fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
The ISW: W3 Commentary & Picks. Line Movements
By: Fernando Murias
Tags: Betting, Sports, Investing, NFL

This week we will be breaking-out our material into three separate pieces:

Fern’s W3 Angles & Market Movement

Line Movements

Sports betting is all about beating the market. Lines move throughout the week and if you consistently get the best number, you have an inherent edge over the market. If you think about lines like prices, the goal is to place a bet (make an investment) at the cheapest point possible.

At the beginning of the week, bookmakers set an opening line that they expect to adjust depending on how the market reacts. The markets are inefficient in these opening days, which makes it the best time to find a mispriced line.

If you bet on a team at the opening line of -1 and the line moves up to -3 by game-time, your bet has increased in value before the game even starts. It may not seem like a big deal for a single bet, but getting an extra 0.5–1 point of value on each bet adds up over time. Professionals play numbers, not teams.

Whenever you place your bets, check to see how much the line has moved throughout the week. Here are a few of the biggest line moves this week:

Lookahead Lines

Some shops will post lines for the next week before the current week’s games have even been played. The betting public has a tendency to overreact to recent events, so these lookahead lines are a good tool to identify potential overreactions. Below are some of the biggest moves from the lookahead line:

Fern’s Official Plays — W3

The Eagles limped out of Sunday night’s contest with an L and injuries across the board. I took this at +7 early in the week and the line started moving after injury news broke and has continued to drop throughout the week. It currently sits at Eagles -4, which provides a nice middle opportunity.

The Browns came into the season overvalued and they are still overpriced given recent performance.

Elite QBs (like Big Ben) are worth about 4, maybe 5 points to the spread. The Steelers were a 1 pt favorite in the lookahead and are now listed as 6.5 pt underdogs, 7.5 points feels like an overreaction.

***

It’s never too early to start thinking about next week so here are the Lookahead lines for Week 4:
Daily Bit #103: Coinbase Acquires Paradex
By: Daily Bit
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Crypto, Bitcoin, Fintech

Word On The Street

Coinbase Acquires Paradex

We’ve mentioned before how big of a deal Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) are. If you don’t remember, here’s a quick recap: Rather than transfer funds onto a centralized platform, users simply link their personal wallet, submit an order, and wait for it to fill. That sounds really cool, doesn’t it?

Coinbase Takes a Big Step

The most notorious of all the trading platforms has made a bold move, acquiring Paradex, a decentralized exchange with 10 employees. Upon visiting Paradex’s website, the hype is evident:

“It was clear from our first conversations with Coinbase that the excitement and optimism was mutual. Like Coinbase, we believe wholeheartedly in the power of an open financial system; it’s paramount to what we’re working towards at Paradex. In our next steps together, we’ll continue to build out the existing Paradex roadmap and continue to explore the world of decentralization and the amazing opportunities at hand.”

Due to conflicting laws, Paradex unfortunately will be unavailable in the United States for a short period of time. However, Coinbase confirms that such services will eventually be offered in the US after changes are made for compliance purposes.

During the integration process, Paradex is temporary offline. Let’s just hope that when Coinbase does come out with their finished product that this one will be as easy to navigate as GDAX. DEXs in the past have had a hard time dealing with simplicity, so it will be interesting to see where Coinbase takes us. If you’ve used Paradex before, be aware that Coinbase intends to makes a decent amount of modifications to the platform before its launch.

So what will happen to GDAX? Don’t worry, Coinbase isn’t completely getting rid of it, just radically altering its services and calling it “Coinbase Pro”. Brian Armstrong, GDAX CEO, recently made a comment on the issue, stating that “Since launching in 2015, GDAX has built liquidity and stability in the space and also helped us understand the needs of active crypto traders. Switching to the name Coinbase Pro is a recognition that the individual active trader requires a product completely dedicated to their specific needs.”

While it sure is exciting that DEXs will soon be a huge portion of Coinbase services, expect a wider variety of coins to appear on the Coinbase catalog as well. But that’s not all, Coinbase will be adding other financial services in the future, such as hedge funds and high-frequency trading firms.
The case of Santa & God v. Life
By: Jonathan Wayne
Tags: Life, Religion, Atheism

I get it. We all get it. Our parents and society told us the story of Santa to make us feel better. Despite the thinly veiled joke made at the expense of our childhood, they were probably just looking out for us. Maybe they decided to go along with it because there wasn’t a better option. It would be kinda weird to be the only kid that grows up without the idea of Santa. The idea of someone recognizing our good behavior was a very satisfying thing. It was also comforting to know that others faced consequences for their actions. It possibly even inspired us to be good even when no one was looking. The promise of future reward and the threat of punishment was extremely persuasive even if it wasn’t actually real. Nobody wanted the punishment. Everybody wanted the reward. We would wait faithfully for Santa to return.

At some point we learned that Santa wasn’t real. This realization hurt a little, but we’re good now.

