fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
The Search — III
By: Heath ዟ
Tags: Love, Wisdom, Journey, Poetry, Hope

Against the yawning mouth of night

I called your name to the moon

and listened

for the wind and the wane

to carry back news

In the blinding light of day

I read your name in footprints

across burning sand,

and in the ice of the north

I left inuksuk to guide your way

I’ve carved years in lines,

frozen, burned, scarred,

on this weathered face

since I set out to find you.

Now I stand at the end on torn feet

Before ancient Yimorada, I presented myself

as told by the hands of dead men,

wise men, and veiled women with knives,

to be tested three times and found worthy,

to learn where I may find you at last.

Through the narrow passage I made my way

past the hanging corpses, the unworthy dead;

the howling sphinx, her question solved;

through walls of air and midnight flame,

past the door with no key

At last I stood in frozen Xanadu

and sang the sacred notes,

my words, my question, my desire,

rousing the Naga from the lotus baths,

to answer me in sibilant song:

“You will find what you seek

in the faces of mothers,

the footprints of pilgrims,

the grip of a child,

the eyes of the broken-hearted,

the tears of the bereaved,

and the blood of the sacrificed

Only when you know this

will she appear to you.”

I bowed my head,

I understood

It was not an end I found

but a beginning.
Perspective
By: Louis Dennis
Tags: Perspective, Poem, Free Verse, Poetry, Happy

Perspective

A short poem

Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

Today is beautiful.

Water is falling,

My clothes are wet.

The sky is grey,

The people are hiding.

My skin is bumpy,

My lover is afar.

I’m repeating my duties,

That bore me to tears,

What a beautiful day,

That today is.
Top 10 Digital Marketing Questions
By: Laura Tate
Tags: Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social Media

For my upcoming free Webinar, “Get Your Digital Marketing Questions Answered,” on March 31, 11 a.m PST, I put out a call for your top digital marketing questions. The questions are starting to roll in, and they range from the specific, such as how to connect with fans using Instagram, to the broad, What is […]

Read more at Top 10 Digital Marketing Questions.

via Crackerjack Scribe http://ift.tt/1LtALBf
Reminder: Get Your Refunds!
Tags: Education, Taxes

by Jordan Carr

It’s Here!

Hit up refunds.stanford.edu ASAP if you’re like me and don’t want to let Stanford Wind Ensemble pry that $1.01 from your cold dead hands (among other groups that may not be doing a whole lot for you).

If for some reason you’re not familiar with the ASSU refund system, basically you as a student are required to pay these fees for groups and organizations, unless you go to that link I’ve posted above and request a refund, with the honor-bound implication that you will not be using that group’s services (I’m not sure, but I think something bad can happen if you end up reneging on that–perhaps my more ASSU-savvy compatriots can fill me in here). In any case, it is particularly interesting in relation to the type of libertarian paternalism choice architecture that Erin was talking about on Sunday.

Instead of a situation where you could join a group and pay dues–that would be fairly straightforward, but perhaps less applicable to publications like the Stanford Daily and the Stanford Progressive (for what it’s worth, the Stanford Review does not receive any student funding). Framing it that way would certainly lead to fewer joiners, regardless of the effort it takes simply because you’ve changed the frame from getting found money to losing money. As Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated, people are risk-averse.

Still, it could just as easily be an opt-in situation as an opt-out one for those, and yet it’s not. Why? The answer seems pretty obvious: money. Much like the newly instituted $200 fine for not having enough units at the beginning of the quarter that led to me picking a five unit class at random (something fairly early in the alphabet like archaeology, I believe) to enroll in despite intending to take 18 units ( two of my five-unit classes required permission numbers), this seems like a fairly straightforward money grab.

On that note, Zoe Richards filed an interesting report in the Stanford Daily noting that the coffers designated to cover refunds are $40,000 short of where they need to be, meaning that the groups themselves will have to pay any refunds charged to their group beyond 10% of their budget out of pocket. But imagine how bad it would be for, say, KZSU and Stanford Concert Network if their funding required students to proactively opt in. In short: choice architecture matters.
建築・都市系の英語履歴書で使える、英文テンプレート！
By: Fraze Craze
Tags: デザイン, 建築, 日本語, 留学, 翻訳

（以下、「/」の部分はどれかを選び、「xxx」や「yyy」、「zzz」の部分は履歴書の内容にあわせて英語を入れてください。）

・ 〇〇デザインコンペで金賞受賞

Won a gold medal in XXX design competition

・設計課題で制作した作品が 〇〇で展示された

A design for a class was exhibited in XXX

・卒業論文（卒業設計）が学内選考で 〇〇賞を受賞

Undergraduate thesis (design) won a XXX award from YYY University

・プロジェクトリーダーとして、 〇〇名のチームを率いて××でのフィールドワークを遂行した

Lead field work in XXX as project leader of a team of YYY members

・設計事務所での設計／現場監理における 〇年間の経験

XXX years of experience in design/site supervision at a design office

・プロジェクトマネージャーとして、複数クライアントとの設計物件を指揮

Lead design projects for clients as a project manager

・パソコンスキル： 〇〇と××などの描画ソフト全般

PC skills: general drawing software, including XXX and YYY

・クライアントとの打合せやプレゼンテーションに問題ないレベルの英語

English communication skills sufficient for meeting with clients and making presentations
Nefertiti and MiningHamster™ trading signals
Tags: Bitcoin, Telegram, Cryptocurrency, Golang, Bots

This is part 6 in a series of articles on the Nefertiti trading bot. If you don’t know what Nefertiti is or does, please refer to part 1 in this series.

