fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Configuring Web Server in Docker Inside a Cloud Instance
Tags: Docker, Centos, Python, Apache Httpd, AWS

Configuring Web Server in Docker Inside a Cloud Instance

How to configure a Web Server in a Docker Container, which is launched in a Cloud Instance.

Hello Geeks, I Hope you are here to learn about Web-Server and Docker, so let's get started with the blog…

We will explain how we can launch a container technology inside a cloud instance and configure a Web-Server inside the blog's same container.

The task we are going to complete:

Launch and start a docker container in EC2 instance

Configuring HTTPD Server on Docker Container

Setting up Python Interpreter and running Python Code on Docker Container.

Here is basic information about the technology we will be using in the blog.

Container Technology: Container technology is a method of packaging an application to be run with isolated dependencies. They have fundamentally altered the development of software today due to their compartmentalization of a computer system.

Docker: Docker is a platform as service products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. Containers are isolated and bundle their own software, libraries, and configuration files; they can communicate through well-defined channels.

Apache HTTP WebServer: The Apache HTTP Server, colloquially called Apache, is a free and open-source cross-platform web server software, released under Apache License 2.0. Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the Apache Software Foundation's auspices.

Launch and start a docker container in EC2 instance

First, we launched our EC2 instance, and we connected to it using Putty. And now we are inside the system. As the system is new, we don’t have any software or program inside. We have to install docker inside our OS at first. To install the docker, we need to use yum, and we don’t have any docker configuration file, so we have to configure yum first.

We went to the path /etc/yum.repos.d/.

And we used the dnf command to download docker software into our system.
Rough Seas
By: Toni Tails
Tags: Poetry, Relationships, Mental Health, Creativity, Life

image by Ulkar — purchased by the author

Friend ships can be sailed

Through rough seas and quiet storms

Scarred — never broken

First of all, you and Siri weren't stupid. You were a couple of kids doing what kids do — learning. I'm so glad you both escaped further harm, and that you built such a bond with one another.
Web scraping com Python
By: Wesley Watanabe
Tags: Data Science, Web Scraping, Python, Analysis, Data

Python RegEx

Well organized and easy to understand Web building tutorials with lots of examples of how to use HTML, CSS, JavaScript…
10 Efficient Ways to Use Python Lists
By: Anupam Chugh
Tags: Software Engineering, Software Development, Python, Data Science, Programming

Copy List by Value

There are many ways to copy a list, but using an assignment operator isn’t one of them. Let’s confirm this:

>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

>>> b = a >>> id(a)

4345924656 >>> id(b)

4345924656

The assignment just creates a reference to the list a . This implies both of the lists now point to the same memory and any changes in one list would affect the other.

Following are some possible ways to create a standalone “shallow” copy of a Python list, ranked from the most efficient to the least in terms of speed:

b = [*a]

b = a * 1

b = a[:]

b = a.copy() (Python 3 — shallow copy)

(Python 3 — shallow copy) b = [x for x in a]

b = copy.copy(a) (Python 2)

While the difference in speeds is comparable, sometimes doing a deepcopy (which is obviously the slowest and most memory-needing approach) is unavoidable.

Unlike a deep copy, a shallow copy doesn’t do a clone of the nested objects. Instead, it just copies the reference of the nested objects. Let’s look at the following example to validate this:

>>> a = [[0,1],[2,3]]

>>> b = [*a]

>>> a[1][0] = 5 #Output of b: [[0, 1], [5, 3]]

Updating the nested list element a[1][0] = 5 changes the list b as well. In such scenarios where we aren’t using a 1D list, the following ways work best for doing a deep copy of all the list elements:
Joining a Professional Association as a Freelancer
By: Kahli Bree Adams
Tags: Freelancing, Entrepreneurship, Business, Startup, Small Business

Personal benefits

Most professional associations require members to keep professional development (CPD) records and therefore offer plenty of training opportunities.

The greatest benefit of belonging to an association is, no doubt, networking. Working for ourselves, we don’t usually get to meet colleagues during the day, so networking events are excellent for meeting colleagues in the flesh. Getting to know and interacting with colleagues is essential and may even lead to fruitful business relationships.

Being a member of a professional association is also a great opportunity for you to get involved. Volunteer, join a committee, take on tasks such as editing their member magazine or helping with their website. This will get your name out there, put you in touch with colleagues and generally allow you to do something for the profession, which will benefit us all.
A Microbial-Based Explanation for Cooling Human Body Temperatures
By: Nita Jain
Tags: Health, Ideas, Microbiome, Science, Education

A Microbial-Based Explanation for Cooling Human Body Temperatures

Could changes to our gut microbial landscapes be responsible for cooling human body temperatures?

The value of 98.6° F (37° C) for the standard human body temperature was first proposed by German physician Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich in 1851. This reference point is likely inaccurate, however, as recent studies have shown that human body temperatures generally run lower than the accepted norm.