I get it. Many of us get it. Our parents and society told us the story of God to make us feel better. Despite the thinly veiled indoctrination made at the expense of our lives, they were probably just looking out for us. Maybe they decided to go along with it because there wasn’t a better option. It would be kinda weird to be the only person that grows up without the idea of God. The idea of someone recognizing our good behavior can be a very satisfying thing. It is also comforting to know that others will face consequences for their actions. It possibly even inspired us to be good even when no one was looking. The promise of future reward and the threat of punishment can be extremely persuasive even if it’s not actually real. Nobody wants the punishment. Everybody wants the reward. Some of us wait faithfully for God to return.

At some point I learned that God isn’t real. This realization hurt tremendously, but I am getting better.

The verdict? Santa Claus and God were found not guilty on the charge of existence.

Funny cartoon tax
Process Text using TFIDF in Python
By: Shivangi Sareen
Tags: Data Science, Python3, Tf Idf, Information Retrieval

Following up from the previous TFIDF post, we’ll now implement TFIDF, manually, over a piece of text.

We are going to calculate the TFIDF score of each term in a piece of text. The text will be tokenized into sentences and each sentence is then considered a document.

Starting off with importing the required libraries:
สปาเก็ตตี้ซอสเบค่อนน้ำแดง. สูตรนี้ดัดแปลงมาจากต้นฉบับที่เป็นซอสปลาเ…
By: Mattika Singtosee
Tags: สปาเก็ตตี้, Cooking, Spaghetti, อร่อย, เบค่อน

in In Fitness And In Health
About Empire
By: Dale Biron
Tags: Politics, Goodtrouble, Braveness, Poetry, Truth

It is strange how empires act

when they are on the wane.

They begin to tell (reluctantly)

the truth about themselves.

Well, not everyone in that

empire, of course. It is usually

the ones who have been getting the shortest

end of the stick. (Of course, that’s cliche #1)

Some in power begin to admit how they

used the word “discover” when what they really

meant, was stealing other people’s land.

A favorite euphemism, but not really a cliche.

And for crying out loud, (#2) wasn’t that old canard,

about “Manifest Destiny” one of the worst lies of all?

Plus you’ve got to admit those grim statues of “brave”

soldiers dressed in gray, were just ordinary traitors.

But still, when the poop really hits the fan,

(I know that’s cliche #3)

the truth seems to start raining

down like cats and dogs. (#4)

Another strange thing is how

there is this slim opportunity that

arises for seriously saving a whole nation

when that cleansing truth starts flowing down.

Granted, this truth may be forced by a series

of chickens coming home to roost, (#5) but

the fact that it actually comes, and is true, feels like

a miracle, like that old chariot swinging low from heaven,

coming for to carry us home. (#6)
Food For Thought: White Lies & I Apologize
By: S. Rae Peoples
Tags: Racism, Inclusion, Equity, Humanity, Justice

Over the weekend, I took some time to reflect on Maurice Berger, an author and brilliant voice of our time who lost his life several months ago due to complications from COVID-19. During his life, Berger authored several pieces of work on the topic of race, including White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1999). Albeit a couple of decades old, White Lies is an “oldie but goodie” and continues to support me and the work I do for racial justice. On the topic of racsim, Berger penned:

“The worst kind of racism was no longer just in Memphis, no longer just in the segregated schools of Little Rock: it was in our living room, and there was no way I could ignore it.”

The notion of racism being in our living rooms, residing right in our homes, is resonating with so many of us nowadays. And while not the case for all members of their community, many white people are becoming increasingly aware of the ways in which racism flows through veins of this country. With every passing day, white people are witnessing and absorbing the havoc, violence, and trauma that racism leaves (and has always left) in its path.

Given their position within an intensely racialized structure in America, Black and communities of color have long known the extent of racism’s destruction. Yet, for several people in the white community, the veil of racism has been lifted in such a way that they are finally being incessantly exposed to the very raw and ugliness of racism. Unable to escape this acute exposure, there is an increase of white people who are feeling a strong sense of urgency to engage in the collective pursuit of racial justice with compassion, conviction, and confidence. The unraveling of racism’s veil has moved some white people to grapple and feel their way into that gut wrenching realization that the racist aggressions directed towards marginalized communities is in fact an attack to their own community and humanity.

Racism is not a monster that is just lurking somewhere “out there.” Racism is not just out in these streets kneeling on necks, chasing life down a quiet southern road, spraying bullets in a residence with sleeping occupants, or using 911 as a direct threat and weapon. The monster is both in our streets and within us. While, as Berger suggests, racism lurks in our living rooms, it then follows us outside of our homes, as we then become hosts of racism, embodying the hatred and ego it needs to breathe. Within us, racism emerges as an active terror in our boardrooms, our PTA meetings, our philanthropic agendas, our social justice nonprofit orgs, and our pulpits. This monster is absolutely all up and through our education system and political landscape. Racism, rooted in our homes, has branched out. It is everywhere. And it is rampant.
WHY IMPERFECTIONS ARE JUST PERFECT
By: Sahil Patel
Tags: Motivational, Life Lessons, Inspirational, Life, Imperfections

By Tai 's Captures on unsplash

There is no such definition of becoming a perfect. Anyone in this whole world maybe have a good job, good house or a good bank balance. However, they all are called an ideal job, an ideal house but it doesn’t mean that you have a perfect life.

