fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Honey Framework UI v3.1 release
By: Jacob Plaster
Tags: Honey Framework, Trading Tools, JavaScript, Tutorial, Framework

Over the last few months, the Honey Framework team has had one goal in mind: To make the UI as reliable and as stable as possible. In this release we have not only added some really cool new features but we have also fixed lots of small annoying bugs and, FINALLY, managed to support building for MacOS from our Linux build servers. So whats new?

1. Better support for MacOS!!

Although the UI has worked on previous versions of MacOS, Mojave has proved to be a real pain for us due to the changes that apple have made to their default unzipping tool. This mean that our Linux build servers were unable to package a working version of the HF UI for Mojave. But we’ve made tonnes of progress, and rather than building the application manually, users can now download a full working version from our landing page!

Download the Honey Framework UI for MacOS here!

2. We’ve built an open source charting library!

Originally the UI shipped with TradingView as the default charting library, which can still be enabled in the settings menu. But this wasn’t versatile enough for us, we needed more control over the rendered data so that we could better integrate algo orders/strategies into the terminal. So we decided to create our own charting library and since Bitfinex loves open source, the project was instantly available to the world. Come and collaborate with us over at the bfx-hf-chart repo.

3. New Algo order: Limit OCO

We’ve had tonnes of requests from our users asking for an order type, which once executed, submits and OCO conditional order. Well its now available and as of version 3.1 you can download the honey framework and instantly start making use of this order type form either the UI of from Bitfinex.com. This order type is useful in lots of different ways, one of the most popular uses, is the ability to set a limit order which already has a take-profit and stop-loss defined.

Download now

If you would like to start using the Limit-OCO, Iceberg, TWAP or any of our other brilliant algorithmic orders then head over to honey.bitfinex.com where you can download the application for Linux, Windows or MacOS!

Thanks for reading

Fancy contributing to the project? Then please just open a pull request to https://github.com/bitfinexcom/bfx-hf-ui.

For tips on how to use the bare metal version head here and finally, for tips on how to create an advanced automated trading strategy using HF head here.
Bubbletone to Showcase its BIockchain-based Platform at GITEX Technology Week 2018
By: Bubbletone Blockchain In Telecom
Tags: Exhibition, Gitex, Blockchain Startup, Blockchain, Conference

Bubbletone will participate in GITEX Technology Week 2018 — the biggest and boldest technology show in MENA and South Asia — that will take place in Dubai on October 14–18. The Bubbletone team will present its decentralized platform for the telecom industry to investors and industry experts and enter pitch competitions.

GITEX (“Gulf Information Technology Exhibition”) is an annual consumer computer and electronics trade show, exhibition, and conference that takes place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at the Dubai World Trade Centre. The 38th edition of Gitex Technology Week will bring together over 4,000 exhibitors and 140,000 attendees from over 90 countries around the world and will shine a spotlight on four major technological sectors — Smart Cities, AR and VR, Internet of Things, and Smart Manufacturing.

The Bubbletone team will take part in GITEX Future Stars, a segment of GITEX for startups, and represent the newly-formed Blockchain sector. This region’s biggest startup show (850+ startups from 75+ countries and across 19 sectors) provides its participants with opportunities to pitch for funding, find a route to market and scale up their operations by pertaining with governments, global investors, established technology companies and the private sector.

Among the investors will be prominent organizations from Europe, Asia, and Silicon Valley such as Amazon, Google Ventures, NorthZone, 01 ventures, European Business Angel Network, MustardSeedVC, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), Rising Fund Tide, and others.

At the company’s booth, Bubbletone’s CEO Yuri Morozov and Project Director Alexander Yakovenko will showcase the Bubbletone blockchain-based platform, explain what benefits it brings to mobile operators and end users worldwide and network with investors and decision-makers. They will also participate in the Supernova Challenge pitch competition and other industry-sponsored Innovation Cups for startups.

We invite everyone who is interested in our cutting-edge solution to visit us at GITEX Technology Week at Hall no. 5, Startup pod F6!
ASTs & Codemods: Effective and Automated Codebase Refactoring
By: Jason Deng
Tags: JavaScript, Software Development, Programming, Bluecore, Web Development

What is an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)?