Nefertiti comes with a built-in strategy that is simple but proven; buy the dip, then sell those trades as soon as possible, preferably on the same day.

However, some traders might prefer an alternative strategy. Starting with Nefertiti 0.0.17 we’re pleased to announce a cooperation with MiningHamster, an awesome Telegram bot that sends trading signals to your phone.
Shrek the Musical
Tags: Medford Panthers, Headlines, Haines Middle School, Families, Entertainment

The Medford Panther Players, comprised of students from the Haines and Memorial Middle Schools, are preparing for a journey to a kingdom far, far away with their production of “Shrek the Musical, Jr.” Based upon the Oscar-winning DreamWorks film, the show brings the hilarious story of everyone’s favorite ogre to life on the Lenape High School stage April 15, 16, 22, and 23.

Join Shrek, the unlikely hero, and his loyal steed Donkey as they set off on a quest to rescue the beautiful, yet slightly fiery, princess Fiona and bring peace and quiet back to the swamp he calls home. Add a villain with a “short” temper, a gingerbread cookie with an attitude, and many of our favorite fairy tale characters in a singing and dancing mix of adventure, and you have a must-see musical comedy for all ages.

Through the laughter and fun, the show carries a poignant message that it is important to accept others even though they may be different. There is often more to a person than meets the eye, even if they have green skin, breath fire, or have a nose that grows when they tell a lie.

Veteran director and social studies teacher Michael Del Rossi leads this talented cast of sixth, seventh and eighth grade students as they bring this upside-down fairytale to life.

“This is a really fun show that will appeal to everyone, young and old. It carries a great message, especially for middle school students, about appreciating inner beauty and maintaining high self-esteem. Audiences will be reminded to love people for who they are, not what they are or how they look. Most importantly, I hope that the young people who see the show will realize that it’s okay to be yourself, it’s okay to ‘Let your freak flag fly!’” Del Rossi said.

This year’s production will be performed at the Lenape High School theater located at 235 Hartford Road in Medford. The show will have two matinee performances- April 16 and 23 at 2 p.m., and four evening performances — April 15, 16, 22, and 23 starting at 7 p.m.

Tickets, which are reserved seating, are available for purchase at the Medford Memorial School main office Monday through Friday 7:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. or online at www.medfordmemorial.org. A limited number of tickets will also be available at the box office on the night of the show.
“El teatro es un arte de un potencial enorme.” Entrevista a Matías Feldman
By: Los Inrockuptibles
Tags: Theatre, Matías Feldman, Artes, Entrevista, Teatro

in In Fitness And In Health
Good Morning, Sweet Friend
By: Rachel B. Baxter
Tags: Micropoetry, Dogs, Poetry, A Cornered Gurl, Pets

A note about this photo and poem:

I took this photo one morning while walking my dog, Nellie. I’ve been eager to write a poem about it because looking at it just fills my heart with happiness — the sun shining through the trees, Nellie pausing to look up at Mama, those floppy ears! On a separate morning, I came down the stairs and I hear Nellie’s tail beating against the sofa, so excited to see me. I smiled and greeted her, and then the words to this micropoem popped into my mind!

I’ve been so grateful for my pets during this season of shelter-in-place. They bring such a sense of calm and comfort. It’s like they know exactly what we need, instinctively. The love from our pets is truly a love unmatched.
Highlight
By: Fọlábòmí Àmọ Ó
Tags: One Line, Love, Time, Proposal, Poetry

I want

these minutes

I spend

in your arms

to be

the highlight

of every day

of my life.
What a Female Vice President Means for Achieving Gender Equity
By: Tony Porter
Tags: Gender Equality, Racial Justice, Healthy Masculinity

As parents of girls rightfully celebrate what it means to have our first woman as Vice President, let’s not forget how important it is for our sons to witness. This is a critical moment to teach our boys to celebrate, respect, and honor women in power — especially when they are BIPOC.

We have long taught at A Call to Men that achieving gender equity hinges on a redistribution of power. Sharing power in a way that fairly corresponds to all those represented. This applies to our government, to our corporations, to our communities, and to our families. And having a woman hold the second highest office in the nation, represents a shift in power.

The images being shared across social platforms are powerful visual demonstrations of how different and how meaningful this moment is. This is what progress looks like.

While we all know that there is much work left to do, let us take a breath to mark the moment. Let us look at our children, our grandchildren, and the young people around us and think about what this means for them — about the possibilities that they can now SEE, and not just dream.

