fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Well-Architected Framework — Security Aspects of the Cloud
By: Pankaj Jainani
Tags: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Architecture, Cloud Computing

Defense in Depth

It encompasses the holistic approach to identify key concepts of security components, technologies and approaches to support a defense-in-depth strategy at each layer. This strategy empowers the organization to employ a series of processes and governance mechanisms to slow the advance of an attack that’s aimed at acquiring unauthorized access to information. If an attacker breaches the protection by one layer then there is a subsequent layer to prevent further exposure. Therefore, the objective of defense in depth is to protect data and prevent it from unauthorized access.

Principle of CIA

The baseline for security policy is to ensure—

Confidentiality — deals with the principle of least privilege to restrict the access to information only to the individuals explicitly granted access.

Integrity — Prevent unauthorized changes to the information.

Availablity — Ensure that information is available to the authorized users.

Security Layers

Let's help you visualize defense in depth through layers of security implementation to protect the data information. This approach removes dependencies on any single layer for protection, acts as a shield to slow down an attack, and provide alerts telemetry that can be acted upon, either automatically or manually

Defense-in-Depth Layers for information security (src: Custom Image)

Here is the summary of layered security implementation:
Best of the Week — November 23/29
By: Dario De Santis
Tags: Software Development, Coding, Programming, Java

Hi guys! Here we are with another appointment of the “Best of the week”, reviewing best articles from the previous week. Let’s see them.

Most Viewed Articles

Recommended Articles

Resource Articles
Improving the React Native Development Experience: Build Your Own Flipper Plugins
By: Audy Tanudjaja
Tags: Mobile App Development, Testing, React Native, Debugging, Flipper

Preparations

In this example, we are going to build a simple plugin to reset/remove our local storage data via AsyncStorage and that value will determine if the app is open by a first-time user. If it is, we will show a pop-up message. Pretty common use case right? In the regular procedure, in order to reset the local storage value, you will have to go through the mobile phone’s settings and clear data from a specific app. With our Flipper plugin that we are going to build, it can save your time just by a single click from a button.

Before we start, there will be some packages that need to be installed. Let’s start with installing flipper-pkg cli into our terminal.

Adding flipper-pkg into our terminal

Next, let’s create a folder named flipper-plugins (note: it has to be this name) in our directory, go inside, then run flipper-pkg init and fill in the details of the plugin that we will create. You will be asked to input the id of the plugin. This id will be used on the mobile app side later on. In this example, we will fill the id field as AsyncStorageExample . After the cli run successfully, go to the plugin folder and edit the render function of src/index.ts . For now, we will just render a text at the center of the plugin for just making sure that our plugin is registered successfully. Save the changes and run yarn watch in our Flipper plugin directory.

Render function code snippet

Now we need to add the flipper-plugins folder path into our Flipper desktop app configuration. We can do this by opening ~/.flipper/config.json file, copy the directory of our flipper-plugins folder, and paste it as one of the values for pluginPaths field. Save the file and open our Flipper desktop app. (Note: Flipper desktop app must be closed before doing this step, otherwise the config.json will be reset).
The bumpiest road is paved with unmet expectations.
By: Bp Studio
Tags: Expectations, Workplace, Leadership, Remote Working

The bumpiest road is paved with unmet expectations.

Better interactions start with understanding expectations.

Written by Rob Lake, COO of Blank Page.

Expectations, we all have them. They guide our emotions, actions, and reactions. They are in place before we know they exist and influence our next set of expectations without any awareness or overt action. They also derail relationships, erode trust, and break down collaboration faster than anything else we bring to an interaction. Why?

Expectations are uniquely ours. They start with us — our experiences, training, biases, cultural influences, as well as interpretations of current environmental conditions. And they enter each interaction ahead of us — before we enter a room, start a meeting, pick up the phone, stream online content, and so on. Why is this important? More specifically, why is this important now?

Because like it or not, we are all carrying our unique expectations into new and different environments (work from home, new work hours, job stress from COVID-19, etc.) Yesterday things were “normal.” Some traffic on the commute, a trendy lunch at the office cafeteria, and dropping the kids off at their various extracurriculars. Today is different. Now, we’re at home…all the time. Sharing an “office” with pets, children, and spouses is just the beginning. We’re also navigating large scale video meetings on painfully slow wifi and clunking our way through the “best” tools for remote collaboration while worrying about where we’re going to buy toilette paper. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t end there. At the same time, we try to find ways of maintaining our sanity, understanding the implications of frightening statistics, connecting with friends, and, most importantly, caring for family and ourselves in the best way possible. All of that comes with a set of expectations. Expectations that not everyone is aware of and that are ever-present in this new world, like it or not.
A Psychedelic Journey
By: Kurt Anderson
Tags: Truth And Life, Growth, Healing, Psychedelics, Awareness

