fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
I’m Being Productive By Telling Others They Don’t Have to Be Productive.
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Humor, Time Management, Satire, Self Improvement, Productivity

I’m Being Productive By Telling Others They Don’t Have to Be Productive.

See? I’m helping.

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Everyone is trying to rush to finish their work for the holidays — so they can “enjoy” the rest of 2020, and by that I mean…flush it down the toilet.

But this is more late-stage capitalism garbage…the feeling of “having to be productive.” We have to edit the book, finish the assignments, pay the bills, complete our wills! We have to do it all by some arbitrary date! We have to help, we have to do, we have to earn, we have to accomplish!

Clearly, there is a need for someone to remind people they do not have to be productive.

That’s where I can step in!

You do not need to be productive. I’m here to champion the idea of relaxation. I am a warrior for sitting in a hammock. I want everyone to be content with the realization that work will be on the other side. There will be work tomorrow, and the day after, and deep into 2021.

This is my mission.

This is how I’m productive — by reminding people they don’t have to be productive.

Circular? Hardly. We have so many messages out there telling people to be more. The perfect mom, the perfect gift. To pay their bills on time, so they can be one of the ones feeling sorry for people who lost their job, but not one of the sufferers. Even now, everyone wants some kind of ivory tower. And they hustle and they work and they judge those who don’t seem to be working as hard.

Without me to remind them, who would?

Hell, maybe I should start charging for my services. I teach people how to relax. How to be okay with themselves.

I could, you know, monetize this hobby. Not for myself, but for the greater good, you know.

Now, what should my class be? Should I build a blog around it?

How do I…you know…monetize the idea of not needing money?

Look, if I don’t do it, then someone else will. I need a logo. I need an Etsy account. I need an email address. Do I even need a fake name?

Phew. This is a lot of work. I should take a break.

Maybe this can be my project for 2021.
Why Python should be your go-to language?
By: Injurious Answer
Tags: Python, IoT, Language, Data Science, Programming

5. Python is instrumental in Data Science and AI

Python comes with a lot of built-in libraries that provide a lot of the functionality a data scientist might need. In addition to that, there are also a great number of robust and popular libraries you can download for Python and use in your projects.

Now, give it a go if it fits your needs.
Dark Energy
By: Cosmic Funnies
Tags: Science, Space, Education, Astronomy, Comics

What is dark energy? Why is it so important to the development of the Universe?

Find out in Dark Energy, the newest installment of Cosmic Funnies where Planet X tells the story!
X-AI, Black Boxes and Crystal Balls
By: Olivier Penel
Tags: Inside Ai, Explainability, Transparency, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence

Inside AI

X-AI, Black Boxes and Crystal Balls

On our road to trusted AI, I discussed in my previous blog the question of bias, how it travels from humans to machines, how it is amplified by AI applications, the impacts in the real world, for individuals and for businesses, and the importance to proactively tackle this problem. Today, I’ll address the issue of explainability and transparency of the so-called “black box” models.

Choosing between Explainability and Accuracy?

To trust, one must understand. This is true of relationships between human beings. It is also true when it comes to adopting systems that augment human capabilities to generate insight and make decisions. It’s a partnership between humans and machines. Like in all partnerships, trust is the key.

It is perhaps no surprise that explainability of AI and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms has become one of the most discussed and researched topics in the field.

What does it meant for an algorithm to be explainable? It means that the system can convey useful information about its inner workings, the patterns that it learns and the results it provides. Interpretability is a softer, lighter version of explainability. A system is interpretable if we can see what’s going on and if we can reasonably predict the outcome based on input variables, even if we do not necessarily know how the system reached its decision.

Some model types, like decision trees and linear regressions, are quite simple, transparent and easy to understand. We know how changing the inputs will affect the predicted outcome and we can justify each prediction.

Unfortunately, the same complexity that gives extraordinary predictive abilities to “black box” models such as deep neural networks, random forests, or gradient boosting machines, also makes them very difficult to understand (and trust). The workings of any ML technology are inherently opaque, even to computer scientists. By its nature, deep learning is a particularly dark black box.

The problem is made worse by the large volumes of data used to train those models, making it difficult to figure out which data points have more influence on the outcome than others. The fact that ML algorithms evolve over time also makes things hard, because the algorithms keep learning from new data.

At the end of the day, it is a trade-off between accuracy and explainability. The question is how much we are prepared to compromise on either. Unfortunately, we have not reached the point where we can have models that are both highly accurate and fully transparent, although we are moving in that direction.
How to Use the Concept of Parsimony to Make Your Life Better
By: Jon Hawkins
Tags: Self, Philosophy, Life, Advice, Psychology

How to Use the Concept of Parsimony to Make Your Life Better

Will living a simpler life make us happy?