Men, our job is to lift up the leadership of accomplished women — in the White House, in our workplaces, in our communities, and in our homes. Our job is to celebrate their success. Our job is to honor and respect their power. Our job is to listen to them. Our job is to learn from their experience.

And if you find yourself feeling some internal discomfort or push back about a woman — and a Black woman — assuming this role, I challenge you to commit some time to thinking about why. Politics aside, we have been collectively socialized to view women and girls as objects, as property, and as having less value than men. These messages are in the air we breathe. And sometimes that socialization can sneak up on us — it is the foundation of our unconscious bias. The teachings of the Man Box help maintain a male-dominated society, where men hold primary power and the majority of roles in leadership, moral authority, social privilege, and have largest control of property.

I invite you to join us as we work to raise men’s and boys’ consciousness about their collective socialization so that we can think critically about how we might be reinforcing or passing on these harmful beliefs and so we can challenge those beliefs in other men. You have influence and you have a platform to create positive social change.

We are going to be talking more about this tomorrow, Wednesday, November 11 with Mark Herzlich, former NFL player and Kyle Harrison, director of players and inclusion for the Premiere Lacrosse League. RSVP to join the conversation.
Chirp + TOTP (Generation and Transmission)
By: Amogh Matt
Tags: Encryption, Chirp, Data Over Sound, How To, Security

Background

Using just a “shared secret” as a form of authentication is vulnerable to replay attacks. A replay attack is a version of the “Man in the middle” attacks. It is an attack on the network where the hashed shared secret sent across the network is intercepted and reused to gain access.

Replay Attack

TOTP (Time-based OTP) is an open standard algorithm that computes a one-time password using a combination of a secret key, shared between a client and the server, and the time. This prevents the user from memorizing the shared secret and makes it difficult for a replay attack, as the pin changes with time.

TOTP is an extension of HOTP (HMAC based one time passwords) (explained in detail below). For both HOTP and TOTP, a shared base-32 secret key is generated between the client and the server. This key is encoded with a message (in our case is the timestamp) to form the HMAC-SHA1 cryptographic hash payload. TOTP uses the UNIX epoch as the time, formatted in seconds. By default, we refresh the TOTP every 30 seconds. This starts at the top of the minute(xx:xx:00) and 30 seconds after the minute (xx:xx:30).

Let us try to understand how the TOTP is obtained from the HMAC-SHA-1 generated pin. An example to generate the pin using OpenSSL on a MacOS terminal is shown below.

$ KEY=`openssl rand -hex 16`

$ echo $KEY

9925d82b3b7f87326e1552f74592bed8

$ date +%s | openssl sha1 -hmac “$KEY”

b3c377e581fff1119ae11384481ad95712da1510

$ date +%s | openssl sha1 -hmac “$KEY” # After 30 Seconds

528c777129d1ed11ed1bcd92e03495fec2332daf

We generate a random hex string as the key, the unix epoch time is obtained using date + %s . Here we obtain the HMAC-SHA-1 string as “b3c377e581fff1119ae11384481ad95712da1510”. We notice that we obtain a 40-character hexadecimal string.

Step 1

Dynamic Truncation is performed next to convert this long string into something smaller and more secure. In dynamic truncation we look at the last character of this string, that is the number ‘0’, highlighted below.

Step 2

To determine the truncation, we use the last character as the starting index of our string. In our example, the hexadecimal character ‘0’ when converted to decimal is also ‘0’. So starting with the 0th Index we read the next 31-bits to obtain our dynamically truncated string.

Step 3

From the original HMAC-SHA-1 hash of “b3c377e581fff1119ae11384481ad95712da1510”, we have dynamically truncated it to “B3C377E5”.

The final step to obtain the pin is to convert this truncated string into a ‘decimal’. We can do it on the terminal by running the commands below.

$ echo “ibase=16; B3C377E5” | bc

3015931877

Finally, we pick the required number of digits needed for the pin from this decimal value. If we need 6 digits, we modulo 1,000,000 and we get the last 6 digits and we end up with TOTP = 931877
Those Treacherous Beasts
By: David Hope
Tags: Treachery, Haiku, Poetry, Hurt, Emotions

I think therefore I write. I have an MA in Creative Writing. I write fiction and short thought pieces. There is more about me and my other work on LinkedIn.

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The Gaping Hole in Our Family Bucket List
By: Dave Smurthwaite
Tags: Asia, Travel, Family, Poverty, World

As a family of world travelers, we’re constantly seeking out “firsts” of all types.

First time eating a fresh baguette from our village bakery in France. ✅

First time standing feet away from mountain gorillas in Uganda. ✅

First time lighting water candles and watching them float off into the night in Vietnam ✅

Along the way, it’s easy to forget that these “firsts” are pretty ridiculous when compared to the world around us.

An afternoon at the beach (photo by the author)

Case in point, take the image above. To the casual observer, this photo could be any Vietnamese family enjoying a lunch at the beach with their American friends.