Why? I say it’s because they see things as beyond themselves, enlightenment for them is but a destination. What it really is, is the ability to shed light on and illuminate your true being. To know what makes you tick, why and the realization that life is but a process of constant evolution and togetherness. Mind, body and Spirit things grow through time like it or not and we’re all in this together. This is Enlightenment! Knowing that you don’t know everything is enlightenment. To know when it’s time to try somethings new or take a leap of faith is what this feeling really is. Many have said I must have been a shaman in a past life, due to my ability to endure deep states of alternate awareness alone! Yes that’s right, I have always done these things alone for they serve me as a tool for deep meditation like the ancients used it. I have never experienced a dark or bad state, I’ve tried it and found through my years of study. I bad trip is nothing but the results of emotions kept in by the person. Many times we don’t allow ourselves to cry or feel these emotions when they come out. Let me tell you the key to these things is your emotions. Open those vaults and let it all out, there’s no monsters in there and if they appear tell them I LOVE YOU. Laugh if you’d like but next time you or someone you know is experiencing a negative state. Give them a hug or yourself and think of love, speak it and like Peter Pan you’ll begin to fly. For me now being 29 years of age and learning to truly enjoy life as a healing journey. I can say we should all explore and cultivate our emotions so that we do not fear them. Instead we use them as the fuel the are Energy in motion! Live the life you’re meant on your own accord and be easy with yourself and others. We’re a team and I believe in You!
Bank Data: Accuracy | F1 Score | ROC AUC
By: Zaki Jefferson
Tags: Sklearn, Python, Confusion Matrix, Data, Data Science

On the bank data we saw that our dependent variable is imbalanced, and on the pervious blog we discussed that the metric that we will be basing our results on was F1 Score using the Confusion Matrix. This blog will discuss, in depth, why.

Accuracy

Accuracy score is the most commonly used metric when it comes to performance measurement, but sometimes this can be a bad metric to base your results on.

Accuracy measures how many observations, both positive and negative, were correctly classified.

This can be misleading when having an imbalanced dataset, because if you have an imbalance dataset where the dependent variable is binary, there are 80% 1’s and 20% 0’s, then our model will develop an accuracy score where it calculates most of predicted variables as 1’s, maybe giving it a 90% accuracy score.

So, when does it make sense to use it?

When your problem is balanced using accuracy is usually a good start. An additional benefit is that it is really easy to explain it to non-technical stakeholders in your project,

When every class is equally important to you.

F1 Score

F1 Score combines precision and recall into one metric by calculating the harmonic mean between those two.

This means that F1 Score is good at evaluating how the model did at predicting your positive class. This helps when you care more about your positive class.

When should you use it?

Pretty much in every binary classification problem where you care more about the positive class.

It can be easily explained to business stakeholders which in many cases can be a deciding factor.

ROC AUC

It is a chart that visualizes the tradeoff between true positive rate (TPR) and false positive rate (FPR).
Stream as an useful analogy for life
By: Aiko Yamashita
Tags: Buddhism, Food For Thought, Random Thoughts

Photo by Jack Anstey on Unsplash

Stream as an useful analogy for life

I was reading Yukio Mishima (one of the greatest Japanese authors of our time) and in his book, “The Temple of Dawn” the main character Honda goes on a trip to India to explore the concept of transmigration, which has haunted him for decades.

Streams of people

The story is set during the Second World War era, but many many years later, streams of millennials and western (and eastern) souls of all other generations continue to flow to India.

I have never been to India, but what Honda witnesses is probably very similar to that of many other visitors who reach the Ganges: a shocking experience full of extremes (and even repulsion).

While reading the depictions of hordes of people congregating to wash themselves in the river, I really felt that I didn’t want to go there.

There. I said it. I have always been wary of crowds, but the older I grow, the more I have become sensitive to masses (and living in Norway has definitively not help my case either). Still, this notion of stream/river/flow did leave a strong impression on me.

The concept of stream in buddhism

I’m not an expert in buddhism. In my first years, I grew up in Japan and I will go to temples with my mom during the “matsuri” and I remember my granddad having a tiny altar for my grandma and my great grandma. But other than illustrated books of “The life of Oshakasama” (Gautama Buddha) my experience with Buddhism was more of a gentle rain sound that surrounded my childhood memories (my experience with catholicism was completely different, but I will leave that for another story)

Even with this “light” exposure to buddhism, it was possible for me to understand that what Honda saw as the concept of transmigration was tightly connected to the notion of a stream. And how by seeing ourselves as a stream, we are more capable of understanding how we fit in this universe (too deep?) So why the concept of stream is useful? Here is my take:

We come (from somewhere) we move across time/space and then, we join other entities. By saying we join other entities, I guess what I’m saying is that we loose our individual form, but in reality we never cease to exist.

Individuals and Streams

So, if we take the “macro lenses” and see humanity, what we see is a stream of individuals, moving at different rhythms.. and we are echoing tales and impressions that we have all collected in our journeys. In the micro, we are convinced of our individuality, but this notion quickly disappears in the mighty realms of time and space.