37 degrees Celsius has been the traditionally accepted value for normal body temperature, photo by orelphoto on Adobe Stock

Nevertheless, average human body temperatures have decreased since the Industrial Revolution, according to the results of a recent Stanford study, which concluded that the average American’s body temperature is about 0.58° F (0.03° C) lower for woman and 1.06° F (0.6° C) lower for men than it was in the 19th century. On average, human body temperatures have fallen by 0.05° F (0.03° C) per decade. The researchers attributed these changes to a reduction in metabolic expenditure, reduced inflammation, and lowered incidence of infectious diseases in modern times.

In their study, the Stanford team examined three different datasets, which included records from the Union Army Veterans of the Civil War from 1860 to 1940, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I from 1971 to 1975, and the Stanford Translational Research Integrated Database Environment from 2007 to 2017.

The team combed through all 677,423 temperature measurements, accounting for variables such as age, height, weight, and potential differences in temperature measurement accuracy, to arrive at their conclusions.

Microbes provide warmth to their hosts

I would like to propose that our reduced body temperature measurements may be the result of loss of microbial diversity and rampant antibiotic use in the Western world. Indeed, a small study of healthy volunteers from Pakistan reported higher mean body temperatures than those encountered in developed countries where exposure to antimicrobial products is greater.

Heat provision is an under-appreciated contribution of microbiota to hosts. Microbes produce heat as a byproduct when breaking down dietary substrates and creating cell materials. Previous reports have estimated bacterial specific rates of heat production at around 168 mW/gram. From these findings, we can extrapolate that an estimated 70% of human body heat production in a resting state is the result of gut bacterial metabolism.
Azure — Deploying Vue App With Java Backend on AKS
By: Bhargav Bachina
Tags: Azure, Cloud Computing, JavaScript, Kubernetes, Web Development

Azure — Deploying Vue App With Java Backend on AKS

A step by step guide with an example project

AKS is Microsoft Azure’s managed Kubernetes solution that lets you run and manage containerized applications in the cloud. Since this is a managed Kubernetes service, Microsoft takes care of a lot of things for us such as security, maintenance, scalability, and monitoring. This makes us quickly deploy our applications into the Kubernetes cluster without worrying about the underlying details of building it.

In this post, we are going to deploy a Vue application with a Java environment. First, we dockerize our app and push that image to the Azure container registry and run that app on Azure AKS. We will see how we can build the Kubernetes cluster on Azure AKS, Accessing clusters from outside, configuring kubectl to work with AKS cluster, and many more.

Example Project

Prerequisites

Install Azure CLI and Configure

Dockerize the Project

Pushing Docker Image To Container Registry

Creating AKS Cluster

Configure Kuebctl With AKS Cluster

Deploy Kubernetes Objects On Azure AKS Cluster

Access the WebApp from the browser

Summary

Conclusion

Example Project

This is a simple project which demonstrates developing and running Vue application with Java. We have a simple app in which we can add users, count, and display them at the side, and retrieve them whenever you want.

Example Project

If you want to practice your own here is a Github link to this project. You can clone it and run it on your machine as well.
If You’re Not in a Developer Community Then You’re Missing Out
By: Jesse Nieman
Tags: Programming, JavaScript, Python, Community, Startup

Help Along the Way

This one is fairly obvious, but it’s also extremely understated. No matter how much you offer to the developer community, it will always give you more in return.

(My favorite online community right now is IndieHackers.)

When I first started to show interest in code, I met one of the developers at the company I work for through a mutual friend. I expressed my interest in learning code, and he immediately offered some advice.

He suggested a few resources and learning platforms to get my feet wet. I maintained a connection with him throughout my learning journey, and as soon as I felt comfortable with the basics of what I was learning (at the time it was HTML and CSS), he offered for me to take some of his smaller freelance jobs.

This was huge!

Even today as I have moved on to new technologies and am learning different things, my friend continues to offer suggestions and guidance. As of late, I have been learning Laravel and I reached out about a bug I kept running into. We jumped on a call and he helped me fix the bug I was stuck on.

The value he’s been able to offer me has been tremendous in my journey to learn code. I can honestly say that I would not be as far as I am today without his help.

And that is just one person! The developer community is full of people just like my friend who are eager to help and offer guidance.

I know that people like him and others who I have met through online communities like IndieHackers will continue to be a source of help as I learn and grow as a developer.
It’s Time to Rethink What It Means to Be Healthy
By: Alexandra Sifferlin
Tags: Nutrition, Body, Health, Life, Science

There are many metrics that are currently used to assess human health that aren’t based in sound science, and yet they persist. The body mass index (BMI) is one of them. Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that the BMI “can be used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems but it is not diagnostic of the body fatness or health of an individual.”