If you could zoom in, you might even see a series of interesting firsts in our diet, including sea snails sea urchin, and a fish head.

What you won’t see is how humbled we felt at the end of our meal, when our good friend Minh came over to thank us for the day’s outing.

“This is my parents’ first time ever to the beach or a restaurant,” he told us. “Before now they always eat at home.”

“Before now” is 73 years for Minh’s parents, known to us simply as Ma and Ba (Mom and Dad). Ma is the beautiful person you can see clearly in this photo:

73 years of toiling day in and out in the rice fields in hopes of making a few dollars a day for your family. ✅

73 years of always eating in because eating out would never make sense. ✅

73 years of no paid beach vacations, or unpaid beach vacations even if you do live within 20 minutes of the coast ✅

It was a stunning reminder that in a world of haves and have-nots, we that have can’t even fathom what it would be like on the opposite threshold.



That’s not an unfortunate life lesson. It’s an unnatural and unnecessary reality.



To those of us that have more, we can do more.



To those of us that seek after firsts, let’s reset our sights.



Instead of chasing bucket lists, let’s look at filling a few buckets besides our own.



If everyone that “has” could do that, we’d all enjoy more “firsts” together.

Here’s my free guide to having a traveler’s mindset even when you’re at home
The Crane Wife
By: Deidre Delpino Dykes
Tags: Relationships, Trauma Recovery, Mental Illness, Trauma, Healing

The Crane Wife

On feathers and healing

Photo by Vincent van Zaling via Unsplash

The Crane Wife is a Japanese folk tale. The version I know is that a man finds an injured crane at his doorstep and nurses it back to health. After it flies away, a woman shows up and the two fall in love and marry. In order to make ends meet, she offers to weave wondrous garments out of silk for them to sell, but she tells her husband he must never watch her weaving. He pushes her to weave more and more and his greed increases while he ignores her declining health. One day, he peeks into her work room to understand her secret and sees a crane plucking out its own feathers and using them to weave. Startled by the man, the crane flies off and the wife never returns.

This story has long reminded me of my failed marriage. My chronic illnesses were the catalyst that tore things apart and ultimately ended in an abusive explosion one night. After years of suffering openly, it became clear that my pain was distressing my husband; so I stopped telling him how I was feeling.

Then I stopped telling anyone.

I stopped talking about my physical or emotional pain. I stopped talking about what I did with my day. I stopped being proud of my accomplishments. I stopped believing that making homemade meals was a worthy chore. I stopped thinking I was a good wife or parrot caretaker. I stopped thinking I was worth anything at all.

Keeping secrets from the world turned out to be a doomed exercise. It ultimately led me to a suicide attempt.

It turns out, I willingly ripped out my own feathers to try to make things work, though they had always been doomed. He was happy to let me pluck myself bare so that, when the time came, I couldn’t fly away.

The night I had to call the police on him, I too disappeared from his doorstep. I fled. I hid. I tried to keep myself safe. I abandoned all I knew, unsure of how I would make my way in the world.

But my feathers grew back. I rose to the occasion. I spoke to doctors and put my needs first and began the long, slow process of healing.

I’m still healing to this day. But now? Now I am free to fly.
改善
By: Ben Edwards
Tags: Improvement, Agile Methodology, Art, Personal Growth, Software

These Sino-Japanese characters are Kai and Zen — Kaizen when used together–and mean improvement. When Toyota started to use the term as part of its underlying lean manufacturing principles, the common meaning bent towards the way the car maker was using it: continuous improvement. In combining ‘kai’ and ‘zen,’ each individual makes sacrifices for the betterment of the entire group. The cycle of kaizen activity as laid out in The Toyota Way (and popularized in the West by W. Edwards Deming) is:

Plan → Do → Check → Act.

When I “discovered” the symbols, I had believed just that they were beautiful to look at and elegantly illustrated a concept that appealed to me. It’s not only appropriate now, that I apply these symbols to my life — as I look to get more involved with charitable endeavors and work on myself — but it also ties into the application of agile methodologies that I’ve employed during the last 15 years of my career in software development and startups.

There are likely other ways to understand kaizen or live the philosophy of kaizen that could be beyond me.

One does not really ‘understand’ the cultural connotations of kaizen, but rather ‘feels’ and ‘senses’ its presence living in modern-day Japan. In Japan, an entity or product without kaizen is like a bowl of rice without miso soup–one simply flourishes by enhancing the other. [Source]

While I may never fully come to understand all that it means, I will likely still keep these two symbols in my various social media profiles as a small reminder to always be changing for the better.
Osedea takes Lisbon: How playing hooky in Portugal has improved our bottom line
By: Ivana Markovic
Tags: Company Culture, Travel, Team Building, Human Resources, Technology

I’m passionate about talent management and culture. My objective is to make Osedea the best workplace for our team.