Photo by Harry Grout on Unsplash

At its core, life’s pretty simple. We wake up, work, eat, sleep, and repeat. So why does it feel so darn complicated?

It’s probably because, as human beings, we naturally make things harder than they are. Life can be boring. Facing a challenge gives our life meaning, and working to resolve it gives us purpose. Psychologists have called this phenomenon “complexity bias.”

In doing so, are we making our lives worse? What if simpler were better?

Parsimony (also known as Occam’s Razor) is a Philosophical Razor that argues just that. It was coined by scholastic philosopher William of Occam (c. 1287–1347,) who claimed that in all situations, the simplest theory is the best theory. The theory states when faced with two competing hypotheses that come to the same conclusion, we should choose the simplest explanation (or in Philosophical terms: the one that makes the fewest assumptions).

This razor is commonly used in Philosophy and Science as a heuristic to make decisions quickly and effectively. But, if applied correctly, could it make our lives better?
22 Questions for ethics in data and AI
By: Peter Brownell
Tags: Data Science, AI, Ethics

22 Questions on data ethics (V1.1)

Big picture

0. If anything was possible, and there were no constraints, how would we act?

Design stage

What is our intention?

2. What are the components we need to bring our project into reality?

3. How will we learn about the potential consequences of our work?

4. How will we establish, and maintain, authority and trust?

5. How are we expected to conform?

6. Who are the participants in our creative process?

7. How will we cede control to, and support, those responsible for day to day choices?

Implementation/Management

8. What is the balance of power between those represented in our data, and those possessing it?

9. What does our data potentially reveal about the personal lives of those represented in it?

10. What events, beyond our control, should we be planning for?

11. How will we be aware of, and adjust for, bias?

12. What, or who, are we willing to sacrifice, at what price?

13. When does data get deleted?

14. Who, or what, else will be involved, and how do they align with our values?

System/Organization

15. What forms of behaviour do we actually incentivize?

16. When we fail to live up to our standards, how will we respond?

17. How will we provide guidance on how to navigate difficult issues?

18. What aspects of our work would we like to keep hidden?

19. How much of our inner workings do we reveal to the world?

20. How will we encourage, listen to and incorporate feedback?

21. How will our ethical policies continue to grow and evolve?
Crown Platform to launch custom Proof of Stake solution in Q4 2018
By: J. Herranz
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Development, Proof Of Stake, Blockchain

Crown Platform to launch custom Proof of Stake solution in Q4 2018

Paddington Software Services, lead by Presstab, hired to perform the task

Crown Community supported the move with overwhelming 436 Yeas / 19 Nays and over 175.000 CRW in donations

The new solution will be fully developed by December 2018

It is official. The Crown DAO has signed an agreement with Paddington Software Services LLC on July 18th to develop a unique Masternode and Systemnode based Proof of Stake consensus mechanism.

CEO and founder Tom Bradshaw, also known as Presstab, will be directing a team of experienced developers that will write and implement the new code in collaboration with the Crown Development Team, piloted by Artem Brazhnikov.

The software development plan consists of six milestones that will be delivered until December 2018. After a theoretical phase, in which specifications and the protocol will be prepared and approved, unit tests will start, culminating in testnet launch. Only then and after rigorous hardening of software design and security, the main network fork code will be developed and pushed.

The development process will start immediatly and the Crown Developers Team will publish additional information as the different phases are delivered.

“I am passionate about community funded projects and my whole team is looking forward to start the work on Crown.”

Tom and his team are excited to develop a unique Proof of Stake solution for the Crown Platform, where they will be investing their years of experience in PoS solutions including but not limited to projects like PIVX, SaLuS, StakeNet (XSN), Neutron (NTRN), and ColossusCoinXT (CLOX). Toms interest in macro economics and financial technology caused him to study and begin using Bitcoin and other digital currencies in 2012. Tom has provided analysis and development work for many digital currencies beyond the ones mentioned above. According to GitHub.com’s code search tool, fragments of Tom’s code appear in over 200 digital currencies. Tom recently designed and implemented the world’s first private proof of stake protocol, and is one of 8 contributors to libzerocoin, the primary implementation of the Zerocoin cryptographic scheme (according to GitHub.com over 1,600 code repositories use libzerocoin).

The implementation of a MN/SN based Proof of Stake is a further step towards making Crown Platform unique and fully community driven.

Thank you for being with us on this exciting journey.
OUR STORIES
By: Nancy Peckenham
Tags: Longevity, Aging, Health And Wellness, Wellness, Retirement

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) Non-fiction pieces, personal essays, occasional poems and short fiction that explore how we feel about how we age and offer tips for getting the most out of life.