If you are writing code, chances are that you are probably leveraging ASTs in one or more ways. An AST or Abstract Syntax Tree is a tree representation of code. ASTs are a formation of tokens generated from statements and expressions in a programming language. The source code that engineers write is typically piped through a parser and transformed into an AST. A compiler or interpreter can then use the AST to generate the corresponding lower-level machine code and evaluate instructions.

The typical flow of how an AST is created and used. — Diagram made with draw.io

When source code is converted to its AST representation, only the structure and content of the source code are kept; any other additional attributes such as punctuation and delimiters (braces, semicolons, parentheses, etc.) are thrown away. Information that’s preserved, which is needed for an AST, are:

Variable types and location of each variable declaration

The order of executable statements in which they defined and represented

Left and right operands of operations

Identifiers and their assigned values

So given these requirements, what does an AST look like?

An abstract representation an AST — Diagram made with draw.io

The above tree is an abstract representation of what a JavaScript AST would look like.

From the top level, we first start off with a variable declaration. This variable declaration has a property node of var type. (as opposed to let or const This variable declaration also consists of an “identifier” and its corresponding assignment, in this case, a binary expression. The binary expression is formed with a “left” and “right” literal and an operator.

This naming of each “node” is defined in accordance with the specification of the parser, but the idea of the AST is consistent throughout all parsers/programming languages.

A more human consumable format for the tree is typically in JSON format.

AST JSON Representation of var example = 5 * 9; — Image made with https://carbon.now.sh/

That’s a lot of JSON just for one line of code!
Setting up GoDaddy Domain and AWS Route 53 with Elastic Beanstalk within 15 minutes
Tags: Godaddy, AWS, Elastic Beanstalk, Route 53, WordPress

Setting up GoDaddy Domain and AWS Route 53 with Elastic Beanstalk within 15 minutes Eder Follow Apr 9, 2019 · 3 min read

This Tutorial will teach you how to forward your GoDaddy Domain to your AWS Route 53 and configure your WordPress environment.

The 10 steps in a DNS lookup

Intro:

Intro:

What is DNS?

The Domain Name System is a hierarchical and decentralized naming system for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities. (Wiki)

Amazon Route 53

Amazon Route 53

Amazon Route 53

It’s time to get your hands dirty :)

Setting up Route 53

1. Create Hosted Zone

Create Hosted Zone

Type your Domain Name in the red area.

Create Hosted Zone Domain Name

Once done you’ll see some configurations on the page. Save the NS value somewhere, we’ll need it when we set up GoDaddy.

ns-1325.awsdns-37.org. ns-287.awsdns-35.com. ns-1715.awsdns-22.co.uk. ns-658.awsdns-18.net.

Route 53 Nameservers

2. Create Record Set: match your domain name to your Elastic Beanstalk environments

For example, we’ll have yourdomainname.com and www.yourdomainname.com

2.1 Click Yes near to Alias

2.2 Select Elastic Beanstalk environments from Alias Target

Link Alias Target to Elastic Beanstalk environments

2.3 Create WWW domain following the above steps.

WWW domain

Setting up GoDaddy Domain

Change the default GoDaddy Nameservers to Route 53 Nameservers.

Looking up your Nameservers Configuration from GoDaddy DNS Management.

Nameservers Configuration from GoDaddy DNS Management

Do you remember we just save the NS value from Route 53? Copy that to GoDaddy and save.

Godaddy Nameservers

When the nameservers are changed, you can expect a propagation time less than 5mins. It takes time for the DNS to take effect across the internet.

Wonderful! Let’s prepare a perfect cup of coffee before finishing it:)

Finally, setting up WordPress Address URL

It’s an optional step if your app is not using WordPress.

Navigation: Settings -> General

Type your domainname.com in WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL)

Awesome, you did a great job!!
FlumeJava: Easier way for writing map-reduce chains
By: Iván De Prado
Tags: Google, Computers, Hadoop, Distributed Systems, Flumejava

Some Google guys have recently published a paper about a Java library for helping on developing and optimizing chains of map-reduce jobs. It is called FlumeJava.



The library is very interesting. From my view, it is clear that it simplifies developing on map-reduce. Instead of hand writing your jobs and chaining them manually, it lets you define your computations using some java syntax with the help of some immutable collections, and leaves the library the responsibility to find the best execution plan.



You get your code splitted in several pieces of code when you develop using standard map-reduce jobs. That makes the code fragmented and less clear. FlumeJava allows you to keep your business logic closer.



