’t. And while I have come up with some creative excuses for missing book deadlines, my “boyfriend’s erection is keeping me up at night” wasn’t going to fly. (If my editor is reading this…that was a joke. All my excuses are real. Even the one about the incurable skin rash.)

So one day, I asked him, “Hey, Babe…What’s with your erections lately?”

Jack was an honest man. He knew lying was futile, so he immediately confessed. He was taking the little blue pill.

I was shocked. I guess I never suspected erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs because Jack certainly didn’t need them. He was 35. Healthy. And I had communicated over and over to him how much I enjoyed our sex life.

But if he was taking it without a need, why couldn’t I?

And so with a few crackers and a brave gulp…I tried Viagra.
When the past comes calling
By: Kirstin Vanlierde
Tags: Music, Photography, Soulmates, Magic, Life

Our paths walked alongside for quite a while. Chris and I got married. He and his girlfriend moved in together. Chris and I had a rough spell in our marriage. He and his girlfriend broke up. She is still my best friend up to this day, and I expect we will be for the rest of our lives, but him I gradually lost track of. Of course, in these Facebook days it’s hard to really lose track of anybody, but I certainly didn’t see him for a long time. He moved to Germany, has a wife and kids there. He left the stage, even before he left Belgium, and went to work in that other place where poets and Magicians can do some of their best work, if they know how: behind the scenes.

All that was years ago. And last night, I saw him again.

My husband and I were attending an evening of Lunalia, a classical festival in Mechelen, a city an hour’s drive away, and we had tickets for nothing less than a QNTAL concert, the premiere of their eigth (VIII) album.

A gothic band? Featuring in a classical festival? There was only one person who could come up with this sort of thing and be able to pull it off… It was exciting that, after so many years in Germany, my old friend was professionally back in Belgium.

I had thought about Messenging him in the course of the afternoon running up to the concert, but had thought the better of it. The last conversation we had on Messenger was years ago, and I also figured he would have twenty-five different things to attend to at once. The Lunalia festival comprised several weeks of moon-and-voice-filled classical and spiritual music, and he was in charge of it all. An old friend attending one particular concert wasn’t exactly an organisational priority…

But as I walked up to the town’s concert hall with Chris, I caught a glimpse of his face from behind the banner at the entrance, and the next moment I saw him walking up to us with a broad smile and his arms wide open.

“I was hoping you’d be here for this one.”
Markets Take a Pause
By: Evamarie Augustine
Tags: Volatility, Stocks, Business, Investing, Finance

Markets Take a Pause

Equities reversed course for the month but continued to surge for the quarter

Photo by Mark König on Unsplash

Volatility dominated markets during September, as the S&P 500 posted its first loss since March amid a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, political infighting, and worries surrounding the upcoming U.S. election.

Despite a late-month surge, stock markets ended September in negative territory, with only the utilities sector posting positive returns. After leading the market for the past several months, the technology sector hit a bump and posted a loss. For the quarter, all sectors rose with the exception of the energy sector, continuing the pattern started earlier this year. Year-to-date, the S&P is up 4.1%.

The energy sector is still reeling from the precipitous drop in demand for oil and refined products from earlier this year. As supplies piled up, many companies were forced to cut production, lay off staff or merge with rivals to cope with the crisis.

According to Keefe Borden, Energy Analyst for Quantum Economics:

“The industry still hasn’t got their breath, and there are signs the changes are permanent.”

Some of those permanent changes include consolidations. At the end of the month, Devon Energy (DVN) and WPX Energy (WPX) announced an all-stock merger. If approved by shareholders, the merger has the potential to reduce Devon’s exposure to federal lands, while reducing leverage for WPX.

Combining the two entities will reduce operating costs and lower the break-even price to $33 per barrel for West Texas Intermediate Crude, creating one of the largest independent U.S. shale producers.
Dysmorphia
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Humor, Comics, Character, Webcomics, Cartoon

Written by

Daily comic by Lisa Burdige and John Hazard about balancing life, love and kids in the gig economy.
The Beachfront WeWorks. Digital Nomad Visas Are Becoming a Thing
By: Rashmee Roshan Lall
Tags: Beachfront Weworks, Tourism, Quarantine, Digital Nomad Lifestyle, Wfhcovid19

Klingking Beach in Bali. Photo by Alec Favale on Unsplash

Apparently, the digital nomad visa is going to ride the coat-tails of the #wfh revolution. Those who work from home are going to move their remote working somewhere nice.

Somewhere, in fact, like a palm-fringed island nation, the sort you would normally visit on vacation.

According to OZY, the seekers include the African island nation of Mauritius and the Caribbean islands of Barbados, Antigua and Bermuda. All launched one-year digital nomad visas in the past few months. Preliminary charges vary — from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. In return, tax incentives are available to the digital nomads. Estonia and Georgia also have similar provisions. And Maldives’ luxury resort island Vakkaru has packages for long-term nomadic remote workers.

Barbados was first off the mark in mid-July with its 12-month Welcome Stamp programme. In September, foreign freelancers and entrepreneurs in the Indonesian island of Bali were pushing for the government to grant them digital visas.

It’s not as odd as it sounds. The tourism sector has had a bad year and 2021 may not be a whole lot better. Unsurprisingly then, normally busy tourism destinations are pivoting to appeal to digital nomads and remote workers. No quarantines or frequent visa renewals required. As OZY says, holiday destinations are now “pitching themselves as safe and fun beachfront WeWorks”.

The digital nomad is the new tourist. The kind who stays on.

Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com on December 31, 2020.