Writer Annaliese Griffin spoke to health experts and came up with five new metrics to assess your health that have nothing to do with measurements like weight or calories and all to do with reframing your relationship with health. They include questions like: How much green stuff are you eating? What did your body do for you today? And are you sleeping enough?

Use the coming new year as an opportunity to embrace better health habits that are based in science and also take into account your well-being and mental health. Read how below.
Donald Trump Is Smarter Than We Ever Gave Him Credit For
By: Jessica Wildfire
Tags: Books, Politics, Society, News, Culture

Donald Trump Is Smarter Than We Ever Gave Him Credit For

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been played.

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

It was all an act.

Back in February, when everyone was trying to warn him about an impending pandemic, Donald Trump under-reacted. He didn’t seem to get it. He dismissed the experts. He called it a democratic hoax. In response, democrats mocked him as a fool. Now we’re finding out the truth.

The entire time, Trump knew how deadly the virus was. He’s on record acknowledging its potential to become deadlier than any virus we’d seen in a century. And yet, he continued to shrug it off as “Kung Flu,” and played politics with masks and ventilators.

He knew. And instead of trying to save lives, he conspired with his administration to sabotage cities and states with democratic majorities. He did this in hopes that it would weaken bastions of liberal progressivism, and turn the election in his favor.

Three books show us exactly who Donald Trump is:

You don’t even have to read these entire books to see the real Donald Trump, the one who his inner circle knows when the cameras cut off.

They show different sides of the president, but they all agree.

We should’ve been much more afraid of this man.
APEX Supernode Candidate Selections
By: Apex Team
Tags: AI, Technology, Blockchain, Big Data

Supernode Candidates, ongoing efforts & reimbursement continuation

It should be noted that each and every Community Supernode Candidate will be expected to maintain a certain level of activity and ongoing support for the project, as their efforts up to this point forms a large part of the basis for why they have been selected. This is not solely for the benefit of APEX Network, but will be a requirement to maintain support and garner the votes necessary from the community of CPX holders to retain active production status in the future.

Every Supernode Candidate will be receive a special “Supernode Candidate” tag in the main and tech support chat.

Supernode Candidates will receive continued reimbursement for their hardware rental costs until further notice. Reimbursement would naturally halt before or close to the start of the staking on the mainnet.
OpenGenius, every business and individual has the power to use innovation to progress
By: Kevin Hart
Tags: Startup, Innovation Management, Innovation, Progress, Creativity

OpenGenius has raised £1.1M in total. We talk with Chris Griffiths, its CEO.

PetaCrunch: How would you describe OpenGenius in a single tweet?

Chris Griffiths: OpenGenius are global experts in creativity, productivity and innovation strategy — we believe every business and individual has the power to use innovation to progress. We’re trailblazing the way for companies to ‘work creative’ with our pioneering app, Ayoa.

PC: How did it all start and why?

CG: Before I started OpenGenius, I was CEO at one of Europe’s fastest-growing ed-tech companies; I knew I wanted it to grow into something more and weave innovation into the fabric of the company, but the board only wanted to focus on ed-tech, so I resigned.

Being true to myself, I knew I believed in the power of creativity and innovation — I wanted to start a company that could bring those things to other people through software and training. Alas, 6 months later I founded OpenGenius. Today, our mission of innovation is established company-wide and over 1.5 million people have used our software and services to drive their innovation-based progress.

PC: What have you achieved so far?

CG: We have achieved a lot — teams and individuals from companies such as Disney, Nasa, Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike and McDonalds have all used our software solutions. The Ayoa app — which was launched in June this year — is something we’re particularly proud of. It’s a tool that really overhauls modern society’s broken approach to productivity; it stops people app-switching, and puts an emphasis on using creativity to uncover the right ideas so you can then do the right tasks.

We also have a global network of innovation professionals who are helping to spread the innovation message around the world. Our OpenGenius team is continuing to grow; we’re based in beautiful Penarth in the tech-hub of Tec Marina which I founded with my wife Gaile to foster a creativity-focussed workspace. The whole company is excited to see what we can achieve going forward.

PC: How will you use your recent funding round?

CG: We are using our funding to expand our international customer base — we’re doing that by being more aggressive in our marketing and sales tactics. We’re growing the teams in both these areas, as well as continuing to develop Ayoa which has a very exciting roadmap laid out for the next six months.

PC: What do you plan to achieve in the next 2–3 years?