I guess that is one of the reasons why we are drawn to rivers? — of course there is the tiny fact that rivers happen to be the source of life :P but maybe it also makes sense that streams are widely-adopted abstractions for cultural cosmogonies (of course, before the big-bang theory came up ;)

In this publication collection, will try to follow the same pattern: a stream of impressions flowing, moving, changing..

To close up, here is a piece of poetry by Amitav Radiance:
Try out regular expressions, this time in reverse
By: Michaela Zákopčaníková
Tags: PPC Marketing, PPC, Marketing Automation, Tips, Ecommerce

This article has been moved to the official blog of PPC Bee. You will get to the article by clicking on this link.
Hello Redux middlewares!
By: Sumit Kumar Rakshit
Tags: Front End Development, Redux Saga, React, JavaScript, Redux

Redux-saga

redux-saga uses an ES6 feature called Generators to make those asynchronous flows easy to read, write, and test. Contrary to redux-thunk, you don’t end up in callback hell, you can test your asynchronous flows easily and your actions stay pure.

Why saga?

Easier to manage

More efficient to execute

Easy to test

Better at handling failures

Pre-requisites?

Before we see our saga in action, a few avengers you would want to explore:

Avenger 1: Generator functions

Generators are functions that can be paused and resumed, instead of executing all the statements of the function in one pass.

function* myGeneratorFunction() {

let a = yield "first value";

let b = yield "second value";

return "third value;"

}

use of function* , which is not a normal function, but a generator

When you invoke a generator function, it will return an iterator object. With each call of the iterator’s next() method, the generator’s body will be executed until the next yield statement and then pause:

const gen = myGeneratorFunction();

console.log(gen.next()); //{value: "first value", done: false}

console.log(gen.next()); //{value: "second value", done: false}

console.log(gen.next()); //{value: "third value;", done: true}

console.log(gen.next()); //{value: undefined, done: true}

This can make asynchronous code easy to write and understand. For example, instead of doing this:

fetch(URL).then((response) => {

console.log(response.json());

})

With generators, we could do this:

let response = yield fetch(url);

console.log(response.json());

In redux-saga, we write a saga whose job will be to watch for dispatched actions:

function* actionWatcher() {

}

Avenger 2: Basic helpers

It is very important to understand the basic helpers which are used to run the effects in saga. Let us visit a few of them:
2020 — The year by when…. We understand that racism is wrong and…
By: Payal Shah
Tags: Mental Health, Pride, Save The Planet, Racism, Work Life Balance

We understand that racism is wrong and needs to be stood up against

Yet many of them will show extremism in expressing their hatred towards men of another colour

We don’t shame men anymore for crying, we don’t hand out tissues so that tears can be wiped; but instead we let them flow because we know the value of letting it out and letting go

Yet many of them keep it bottled up and think it better to end their lives than asking for help

We truly believe the earth needs to be saved and want to do everything in our power to prevent any further damage

Yet many of them continue to increase landfills of plastic to enforce their capitalist ideologies

We have seen too many examples of monarchy and dictatorship going bad with innumerable lives suffered and lost because of it

Yet the Prime Minister of Hungary used the COVID-19 pandemic to attain complete power over ruling the country and China is using this opportunity to take over Hong Kong

We realise the value of spending time with our families and having a work life balance

Yet many of them are still holed up in their rooms before their screens talking to others or working for others instead of valuing what they truly have

We support all kinds of sexualities in human being with ‘pride’

Yet many of them are still so afraid to come out of the closet and truly be themselves
Data science collaboration: Why it’s often difficult and how cloud services can help
By: Cindy Weng
Tags: Azure, Collaboration, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, Data Science

In these strange times, we’ve been forced to adapt our ways of working to accommodate our new reality of isolation. It’s difficult for those who are used to sitting side-by-side, pair programming the day away. However, there are some silver linings to be found. Society may become more flexible when it comes to working from home after this is all over. We could all do with a little more flexibility around our working hours and location. Furthermore, we will have found better ways of collaborating, with greater resilience in what we create, better integrated systems, and collaborative practices which will last beyond Covid-19.

When I look back, my journey in becoming a data scientist was a hodgepodge of experiences. My first programming language was VBA. I learned R mostly through Stack Overflow. I ran too many focus groups to remember. I almost got a PhD in graph theory. I’ve never officially taken a computer science class and now I code in Python most days of the week. There are many other data scientists like me, and many who aren’t.

I’ve worked in multiple consulting firms, startups, a food unicorn, and one of the world’s biggest tech companies. There’s one thing that I see over and over: collaboration struggles, both amongst data scientists and between data science and engineering.

The reason is this: data scientists come from a really wide variety of backgrounds. Data touches everything.

In one team, I worked with an astrophysicist and rocket scientist (he literally built rockets for his country’s space program). In another team, I worked with an MD-PhD with little coding experience and a backend engineer who coded only using VIM and didn’t believe in IDEs. My background is in behavioral studies. And we all called ourselves data scientists.