Perfection is something that we can’t able to define. Perfection is the word that if you want to feet in this word you have to be just perfect in every aspect of you life.

On the other hand, what if this whole world become perfect. It is only our imperfections which makes our life interesting otherwise life gets bored.

We can love someone only if we know to love ourselves.

By Will Turner On unsplash

In order to do so we need to accept our imperfections. We can truly love someone only when we accept them as whole, with their good things and flaws, because everyone off is flawed in someway or the other.

I’m imperfect like all of us are … and that imperfection is perfect . It means that I accept my flaws heartily.

I know where I lack.

Like you are imperfect, so am I… and so are others.

We all know that every coin has its two sides. Everything has pros and cons. Then we human beings also have strengths and weaknesses.

We must keep in mind that our weaknesses never make us weak.

You have to accept your imperfections cause acceptance is an art and not everyone is an artist.

By Louis Hansel @shotsoflouis on unsplash

Being a perfect is a unrealistic expectation of this world.

Accept that you are not perfect and you don’t have to be is the step of accepting your imperfections.

Love yourself and realise that we are all imperfect, in our own ”perfect” ways.
How a Site Redesign Helped this Online Sales Tool Sell Itself More Effectively
Tags: Conversion Optimization, Ecommerce, Web Design, Copywriting, Digital Marketing

How a Site Redesign Helped this Online Sales Tool Sell Itself More Effectively Ideometry Follow Oct 20, 2017 · 2 min read

From Amazon to eBay to Zappos, online sales play an important role in overall company success. Webcollage’s software helps manufacturers make sure they’re always looking their best, across all platforms, with features such as videos, FAQs and user-reviews, all of which help to boost brand confidence and reduce return rates.

The best part is, with just one click, Webcollage updates information across all retail sites, so the manufacturer can be sure nothing is overlooked or out of date.

The Problem

The Webcollage website did not serve as an effective sales tool as it was not optimized for conversion. In fact, Webcollage’s sales teams were hesitant to even direct potential customers to the website. They knew they needed that to change… and fast.

The Solution

Ideometry’s website included a massive restructure — clearly delineating the major selling points for both retailers and manufacturers — along with an update to the visual branding.

Ideometry also consulted on updates to the official Webcollage logo and new site copy, emphasizing concision and clear calls to action.

***

If you liked what you saw here, check out some of the other branding and creative campaigns we’ve done for a major credit union and a BBQ catering startup.

Need help creating an amazing brand? Get in touch with us today.
Not quite…
By: Andy Anderson
Tags: Election2020, Humor, Comics, Election, Funny

Looking to add some funny to your feed? Follow this page for new cartoons every week.

Follow
The ultimate guide to proper use of animation in UX
By: Taras Skytskyi
Tags: Animation, UX, Motion Design, UI, Ts

Nowadays it’s hard to impress or even surprise with an interface animation. It shows interactions between screens, explains how to use the application or simply directs a user’s attention. While exploring the articles about animation, I found out that almost all of them describe only specific use cases or general facts about animation, but I haven’t come across any article where all rules concerning animation of interfaces would be clearly and practically described. Well, in this article I won’t write anything new, I just want to collect all the main principles & rules in one place, so that other designers who want to start animating interfaces don’t have to search for additional information.

Duration and speed of the animation

When elements change their state or position, the duration of the animation should be slow enough to give users the possibility to notice the change, but at the same time quick enough not to cause waiting.
How a Felon Showed Me What Love Is
By: Ramona Mead
Tags: Relationships, Love, Life Lessons, Friendship, Crime

We met in middle school, on our bus ride home my first day on that route. He was cute despite a case of acne and a homemade bowl cut, because he was funny and friendly. I’ve always felt certain I’d loved him since that afternoon.

Later, he was one of the cool kids at the back of the bus who smoked cigarettes and bragged about sexual conquests. Where Ben sat made a statement. When he sat with me, I was visible. I was different from other girls because I didn’t “put out” or supply weed in order for him to hang out with me.

We were always friends, and sometimes a little bit more. We “went out” before we were even old enough to drive. When he broke up with me after a few weeks, I was crushed. This happened every time he was cruel with my emotions, when he’d stop sitting with me on the bus, or go out with someone else. I’d ignore him for a couple weeks, then realize I didn’t want to live without him. I’d accept his apology and we’d go back to being friends.

Mid-way through high school, my family moved out of state. Ben probably sent me one letter for every five I sent him. Shortly after graduation I called his house and his mom said he didn’t live there anymore. That was the first time he disappeared from my life without warning, though he always returned.