Follow
Healing is a Trap
By: Bryce Godfrey
Tags: Personal Development, Life, Mental Health, Self Improvement, Life Lessons

I don’t need to heal because I was never broken.

I didn’t believe this a year ago, a month ago, a week ago, yesterday. I didn’t believe this a minute ago or the second that just passed.

It’s easy to forget a truth that wasn’t such for many years.

I spent the last ten years searching for answers for my anxiety, my lack of trust in my intimate relationships, my relentless doubt and indecisiveness that felt as normal as air to lungs.

I spent the last ten years nose deep in books and palm in pain from writing notes the size of the book I was reading.

I spent the last ten years watching and rewatching the same Youtube videos because that brought relief movies and shows couldn’t.

I said no to invitations to the bar, to parties, job opportunities, beautiful girls that genuinely liked me, and hardwired dreams because I didn’t feel comfortable revealing myself until the emotional stitches have fallen out and the scars as noticeable as the sun at night.

I yearned for a path, a freeway that would lead to a destination of ease and pain-free success.

I honestly craved the direction more than the destination because a promise of a better tomorrow intoxicated the suffering of today.

But healing is that small cubicle block of sharp cheddar cheese atop of the mousetrap. Once the apparatus is triggered, there is no escaping your neck from its clamps.

Put the cheese back in the air-sealed Craft bag.

And return the spine-snapping rig to Jeff Bezos.

Because your name tag doesn’t read “Broken.”

It says “a regular-normal-and-specutacular-human-being-that’s-taken-a -few-nicks-because-life-sometimes-sucks-but-is-as-tough-as-nails-yet-soft-as-a-down-pillow-and-as-content-as-a-Buddhist-monk-meditating-while-as-joyous-as-a-kid-ripping-their-presents-open-on-Christmas.”
We Can Disagree Without Disrespecting One Another
By: Gillian Sisley
Tags: Relationships, Love, Feminism, Women, Writing

There’s no reason to feel jealous when you’re fulfilled in your life and secure in yourself.

I really, really like being me.

And I know a lot of women who feel the exact same way.

We do not want to be someone else, including Rachel Hollis. We don’t want to have her life, or be the mother of her four kids.

We don’t want to tell people about a glamourized story of how our husbands used to treat us like total crap when we dated, but our love for him was so strong that it ‘fixed him’.

Success is a subjective term, and it changes in definition from person to person.

To the above-mentioned influencer, success is jumping on planes multiple times a week, posting on social media several times a day with millions of likes and comments, having millions of dollars and speaking with the likes of Tony Robbins on his tours.

For many of us, none of that is appealing. It’s all a matter of taste and choice.

My definition of success is valuing my freedom and flexibility over all else (which one cannot do if they want to be a millionaire — I truly am not willing to work hard enough in my career to make that a reality for myself), making enough income to be comfortable but also be able to travel once or twice a year, and being able to raise a family quietly and happily while respecting others and the Earth… yeah, that’s my humble yet dream life.

Being a public figure in the limelight? That’s a nightmare to me — anyone else feel the same?
Drawing The 92nd Academy Awards
By: Liza Donnelly
Tags: Movies, Academy Awards, Storytelling, Oscars, Film

It’s always an enormous treat to go to Los Angeles and draw the Academy Awards red carpet and show. This year was no different; my fifth time in attendance drawing. I never take my luck for granted.

I arrived two days in advance of the Sunday broadcast so that I could draw behind the scenes and walk around the neighborhood.

After arriving on site, I get my credentials and head down to the red carpet area to see what’s going on. There were the usual suspects: journalists dressed up and practicing on camera, and men in dark suits seeming to be guarding things. The carpet was still covered in plastic.
I did write today, and a lot, yet if I’m not publishing I feel like I’m braking my chain anyways…
By: Joseph Emmi
Tags: Commitment, Goals, Journal, Self Improvement, Writing

I did write today, and a lot, yet if I’m not publishing I feel like I’m braking my chain anyways, because I guess I defined it around publishing instead of of only writing.

In a sense I guess it good as it keeps me on my toes and looking for moments for me to squeeze my writing no matter what, to avoid excuses but also to keep real and simple, to keep it personal and not solely focused on the technological and at times deep subjects I like to explore.

There’s a reason for why they “simple is good”. Well, it also feels good, especially when hitting publish.
My Flatulent Empire Is Crumbling
By: Reuben Salsa
Tags: Humor, Diary, Satire, Salsa, Writing

THE SALSA DIARIES #3

My Flatulent Empire Is Crumbling

The broken wind of a Monday morning

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I first noticed the cracks on a Monday morning. My gimp was unable to get hard and I needed plugging. In a rage, I struck it several times. It grunted but the appendix refused to rise. What more could I do?