How I imagine my former colleague’s past life

As much as data bonded us together, our different experiences and processes drove us apart. We were used to doing things “the way we’d always done it” and this meant for some of us, adhering to the git flow bible. For others, it meant writing 10,000 lines of code in a single python file on one’s local machine.

We argued over speed (yes, writing 10,000 lines of code in a single file technically is faster than splitting it into folders and files) and resilience (but no, it’s bad practice to store that code on a laptop that you lost yesterday, plus no one can read your code). We argued about security (no, you can’t have admin access to install this random package you found in the depths of the web which hasn’t been updated since 1996). Most of all, we argued about working together (“Pair programming is a waste of time!” But you want to spend an extra week explaining it to me when it took you two days to write?).
We All Wanna Be a Rock Star
By: William, Dollar Bill
Tags: Memoir, Heart, Music Business, Music, Rolling Stones

We All Wanna Be a Rock Star

Close but no cigar for me!

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Who doesn’t want to be a rock star? Fame? Fortune? Lines of willing groupies at your beck and call? Yes, all musicians love music. Which is why they choose to play it for a living. But there are some other motivating factors. And I think I just mentioned them!

Of course, there are degrees of success a professional musician can reach. Some guys make a living performing at weddings. Some go on the road with no-name — or even — name bands. Some hear songs they’ve written or records they’ve played on or produced on the radio. And some even get a record on the Billboard charts!

I’ve actually done all of that. But don’t get jealous just yet. I didn’t make a lot of money in the pursuit of those goals. And I didn’t get laid all that much. For every day of glory, there were 100 of drudgery. Such was the nature of my beast.

In my publication “Our Musical Journey (My Life On the Road),” I chronicle various anecdotes and episodes from my 15 years of struggling to finally make it big in music.

I’d like to think that reading through my stories, you’ll get a vivid picture of what it’s like to be a musician on a mission — as well as exactly how glamorous (or unglamorous) going on the road really is.

Here’s a few examples. I hope you enjoy:
Regulators take aim at Exchanges
By: Blair Marshall
Tags: Blockchain, Ethereum, Newsletter, SEC, Bitcoin

Regulators take aim at Exchanges

Issue: 027

Headline:

The SEC takes a shot at cryptocurrency exchanges, saying these exchanges must “register with the SEC as a national securities exchange or be exempt from registration”. Some exchanges, like Binance, are trying to avoid regulation by creating their own decentralized exchange.

Meanwhile, Japanese regulators are also cracking down on exchanges and sometimes even outright suspending their operations.
The Adjacent Possible
By: Rafe Furst
Tags: Causality, Cooperation, Interconnectedness, Cognition, New Economic Space

Stuart Kauffman has a concept called the Adjacent Possible which I find incredibly useful in understanding the world. Simply put, if you think of the space of possibilities from the present moment forward and just concentrate on those that are achievable today — adjacent to the present moment — that’s the Adjacent Possible.

What’s interesting about possibility-space is that tomorrow’s Adjacent Possible depends on the actions and choices we make today; it’s not symmetric and it’s nonlinear. Certain actions generate more future possibilities than others. In my experience, those actions tend to be the cooperative ones, ones that produce network effects: financial, social and otherwise.

Due to our evolutionary heritage, having come from a resource-constrained world, we may be predisposed to see the more competitive actions which tend to shrink the Adjacent Possible. Whether or not this is a bias or an actual state of affairs, much of our thinking is based on scarcity, so we are drawn to actions that become self-limiting.

Here’s how I visualize the Adjacent Possible, and it has profound consequences for how I think and live my own life:
Making Things Together
By: David E Alexander
Tags: Events, News, Developers, Maps, Making Stuff

I do many things at Singly, but first and foremost, I am a creator. Ranging from full scale product & company creation on down to hacking on the weekends, I bring things to life for a living. This idea is a big part of how I think about personal data — it’s about more than just ownership, access, and control, it’s first and foremost a platform for creation, for Making Stuff.

A platform for creation could mean almost anything, so to get started we thought about what it would feel like to create using personal data with most (if not all) of the many pain points lifted — authentication, aggregation, collation, deduplication, storage, indexing…the list is long and often deflating. I believe incredible things will happen with those obstacles out of the way and we’ve been building like crazy to make that a reality. Our first version makes it super fast and easy to create powerful, yet lightweight HTML+CSS+JS apps that leverage an extensible set of your personal data without the need to run a server or write any backend code to solve the problems on the aforementioned Long List. We are beginning to send out invites and are so excited to see what sort of Stuff you Make.

.

With that, the only thing better than Making Stuff, is Making Stuff with Friends, so last Thursday we reached out to some friends, new and old and all gathered at our space here in the mission to experiment and Make Stuff Together (over beer and pizza, of course). In the course of only about 3 hours some really awesome things were created!