CG: We’re ambitious and we firmly believe we have created a disruptive software product with Ayoa — over the next 2–3 years, we expect to see a huge increase in our user base and the awareness of our brand. People are excited by what we are doing here. We’re proud to be the first Welsh company ever accepted onto the London Stock Exchange ELITE Accelerator Programme, and we have our sights set on flotation in the future. We’re not following market trends, but instead, we’re driving change with the Ayoa tool which offers something no other software does — all I can say is, watch this space.
TLDR Migrating a 130TB Cluster from Elasticsearch 2 to 5 in 20 Hours with 0 Downtime by Fred de Villamil
By: Pavel Trukhanov
Tags: Tldr, Elasticsearch, DevOps, Engineering, Big Data

TLDR Migrating a 130TB Cluster from Elasticsearch 2 to 5 in 20 Hours with 0 Downtime by Fred de Villamil

Replicate it using built-in ES capabilities, then reindex delta from your main data source. Also — it’s so cool to have everything saved in ~kafka~ a log.

77 nodes cluster, with 200TB storage, 4.8TB RAM, 2.4TB being allocated to Java, and 924 CPU core. It is made of 3 master nodes, 6 ingest nodes, and 68 data nodes. The cluster holds 1137 indices, with 13613 primary shards, and 1 replica in a second data center.

1 option — Cluster Restart: close every index, upgrade the software version, start the nodes, then open the indexes again. Downside — maintenance downtime =(

Better option — expand cluster 2x times, replicate everything 2 more times, split cluster into two, then catch-up with changes:

added 90 new servers with the same ES 2.3.

“number_of_replicas : 1” becomes “number_of_replicas : 3" and ES takes care of copying every index and shard onto new servers.

Transferring 130TB of data at up to 4Gb/s puts lots of pressure on the hardware. The load on most machines was up to 40, with 99% of the CPU in use. Iowait went from 0 to 60% on most of our servers.

mitigate problems of serving clients from the busy hardware by using ES “zones” to split the data into cold and hot parts and dedicated some resources to serve the hot part to clients without reduced QoS.

split the cluster: shutdown new servers, disconnect them from the cluster in terms of auto-discovery, start them separately:

close all the indexes on the new cluster and now upgrade the ES to 5.0

reopen indexes and catchup with changes by reindexing the delta from kafka source.

switch ES clients to use new cluster.

Profit!
The Motivation To Exercise Starts From Cues.
By: Aldric Chen
Tags: Self Improvement, Motivation, Health, Healthy Lifestyle, Short Story

The Motivation To Exercise Starts From Cues.

Willpower is out. Cues are in.

Photo by Ethan Elisara on Unsplash

Very often, we rely too much on our willpower to get ourselves up for exercise.

It could be a trip to the gym, to the pool, to the tennis court or even just lacing up for an evening jog.

The power of our Will is very often, not very powerful.

That is probably why we cannot really depend on it.

Ask any smokers who tried to quit smoking based on sheer willpower.

Or any fried food junkie trying to lose weight.

If it is not willpower, then what can we rely on?

For me, the answer is “cues”.

And I am big fan of cues.

For instance, if I know that I want to head for a swim tomorrow, this is what I am going to do.

I will pack the swimming equipment the evening prior to my session.

And then, I will put spare goggles at my working desk at home, at the working desk in the office, and in the shared locker where I deposit my bag in office.

I constantly remind myself of my swim session using cues (goggles) strategically placed all over where my eyes cannot miss.

That is swimming.

Running is a different ballgame.

With running, motivation comes from proximity.

I find that I have a tendency to not run when I have to travel far to the start line.

It is much easier for truckloads of excuses to infiltrate and takeover my mind when it takes a long while from preparation to start.

I do this.

I keep a set of running clothes near the front door of the apartment before I head to work.

When I come home, I would immediately change into my workout gear and start warming up the moment I shut the gate.

If I am heading for track training, I would search for the nearest stadium from the office and deposit my running attire and shoes there before heading to office.

That way, no matter what happens, I will have to make my way to the stadium to collect my gear before I head home.

This eliminates all excuses from my end.

As with all things in life, a little deliberation goes a long way.

Don’t you think so?
TOP 5 — Must Read for every CEO.. IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE I GET STARTED…
By: Sumit Mattey
Tags: CEO, Artificial Intelligence, AI, Microsoft, Mindfulness

IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE I GET STARTED: This is my first list of my own, I consider myself as evid reader and technologist. I hate reading books on Kindle, Google rather than at bookstore or at my study table. I work with IT Consulting firm — Cloud Certitude and works typically in SMB Market and Mid Market.

Hit Refresh — by Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft

Though I’m not a big Microsoft fan but this book is all about individual change, the transformation happened inside Microsoft and the arrival of the most exciting and disruptive wave of technology humankind has experienced — including artificial intelligence, mixed reality and quantum computing. One of the finest words I loved was “Ideas Excites Me.” Empathy ground and centres me”.

2.META HUMAN — Unleashing your infinite potential by Dr. DEEPAK CHOPRA

Well I would say this is the most controversial book in the entire list. I met with Dr. Deepak in United States, SFO for a brief discussion and I become his big fan. In this brilliant book Dr. Deepak successfully argues that consciousness is the sole creator of self, mind, brain, body and the universe we know it. METAHUMAN is a brilliant vision of human potential and how we can move beyond the limitations, concepts, and stories created by the mind.