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Weekly Stock Spotlight
By: Ibillionaire Capital
Tags: Finance, Stock Spotlight, Money, Business, Stocks

iBillionaire Capital LLC is an SEC registered investment advisor. See sipc.org for more details. By using this website, you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Before investing, consider your investment objectives and iBillionaire’s charges and expenses. Historical performance is not a guarantee of future returns. Any historical returns, expected returns, or probability projections may not reflect actual future performance. All securities involve risk and may result in loss. Not endorsed by, affiliated with, sponsored by, or fully reflective of the “billionaires” or their companies. The information contained on and used by our site and in our apps includes the names, brief biographical information, and references the companies of certain persons whom iBillionaire has identified from publicly available information as high net worth and financially sophisticated personal investors, most of whom are public figures. iBillionaire does not communicate with and is not supported or endorsed by or affiliated or associated with any of these individuals or their companies. To the extent these individuals use their names or the names of their companies as trademarks, such trademarks belong to their respective holders, and iBillionaire’s use of the same does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them. Information about the investments of the listed billionaires is limited to that which is publicly available in regulatory filings and may not provide a complete picture of each of their personal investment strategies. Daily and annual performance rates for the billionaires are calculated based on this limited information and will not accurately reflect each billionaire’s personal investment return. In addition, certain information is gleaned from filings made by companies substantially owned or controlled by one of the billionaires, which we have attributed to the billionaire personally.
Why is the weight of change placed on the shoulders of the young?
By: Adam Allred
Tags: Poetry, DACA, Dreams

Why is the weight of change

placed on the shoulders of the young?

Those shoulders

hardly strong enough to carry themselves.

Why are the expectations

and dreams

of those whose potential was tossed

thrown at the young?

When the dreamer is enslaved,

still we ask for nothing.

We want to change the world

But we can’t.

You can’t see past color of skin.

We ask for one thing

The rest we can do,

Let us dream.
belajarFrontend#2
Tags: CSS, HTML, Frontend

in In Fitness And In Health
The Bermuda Triangle of New England: Vermont
By: Brianna Bennett
Tags: East Coast Crimes, Paranormal, Disappearances, True Crime

Narrator: Good evening and welcome to Friday Night Crimes. The Bermuda Triangle is a well-known hotspot for disappearances of ships, planes, and most importantly, people. Similarly, the Bennington Triangle of southwestern Vermont has had its fair share of worrisome coincidences.

Today, we’re going to dive into the cases of five people who walked into this particular trail and never came back out.

The Timeline: 1945–1950

Chronological Events of the Case:

Middie Rivers, 74 (1945)

A hunting guide, Rivers disappeared while guiding a group of four through Hell Hollow when he seemingly popped out of existence. Though extensive searches have been done of the area, no one has been able to determine the fate or whereabouts of Mr. Rivers.

Paula Welden, 18 (1946)

The most famous victim of this particular triangle, Paula was a student at Bennington College. She had decided to go on a hike through the area when most of her colleagues had gone home for Thanksgiving.

She was absent from her Monday classes the following week, and her disappearance was the catalyst for the formation of the Vermont State Police later that year.

James E. Tedford, 68 (1949)

Eerily, the next victim vanished on the same day Paula did, three years later. However, Tedford was not a guide nor a hiker; in fact, he was a bus rider that was returning to Bennington after visiting family in St. Albans, Vermont.

Multiple witnesses, including the driver, confirm that Tedford was on the bus up until the second-to-last stop, but by the time the bus stopped in Bennington, Tedford had seemingly faded away. An open bus schedule and all of his belongings were left on the bus, but the man himself was nowhere to be seen.

Paul Jepson, 8 (1950)

The youngest victim of the Bennington Triangle, Paul Jepson was last seen playing in his family’s pickup truck by his mother. While both Jepson parents were tending to their pigs, Paul completely vanished.

A New Hampshire sheriff brought a bloodhound to the scene to search for the child, but the scent suddenly stopped at a crossroads, indicating that the boy had been abducted.

Frieda Langer, 53 (1950)

The only disappearance to have any kind of closure, Frieda’s body was discovered six months after the last time she was seen. Unfortunately, her remains were so badly decomposed that it was impossible to determine a cause of death or to definitively say whether it was homicide or not.
As 2020 Bleeds into 2021…
By: Marilyn Flower
Tags: Covid 19, 50 Words, Trump, New Year, The Bad Influence

Hard to have closure

with so much exposure,

We’re livid

at Trump’s

response to COVID.

Fearful least anti-maskers

become anti-vaxxers,

least the virus mutate

before we can vaccinate.

Will Trump vacate?

Or will we placate

him with pardon?

Let him wear

an orange jumpsuit

to match his hair!
”Koldioxidbudgetar är det viktigaste som finns”
By: Digidem Lab
Tags: Climate Change, Open Data, Climate Action, Civictech

Network 🕸️ of people working with technology 👩‍💻 for the common good 👍 and digital tools for community 💞 + democracy 🖐️ + transparency 🔎

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Which Companies Have the Most Personal Data about You?
By: Paul Dughi
Tags: Privacy, Digital Marketing, Adtech, Data, Social Media

The folks at Clario have put together a fascinating chart that breaks down which online platforms and brands collect the most data and what they know about us.