Beau Gunderson made Excessive Mapper, an app to see your locations (checkins, geotagged tweets and photos, etc) over time on a map:

All my checkins on Excessive Mapper (can you tell my girlfriend lives in NYC???)

Max Schultz made DragPhoto, an app to see your photos how you used to as a kid — a stack of polaroids that you can drag around:

Drag Photo shows your photos as a stack of Polaroids

I actually unfollowed two of these accounts after seeing this!

Chris Hannam extended the Foursquare connector to pull in your badges.

Soon, we will be sending out more invites to developers to get an account and start building things. Sign up at singly.com to get on the list and be sure to put in your GitHub handle if you are a developer. If you are as excited as we are (improbable, but I’m open to the possibility!) and want to get in as soon as possible, there are a few ways to get (extra) early access:

Come to a Singly event (details to come on Twitter, but expect another Make-a-thon in early January)

Join us in IRC — #lockerproject on freenode

Join the Singly developer mailing list

Write some Locker Project code (this will get you invited right away!)

I am so excited for the community we are building around this idea and can’t wait to meet as many of you as possible in the future!
Employee Spotlight: Kimberly Simon, Senior Marketing Manager with Bisk
Tags: Higher Education, Employee Engagement, Employee Experience, Employee Spotlight, Company Culture

Hey Everyone, meet Kimberly Simon, Senior Marketing Manager with Bisk. We asked her a few questions about herself and her experience as a Bisk Employee.

Question #1: What’s your favorite aspect of working at Bisk?

While there are many reasons I enjoy working at Bisk, the thing that stands out to me the most is that because the business is ever evolving, so am I. I truly feel like I learn something new almost every day or, at the very least, I am challenged to improve skills I already have.

No two days are alike in my position and that is something I thrive on. If I did the same thing over and over again I would become bored very quickly.

Question #2: Who inspires you?

Professionally, I would say strong leaders inspire me the most. The ones who cause you to sit up just a little straighter in your chair when they walk in the room. The ones you know will ask the tough questions and push you to defend your reasoning. Not because they think you are wrong, but to help you grow as a person. They don’t accept the status quo or indirect answers. They push you to be better.

Personally, my best friend just recently went into remission after a long battle with cancer and to watch how she approached that battle, never letting anything get the best of her and continuously fighting, is more inspiring than anything I have ever seen. It reminds me daily that I truly am blessed and there is nothing going on in my life I can’t overcome.

Question #3: What’s your professional passion?

If you ask anyone on my team, they will tell you that I am an extremely competitive person, both personally and professionally. I grew up playing multiple sports, so working as a team toward a common goal is ingrained in me. My passion is winning, or at least leaving it all out on the field trying to.

I believe every action we take to get to our goal truly matters. Any chance I get, even if it is just a quick win for the brands I work on, for my team, for the marketing department or for Bisk in general, I jump all over it!

Question #4: What’s the last book you read? What did you learn?

Technically, the last book I read was “Grumpy Cat” with my daughter. I learned he really was just grumpy and no insect could change that.

But since I assume you were looking for something a bit more professional, I am currently reading books regarding Business Analytics for the certificate course I am taking through Michigan State University. It is only week one, so it is a little early to tell you what I have learned just yet.

Question #5: Just for fun, who is your least favorite Muppet and why?

Cookie Monster. He wastes so many cookies and I am just not OK with that. :J

Thanks for sharing Kim!

Written by Mark.
Linear Ion Trap
By: Andrea Detlefsen
Tags: Mass Spectrometry, Poetry, Science, Science Communication, Poetry On Medium

Is an undergraduate chemistry major at UPitt, who, after taking one poetry seminar, will be giving her best shot at bringing the two disciplines together.

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How to Store Documents Larger Than 16 MB in MongoDB
By: Valeriy Baranov
Tags: Mongodb, Programming, JavaScript, Database, Data Science

How to Store Documents Larger Than 16 MB in MongoDB

A simple approach without using GridFS

Photo by Ruchindra Gunasekara on Unsplash.

I used to develop an app for viewing huge tables of data (250K rows x 120 columns). The main requirement was that all the data was available in the client’s app. The data was immutable — it was saved once and then used in table views in the client app.

As you know, MongoDB stores data in a document. The limit for one document is 16Mb. You can also use GridFS to store large files that can exceed 16Mb. It will store them in multiple chunks.

I decided to store each column as a single document in MongoDB where _id was a hash of that column data. In this article, I will share an approach I used to store documents in MongoDB columns larger than 16Mb.

There are four types of data in our app — strings, numbers, dates (represented as Unix ms), and booleans. With its 16Mb limit, a MongoDB document can easily store around 2 million values of 64-bit numbers (also dates and booleans). But strings are a special case. Each UTF-8 character takes one byte.