Well, let’s see if that amazing Hadoop guys implement something similar for the community.



UPDATE (2010–11–12): The amazing Hadoop guys has started to move. Ted Dunning has created Plume, the “Hadoop FlumeJava”. My friend Pere Ferrera is also colaborating with the Plume development.
Andrea Leiter Joins Crypto Law Review — Welcome!
Tags: Cryptocurrency News, Crypto Law Review, Blockchain News, Crypto Lawyer, Blockchain

On September 28, 2018, CleanApp Foundation announced the launch of Crypto Law Review. In only five months, we have grown to nearly 400 subscribers and hundreds of unique daily visitors.

CLR’s growth is 100% organic. Our articles resonate with crypto and broader global governance communities because they focus on the hardest and most consequential questions in the space. And we’re only getting started.

Today, we are excited to announce the addition of Andrea Leiter to our editorial team as co-editor of the Crypto Law Review!

A law graduate of the University of Vienna, and a doctoral fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Leiter has years of rigorous research and publication experience.

Leiter’s crypto law analysis focuses on the most important theoretical and practical questions of the day:

the nature, function, and limits of crypto legal forms (e.g., “smart contract,” property, “self-enforcement,” etc.);

(e.g., “smart contract,” property, “self-enforcement,” etc.); the essence of crypto legal jurisdiction vis-a-vis existing jurisdictional frameworks;

vis-a-vis existing jurisdictional frameworks; crypto law in broader socio-legal historical and critical contexts.

As important, Leiter is an institution-builder who understands the centrality of collaboration and plural global perspectives. In a field as inherently contested and politicized as “crypto law,” voices and networks like Leiter’s offer much-needed grounding effects.

The global crypto law and governance community has already benefited from Leiter’s analytical work. Please join us in welcoming Andrea to this critical scaling and editorial role.
What is the difference between a blog and a newsgroup?
By: Pito Salas
Tags: Blogs

Recently in a conversation I was asked to comment on what really was the big difference between a blog and a newsgroup.



After all they are both a reverse chronological list of postings, right?



My answer, maybe obvious, is this: a newsgroup is (typically) focused on a certain subject matter, and has many different people posting their comments and questions on that topic. So you follow a newsgroup because you are interested in a specific subject matter.



A blog is (typically) focused on a certain author’s voice, and often covers many different topics, of interest to the author. So you follow a blog because you are interested in a particular author’s point of view.



Of course in reality it’s not quite that black and white, and there are shades of grey in between.
Our take on a powerful workplace benefit: the paid employee sabbatical
By: Ivana Markovic
Tags: Company Culture, Startup, Culture, Ideas

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

Follow
Announcing Sofort for Instant Purchase of Bitcoin
By: Žiga P. Škraba
Tags: Payments, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Sofort, Klarna

Kriptomat is the point where EUR meets cryptocurrencies. We’re always trying to exceed the expectations of our users, which includes looking for new solutions on how to make the process of sending euros to Kriptomat more secure, reliable, faster, and affordable. One of the reasons why our users like us, is because we’re a global business acting local and we are constantly looking for new popular local payment solutions and other financial partners. After successful addition of Zimpler, we are excited to announce the popular Sofort (Klarna Group).

Use of Sofort for easier and faster entrance into the world of cryptocurrencies

We’re excited to announce that we’re introducing new payments options for Kriptomat, making it easier for our users to purchase their bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Sofort Überweisung or Sofort for short is a respected and secure payment service provider and is part of Klarna Group. Klarna is one of the leading providers for alternative payment methods in Europe with over 70,000 merchants and is trusted by over 60 million consumers.

Sofort offers a fast and easy payment of your online purchases and transactions including your cryptocurrencies just by providing your online banking details. Sofort proves their swiftness by immediately sending their clients a real-time confirmation of the transfer, and we know our users need fast transactions to exchange EUR for cryptocurrencies.

Using Sofort has several benefits when making your Kriptomat instant purchases.

First off, Sofort is very secure and safe to choose as a payment method because they don’t store personal and financial details. They utilize two platforms to really secure your transactions, PIN-code and TAN-code. These codes make it almost impossible for third parties to access your details and transactions.

Second, Sofort makes sure that transactions are instantly processed and delays are less likely to happen with Sofort.