I needed entertainment. It isn’t easy living in a grand chateau and not having anything to do. The remote was lost last week, shoved up the arse of some beast, and the pool was flooded with some weird aquatic lurky as a result of a heavy dose of fecal matter.

What a shit Monday I thought. What’s the point of being filthy rich if I can’t get any relief from the boredom of life?

I speed-dialed Jesus. The second son of god was always up for a laugh.

“Yo, JC! Whassup bruh?” He likes to think he’s a little gangsta since the resurrection. He tells me he’s the only son of god and I should stop disrespecting him. Fucking Jesus was certainly better than humping day-old pizza but he ain’t no saint.

Jesus was in a slump too. Turns out, on his day off from being worshipped, he had an altercation at a local 7–11. He was pissed. The cops mistook him for a crazed robber on account of his black skin and dodgy hoodie. JC’s beatific smile couldn’t save him and they shot several rounds into his already-dead and twice risen corpse.

It’s best not to ask too many questions from the force.

Meanwhile, Michael Bauble was crooning about Christmas as JC’s blood dripped a festive red on the sludged-up snow.

“Fuck…here we go again,” I thought. JC loved drama. I could see him licking his lips as he changed gears in retelling his tall tale. There’s nothing he likes better than rising from the dead and scaring the good folk into believing in miracles. That’s how his mom conceived he would say with a wink.

“Jesus. JESUS! Just fucking stop. I don’t need to hear about another fucking resurrection on a Monday morning. I thought you had some nose candy that you scored off Magdalene. Now crack that shit open and let's get a fucking party started! I’ve got a marketing meeting in ten and your shit is getting old.”

Nobody puts Jesus in the corner. Offended, he bitch-slaps my gimp before storming off in a huff.

I’m now suffering from withdrawal. It’s still fucking Monday. My gimp isn’t giving out any pleasure and worse of all? It’s time for Secret Santa. Our yearly celebration where dirty Macca sweats his way through a Santa suit making every female staff member awkwardly sit on his lap. The bloody perv will already be half-drunk on cheap scotch. His hands wandering over limbs while readjusting his pants.

I’ve got no game. I’m out of ideas. At least it’s Intern Torture week. Perhaps that’ll bring the gimp back to life.

I sure love the fucking holiday season.
How To Share State Between React Components
By: Joe Bologna
Tags: JavaScript, Reactjs, React, Web Development, Coding

React is a really great platform for writing applications. With the introduction of React Hooks and JavaScript improvements, writing more sophisticated React applications can be easier. I recently found a nice pattern for sharing state between React components and thought I’d share :)

Let’s start with a simple application with a child components:

import Child from './Child';



export default function App(props) {

return <Child />;

}

The Child components will just expose a button to increment a counter, with state kept in the Child component:

import React, { useState } from 'react';



export default function Child1(props) {

const [counter, setCounter] = useState(0);

return <button onClick={() => setCounter(counter + 1)}>

Child Counter: {counter}

</button>;

}

This app is pretty simple, just a button that increments a counter:

Click on the button and the counter increments:

Let’s say the parent wants to access the counter. This can be accomplished using global state managed by the Child component. The reactn NPM module provides setGlobal and useGlobal methods to make data global. (React allows this via Context, but it's pretty complex to use, so let's use reactn ).

Let’s change Child to store the counter as a global.

import React, { useEffect } from 'react';

import { useGlobal, setGlobal } from 'reactn';



setGlobal({});



export default function Child1(props) {

const [child, setChild] = useGlobal('child');

useEffect(() => (child ? true : setChild({ ...child, counter: 0 })), [child, setChild]);

return <button onClick={() => setChild({ ...child, counter: child?.counter + 1 })}>Child Counter: {child?.counter}</button>;

}

This code has the same output as before, except the counter is now available as a global. Note, useEffect is needed to initialize the child global object. The notation I'm using is pretty terse to keep it compact, it's just initialization code so let's minimize it.

Note the use of child?.counter . The ?. operator is a new JavaScript operator that is very handy. The first time Child1 is rendered child will be undefined . The ?. short circuits evaluation so the counter member isn't accessed to prevent a run time error... caused by attempting to access undefined.counter .