I thought it was worth sharing. Facebook and Instagram top the list (no surprise).

We all do it — click ‘accept’ on a cookie pop-up without reading any of the information, just so we can see a website sooner. It’s almost become second nature, with those little boxes getting in the way of what we actually want to do. Clario Blog

Each time we visit, engage, and click, brands gather more and more personal information about us.

H/T Social Media Today
Random forest model building by tournament search.
By: Octavio Gonzalez-Lugo
Tags: Machine Learning, Feature Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science, Random Forest

The model

Know that we have a balanced data set, we can start to create the classifier. We have sixteen categorical features in the data set, from those categorical features we need to select the best combination of features to create the most accurate model. First, we create a function that randomly samples the categorical values and returns a list of variable sizes of the categorical values. That will have tow effects, we can select randomly features to create the classification model, and we can randomly change the size of the model.

With the random selector created, we need to create a numerical representation of the categorical values. To do so, we are going to use the one hot encoder function from sklearn. We use that function to train the one hot encoder on the training data for each column.

Know we combine both approaches and we can create a new variable size data set with the encoded features to train a random forest classification algorithm. From that data, we take 85% as training data and remaining as test data. And finally, we calculate the ROC AUC score from the trained classifier as a measure of performance.

With all the functions previously created, we can dynamically train a random forest classifier of variable size and measure the performance. Know we can train a series of classifiers on a randomly generated list of features to be encoded.

To test for the performance and size of the model, we make a bar plot, where the height of the plot is the ROC AUC score from the model, and the width of the bar is the size of the model. The longer bar has a better performance and the thinnest bar is the lowest model.

Finally, we can select the model with the best overall performance or select the best performance with a smaller size from the previous plot. That quick selection rounds up the tournament search. You can increase the number of rounds by increasing the population in the tournament.



Know you know some simple data set analysis techniques, how to resample unbalanced datasets. How to train a random forest classifier using only categorical features, And how to apply a simple method to dynamically create and train new classifiers and to select the best model. You can access the data by clicking here and the complete code from this post can be found at my Github by clicking here. See you in the next one.
Range celebrates LGBTQ Pride Month
By: Sean Mcbride
Tags: LGBTQ, Culture, Pride, Celebration, Inclusion

At Range, we believe people should be supported and affirmed at work regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Not only is it the right thing to do, but when each individual can bring their full self to work, teams operate at their best and organizations are more effective. Psychological safety is a key predictor of team success, and acceptance of difference is a critical ingredient.

However, for many people in the LGBTQ community — my community—bringing one’s full self to work can be a risky or even dangerous proposition. Where one lives and works, how one identifies, and whether one is also part of another historically marginalized group can have a significant effect. 31 states in the US and many more places throughout the world still lack basic protections against discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

We believe that Range has a role to play to help move things forward — even beyond making sure that our own organization is a welcoming place to work. Organizations are shaped by the software they use, so by creating software that promotes inclusion, openness, and safety, we can help teams to lay the groundwork for greater acceptance.

One early example is the team questions feature that we’ve built into Range, with questions spanning from “What happened over the weekend?” to “What would make you feel safer when taking calculated risks at work?” These questions give team members a low-risk opportunity to share their unique experiences of life and work with the rest of their team. This might sound small, but it can be a meaningful first step for a team to develop comfort expressing and accepting difference, which fosters psychological safety and ultimately makes teams more effective.

From all of us at Range, we wish you a happy Pride! 😁

Ever wondered where Pride Month comes from and why it’s celebrated each June? Here’s a bit more history from GLAAD:
Introducing Dcrypt
By: Patrick Depippo
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Trading, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency

The world’s first desktop platform for trading and managing crypto investments

Investing in the crypto asset space is very much a fragmented and cumbersome endeavor. Trading requires managing multiple exchange tabs, while a lack of data transparency makes tracking performance statistics next to impossible.

As avid crypto investors, we wanted immediate, direct access to the most fundamental aspects of our portfolio, but we found that the requisite tools were either siloed or nonexistent.

Our solution is Dcrypt, a comprehensive desktop platform where investors can trade cryptos, manage their portfolio, and research the market in one unified experience.
Snipers and the Unattainable Romance
By: Phillip Caron
Tags: Features, Digital Life, Gaming, Videogames, Self

Snipers and the Unattainable Romance

We really should accept that most of us aren’t snipers

“O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not my enemies triumph over me.” — Private Jackson (Saving Private Ryan)

Who could forget that scene? Private Jackson is standing in the watchtower, taking down soldiers as he utters his silent mantra. The sound of the reload penetrates our minds as he takes shot after shot. He carries his intensity in his eyes and embodies a being at peak focus. He rightfully receives the ending that he deserves as he perishes in a giant ball of flaming glory.

If that movie doesn’t represent the feeling of being a sniper, nothing will.

Back in our own fantasy world, we clutch our controllers, fully prepared to create the perfect sniper. Thoughts of creating a compilation kill-cam video filled with our impeccably timed snipes flood our minds.