Third, you don’t need to register an account at Sofort. All you need is an online banking account connected to Sofort and you’re good to go. No need to enter any lengthy card numbers, no need to create an account, no need for anyone to store your details. Just use your own online banking details to make a purchase. With an immediate transaction confirmation, your order will be processed immediately.

Which countries and currencies are supported by Sofort?

Sofort will be available to our users from Germany, Austria, UK, Spain, and Switzerland. The supported currency will be the euro (EUR).

The Sofort payment method is scheduled to be released in July!
Is Cleopatra’s Bee Powered Gourd the First Vibrator?
By: Lioness Rue
Tags: History, Vibrators, Sexuality, Cleopatra

1. Cleopatra’s Bee-powered Vibrator.

Think of all the inventions you know that are credited to Ancient Egypt. You probably would name these:

Pyramids

Mummification

Hieroglyph

The list goes on, but you probably wouldn’t think of a Women’s Vibrator.

An Illustration of the gourd of bees used by Cleopatra — Image by Jen Bell

The story of the first vibrator dates back to Cleopatra’s era. Cleopatra was an Egyptian queen who lived from 69BC to 30BC. She was well known for her sexual appeal. How does the idea of conceiving what is practically a tiny hive to quench her sexual thirst sound to you?

The Cleopatra’s bee vibrator story became popular after the release of the encyclopedia of unusual sex practices by Brenda Love in 1992.

Imagine Queen Cleopatra going about her own business in the nature that surrounds her great palace. She spots a beehive, and for some reason, she gets fascinated by the vibrations the bees make inside the hive. She orders one of her best engineers to make her a small box/gourd in a way that lets bees inside shake the walls to generate vibration. This device would also prevent the bees from escaping. The chances are such an incident would only end in pain.

Well, that was such an ingenious and probably a great way to take care of her female body while satisfying her desires.

But, this claim was denied by Historian Helen King. King claims that there is no archeological evidence of such material since no historian could prove the statement Love wrote in her book.

Cleopatra is said to have had a small box that could be filled with bees and placed against her genitals for stimulation similar to that of vibrators.

The lack of tangible evidence of this invention led to it being classified as an urban legend. It was and still is repeated by many history fanatics through print and other media. The story also led to a lot of research on the origins of the vibrator.
Trump Thinks If He Brings Cookies In On His Last Days Of Work, Maybe They’ll Let Him Stay
By: Eric J Scholl
Tags: Economy, Politics, Russia, Democracy, Donald Trump

Trump Thinks If He Brings Cookies In On His Last Days Of Work, Maybe They’ll Let Him Stay

If that’s not what all this craziness with suddenly refusing to sign a COVID-19 relief bill, then suddenly caving is kind of all about, then what is?

All we can see is an effort to rev up hatred for the government — regardless of whether Republican or Democrat — while holding out some hope of bringing some love to Trump. And if that’s the note on which he goes out, it’ll say a lot about Congress’ loss of power, and a gain if not by Trump, immediately, himself, by the idea Trump’s tried to plant in the heads of many Americans all along: that a dictatorship wouldn’t be all that bad; at least it’d mean “much more money is coming”. And with that, Democracy becomes something to fight, not cherish, because it means somebody other than you might win.

We’re seeing this spotlighted in multiple tantrum-related moves by Trump just now:
Download an Image Using Python Client From Express.js Server
By: Souvik Paul
Tags: Python3, Nodejs, Servers, Expressjs, Clients

The objective of this article is to create a python client which will send an HTTP request to the server that is running on express.js framework for downloading an image.

The code for this project is also available in my GitHub repository -

Developing the server

We’ll develop the back-end of this application in Node.js using Express.js framework. For that, let’s create a directory for our server application with the name myServer, which will contain the following files and folders.

We’ll open the terminal and navigate into this directory. We’ll then create a folder with name public and inside that we’ll keep any image with name image.jpg.

After that we’ll run the command npm init and we’ll choose all the default options that will pop up. Then we’ll install express using the following command.

npm install express --save

Express is a minimal and flexible Node.js web application framework that provides a robust set of features for web and mobile applications.

Now we’ll write the code for our server application in the file app.js.

When we run the above code, it will make our server operational and will listen to calls on port 3000. And when somebody tries to access the /image route, the server will send image.jpg file to the client.

Developing the client

Now, we’ll write code for our client application in python.