Now, let’s use this counter in another component. For simplicity we’ll just access it from the parent component. It is just as easy to access from components that are peers or children of the Child component.

import { useGlobal } from 'reactn';

import Child from './Child';



export default function App(props) {

const [child] = useGlobal('child');

return (

<div>

<div>Parent Value: {child?.counter ? child.counter : 'NA'}</div>

<Child />

</div>

);

}

child will be undefined until the button is clicked, so the initial screen looks like this:

Click on the button to increment the counter in the child and update it in the parent:
The World of Hadoop
By: Prasadi Abeywardana
Tags: Apache, Hadoop, Big Data, Mapreduce, Hdfs

The World of Hadoop

Interconnecting Different Pieces of the Hadoop Ecosystem

When learning Hadoop, one of the biggest challenges I had was to put different components of the Hadoop ecosystem together and create a bigger picture. It’s a huge system which comprises of different components which can be contrasting as well as complementing to each other. Understanding how these different components are interconnected is a must have piece of knowledge for anyone willing to utilize Hadoop based technologies in a production level big data application. Hadoop ecosystem possesses a huge place in the big data technology stack and it’s a must have skill for data engineers. So, let’s dig a little deeper into the world of Hadoop and try to untangle the pieces of which this world is made.

Starting with a formal definition for Hadoop can help us getting an idea of the overall intention of Hadoop ecosystem:

Hadoop is an opensource software platform for distributed storage and distributed processing of very large data sets on computer clusters

As the definition indicates, the heart of Hadoop is made of its ability to handle data storage and processing in a distributed manner. In order to achieve this, the overall architecture of Hadoop and its distributed file system has been inspired by Google File System (GFS) and Google MapReduce. The distributed nature of Hadoop architecture makes it suitable for very large data, specially by removing a single point of failure when processing these large amounts of data.

Now let’s try to walk through different building blocks of the Hadoop ecosystem and understand how these pieces are interconnected.

The Hadoop Eco System: Image Source

I tried to organize the entire Hadoop ecosystem into three categories.
The best Design Events in Europe (2018)
By: .Dsgnrs. Team
Tags: UI, Design, Design Thinking, Product Design, UX

Awwwards Conference - An Event for UX / UI Designers and Web Developers.

Two exciting days with some of the most influential speakers of the industry, who inspire, teach, and guide us as we…
Understanding Factors in R
By: Kurt F.
Tags: Development, Programming, Statistics, Data Science, R

The factor() command is used to create and modify factors in R.

Factors have a privileged representation with respect to vectors. To create a factor in the R language, it is used as in the following example:

factor (c("..."))

So, how does factors work?

⏩ Factors are a special type of vector to represent categorical data.

⏩ It serves to store categorical or ordered data.

⏩ Factors treat transactions specifically by modeling them.

⏩ Factors define themselves in some way. For this purpose, the tagged information follows a certain order.

Now let’s make it functional with some examples.

👍Factor prints out a little bit differently from a character vector, in the sense that it prints up the value. And then it has a separate attribute which is called the levels.

It also indicates the levels in terms of standart. For example, since there are 2 different levels in the form of “a” and “b”, the factor specifies the contents.

The order of the levels in the factor is arranged alphabetically. What if I don’t want to follow the alphabetical order? For this to happen adjusting the levels() of a factor provides a useful shortcut for reassigning values in this case. Then I can that:

> x <- factor (c("a", "b", "c", "d"),

levels = c("b", "a", "c", "d")) > x

> [1] a b c d

> Levels: b a c d

👍 With the table() you can classify the contents of the factor. And this will give the number for each of them. For example, we have a factor like the following:

> x <- factor(c("adenin", "guanin", "adenin", "timin"))

> x

[1] adenin guanin adenin timin

Levels: adenin guanin timin

Now when we call table (x):

> table(x)

x

adenin guanin timin

2 1 1

👍 With unclass() , I can show the row as a number as an array. Factor sorts the contents alphabetically and represents it as such. If we do for the same factor:

> unclass(x)

[1] 1 2 1 3

attr(,"levels")

[1] "adenin" "guanin" "timin"

👍 as.numeric() function is still required to convert the values to the proper type (numeric).

> y <- factor(c(2.5, 1.5, 3.5))

> as.numeric(y)

[1] 2 1 3

👍 summary() is a great way for spotting missing data. Let’s look again for x:

> summary(x)

> adenin guanin timin

2 1 1

👍Using factors for everyone very basic situation. Actually it services to good working on any project with R or maybe any language of programming speak.

stringsAsFactors=TRUE is the default behaviour for R. And of course we will use it by default when opening the file with factors. For example “r_test” file:
When Love Decides To Leave
By: Stephanie Love
Tags: Relationships, Life, Love, Development, Life Lessons

Photo By: Stephanie Love

Remember that time you were in love? It was so real until that love changed. Until love said, “This is no longer enough.”

You were so in love, but somewhere along the way, things started to move too fast. Or maybe things didn’t move at all. Things became a little too complicated, and you outgrew one another.

It’s just that you wanted the moon and stars and a sea escape. They wanted none of that.

Or maybe you wanted a family, and they wanted ‘freedom’, whatever that is.

Or perhaps you went back to school, and they left to go backpacking through Asia and didn’t want to be a part of that journey with you.