The interface for the column with strings is below:

At some point, our users started to upload tables with 250K values with columns of 40-character hashes. Simple math shows that 250,000 x 40 characters x 2 bytes = 20Mb. At that point, our app was unable to save such columns to MongoDB.

I had to find a solution.
Anchors aweigh
By: Claire Elaine
Tags: Religion, Personal Growth, Spirituality, Faith, Spiritual Growth

The loss of religious faith can be at once heart-breakingly sad and joyously cathartic. The release of one’s energies from strictly controlled dogma can produce a lightness of spirit rarely felt when within dogma’s grasp, but the loss of what was once believed to be absolute truth can leave many sorrowful.

Many, without the certainty of life’s meaning and an entire community of like-believers to guide them along, begin to flounder within the new lightness — all past anchors are now aweigh, so they drift through the grey, unfamiliar waters of no-faith, all the while grieving for the comfort of their once truth.

’Tis a sad and lonely voyage, at times, but not one truly taken solo. All are guided and guarded more closely through this passage than any other, for, not only, do higher guides join the journey, one’s higher self lays hand to the tiller.

’Tis the higher self that leads one to this point and ’tis this aspect of self that will steer one onwards, for now it has been fully released back to its owner, but this re-connection can take much time to feel comfortable.

Many, perhaps, prefer to live for a time in stark reality, close their minds and hearts to anything remotely spiritual — understandable, of course, cold reality can be a calming refuge for the spiritually wounded, but the temptation of truth’s knowing often, eventually, niggles. Many resist fearing more hurt, more seemingly foolish gullibility.

Mm, so how does one who has experienced profound disillusionment with what they once thought to have believed regain any form of faith?

Well, ’tis not truly a question of regaining structured faith, for faith bides in the soul of the seeker — and seekers you all be, but ’tis a question of regaining trusting faith in one’s own judgement.

What needs to be recognized here is that whatever has been left behind has been replaced with knowledge, knowledge that would not have been attained if a judgement, good or no, had not been previously made to experience, to seek. ’Tis the seeking, not the gifting, of knowledge that will lead to finding one’s own absolute truth, truth that will lift not bind, truth that will allow one to journey not stay anchored to the sharp, unyielding reefs of someone else’s dogma.

We ask you to not fret for your faith beloved children, for it is innate — inner energy, not outer. We ask you to not harshly judge your past judgement, but rather celebrate the gifts it brings, for your wise judgement knows when to lead or follow, knows when to leave or wallow.

Aweigh anchors at will beloved seekers, trusting in the hand laid to the tiller for it wisely seeks truth always and ways.

Trust. Be peace and sail freely over the sea of life and its beckoning mysteries.

Namaste.

Channelled 29/08/2019.
FOURTH ABUJA NEM101
By: Martins Ajima Austin
Tags: Nigeria, Nigerian Economy, Nem, Xem, Bitcoin

Some attendees had been into cryptocurrency for years but had little or no knowledge of NEM and XEM before the meetup opened their eyes to the wonders of the NEM Blockchain.
Proclamation
By: Anna Rozwadowska
Tags: Exaggerations, Stories, Proclamation, Ftphprompt

It is unknown when stories of mankind are pompous,

reality has a mundane quality, heart grows the humane,

your Spirit desires hearing, attainment, acclamation,

therefore exaggerate it matters not; we drift into the ether,

at the appointed time.

Who is one to judge the living, a life fulfilled, tempting,

lives lived contemplating upon still rocks, shallow waters,

they breathe into you, inhale their oxygen, purity allows,

fresh is the temptation to elaborate, life pursues experience,

something is bound to startle, feeding the need to pursue and unfold;

when one grows courageous, stories are deep, sounds in the water

unfurl like fiddleheads, exaggerate the hours,

lifetime of written stories remain stored in the heart;

there is no judgement here.
Pangborn Development Site, Part II
By: Giga Watt
Tags: Mining, Crypto, Gigawatt, Cryptomining, Cryptocurrency

An ongoing, sneak peak at work under way building out the next facilities at Pangborn

The latest progress from Pangborn…

FEBRUARY 15TH

FEBRUARY 5TH

The crew installing racks of PDU’s.

Fans are being placed. Siding is up next.

Electricians are working ahead of Pod construction

Walls are going up on 3 more pods.

Transformers are going in the first group of pods.

JANUARY 31ST

3 of 6 pods that are currently built. We have electricians working in them now. In the foreground is a kit and a finished foundation waiting to be assembled.

JANUARY 9TH
Node Js Microservice Api Gateway
By: Abdulkerim Karaman
Tags: Api Gateway, Expressjs, Nodejs, API, Microservices

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NEM Europe was hosted by Insurlab-Germany for a workshop on NEM use cases for Insurance.
By: Nem Europe
Tags: Blockchain Development, Nem Blockchain, Blockchain, Nem, Blockchain Technology

Insurlab Germany organized an innovation workshop on blockchain as part of an event series about Blockchain Technology for the insurance industry. Insurlab Germany is part of the DE: Hub Initiative and boasts most of the largest insurance corporations among its members alongside many insurtech-startups. They‘ll be connected which will result in digitization of the industry, and ultimately, innovative insurance products, projects and businesses.