3. THE TECH WHISPERER — ON DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND THE TECHNOLOGIES THAT ENABLE IT BY JASPREET BINDRA.

This book is all about Digital Transformations and the technologies which can enable it. Companies across the world are being buffeted by new technologies, disruptive business models and start up innovation. Business leaders knows that need to adopt the new technologies, like blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), using them to keep pace with rapid customer and business environment changes. My loved chapter of the book is Brahma and Business Models.

4. HOW TO CREATE A MIND — THE SECRET OF HUMAN THOUGHTS REVEALED

RAY KURZWEIL prevents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human — machine civilization: reverse — engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using the knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil also has explained how the brain functions, how the mind emerges, brain computer interfaces, and the implications of vastly increasing the power of our intelligence to the address the world’s complex problems. I would say every page of this is unique and inspiring.

5. Customer — Support — Focused — Driven — Obsessed — A whole company approach delivering exceptional customer experiences. GET AHEAD OF THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE CURVE

This book is for the companies who defines success through business outcomes and put customers at the center of their business realize sustainable, continuous growth. Customer experience is a key driver of technical innovation and business success — customer obsessed teaches organization how to leverage it across all the levels of the organizations to sustain competitive advantage in the digital era.
Super Simple React Native Redux Example
By: David Vassallo
Tags: React, React Native, Reactjs, JavaScript, Development

Inspired byhttp://blog.tylerbuchea.com/super-simple-react-redux-application-example/

In this article we explore the barest of solutions to get started with React Native + Redux. The only pre-requisite to the below is to have “create-react-native-app” installed (https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/getting-started.html)

Setup

create-react-native-app superSimple

cd superSimple

npm install --save redux react-redux

redux.js

App.js

Notes
Joint Friendly Fitness: Make Light Weights Feel Heavy
By: Zack Harris
Tags: Health, Wellness, Fitness, Life, Self Improvement

Perform The Big Movements Last

I’ve spoken plenty about how your training should be centered around the big, compound lifts — press, squat, row, and deadlift variations are all staples in a sound strength training program.

Traditionally, these movements are performed first in a workout, when we’re at our “freshest”, so that we can move the heaviest weight possible. After this main lift is done, we move onto the accessory movements like curls and side lateral raises; the more “bodybuilder” style exercises.

This is sound logic, and it’s clearly the way to go if your one and only objective is to move as much weight as humanly possible on that given day. But a great way to make things a bit more “joint friendly” while still getting a productive workout is to occasionally flip the exercise order of your workout on its head.

By performing those accessory movements first, you’re pre-exhausting the muscles, which means when it comes time to perform that compound exercise at the end of your workout, you’re not going to be able to move as much weight as you normally could. This is a good thing from a joint health standpoint, because you can still train hard and reap the muscle building benefits that these compound lifts provide, but with less weight.

If you’re a competitive powerlifter training for a contest, this may not be ideal for you — but for pretty much anybody else, this is a great strategy to cycle into your training every few months to give your joints a break from all of the heavy lifting you’re otherwise performing throughout the year.

I like performing my compound lifts in this fashion for about 6 weeks at a time, every 3 or 4 months.
Why Companies Desperately Need Generalists to Innovate
By: Jean-Marc Buchert
Tags: Management, Innovation, Productivity, Creativity, Jobs

Field outsiders see structural similarities better

Shubin Dai, a specialist in bank data analysis is maybe one of the best model of the outsider.

Passionate about his data financial work, he also spends his time responding to the various challenges posed by Kaggle, a community of data scientists. Quite surprisingly, he enjoys working on various topics such as nature conservation and medicine where he has gained considerable knowledge. For example, in these fields, he has achieved to identify the human causes of deforestation in the Amazon, and he has become a leading expert in disease prediction.

Like Kaggle, these kinds of outsiders are more and more prospected by companies, as they respond perfectly to the issue of open innovation. They have increasingly been opposed to the field insiders that know deeply their stuff, but have been suspected of being blinded by the limits of their own expertise.

The outsider specific talents have been based on what researchers have conversely called the “outside view”. It consists in relying not on familiar experience or analogies but on more distant and deeper analogies. By adopting an open perspective, they can seek and find similar structures with their project and thus better judge as they compare it with examples from other horizons.

InnoCentive is an organization that has tried to promote an outsider-like vision of innovation. It has bet on open-mindedness by setting up crowdsourcing with communities of various specialists. Thus, biologists or chemistry specialists can work on issues as distant from their field than IT or network architecture issues. Yet, by providing diverse and open expertise, they find connections that the clients themselves haven’t found about.