Maybe love said, “This isn’t it anymore.” I don’t feel the same as I once did.” And so it left.

Maybe love followed you through your darkest moments, and when the light finally came, it vanished. Perhaps love came to challenge you; bring you out of your comfort zone, only to say, “This is when I must go now.”

And you watched it go.

Maybe for a moment, or many, you began to feel that love was never real and that it never actually cared. Perhaps you began to question it and what it meant when it said, “Forever.”

Regardless of how love unfolded, trust me when I say it was real, even if it was just for a moment. Or maybe it lasted many years; perhaps it’s still there growing with you. Perhaps it’s not. The thing is that sometimes we outgrow a certain love, but sometimes love outgrows us. Sometimes love comes to help us heal, and once we’re healed, love leaves. Sometimes love comes to teach us a lesson, and once the lesson is learned, love has served its purpose, and so it goes.

Sometimes love comes to save us, to destroy us, or just to be. But when love leaves, it always teaches us. Love always helps us grow. It always makes room for a new love you can now hold space for.

It’s easy to look at past relationships negatively and blame love for how things ended. The truth is that somewhere along the way, you and another body, mind, and soul were so in love, and that love was real. Even when it dwindled.

For a moment in time, you were the lucky ones. Sometimes it stays, sometimes it goes, but the lessons are always there.

As long as you hold love within yourself, know that love is infinite.
The Uncertain Fate of Pandemic Relief Funds
By: Vy Nguyen
Tags: Politics, Federal Reserve, Coronavirus, Economics, Government

The Uncertain Fate of Pandemic Relief Funds

The fight between fiscal and monetary policies continues, with the economy caught in the crossfire.

The Battle Over Pandemic Relief

Last month, Secretary of Treasury Mnuchin requested to return $455 billion of coronavirus emergency lending funds back to Congress. These key programs were intended to help Americans weather the pandemic, providing credit to employers, small businesses, and state and local governments. Though the majority of funds remain largely unused, the emergency loans helped to shore up market confidence during the economic freefall in March.

In his justification, Mnuchin argued that the funds served its purposes, citing sufficient lending capacity to meet the borrowing needs of consumers and businesses. But in a rare dissention, the Federal Reserve issued a statement arguing that it “would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy.”

The rare split between the Fed and Treasury sparked another debate in Washington, with Democrats decrying it as another political move by Republicans to block the incoming Biden administration and its Treasury appointee, Janet Yellen, from having the toolkits necessary to prevent further economic downturns.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), on the other hand, countered that an extension of these funds would not only go against the original intentions of the CARES Act —which was for these facilities to be temporary and to cease operations by the end of 2020 — but would also create a form of moral hazard. If extended, monetary policies would substitute for fiscal policies, putting the onus on the Federal Reserve rather than Congress to bear the brunt of economic recovery efforts.

That is a fair argument, but given the resurgence of the virus and the return to lockdown in places like New York and California, taking the gas off pandemic relief is precisely the opposite of what should be done. Despite Secretary’s Mnuchin assessment that the recovery is in full swing, one doesn’t have to look so hard to find deeply troubling signs of tough times ahead.
Deep dive into multi-label classification..! (With detailed Case Study)
By: Kartik Nooney
Tags: Machine Learning, Python, Nltk, Scikit Learn, NLP

With continuous increase in available data, there is a pressing need to organize it and modern classification problems often involve the prediction of multiple labels simultaneously associated with a single instance.

Known as Multi-Label Classification, it is one such task which is omnipresent in many real world problems.

In this project, using a Kaggle problem as example, we explore different aspects of multi-label classification.

DISCLAIMER FROM THE DATA SOURCE: the dataset contains text that may be considered profane, vulgar, or offensive.
Looking for UX work? BIM is waiting for you
By: Bruno Martorelli
Tags: Architecture, Bim, Design, UX Design, UX

BIM is just beginning, and it’s here to stay. You can be a part of its development as a UX designer.

You see, BIM is all about data, enormous amounts of it. All this data is populated as the building is designed in 3D and is available to stakeholders in the project: owner, architect, contractor, and user. However, data by itself is useless: we require the right interfaces to make this data understandable and usable. I have witnessed how this robust data inside a model can often get ignored due to bad user experience design in the software that works with this data. It would be such a different story if only we understood better who the user is and what he requires in each scenario.

The opportunity is there for you as a UX Designer: the current applications that operate BIM technology are far behind what we would call a user-friendly experience. They are well known for their complicated interfaces, feature-rich environment that is confusing, and steep learning curves. Look for big names in the industry like Autodesk and Graphisoft to get an idea of what I am mean. I recently wrote an article about it if that would give you some insights on a platform for BIM I use every day in my line of work as an architect. Have a look:

There are many more up and coming developers that are trying to harness the future of BIM. Most of them haven’t invested in UX design and believe me they urgently need it! BIM is a field ripe for UX designers, from VR applications, iPhone apps to full-blown desktop apps for both MAC and Windows, and even city management software.