We dream of the perfect 360. We anticipate the one-shot kill from the second story window that eliminates that confused enemy running for their favorite gun. We salivate at our enemy's frustration. But we hardly ever get the payoff.

Let's face the facts; we’re just not that good at sniping.

Watching highlight reels begs us to try again. Our Instagram feeds are filled with kill-cam compilations set to electronic music. We can feel the dopamine surge through our system while witnessing moment after moment of greatness. Someone who lives on another tier of mastery convinces us that sniping is easy.

Which do we enjoy more, the sound of a sniper shot or the sound of the reload? Which part of the sniper-class speaks to us, and why can we never find enough ammo? Each highlight beckons us to try out the .50 calibers, against our better judgment.

In every film or video game, we idolize the sniper. A sniper is an apex predator who prefers to run alone and embodies a stoic lifestyle. This philosophy exquisitely combines competence with individuation and entices us to attempt to achieve God's status in the FPS scene.

Normally I am the one being hunted. Each time one of these elusive predators cuts me down, I look around incredulously. Where? There is no way they could have made that shot. They must be cheating. I have spent many nights clutching my Xbox controller, trying to figure out how someone gunned me down in the middle of an open field.
Binary Search Tree
By: Ronan Mcclorey
Tags: Binary Search Tree, Data Structures, JavaScript, Code

Within programming, there are many different Data Structures one of which is a tree. Then within that, there are many different types of tree structures. The tree data structure I am focused on exploring more for this post is the Binary Search Tree.

Photo by Adarsh Kummur on Unsplash

First some key points about all tree data structures:

The topmost node is the root node there can only be one root node.

Nodes on a tree point down to other nodes called child nodes.

A parent node is a node pointing towards the child node.

Then for a tree to be a Binary Tree:

Each node can only have two child nodes.

Lastly for a Binary Tree to be a Binary Search Tree:

Of the two children nodes the node to the left has to be less than its parent node and the node to the right has to be greater than its parent node.

So for a Binary Search Tree to be valid it has to follow all of the above bullets should be followed.

Below is a illustration of a very simple Binary Search tree

Binary Search Trees are very efficient data structures when it comes to searching and insertion, in terms of Big O both have O(log n) runtime for best and average case (there is a worse case that runs O(n) time if the tree only continually branches in one direction). So, in saying that here is the code in JavaScript for creating a Binary Search tree data structure class and node class I will then go through the insert and find functions.

The Binary search tree will know its root and each node for the tree will be initiated with a value and have a left and right associated with it.

Search

This is the code for the function for finding a node that will return true if the node is found or false if it isn't.

It first checks if there is a root node if not we know the tree is completely empty and there is nothing to find. However, if there are values in the tree we start at the root store it in a variable. Then create a while loop while there was a value in the variable we created to move left or right in the tree based on whether the value we are searching for is greater or less than the current node. This will return true if the node is found or it will return false if it reaches the end of a branch of the tree and the node wasn't found.

Insert

Here is the code for the function for inserting a new value into the tree in its appropriate location.

To start create a new node with the entered value. Then check if the tree root is empty if it is set the root to the created node and it’s done. Otherwise, like with the find function, we create a variable starting at the root that moves through the tree based on whether it is less than or greater than the variable to be inserted. Until we get a null value from the left or right(again based on whether it is less than or greater than the variable to be inserted) of a node and we place our new node there. The other exception here is if the value you are trying to insert already exists we just return undefined so there are no duplicates.

And that is a binary search tree with the search and insertion functions.
How to create optimal user experiences by improving your product’s content structure “IA”
By: Mostafa Metwally
Tags: Information Architecture, Product Design, User Experience, Content Strategy, User Research

IKEA, iconic Swedish brand and largest furniture retailer in the world, has an inspiring vision: “To create a better everyday life for the many people.”

Founded in 1943, Ikea became both a worldwide giant and household name. So much so, that the psychological phenomenon associated with this love humans have of our own self-assembled furniture (and anything else we’ve made, whether it’s well-assembled or not) was christened with it’s name.

“To create a better everyday life for the many people”, this is the IKEA vision. Our business idea is “to offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them”.

IKEA: The In-Store Experience

IKEA’s immersive customer experience begins at childhood, and in-store. Dotted through the sprawling building are handsomely decorated rooms reminiscent of movie sets, all showcasing IKEA’s latest catalog items in a way that makes customers feel both in-home and at home. Arrows line the floor, indicating that IKEA has designed a ‘vision quest’ for all who enter. There is much to touch, see, and feel on this journey for customers of every age group. The cafeteria is strategically placed mid-journey, and a hot dog stand and a Scandinavian grocery store are found at their journey’s end (this is not surprising, as IKEA’s immersive customer experience builds up an appetite).

In addition to providing a unique and interactive experience for kids (who are also potentially future IKEA consumers) and adults, IKEA also keeps customers’ cultures in mind. As AdWeek notes, IKEA is an inclusive space in that it acknowledges a variety of diverse cultures and situations.