Whenever I heard from him, we’d talk on the phone for hours as if no time had passed. Whether we were in relationships with other people, when I was married, then divorced, he always knew how to find me and I always took his calls. When Ben felt like the world was against him he’d call me, and I’d remind him he was loved. Maybe that’s why he reached out to me on his first day home from prison.
🐟 แซลมอนราดซอสขิงแซ่บๆ
By: Mattika Singtosee
Tags: อาหาร, ซอสขิง, แซลมอน, Salmon, Cooking

in In Fitness And In Health
A Solitary Moor
By: Abhishek Negi
Tags: Beauty, Literally Literary, Inner Peace, Poetry, Loneliness

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

Afar in a solitary Moor

as two swans lay

the distant contours

too white too pure,

I behold

the silent ripples

on green lay unfold

whispering

a dearly lone that beauty holds.

It is a glass pane

that reside in between,

A dormant vein

And a forgotten dream.
GLX Stablecoin listed on Instant Bitex
Tags: Cryptocurrency News, Stablecoins, Cryptocurrency, Globcoin, Glx

Great news for the Globcoin and stablecoin Community: The GLX stablecoin — the most universal of this kind — has been listed on InstantBitex, UK’s well known crypto exchange with more than 100k users. This is GLX’s second Exchange following a successful listing on Lykke.

The GLX is linked to a basket of the world’s top 15 currencies and gold, truly representing the World Economy and acting as an ideal payment token, as well as a hedging tool either against volatility. GLX is also considered a safe haven for crypto investors.

InstantBitex offers

Global coverage

Very low fees

24/7 support

A secure, functional interface

We’re glad to offer the GLX community more opportunities for high-speed, low-cost, truly global payments.

Join the GLX Global Payments Community now and don’t miss important updates!
LoyalCoin доступен для торгов на Cryptopia! Как пользоваться Cryptopia? Пошаговая инструкция
By: Miko Ilas
Tags: Loyalcoin, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Cryptopia

3. Take note that you can buy LoyalCoin using Bitcoin (BTC) or sell LoyalCoin in exchange for BTC. On the Buy LYL/Sell LYL dialog box, enter the desired LoyalCoin and the BTC amount you’re paying (for buy) or the BTC amount you expect to get (for sell).
JavaScript Solution to Number of Recent Calls
By: Gulgina Arkin
Tags: Leetcode, Queue, Programming, JavaScript, Data Structures

Explanation of the question

Write a class RecentCounter to count recent requests.

The key point above is class, we need to implement a class, not a function.

It has only one method: ping(int t) , where t represents some time in milliseconds.

The class instance needs to have ping method, which is a function that takes t, an integer in the range of 1 <= t <= 10^9 , as an argument.

Return the number of ping s that have been made from 3000 milliseconds ago until now.

The ping method return value is an integer.

Any ping with time in [t - 3000, t] will count, including the current ping.

Any previous t that has been called, which is in the range of [current t-3000, current t], will be counted.

It is guaranteed that every call to ping uses a strictly larger value of t than before.

Each call of ping, the argument t increases, it forms an ascending integer list.

Example 1:

Input: inputs = ["RecentCounter","ping","ping","ping","ping"],

/*

first, we create a new RecentCounter object

obj = new RecentCounter()

then, we call ping four times with four different t

*/ inputs = [[],[1],[100],[3001],[3002]]

/*

obj.ping(1)

obj.ping(100)

obj.ping(3001)

obj.ping(3002)

*/ Output: [null,1,2,3,3] /*

object initialized, ping is not called, no return value, null

obj.ping(1) should return 1

obj.ping(100) should return 2

obj.ping(3001) should return 3

obj.ping(3002) should return 3

*/

Note:
Handling Posting Key in Steem based DApps
By: Pratyush Singh
Tags: Blockchain, Product Updates, Decentralization, Steem, Technology

The Steem blockchain has rewarded more than $22 million to its users since June 2016. And with its API being released for public usage, we’ve seen many applications built on the top of it like Busy, DSound, DTube, Steepshot, etc.

These platforms provide users with a different interface to do different things; like publishing music, sharing photos and videos, blogging, etc. And since there are a lot of use cases where users can get rewarded for the content they create, there is a fair chance that you will come across the next cool thing and decide to work on it.

In such cases, you would like to provide your users with a functionality to vote, comment, create a post in your platform’s style and so on. But before you can do any of this, you would require user’s authorization.

In Steem, there are two ways to do this —

Using Steem Connect.

Using the private posting key (more here).

In this post, I will be discussing only the posting key method and the practices that developers should follow while using it.

Installing Dependencies

The Steem API is available in Javascript and can be easily installed using npm —

npm i --save steem

or using yarn —

yarn add steem

after this, we are all set to go.

Logging Users In

The easiest way to log users in is by asking their username and private posting key.

After getting this data, here is the flow for verifying the credentials —

Get the username and request user details from Steem API. Extract the public posting key from the response to the previous step. Use the Steem API to validate private key using the public key. If success, set the cookies or localstorage or whatever you want, otherwise display some error message.

Here is an example —

And once we are sure that the posting key provided by the user is correct, we can use it to comment, vote and create new posts. These actions are available in the steem.broadcast module.

(Not) Storing the Posting Key

The private key of the user can be used for the most powerful action on the Steem blockchain — content creation and curation.

So, the developers should NEVER store the posting key with themselves by making a POST request to their own back-end server (or something similar).