NEM Europe Head of Partnerships, Julian Richter introducing NEM Blockchain at Insurlab Germany

NEM Europe was invited to pitch the NEM Blockchain and introduce potential use cases for the insurance corporations. Following the pitches of NEM, Gnosis, uBirch and NOS, insurers, consultants and bankers signed up for workshops to discuss and work on different use cases.

In order to identify good use cases, Julian Richter — Head of Partnerships, Europe — introduced a decision tree created by ETH Zürich named „Do you need a Blockchain?“ to the workshop participants. Using this as a tool, the following existing problems in the insurance industry were identified: inefficiencies and lack of trust between the insurer, insured person and third parties, and potential improvements through Blockchain Technology. The group worked on existing use case ideas such as claim management improvement, and brainstormed potential new use cases during the afternoon like Atomic Swaps with multiple untrusted parties, then pitched the resulting ideas to all participants. The Insurlab workshop was organized with the goal of coming up with real projects and PoCs. The use case discussions were very productive, and we are very much looking forward to future collaborations.

NEM is committed to working on real-world use cases, to solve real-world problems for real businesses. In close conjunction with industry leaders in their own fields of expertise, NEM can achieve this. After all, who knows their business and the issues facing them than those with the experience and know-how to back it up? Be it med-tech, supply chain, track and trace, financial, insurance, e-identity, or whatever — NEM’s focus is on tangible outputs for actual business to gain an advantage through the use of our blockchain technology. Workshops such as this will expedite NEM blockchain adoption, and we would be happy to be involved with events such as these in the future. Do you have a suggestion for us? Please get in touch and let us know!
The 5-Point Plan for Hijacking Democracy
By: Argumentative Penguin
Tags: Politics, Media, Voting, Democracy, Psychology

The West has a problem and one that is not easily solved. Democracy isn’t dead, it’s functioning exactly as it should. Votes are taken and counted, the results are fairly implemented. There is nothing wrong with voters and there is everything wrong with voters.

How we’ve ended up with Donald Trump-lite in the UK is going to be studied for long after I am dead. It’ll be seen as the pivotal turning point in the demise of democracy. How does a fair electoral system cope with demagogues? At the moment, it doesn’t. Democracy isn’t broken, voters are.

By convincing the working class to vote for the elite, Boris Johnson has pulled off something that seemed impossible. The loss of Labour strongholds in the North and the midlands would’ve been unthinkable a decade ago.

Unthinkable until the exit poll came out.

Nobody will look to overturn this result. The election itself followed due process and the will of the people has been ascertained. Labour will have to rethink its strategy, the Conservative party will have five years of nearly unopposed rule.

Convincing the working class in mining towns to vote Tory is nothing short of a miracle. It’s also a worrying continuation of the tactics employed by Donald Trump. A precedent via president.

So here’s how they do it. The psychological tricks that win elections.
Designing Dashboards
By: Amol Chandwadkar
Tags: Design, UX, Dashboard Designing, Data Visualization, Dashboard

Hope you have got a better understanding regarding this topic. Please let me know if you have anything else which needs to be added in this list. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments below, I will surely consider making some updates !
Woman discovers her phone is missing on Shanghai Metro, holds up entire train for 20 minutes
Tags: China, Shanghai, Public Transit

Woman discovers her phone is missing on Shanghai Metro, holds up entire train for 20 minutes

‘It’s okay if you detain me, I’m the victim here!’ she told subway police

Believing that her phone had been stolen, one woman decided to inconvenience thousands of commuters on Monday evening by standing between the doors of a Shanghai Metro Line 2 carriage and refusing to let the train depart.

A video of the hysterical woman arguing with subway staff and police has gone viral on Weibo, outraging netizens across the country. In the footage, the woman shouts, “It’s okay if you detain me, I’m the victim here!” To which one worker responds, “Your actions are making victims of thousands of other people.”

Subway staff told Btime.com that the woman managed to delay the train from departing Guanglan Road Station for 20 minutes before she was finally detained by police. It’s not clear what took so long.

According to Shine.cn, local authorities announced yesterday that the 31-year-old woman, surnamed Deng, had been fined 200 yuan for her actions… that oughta show her! Meanwhile, police are still searching for her stolen smartphone.