There is quite purposefully “something for everyone” from the minute one enters the store to the moment one leaves the parking lot. And this transcends geography, too; with IKEA stores in nearly every corner of the world, Forbes suggests “there may not be an entity anywhere on the planet that operates in as many countries as this company does.”

The in-store IKEA experience is memorable, and likely the most effective part of its customer journey. It also offers an example of how enveloping customers in a vivid experience of your store (and feeding them, too) will keep them coming back for more.

So from the IKEA experience, we can see the importance of Information Architecture regarding the Customer/User Experience in our products.
Did You Like This Movie? A Film Critic Questionnaire
By: Adam Dietz
Tags: Satire, Humor, Criticism, Movies, Film

Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash

Was the film plotless, meandering, and shot in black and white?

If yes, you liked this film.

If not, you disliked this film.

Was Paddington Bear in this film?

If yes, this was one of the best films of the year.

If not, this film was fine, but would have been better had Paddington Bear somehow been involved.

Was this film released by A24?

If yes, this film will definitely crack your yearly top ten list.

If not, this film is not worth watching.

Did this film involve someone who has been canceled on Twitter?

If yes, you absolutely hated everything about this film.

If not, you might have liked this film.

If the canceled party worked behind the scenes and was not prominently featured, defer to New York Times critic Manohla Dargis on how to proceed.

Was the ending of the film frustratingly open-ended?

If yes, you liked this film. It was very poignant.

If not, this film’s ending probably tried too hard and therefore, you didn’t like it.

Did the film have an overtly political message?

If the messaging was Conservative, you definitely did not like this film.

If the messaging was Liberal, you probably liked this film, unless it was too liberal, in which case you didn’t like this film.

If this was a Clint Eastwood film, consider flipping a coin to decide whether you liked it or not.

Will this film make a lot of money and be seen by a lot of people?

If yes, this film was probably bad.

If not, this film was probably quite good.

Did New York Observer critic Rex Reed like this film?

If yes, this film was truly horrible.

If not, this was one of the great films.

Did the film have subtitles?

If yes, this film was probably very good.

If not, this film was probably quite bad.

If this film was Le Jour et la Nuit then it was not good. Please don’t be fooled.

Did Mark Duplass have anything to do with this film?

If yes, this was a great film.

If not, this film was awful.

Was the film a period piece with a coming of age narrative?

If yes, you fucking loved this film.

If not, this film should have considered being a period piece with a coming of age narrative.

Did other critics like this film?

If yes, you did like this film.

If not, you did not like this film.

If the critic who liked this film was The New York Observer’s Rex Reed… you know what to do.
What Child Is This
By: John O'Neill
Tags: Spirituality, Birth, Poem, Self, Poetry

Here I am, fulfilling the destiny ordained for me

Beyond time and dimensions

This is birth

The story begins

These sensations that now awaken in me are not new

But my experience of them

Is entirely different in quality

Air gently embraces my body

The touch of this, my mother’s breast

As she feeds me from her own body

Is comforting

The smell of her permeates my being

Her heart beat is familiar and hypnotic

She is wonderful

The singing of angels can be heard

But filtered, without their usual purity

Colors here are but shadows of their true essence

The people around me using words to connect

Instead of simply being in communion together

All this strangeness

This understanding of who I am will gradually be forgotten

As my time here unfolds

New mysteries will displace this knowledge

As my being is transformed into a new unity

My course is now set

As Mother designed it

For my brief moment here

My maturing self will have to empty itself completely

The final rendering of my spirit will be painful

Just as my birth brought redemption for all peoples throughout eternity

My life and death will bring fulfillment for all

And then once again I will be able to breath as one with Her

Seeing Her touch in all of this creation

Will give me sustenance

My role will be to help them find

The divine spark in themselves

So that they might recognize it in others

Accepting that they are good and blessed

Experiencing joy as they realize

That they are part of a family that

Includes everyone who has ever lived

And who will ever be born

That Mother’s love for them has no limits

As witnessed by the gift of my birth among them

Then truly all creation will sing Her praises
Wildflowers
By: Upen Singh
Tags: Love, Poetry On Medium, Poem, Life, Poetry

If paintings could talk

in the language of butterflies

what thoughts would you abandon?

If we all lived in tree houses

and had breakfast with baby flamingoes

what would your first thought be when you wake up?

…and your last thought before you go to bed?

If we had to jump two times

every time we meet a friend

would you still say “how are you?”

If you had to stretch your hands,

twist your body,

breathe deep nine times,

and smile for nine seconds

before every meal,

would your hunger be any different?

If you could choose your thoughts

and turn then into colors

what picture would you paint?

If you could breathe in water

and take a lunch box with you

what fish would you feed?

If it rained for fifteen days

and you had to stay home

what stories would you write?

If you could float in the air

for eighteen seconds

would you feed the birds more often?

If windows could block light

would you still use curtains?

If you could write in your mind

and color those words

who would you send those messages to?

If turtles would dance

every time it rained

what color umbrella

would you choose

to see the show?