This would take away the power from users and introduce the trust element again in the blockchain, which is the USP of this technology.

If someone holds the posting keys of all the users on a platform, it is possible that they can use these keys to upvote some articles without the authorization of the user and ruin the complete motivation behind Steem.

Users should also take a deep look inside the platform before submitting their posting key to them, there are many phishing websites out there.
Content Specialists Spotlight: Meet the Customer Requests Team
By: Main Street Hub
Tags: Company Culture, Culture, Content Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Content

At Main Street Hub, our Content Team specializes in representing our small business customers’ voice and brand in an authentic way online. Within our Content Team, our Content Specialists, Customer Requests work across a set of on-demand queues to create incredible, eye-catching, on-brand designs for our customers to help them stand out on social media to discover customers in their communities and beyond.

Get to know some of our Content Specialists, Customer Requests and learn how they help our customers elevate their online presence through beautiful graphics and campaigns:

Can you describe what you do as a Content Specialist, Customer Requests?

Caroline Foley: “As a Senior Content Specialist, I help customers’ visions and goals become an online reality on social media. Whether they want to engage with consumers through email, paid media, posts, or campaigns, I’m translating the customers’ objectives into beautifully-branded campaigns and graphics. From copy to design to strategy, I have the opportunity to both see the big picture of a project and work on each step to ensure I’m delivering results.”

Lauren Hanks: “I adapt customers’ requests and promotions into on-brand, clear graphics and flyers.”

Rowan Miller: “My main role is creating unique, on-brand graphics for specific things going on at our customers’ businesses. As a team, we boost content on Facebook , handle our customers’ review responses, and work with our customers to make their platforms look the best they possibly can.”

What’s your favorite thing about your job?

Caroline: “When I drive into work every day, I look forward to seeing what my extremely creative team is crafting for our customers.”

Lauren: “I love flyer transformations — taking a customer’s photo or word document containing a ton of information and transforming it into an easily-digestible graphic.”

Rowan: “I think my favorite thing about my job is how versatile the workload is. You never know what to expect on any given morning, and as someone who thrives on having a few different things to work on, this kind of environment suits me well. You really have to be a jack-of-all-trades to succeed in this role.”

Jessica Phillips: “There’s so much flexibility when it comes to email marketing. It’s such a fun platform to design and write for because the industry is always changing.”

Can you describe a favorite on-demand graphic or email campaign you’ve created?

Caroline: “One of our bar customers asked us to promote a Mean Girls Trivia Night. I had a blast designing with one of my favorite movies in mind.”
A Note About Thimble
Tags: Mozilla

A Note About Thimble

Mozilla is partnering with Glitch to keep Thimble projects published and remixable

In the coming months, users of Thimble — Mozilla’s browser-based, educational code editor — should migrate their projects to Glitch. Glitch is a platform similar to Thimble, where users can easily build and publish apps, web pages, and more, for free.

The migration process will be simple for Thimble users: just a few clicks. And your project will remain fully editable — you can keep on building. Glitch will also be running introductory webinars for Thimble users.

Why this change? Over the years, Mozilla’s educational software has helped teach critical digital skills, from creating content to mastering HTML and CSS. But as new threats and opportunities to the open internet arise, Mozilla sometimes decommissions projects to focus on new ones.

Over the next several months, as Thimble users migrate their projects to Glitch, we will be disabling Thimble features incrementally. The incremental shut-down will be timed around semesters to minimize disruption to university course schedules. We expect Thimble to be fully retired by December 2019. After this date, all project and account data will be erased.

We’re committed to preserving the more than 1.4 million Thimble projects online. And we’re excited that these projects and the people behind them will continue to grow at Glitch, a robust community that celebrates creativity and openness. Further, the spirit of Thimble lives on in many of Mozilla’s latest initiatives, from our open-source Internet Health Report to our support of Mozilla Fellows who are teaching the web. Many of these initiatives were developed with input from the staff and community behind Thimble.

If you’re a Thimble user who wants to learn more about migrating your project to Glitch, watch this video or sign up for the January 8, January 22, or February 6 webinars.
Cherish My Heart
By: Ivette Cruz
Tags: Blue Insights, Relationships, Love, Life, Poetry

Poetry

Cherish My Heart

My heart rests in your hands

My heart

Rests

In your hands

Please

Cherish it

Until death

Do us apart
The End of the Story
By: Abigail Siegel
Tags: Philosophy, Stories, Poetry On Medium, Poem, Poetry

Photo by Reuben Juarez on Unsplash

do stories have an end?

I’ve never seen one

just on and on and on

one person to another

grazing the surface

of someone else’s deep

history to history

time to time

until time has no meaning

unless defined by the end

but where is it?

I hope to never find it
Longing for Change
By: Dayleah Rose
Tags: Microfiction, Evil, Revenge, Change, Pentina

Longing for Change

Change is the essence of hope

Photo by Carson Greenhalgh on Unsplash

Eli tiptoed toward the chair. “I’m getting you out of here.” He untied the thick rope that bound Callie’s arms.

“What are you doing, Eli?”