This enables InnoCentive to have a 75% more chance of success in their clients’ projects, compared to the 20% of corporate and internal research projects.

The bottom line is that organizations need to rely more and more on collaborators who have remote expertise and are therefore more original and accurate on their issues.
Prefect Cloud has Launched! 🎉
By: Jeremiah Lowin
Tags: Data Science, Prefect, Python, Data Engineering, Workflow

For more than two years, Prefect has been making steady progress on our mission to eliminate negative engineering. Today, we’re excited to announce that Prefect Cloud is available to the public — including its free Scheduler tier!

Learn more here.

We worked with hundreds of early Cloud previewers and tens of Lighthouse Partners to reach this point. Since July 2019, when we onboarded Cloud’s very first customer, we have made enormous strides in our understanding of workflow systems and user requirements.

The biggest lesson of all is that a system we built for a very specific set of customers — large financial institutions — has come to dominate our business model. Our Hybrid Model delivers cloud convenience with on-prem security, and is so innovative it has resulted in two separate patent filings. Users keep their code and data on their private infrastructure — whether that’s a personal laptop, an IoT device, a cloud-hosted cluster, a serverless function, or just bare metal — while Prefect Cloud’s managed orchestration service provides complete oversight and confidence. The hybrid model is a clear advantage that Prefect provides over any alternative system.

Learn more about the hybrid model here.

The public release of Prefect Cloud caps “Phase 1” of our company’s story. It represents everything we’ve learned about negative engineering, and is informed by thousands of user stories gathered from all industries and experience levels. Just as when we launched our open-source Prefect Core library with the extreme confidence that comes from iterating with a small group of early previewers, we’ve already seen Prefect Cloud deployed at institutions large and small. We know that it fulfills the objective we laid out in this blog a year and a half ago:

Prefect is the codification of the patterns we observe in modern data engineering. At our core, we provide two things. One is our open-source framework [Core], which operates like a hardware store: stocked with all the necessary components for building great data applications. The other is our platform logic [Cloud], which we think of as the store manager: guiding users to the right tools and making sure their projects are successful. With these two things working together, we can offer a compelling solution for both positive and negative engineering problems.

What will you build?

— The Prefect Team
Five Books That Made Me Laugh Out Loud in Quarantine (and Taught Me Amazing Lessons)
By: Aaron Nichols
Tags: Comedy, Books, Reading, Creativity, Self Improvement

Five Books That Made Me Laugh Out Loud in Quarantine (and Taught Me Amazing Lessons)

#3 is one of the most unorthodox, original books I’ve ever read

Image by Christopher Ross from Pixabay

I have a special place in my heart for writers who can make me laugh when I’m alone, especially now. We’re in a pandemic, people! That news outlet you love? It’s just going in circles.

Why not step back, and read something that doesn’t put the weight of the world on your shoulders?

All the books I’m including in this list manage to interweave fantastic life lessons with the comedy, so even if you’re a hyper-efficient self-help junkie, there are pearls of wisdom awaiting you between the humor. I’ll be sharing a quote from each book and a short summary of my takeaways. Enjoy!
How To Make Scalable APIs Using Flask and FaunaDB
By: Agustinus Theodorus
Tags: Software Engineering, Programming, Software Development, Microservices, Serverless

What does Serverless have to do with this tutorial?

The main reason serverless is being mentioned here is because FaunaDB is a NoSQL database that is made for serverless in mind. The pricing on this database is request based, precisely what serverless apps need.

Using a service like FaunaDB can help cut costs so much that the hosting capabilities of the app would be virtually free. Excluding the development costs of course. Thus, using a monthly billed database for serverless apps kind of kills the point.

A free stack example would be a combination of Netlify, Netlify Functions, and FaunaDB. Though it would only be ‘free’ for a certain amount of requests. Unless you are making an app that gets thousands of users on day zero of deployment I don’t think it would be much of a problem.

In my opinion, using a monthly billed database for serverless apps kind of kills the point

Flask on the other hand is a microframework written in Python. It is a minimalistic framework with no database abstraction layers, form validation, or any other particular functions provided by other frameworks.

Flask is by large serverless compatible. You can make a serverless Flask app using AWS Lambda. Here is an official guide to Flask serverless from serverless.com.
Practical Data Analysis with Pandas and Seaborn
By: Soner Yıldırım
Tags: Data Science, Python, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analysis, Pandas

Practical Data Analysis with Pandas and Seaborn

Exploratory data analysis on a bank customer dataset

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Whether we are creating a dashboard, doing predicting analytics, or working on any other machine learning task, we first need to explore the data at hand. We should obtain a thorough understanding of the data and the relationships among variables.

There are many tools and packages that can be used to analyze data. What they all have in common is that the best way to learn them is through practice.