Earlier this year, a woman was slapped with a 2,000 yuan fine for delaying a high-speed train from departing a railway station in Anhui province. For at least four minutes, the woman stood in the train’s doorway, insisting that her husband was just about to arrive.
Alexis Sanchez Transfer
By: Sam Iyer Sequeira
Tags: Manchester United, Sports, Football, Premier League, Soccer

Alexis Sanchez Transfer

Alexis Sanchez officially completes his move to Manchester United

On the 22nd of January 2018, Alexis Sanchez officially completed a swap deal to Manchester United with the Armenian midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan going the other way. The signing of the Chilean was officially announced on Manchester United’s twitter account, with him playing the iconic “Glory Glory Man United” song on the piano. It is understood from sources close to Manchester United that this is a straight swap deal, with no cash involved in the fee. This transfer sees Alexis Sanchez becoming the highest ever paid Premier League player, earning a staggering £14 million a year after tax.
Namespacing in Python
By: Manning Publications
Tags: Best Practices, Python, Programming, Python Programming, Namespacing

Namespaces and the I mport Statement

When you first open the Python interpreter, the built-in namespace is populated with all the stuff built into Python. The Python built-in namespace contains the built-in functions like print() and open() .

These built-ins have no prefix and you don’t need to do anything special to use them. Python makes them available to you anywhere in your code. This is why the famously easy print('Hello world!') Just Works™ in Python.

Unlike some languages, you won’t explicitly create namespaces in your Python code, but your code structure affects what namespaces are created and how they interact.

For instance, creating a Python module automatically creates an additional namespace for that module. At its simplest, a Python module is a .py file that contains some code.

A file named sales_tax.py , for example, is “the sales_tax module”:

# sales_tax.py



def add_sales_tax(total, tax_rate):

return total * tax_rate

Each module has a global namespace that code in the module can access freely. Functions, classes, and variables that aren’t nested inside anything are in the module’s global namespace:

❶ TAX_RATES_BY_STATE is in the module’s global namespace.

❷ Code in the module can use TAX_RATES_BY_STATE without any fuss.

Functions and classes in a module also have a local namespace only they can access:

❶ tax_rate is only in the local scope for add_sales_tax() .

❷ Code in add_sales_tax() can use tax_rate without any fuss.

A module that wants to use a variable, function, or class from another module must import it into its global namespace. Importing is a way of pulling a name from somewhere else into the desired namespace.

❶ The add_sales_tax function’s added to the receipt global namespace.

❷ add_sales_tax still knows about TAX_RATES_BY_STATE and tax_rate from its own namespace.

To refer to a variable, function, or class in Python, one of the following must be true:

The name is in the Python built-in namespace. The name is the current module’s global namespace. The name is in the current line of code’s local namespace.

The precedence for conflicting names works in the opposite order; a local name overrides a global name that overrides a built-in name.

You can remember this because, generally, the definition most specific to the current code is the one that gets used. This is shown in figure 1.

Figure 1. The specificity of namespaces

You might have seen a NameError: name 'my_var' is not defined some time in your adventures with Python. That means the name my_var wasn’t found in any of the namespaces known to that code.

This usually means you never assigned my_var a value, or you assigned it somewhere else and need to import it.
Karen Wawrzaszek Joins Meyer Foundation Board of Directors
By: Meyer Foundation
Tags: Philanthropy, Meyer Foundation Board

The board also bids farewell to Jim Sandman, Debby Ratner Salzberg, and Rajiv Vinnakota and thanks them for their years of service.

Karen Wawrzaszek

The board of directors of the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation elected Karen Wawrzaszek, senior director of financial planning at Sullivan Bruyette Speros & Blayney, to the board at its June 4 meeting.

Prior to joining Sullivan Bruyette Speros & Blayney, a Washington, DC area-based financial advisory services company in 2018, where she leads the firm’s planning strategies and team development, Wawrzaszek was a managing director for Rockefeller Capital Management. For more than 20 years, she has helped families and nonprofit organizations navigate financial planning and impact investing. In 2018, she was named one of Washingtonian magazine’s Top Financial Advisers.

She is also the co-founder and chief executive officer of Pomona Society, a diverse collective of women who collaborate to affect systemic change for women and families in the District.

She serves as treasurer of the Washington Area Women’s Foundation’s board of directors and business advisor to Bubble, LLC, a privately held company. She is a member of the Washington, DC Estate Planning Council and the Family Firm Institute.

Wawrzaszek is a 2018 graduate of Leadership Greater Washington’s Signature Program. She holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Wichita State University, is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER ™ professional, and Certified Trust and Financial Advisor (CTFA).

“Karen is an excellent addition to the Meyer Foundation’s board of directors,” says Meyer Foundation President and CEO Nicky Goren. “She brings to the Foundation a commitment to systemic change, as well as a belief and expertise in aligning organizational practices — including investments — with values and mission.”

In addition to Wawrzaszek joining the board of directors, three board members will also be departing the board in June: Board Chair Jim Sandman rolls off the board after 12 years of board service, as does Immediate Past Board Chair Debby Ratner Salzberg; Rajiv Vinnakota completes a three-year term on the board and takes on a new leadership role at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in New Jersey. Vice Chair Charlene M. Dukes takes over as board chair and Bo Menkiti as vice chair.

Debby Ratner Salzberg; Jim Sandman; Raj Vinnakota