“People can change, Callie.”

“But the past can’t be changed.” She struck Eli swiftly, who fell to the ground. “I was bound for a reason.”
SIREN News Jan/Feb 2017
Tags: Dentsu Aegis Network, Latest News, Advertising, Digital Marketing, Agencylife

People

“Everyone has a different background and when working with different teams and clients it’s beneficial to have that understanding. I hope that it has made me a better leader.”
Everyone Is Not a Little Bit Bi
By: Danny Jackson H.
Tags: LGBTQ, Bisexual, Sexuality, Queer, Self

The idea that everyone is a little bi de-legitimizes the people who actually are attracted to two or more genders. It belittles us into thinking that the attraction that makes us unique is just “normal.” That it doesn’t really matter.

In addition, it makes it sound like no one is one hundred percent gay or one hundred percent straight. That simply isn’t true.

There are gay folks who have fought hard to come to terms with the fact that they are completely gay with no trace of straight attraction in their system. And there are straight people who will live their entire lives without feeling sexually or romantically drawn to someone of the same gender.

Saying that everyone is a little bit bisexual throws the people who exist at one end of the spectrum under the bus.

It claims that their experiences don’t really matter, that they should keep their options open in case someone of the gender they’re not attracted to comes along and changes their viewpoint.

This phenomenon is particularly common with lesbians. They are told that they should give a certain man a chance, that since all people are really just bi, that they should allow themselves to love a man.

But all the lesbians I know underwent a long and arduous journey of self-discovery to come to terms with the fact that they weren’t attracted to men. Many of them have already given men a chance before realizing who they really were. And it was generally unpleasant for everyone involved.

In short, stop saying that everyone is kind of bi. Save that word for people who actually experience attraction to people of multiple genders.
Michelle O’Connor, VP of Marketing at Synapse
By: Sankaet Pathak
Tags: Fintech, Banking

Today we are pleased to announce that Michelle O’Connor is joining Synapse as our VP of Marketing.

Michelle has 12 years of experience in marketing, most recently at Uphold, where she was the VP of Marketing and Community. In that role, she developed and implemented the brand’s marketing strategy, brought cohesion and intention to the brand voice, and facilitated Uphold’s online community. She also managed public relations, content marketing and development, and social media strategy. Before Uphold, Michelle was the Creative Director of MWQpr, where she developed and implemented multi-channel strategies to build brand awareness and loyalty for her clients, including lifestyle brands, small businesses, Orion Labs (Explore Ruby), and Apollo Education Group.

At Synapse, Michelle will lead Synapse’s marketing and community building. She will also oversee public relations, further elevate Synapse’s brand in the FinTech and traditional banking markets, and continue to build our community by amplifying the many voices within Synapse as well as those of our customers.

In addition to being well-established in the FinTech space, Michelle is also closely aligned with Synapse’s mission. She commented,

As a mother of two young girls, I believe we are all responsible for building a better world for future generations. In this unprecedented socio-economic crisis, we face a watershed moment for legacy finance, where the need for access to equitable financial services is at its peak. We cannot sit idly by; the time for change is now. I chose Synapse because of its world-class team and its potential to truly revolutionize the financial services industry through a unique and robust product offering. I look forward to digging in and working closely with our customers and community to drive growth and build awareness worldwide.

Michelle has a proven track record of leading brand management, marketing communications, and community building in the FinTech space. We are excited to welcome her strong leadership and deep expertise to Synapse’s management team as we navigate our next phase of growth.

Welcome, Michelle!
by Christina Vaughn: Nurse, freelance writer
By: Christina Vaughn, Nurse, Freelance Writer
Tags: Love, Parenting, Family, Poetry, Baby

Poems of any length on life, love, family, emotions, children, motherhood, or just about what you need to express (with taste, of course)

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The power of algorithmic generation
By: Juan Andrés Hurtado Baeza
Tags: Miscellaneous, Web Development, JavaScript, 3d, Algorithms

The power of algorithmic generation

How to create awesome geometries from JS algorithms instead of from coordinates

Click on the image to open an interactive 3D view

CAD systems usually offer a wide variety of native entity types like polylines, spline curves, revolved surfaces, meshes, NURBS, etc. Additionally they have functions for transforming geometries or performing boolean combinations between entities enriching the available resources to design complex models.

Unfortunately this set of possibilities is not always enough to satisfy the design requirements in an easy way. Sometimes the desired model is the result of elaborated rules that cannot be fulfilled by a combination of the available standard entity types or operations. The most simple example could be to draw a mathematical 2D curve. Sure you don’t have an standard entity that exactly matches your needs, but probably, it is not very difficult to calculate the sequence of point coordinates in a worksheet and then pass somehow the values to the CAD application in order to draw a polyline defined by the calculated coordinates. OK, problem solved.