In this practical article, we will explore a dataset that contains information about the customers of a bank. The ultimate task is to predict whether a customer will leave the credit card services of the bank.

We will be using Pandas for data analysis and manipulation and Seaborn to create visualizations.

The first step is to import the libraries.

import numpy as np

import pandas as pd import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import seaborn as sns

sns.set(style='darkgrid')

Let’s create a dataframe by reading the provided csv file.

churn = pd.read_csv("/content/BankChurners.csv", usecols=list(range(21)))

I have excluded the first column and the last two columns by providing a list of indices of columns to be included in the dataframe. The usecol parameter is used to select only certain columns. We can pass the names or indices of the columns to be included.

The first column is client number which does not add any value to the analysis. The last two columns were not relevant as indicated by the dataset provider.

The shape method returns the size of the dataframe in terms of the number of rows and columns.

print(churn.shape)

(10127, 20)

(image by author)

There are 20 columns. The screenshot above only includes 7 columns for demonstration purposes. We can view the entire list of columns by using the “columns” method.

Before starting the analysis, we should check if there is any missing value in the columns. The isna function of Pandas returns true if a value is missing. We can apply sum functions to count the number of missing values in each column or entire dataframe.

churn.isna().sum().sum()

0

There is no missing value in the dataset.
A Template for Writing Blog Posts That Earn Passive Income
By: Krystal Wascher
Tags: Business, Writing, Marketing, Blogging, Money

A Template for Writing Blog Posts That Earn Passive Income

Steal my formula to sell online courses, books, or services with your writing on autopilot.

Photo by RF._.studio from Pexels

There’s a reason why some bloggers make multiple six-figure incomes and others struggle to earn pennies from their writing.

People who earn life-changing amounts of money from their content usually follow a strategic formula.

The step-by-step formula that I have laid out below is a repeatable recipe that you can use to create profitable blog posts, Medium articles, or YouTube videos.

This is the exact “behind the scenes” process that I used to achieve the results outlined in this case study that I wrote a few months back.

I’ve been using this exact formula to reproduce these results on several of my websites covering different niches.

The formula itself is simple.

However, it does require some planning, effort, and practice to see maximum results.
Google Sign-In Integration in iOS
By: Lee Kah Seng
Tags: Mobile App Development, Software Engineering, Software Development, iOS App Development, Programming

Creating OAuth Client ID for Google Sign-In

After performing the SDK installation, you will need an OAuth client ID and an iOS URL scheme so that you can continue with the configuration in Xcode.

Head over to Google APIs Console and create a project for your sample app. If you have already created a project, you can also select it from the project list.

Create project in Google APIs console

After you have created/selected a project, you also need to configure the OAuth consent screen. Follow the steps as shown in the image below to choose your app user type and then create the OAuth consent screen.

Create OAuth consent screen in Google APIs console

In the OAuth consent screen information page, fill in the application name, and then click “save”. This application name will be the name being shown in the Google Sign-in form when a user tries to sign in using your app.

Application name in OAuth consent screen information page

Once finished configuring the OAuth consent screen, it is time to create the OAuth client ID. You can follow the steps as shown in the image below to navigate to the OAuth client ID creation page.

Create OAuth client ID in Google APIs console

Once you reach the OAuth client ID creation page, go ahead and select “iOS” as application type, fill in the name and also your sample app bundle ID and then click “create”.

Create OAuth client ID

Copy the OAuth client ID and iOS URL scheme you just create and keep them in somewhere easily reachable, you will need both of them in just a bit.

Copy OAuth client ID and iOS URL scheme

With that you have completed the OAuth client ID creation process, we can now head back to Xcode and proceed with the configuration.
November Issue: The Current Corona-virology Research
By: Shin Jie Yong
Tags: Covid 19, Health, Research, Science, Education

November Issue: The Current Corona-virology Research

A newsletter covering the most recent developments in Covid-19 research.

Another month has passed, and I hope life has been treating you well. As usual, here’s a brief description of the 10 articles (friend linked) Microbial Instincts or I covered in November in chronological order:

Many thanks for your support. Kindly subscribe here or reach out to me for any questions or suggestions at shinjieyong@gmail.com.
Princess
By: Rebeca Ansar
Tags: Storytelling, Poetry, Poet, Poem, Creativity

amid the pompous pain of pinpricks

the princesses made sleepless by peas

who know nothing of a steely gaze

the corroded heart punched down

by even the most simple dreams

who desire the depth of an ocean

as if it comes easy, as if

the waters remain subordinate

this armor of faith

has a heavy weight and a hefty price

we are not the same

dragon ladies

skin split by the forest

on the outskirts of their stories

better a shrew than what they want

better a beast than what they own

only a ravaged spirit

knows this art of survival.
Why McDonald’s is Using Artificial Intelligence to Spy on Its Dumpsters
By: Audrey Malone
Tags: Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Recycling, Surveillance, AI

Somebody’s Eyes Watching

In an age where surveillance and monitoring are all too easily misused, the idea of a camera in odd places can seem a bit weird and even a little creepy.