Have a look at this project from the UNSENSE Studio in Amsterdam on what the future of BIM could look like:

Hyperform software concept film developed by Squint

As an architect and UX Designer, I am very passionate about this topic and have the intent of being part of the solution. I am busy compiling aspects of the future of the BIM industry that could use UX design. If you are interested in this field, please drop me a line, we could work together.

For now, do some research on the BIM industry and let your creativity flow! What the future will bring in the BIM industry could be shaped by people like you.
Emergence is The New Amazing Field of Science
By: Charles Stephen
Tags: Philosophy, Biology, Technology, Science, Nature

Depiction of Entropy Increasing — Image by Pixabay

Does emergence violate the second law of thermodynamics?

Many people describe emergent behaviors as spontaneous activities toward a state of order. The second law of thermodynamics claims that systems will always move toward a state of disorder. But when we observe single-celled organisms like slime mold join together and function as an organized unit, this appears to contradict this law completely.

This is not the first time that biological systems have challenged the second law of thermodynamics. As life evolves to changing conditions to survive, it poses a challenge to this law.

But in this case, defenders of the second law argue that while it does state that the order of a system must decrease, it doesn’t say when, where, and how. They then point out that emergent communities like slime mold become disordered again after achieving its objective as a collective group. Therefore, it is not defying the second law — not everyone agrees.

Required ingredients of emergence

To observe emergence in nature, certain requirements must be in place. To begin with, there must be a sufficient quantity of individual units. A handful of individuals usually don’t show emergent patterns, but thousands of them do. The whole system has to be observed to witness a pattern or structure of emergence.

Interestingly, the simple nature of the individual units is essential in the emergent world. In fact, the more ignorant they are, the better. Consider how computers are built using the basic binary system of ones and zeros. If any of its components become too smart, they will make decisions based on their own needs and not the system's needs.

Emergence is also dependent on random encounters and actions. Much like the sampling methods that statisticians use in their studies, if their samples are not random, then biases will be introduced into their results. Emergent behavior relies heavily on these haphazard interactions; otherwise, its biases might refuse to recognize needs or dangers to the group.

Finally, local information gathered from individual units eventually becomes wisdom for the entire community. It begins with single units sharing data with one another, rather than with a community leader, and the network gradually begins to act for the common good of the entire group.
Create Your Own Story
By: Aaron Schnoor
Tags: Humanity, Life, Development, Advice, Self Improvement

Controlling Your Story

How do you control your own story? Here are three steps to become the main character of your life story again:

Know what you are passionate about. Start saying “Yes” to things that scare you. Be willing to take risks.

Does that sound too simple? It might seem easy on paper, but it’s harder than you’d think.

Let’s start with the first one: knowing what you’re passionate about. Do you know what excites you? Do you know what you live for? You probably did at one point. But as life moved on, you might’ve forgotten. At one point or another we all do, actually. It’s so easy to become focused on your job and forget what truly brings you happiness. It’s so easy to obsess over movies and mistakenly believe that screens are all that life has to offer.

Grab a pen and a piece of paper. Write down what excites you. It might be one thing — it might be ten things. But go on and do it, then put the paper where you can see it each day. Are you pursuing those passions?

The second step might be the scariest. It’s time to start saying “Yes” to things that scare you. Did your friend invite you to hike part of the Appalachian Trail, and did you say no because you were too scared? Did your brother ask you to go scuba diving, and did you say no because you just didn’t want to?

It’s important to note that we shouldn’t say yes to everything. Some things are actually dangerous and potentially harmful, and we might have a good reason to decline invitations from certain people. But, in moments of discomfort, are you saying no because you’d rather remain complacent than try new things? Maybe it’s time to try something new. Maybe it’s time to begin saying more of “yes” and less of “no.”

The third step follows right after the second one: be willing to take more risks. At the end of your lifetime, when you’re having that birthday party I mentioned earlier, will you regret the risks you took in life? No, probably not. If you regret anything, it will be the times that you avoided risks just because you preferred being comfortable in your way of life.

Take a few risks. Try a few new things. Remember what excites you about life.

Become the main character you are meant to be. Create the story that you want to be told about you.
Todo lo que Necesitas Saber sobre el Descenso del Gradiente Aplicado a Redes Neuronales
By: Jaime Durán
Tags: Neural Networks, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Gradient Descent, Español

Get this newsletter By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.