Now imagine you have to design an snail shell like the one represented by the picture above (Click on the image to open an interactive 3D view)

Although the CAD system disposes of meshes or other entity types suitable to handle general geometries defined by clouds of points, the situation is now much more complicated. The snail shell is a 3D surface whose vertices must be generated using a non-trivial algorithm. Furthermore the solution of the worksheet appears to be not viable because the algorithm cannot be directly implemented using the worksheet formulas and neither it is clear how to pass the set of coordinates to the CAD application. Assuming you know the math and programming concepts necessary to understand and implement the corresponding algorithm, as a designer you have the following main options:
Callbacks, Promises, and Async/Await in JavaScript
By: Tyler Hawkins
Tags: Programming, Software Development, Asynchronous, Web Development, JavaScript

Callbacks, Promises, and Async/Await in JavaScript

How To Write Asynchronous JavaScript

Photo by Álvaro Bernal on Unsplash

JavaScript is single-threaded, which means that only one thing can happen at a time. Synchronous code is executed from top to bottom in the order that the code is written. Synchronous code is also “blocking” — each line of code waits for the previous line of code to be executed before it runs.

In contrast, asynchronous code is “non-blocking” code that allows long-running requests to not block the main JavaScript thread. When the request is finished, additional code can then be executed. This is generally done in one of three ways:

Callbacks Promises Async/await

Let’s look at a few examples to see how we can write asynchronous code using these three approaches.
How to Be a Guy
By: Jay Edidin
Tags: How to Be a Guy, Sex And Relationships, How To Be A Guy, Transgender

The fairy tale of transition is one of whole-cloth transformation, a butterfly emerging fully formed from the cocoon of its previous self. If not that, it’s a story of linear progression: a series of steps toward an endgame of becoming the person you’ve always known yourself to be.

Sometimes, it’s true. There are people who just know, who’ve always known; who have a true self poised to emerge, or for whom every step moves them further on a clear path from point A to point B.

I’m not one of them.

My experience of transition has been one of continual second-guessing. I’m tiptoeing into manhood like a cold ocean. I change my name by degrees, a breadcrumb trail of bylines, from Rachel, to Jay Rachel, to Jay. I make excuses, file away the surgeon’s letter that will let me change the gender marker on my driver’s license until I’ve figured out what to do with my middle name. I cling to the middle ground of neutral pronouns; to the word transmasculine and its implication of direction rather than destination.

After 30 years spent trying and failing to get the hang of being a woman, I find myself somewhat unprepared for the sudden challenge of being a man — and acutely aware of just how instinctual most of it isn’t. It’s pornography, or John Wayne’s walk: difficult to quantify, recognizable mostly in its presence — or its absence.

For instance: Testosterone will deepen my voice, but when it comes to sounding like a guy, research shows that depth matters less than inflection. Dressing like a man and dressing to make a feminine body read as male overlap less than you’d think. The logistics of using a urinal when I lack the recommended plumbing are a hell of a lot less complicated than navigating the etiquette of men’s bathrooms, where the unwritten rules of manhood are at their most intricate and rigid, and the stakes at their highest.

And with all of this come the kinds of questions that don’t really have right answers. How much of myself am I compromising to fit a standard of masculinity I recognize as constructed? Does acknowledging that identity as constructed make it any less real?

Also, the shirts all button on the other side.
How to make your own plugin
By: Alex Melnyk
Tags: Plugin, Module, Flutter, Package, Extension

Sometimes you can get a request from a customer to develop some specific functionality that can’t be done with the plugins list on pub.dev or a customer wants a plugin with custom implementation that can be shared between several projects. In this case, you will need to develop your own plugin.

Make a Flutter plugin first step

Of course, to develop a plugin with native support you will need to know one or more programming languages to write native code currently you can use Java/Kotlin for Android and Objective-C/Swift for iOS development.

Ways to create a plugin project

So, you have two ways to do that:

Android Studio “New Flutter Project”

We have three different options to create a plugin project:

Plugin

This option creates a Flutter project with iOS and Android sub-projects. You can develop native functionality and expose API written on Dart.

Package

This option can be used if you wanna develop functionality just using Dart without native support, for example, it can be a widget, widget library, or some utility functions that you plan to use in several projects, etc.

Module

This option creates a solution that you can integrate into an existing Android or iOS project.
『週額５０に仮想通貨で』０１１ー流通は財産を生み出す
Tags: Bitcoin, Eos, Ethereum

in In Fitness And In Health
Optimize Response Time of your Machine Learning API in Production
By: Yannick Wolff
Tags: Machine Learning, API, Response Time

This article demonstrates how building a smarter API serving Deep Learning models minimizes the response time.

Your team worked hard to build a Deep Learning model for a given task (let’s say: detecting bought products in a store thanks to Computer Vision). Good.

You then developed and deployed an API that integrates this model (let’s keep our example: self-checkout machines would call this API). Great!

The new product is working well and you feel like all the work is done.

But since the manager decided to install more self-checkout machines (I really like this example), users have started to complain about the huge latency that occurs each time they are scanning a product.

What can you do? Buy 10x faster — and 10x more expensive — GPUs? Ask data scientists to try reducing the depth of the model without degrading its accuracy?