Even when cameras are where they’re supposed to be, it can mean that you’re being watched by who knows who.

I definitely cover my webcam to keep unscrupulous eyes from peering through watching me in my own home.

So, I was a little leery when I found out that McDonald’s was putting cameras in their dumpsters.

“For what?” I said.

My first thought was that they wanted to do that to possibly catch dumpster divers, but then I thought what would somebody be trying to find that they could sell in a McDonald’s dumpster?

Then I thought well maybe they’re putting the cameras in the dumpsters to catch homeless people rummaging through them, which I thought was a rotten thing for them to do.

But neither of these is the case.
How to run Spark/Scala code in Jupyter Notebook
By: Vishal Mishra
Tags: Jupyter Notebook, Data Engineering, Apache Spark, Data Science, Scala

Photo by Ilya Pavlov on Unsplash

Jupyter Notebook is the most widely used tool for putting code and text together in Data Science World. It’s a great tool for practicing data analysis and performing machine learning techniques in Python. This is a must for every Data Analyst and Data Scientist.

Apart from the data analyst and data scientist, this tool can also be useful for a data engineer. If you don’t know about Data Engineering, It’s a way of collecting/transforming data into a common data lake from where Data Analyst and Data Scientist can use this data to perform data analytics.

In the Big Data domain, there are various tools and technologies we use to collect and process the data. Apache Spark is one of the frameworks which allows distributed computing on a large data scale.

Apache Spark is a data processing framework that can quickly perform processing tasks on very large data sets, and can also distribute data processing tasks across multiple computers, either on its own or in tandem with other distributed computing tools.

Apache Spark code can be written in the following 3 languages — Java, Scala, and Python. Scala is the most preferred programming language for Apache Spark as Spark itself is written in Scala.

Hence in this article, I am going to tell you how you can use the same Jupyter notebook to write Spark code in Scala language.

Step 1: Install the package

pip install spylon-kernel

Step 2: Create a kernel (scala)

This will allow us to select scala kernel in the notebook

python -m spylon_kernel install

Step 3: Install and use Jupyter Notebook

pip install jupyter

And in the notebook, we select New -> spylon-kernel. This will start our scala kernel.

However, for this to work, you need to make sure that SPARK_HOME is set.

To set the SPARK_HOME in linux/mac OS, put the below statements in the home .bash_profile file.

export SPARK_HOME=/Users/vishalmishra/spark-3.0.1-bin-hadoop2.7

cd ~ vi .bash_profile
First Rule of Entrepreneurship: Always Have Multiple Revenue Streams
By: Aaron Dinin
Tags: Startup, Business, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, Side Hustle

A common point of failure

One type of easy-to-spot SPOF for investors is revenue stream. This is especially true for early startups because they haven’t had an opportunity to build a robust variety of revenue streams.

For example, an early startup might have one customer or one partnership providing the bulk of its revenue. Or the startup might be relying on one type of advertising channel to drive sales. From the startup’s perspective, it usually makes sense to focus its limited time, energy, and resources on one valuable revenue stream and make it as successful as possible. After all, why deploy scarce resources to things with questionable value when you’ve got something that’s certain to deliver a high ROI?

However, from the perspective of potential investors, a startup with one primary revenue stream is a huge risk. If something happens to that revenue stream, the company will fail. So why take the chance? Investors are better off finding similar companies with multiple revenue streams even if those other companies are currently generating less cash.

The YouTuber I was meeting with is a perfect example. Yes, he was making good money from YouTube, but he was also completely at YouTube’s mercy. When YouTube changed its algorithms, his audience vanished overnight, and he didn’t have any other way to make money. Why hadn’t he also been building an audience on TikTok or Instagram? Why didn’t he have a newsletter? Why hadn’t he signed long term sponsorship deals? In other words, why hadn’t he built other potential revenue streams to protect himself and his business from the eventuality that YouTube wouldn’t remain a viable source of income?

Instead, his years of hard work were negated in an instant because some strangers at a company on the other side of the country changed a few lines of code. Since he hadn’t properly accounted for that possibility, he was left with lots of bills, and no way to pay them.

If you don’t want to get stuck in the same position, you need to look carefully at your single points of failure. That’s true regardless of whether you’re a social media influencer, a startup CEO, or even someone working a traditional 9-to-5 corporate job. In fact, people with corporate jobs are often the least secure. What would happen if your company shut down tomorrow? How would you pay your bills? How would you eat?

If the answer to those questions doesn’t include, “keep paying the bills with my other income,” then you’re violating the first rule of entrepreneurship, and it’s time to find other streams of revenue. Have you considered mowing lawns?