This application will send an HTTP request to the server and will receive the image as a byte string, which will be decoded and stored in the local system.

Now that we have created our client as well as server application, it’s the time to test it.

Testing the application

First of all, we’ll run the server application in the terminal using the command-

node app.js

It will give the output as

server is listening on port: 3000

Then, we’ll open another terminal window and navigate to the directory where the client.py file is located. Then, we’ll run the command —

python client.py

It will give the following output in the terminal

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

X-Powered-By: Express

Accept-Ranges: bytes

Cache-Control: public, max-age=0

Last-Modified: Mon, 10 Oct 2016 11:18:54 GMT

ETag: W/"290453-157ea522f31"

Content-Type: image/jpeg

Content-Length: 2687827

Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 20:23:20 GMT

Connection: close

and will download the image and store it with the name downloaded_image.jpg in the same directory where client.py is located.

References
Hero Parrot Saves Owner
By: Nicole Henley
Tags: Pets, Animals, Human Interest, Australia, Parrot

Parrot Saves Owner from Fire.

Photo by I.am_nah on Unsplash

Recently, one man from Queensland, Australia, was awoken to the scary realization that his home was on fire. After waking up to the sound of a bang, followed by his pet parrot Eric yelling out his name, the man gathered what few possessions he could, grabbed Eric, then ran out of the house.

Once the firefighters soon arrived at the scene around 2 a.m. and the blaze was subsequently contained, Eric was commended for alerting his owner to the danger before the home’s smoke alarm.

Despite the loss, Eric’s owner maintains a positive outlook:
1 line to BERT Word Embeddings with NLU
By: Christian Kasim Loan
Tags: Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Python, Data Science, NLP

Including Part of Speech, Named Entity Recognition, Emotion Classification in the same line! With Bonus t-SNE plots!

With the freshly released NLU library which gives you 350+ NLP models and 100+ Word Embeddings, you have infinite possibilities to explore your data and gain insights.

In this tutorial, we will cover how to get the powerful BERT embeddings with 1 line of NLU code and then how to visualize them with t-SNE.

T-SNE [1] is a tool to visualize high-dimensional data. It converts similarities between data points to joint probabilities and tries to minimize the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the joint probabilities of the low-dimensional embedding and the high-dimensional data. t-SNE has a cost function that is not convex, i.e. with different initializations we can get different results.

1. Import NLU, load Bert, and embed a sample string in 1 line
Blogging Guide June Discount
By: Casey Botticello
Tags: Medium Partner Program, Newsletter, Substack, Writing Tips, Ｍedium

Source: Blogging Guide

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to remind you that Blogging Guide is being offered at a 20% discount through the end of June. If you haven’t subscribed, now is the perfect time!

Why Subscribe?

When you subscribe to Blogging Guide, you are guaranteed access to cutting edge articles, strategies, and tools related to digital publishing.

What does that actually mean?

You will receive concise and actionable emails/articles that are only available to paying subscribers (click this link to preview some of them).

to preview some of them). You will gain access to my entire back catalogue of articles on Substack . Unlike many newsletters, the content in Blogging Guide is largely evergreen, meaning its value remains consistent over time. While there may be the occasional platform news alert, most of the content is really a collection of some of my best advice and timeless tips on making money writing online.

. Unlike many newsletters, the content in Blogging Guide is largely evergreen, meaning its value remains consistent over time. While there may be the occasional platform news alert, most of the content is really a collection of some of my best advice and timeless tips on making money writing online. You will be able to download many of my custom digital products for free. These products would otherwise cost more than $20 , making this a great offer!

for free. These products , making this a great offer! You will get a first hand look at aggregated writer earnings data to help you find out how much money various writers have made over time on different platforms. And yes, this will include my earnings as well! I not only want to be transparent but I also want to share my own journey writing online (both successes and failures).

I not only want to be transparent but I also want to share my own journey writing online (both successes and failures). You will gain access to Blogging Guide’s private Slack channel, which allows you to message other writers, participate in group discussions, and will ensure that I can respond quickly to any questions you have.