Cheaper and easier solutions exist, as you will see in this article.
APIs are the new Business Development
By: Martin H. Normark
Tags: Platform, API, Business Development

Back in 2008 I spent months and months on integrating with a new partner that the company had hit up.

Literally hit up.

Talk, meet, go out for lunch, out for beers, meet and talk some more and then see what the technical aspects of such an integration would look like, how will it benefit customers (mutually) and how does that affect our businesses.

Today if you want to integrate your product with another one to provide more value to your customers, you basically just find an API that does what you need, hit up the documentation and evaluate the feasibility of the time it will take vs. the value it will provide.

Any developer can do that. It’s even fun to do. And you don’t need to think about how it benefits the provider of the API — since they’re offering it, it’s all up for grabs.

Business Development is going away.

It’s 2015 and there’s a ton of stuff built already that you can take advantage of. There’re even API marketplaces and directories where you can search for an API that does image manipulation and get a list of providers that does that.

Your job is to solve problems, so as longs as the business can align their thinking about which problems to solve you should be just fine to go an hit up APIs to help you solve them.

If you’re an indie developer, this is even better. The world of APIs is a giant box of LEGO bricks waiting to be poked, mashed together and brought to life.

You can even use integrations as marketing which is often the point, since you now extend your product with new capabilities you want your customers to know.
Karma 2020.Q3 Financial Report
By: George Goognin
Tags: Finance, Karma, Lending, Economy, Fintech

Hello, dear friends!

Let’s discuss our financial results for the 3rd quarter of 2020. You can check the detailed data in our comfortable Google Spreadsheet, including historical data by quarters since 2018.Q1.

The main part of Karma's revenue is the listing fee

Key Facts:

Our listing fees hit the top since inception, and we've quickly recovered after the Corona pandemic. Our total net quarterly loss is $68,218, which is 32% better than the previous quarter. It is the best result since inception: x2 better than 2019.Q3 and x8 better than 2018.Q3. Quarterly operational expenses have been cut 25% QoQ because of the final pack of lay-offs. We burnt as low as $78,171, which is seven times better than 2018.Q3. Our runway time is one year+ considering our burn rate, working capital, and cash on hands. We're still persistently increasing our turnover capital from retail investors, no matter the global economic turmoils. QoQ growth was 44%.

Plus, we finally got listed at the Russian Central Bank's investment platform operators registry. It allows us to operate legally and increases our trustworthiness.

And we got all the approvals and comments from the EU lawyers and government bodies to start trading our digital securities at the Tokenomica this year. It enables liquidity for our shareholders and provides a legal tool to attract new investors, both retail and institutional.

What next:

Our focus is to grow the loan volume to become self-sustainable. The target is $1M/mo, and we made north of $350k in October-2020.

There will be more news on the OTC trading launch and our partnerships with large fintech partners.

Cheers ˆ_ˆ
Brunswick Centre, London
By: Dan Hill
Tags: Architecture, Gentrification, Photojournalism, Housing, Modernism

Yet a quick glance at Wikipedia reveals a sorry but all-too-familiar tale of a British modernist housing project unfinished and left to wither by the developers and councils:

After failing to attract private buyers on time, the block was sold to London Borough of Camden for use as council housing. The exterior of the building was never painted because Camden Council could not afford to complete work on the building after they took control. In Hodgkinson’s design each flat had a sun room but as the building programme was truncated, flats were equipped with neither adequate glazing nor ventilation units, and as a result were too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. [Wikipedia]

This lack of guts, vision, care and attention-to-detail, even from the largely progressive Camden Council of the day, is largely why modernism has a bad name in Britain. That, and the quaint obsession with owning your own house rather than living in an apartment, with only the Barbican and a few others bucking the trend slightly. But maybe the Brunswick is about to turn a corner.

The entire building is being redeveloped, with the concrete spruced up and the main strip is about to feel the combined effects of French Connection, Oasis, Starbucks, Carluccio’s, Waitrose et al. While it’s good to see the Renoir cinema still there, I’ll miss the scruffy but engaging Skoob Books second-hand store, and it remains to be seen what these new shops will do for the Centre by themselves.

They’re reasonable interventions, on the whole, but entirely obvious, and devoid of any particularity of character. I hope the vision of mixed-use development is mixed-up a bit more than this. It’s all a bit generic, all a bit too easy, from the curation of the retail to the design of the street furniture, and with none of the bold panache of the original architecture that cradles the development either side. But, all things considered, the place needs more life coursing through it, and the popularity of these choices may help. The potentially missed opportunity is whether that life could have more diversity, more of the bravery and optimism noted above. We’ll see.

Will it become a desirable place to live, hang out, shop — and provide the existing residents with a better quality of life? Or will the existing residents be forced out over time, as the place gentrifies? Will those brands still be there in a year, will the Centre be maintained properly, or will it descend once again to its previously fallow state? While the space and architecture may always be a little less than perfect, I’m hopeful it’ll do well, as long as the place is seen as an ongoing development.

The 20th Century Society has a great ‘fact-sheet’ on the Brunswick, and a smaller update, as does The Observer and there’s some good (early 70s?) snaps of the Brunswich at Art&Architecture.