Check your inbox

Medium sent you an email at to complete your subscription.
What Software Engineers Can Learn From Studying Philosophy
By: Derek Johnson
Tags: Web Development, Philosophy, Software Development, Coding, Software Engineering

Formal Logic Proofs are at the Core of Functional Programming

There is currently a significant paradigm shift happening in the field of software engineering. Many developers are starting to notice that functional programming (FP) is taking over in the software world. Polymorphism and object-oriented programing (OOP) were for a time considered to be superior. However, as more developers recognize the benefits of composition over inheritance, these seemingly outdated patterns in the OOP world begin to fall short. FP languages such as Haskell, Elixir, Elm, Scala, and F# are increasingly becoming the new norm in modern software development.

Now that we have some understanding of what functional programming is, we can better appreciate why formal logic is relevant. While learning functional programming, I noticed that many formal logic rules of replacement are used. Take, for example, the rule of associativity. One of the main benefits of functional programming is that you can create several small functions and compose them together to make entire programs and applications. These little functions are used as small, reusable components, almost like lego blocks. The reason why engineers can quickly “snap” together these functions is because of their associative nature. One with a philosophy background will intuitively recognize how to use composition from doing proofs using the same replacement rules on whiteboards.

Church proved that all computation could be accomplished through mathematical functions. Simply put, each of these functions can be viewed as a system that determinately returns the same output given the same input. Church’s famous discovery is referred to as the Lambda Calculus.

With Functional Programming rising in popularity, philosophy becomes even more relevant to software engineering. Many believe that Functional Programming is such a significant paradigm shift that it is also causing Senior Developers to feel like newbies all over again.
House Sales Predictor Using Deep Learning
By: Umair Ayub
Tags: Data Science, Deep Learning, Exploratory Data Analysis, Neural Networks

Housing prices are an important reflection of the economy, and housing price ranges are of great interest for both buyers and sellers. In this project, house prices will be predicted given explanatory variables that cover many aspects of residential houses. The goal of this project is to create a regression model that are able to accurately estimate the price of the house given the features.

Acquiring data

The data for this project is available on kaggle. The main objective is to predict the price of a given house based upon the previous available data. The dataset is available here: https://www.kaggle.com/harlfoxem/housesalesprediction

Checking out the data

As we can see there are 21 different features upon which the price of the house is dependent. Not all of these features have a high correlation with the price so, we will only be looking at those features having a high correaltion.

Since this is quite a large dataset we have to check for missing values and fortunately there are none!

Exploratory data analysis

Now we have to visualize the relationship between the price and various features present in our dataset.

Majority of houses are in the one million dollars mark.

As is evident from the figure most of the houses have 3- 4 bedrooms.

There are several other features such as the year in which the house was built, number of floors in each house, the square feet of living space available and many more. Each of these features have a very high correlation with the price.

Based off these features alone we can predict the price of a house but the most important feature is the location of the house, which is discussed next.

Geographical Plotting

As is clear from the heatmap the majority of pricey houses are present along the waterfront which is also clear from the actual map of King County, USA. It is quite understandable as better the view from the house, the more expensive it would be.

Feature Extraction & Engineering

There are a lot of columns present in our dataset which are of absolutely no use to us. So it is quite beneficial to us if we simply drop these columns from our dataset. It is also better for us if the date column which is initially an object be converted to datetime.

Creating the model

First we do the train-test split on our dataset and scale the data using MinMaxScaler.

The second step is to actually create a neural network using tensorflow having keras API.

Model Evaluation

We will be evaluating our model using the various metrics available to us through scikit-learn.

So we get an accuracy score of around 0.8 and a mean absolute error of around 1,00,000. This means our predictor will be off by a value of a hundred thousand dollars on a 2–3 million dollar house, which seems to be doing a good job.
We Are. We Are Not. We Will Never Be.
By: Tre L. Loadholt
Tags: Beauty, I Missed Yall, Writing

We Are

We Are Not. We Will Never Be…

Courtesy of William Okpo

I watched as you burned sage,

cleansing your home of another

breakup,

burying a relationship you thought

would not live up to its

potential,

You were right.

In the brisk air of the hallway,

the smoke led itself down an

uneven path, waiting for

tourists afraid to drink you —

thirsts forever unquenched.

who you are to them isn’t

who you are to me

and only time knows the

Truth.

It is the clever souls who

bark up trees with no

grip to console their feverish minds,

biting at old stories, trying

to pick up where they left off

leaving the glories of the

good ole days in dusty

waste bins, unsure of how

to clean each

One.

Didn’t you find me in

your reflection standing behind

years of defeat, yet holding

every story we shared over

your head as a reminder of

how insouciant you are.

belligerent in crumbling armor,

a world of “no, thank you” and

“please, leave me be”

lives on the tip of your tongue.

We Are. We Are Not. We Will Never Be.