Blogging Guide does offer some free articles to non-paying subscribers, but to receive access to the premium content above, you must be a paying subscriber. Click here to check out our free articles.
Jason Isbell is the Songwriter the South Needs
By: Thomas Jenkins
Tags: Music, Culture, Songwriting, Jason Isbell, Writing

Jason Isbell is the Songwriter the South Needs

If music is storytelling, Isbell’s haunting songs are a world I want to visit

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit at SunTrust Park

A few weeks ago, my wife and I watched Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit perform at SunTrust Park after an Atlanta Braves game. The concert was rescheduled from an earlier rainout, and the Braves had just blown a late lead to the Colorado Rockies in a disappointing extra-innings finish. The end result was that most of the people who stuck around for the concert that began around 11:00 pm were more interested in finishing their beer than hearing Isbell perform. This was my second time watching him sing, and the contrast between the sold-out concert hall in Birmingham and the 4/5s empty stadium in suburban Atlanta was jarring.

If he was jarred though, Isbell didn’t show it. He cracked a few jokes about Chipper Jones, about being mistaken for Matthew Stafford in Athens, and about how his daughter mispronounces the names of the Braves’ best players. Most importantly though, he played song after song from his extensive catalog, reminding the few fans who actually knew his music why a chance to see Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit live is never worth passing up. Despite the crowd’s general apathy, it was an excellent experience.

This introduction is a long-winded way of getting to this point: Jason Isbell is one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard, and perhaps the best. His instrumental work is always excellent, but his lyrics are what make his music exceptional. It doesn’t hurt that I grew up in the South — the subject of much of his songs — but I think that his music is relatable to anyone who is interested in stories and people. Whether its an introspective look at Southern racism, a love song written to his wife, or wistful nostalgia for trees in Alabama, every song Isbell writes is thoughtful, careful, and beautiful.
How to quickly buy Bitcoin
Tags: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Blockchain Wallet, Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is back in the news. Have you been thinking about joining in?

Getting some exposure is now easier than ever.

Here’s how you can quickly buy Bitcoin using Blockchain.com’s Simple Buy tool.

Step 1: Sign up for Blockchain.com Wallet Step 2: Verify your identity Step 3: Enter an amount to purchase and buy

That’s all it takes. After just a few quick steps you will have exposure to an exciting new asset class.

Log in at blockchain.com/login to buy bitcoin today.
Introducing The Best Crypto Trading Fees in the World
Tags: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Exchange, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

“Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market. Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money.” — Ed Seykota

Modern digital assets aka cryptocurrencies have become an integral part of the savvy investor’s portfolio in an attempt to diversify it. You don’t get extra points to guess that this diversification is prompted by the need of any smart investor to maximise their profit and keep their losses at a minimum.

This is what every investor is striving for eventually — profits — right? Then why to decrease them in the name of something that’s mandatory yet seems so unnecessary for the investor?
I Refuse to Run a Virtual Marathon
By: Ryan Fan
Tags: Inspiration, Coronavirus, Sports, Self, Running

I Refuse to Run a Virtual Marathon

And I’m embracing life as a hobby jogger.

Photo by Sherise . on Unsplash

Yesterday, I received notice that the Boston Marathon would be turning virtual and that runners who qualified that didn’t want to or were unable to do it could get a refund. If runners choose to go through with the virtual marathon, they will have a six-hour window to complete a marathon and provide “proof of timing” to the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.). It was officially cancelled by Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, and in an e-mail sent to all Boston Marathoners, the B.A.A. said this:

“Our top priority continues to be safeguarding the health of the community, as well as our staff, participants, volunteers, spectators, and supporters,” said Tom Grilk, C.E.O. of the B.A.A. “While we cannot bring the world to Boston in September, we plan to bring Boston to the world for an historic 124th Boston Marathon.”

While the news is not at all surprising, it was still disappointing that the race I trained pretty hard for wouldn’t happen at all, but of course, everyone’s safety and health is more important than my training.

But as for a virtual marathon, I refuse to do it. First of all, it requires a GPS watch to provide “proof of timing”, and I am philosophically opposed to GPS watches. I just am — I don’t like to know how fast I’m running. As a runner, I hate worrying about numbers, I enjoy the unknown, and I would much rather focus on how I feel and enjoy the scenery around me than obsess over my pace.

In addition, to provide proof of timing, runners would likely need a verified GPS watch as well as uploading times to Strava — and I am not a big fan of Strava either. I am probably an old school of a runner, but I don’t enjoy knowing how fast I run, and I don’t enjoy documenting to other people how fast or how much I run either. I just run. It’s as simple as that.

I’m glad that competitive runners are being given the option of a virtual marathon to take advantage of their fitness. I’m just not one of those people for the reasons I noted.

Who knows when competitive running is going to make a return? It’s clear that marathons and highly crowded races are extremely high risk for the transmission of the Coronavirus — so I would rather be safer than sorry too if I were a race organizer.

It would likely be irresponsible for any marathon to happen the rest of the year, which I know is heartbreaking to many people in peak physical fitness or first-time qualifiers to dream races like the Boston Marathon. That’s why I respect the race organizers for making the virtual marathon a standstill while the whole competitive running world is at a standstill. Some runners may find this year and next to be the last of their competitive running careers — a tragic way to finish your running career.
Repurposed Infosec Comic #9: “Consultants”.
Tags: Tech, Cybersecurity, Cyber Security Awareness, Infosec, Security

Also, if you tire of your crappy consultants, please consider hiring a good one . Be prepared for results however.

The San Francisco Examiner, (San Francisco, California), 24 Dec 1894

Like this story? Want to see others like it? Check out more technology/cyber security influenced articles in Infoseconds. Check out other publications around Historical News or Internet Archaeology(True Crime).
Why We Have Lost The Art Of Play & How To Get It Back
By: Zaid K. Dahhaj
Tags: Work, Work Life Balance, Energy, Mindfulness, Play

Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children, youth as well as adults. Play allows us to explore a totally different side of ourselves that gets to experience everything in the present moment — a state of flow.

Why Have We Lost The Art Of Play?

In my opinion, we have lost the art of play due to the extreme focus on work and obligations. Work and obligations have value but when taken to the extreme, the balance shifts towards the dysfunctional end.

As a culture, we are so obsessed with productivity, efficiency, work-life balance, emails, notifications, schedules, so on and so forth that we have lost touch with the side of ourselves that can play and just bask within the present moment.

A Definition Of Play

Firstly, let’s come to an agreement on the definition of play since defining where we stand is extremely important.

Play: To engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.

Here’s a couple great questions that you can ask most people to understand where we are with play as individuals and a culture: When was the last time you just purely played by yourself or with a group of friends?

When was the last time you engaged in an activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose?

In other words, when did you engage in an activity for its own sake?

In our culture, we seem to look at play as something that doesn’t matter — a mere waste of time from the perspective of many individuals. This can’t be farther from the truth because play is an inherent part of our biology. Play is a form of bonding that we have evolved in order to strengthen the cohesiveness of our group for the sake of our survival.

Our cultural operating system seems to run on the ideas of productivity and efficiency but towards what? A new car, house or watch? This is a matter of being focused on materialism and that brings a whole new set of problems to the playing field. It creates a vicious cycle of focusing on the meaningless and short term things rather than the meaningful and long term things.
Making Money by Writing Isn’t Easy
By: Ellie Daforge
Tags: Work, Money, Creativity, Publishing, Writing

Making Money by Writing Isn’t Easy

But it is possible

Photo by Kody Gautier on Unsplash

One thing that self-improvement gurus like to say is that making money is easy. It’s not. As the saying goes: “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.”

A friend of mine could write a blog post titled, “How I make $5,000 a month working four days a week.” Sounds amazing, right?

It would go like this: “Go to college. Declare an in-demand healthcare major. Study in competitive and tough classes. Graduate and get the first job you can get, for experience. Then jump to a job that pays $5,000 a month to work 32 hours per week. Although, you’ll have to work a lot of holidays and weekends, and stay late often.”

Sound like a lot of work? That’s the point. The people who make a cool $1 million on a game show are the outliers. The rest of us hustle.

I’ve never made it a secret that I’ve struggled to make money as a writer. When I see people who declare they make thousands of dollars a month by writing, I can see that they’ve put the effort.

People who write for a living didn’t just get lucky or stumble upon a secret. They showed up and wrote, day in and day out. When there were a lot of readers, and when there seemed to be nobody, they still pumped out content.

I’ve seen a lot of people get burned out on writing quickly. They didn’t see money or attention soon enough, and they lost interest.

In the show Game of Thrones, a character tells a queen that she must earn a kingdom’s loyalty, not simply expect them to adore her. Writing is a lot like that. You can’t just write a few blog posts and demand that readers follow you. They have a lot of choices. You have to earn their attention.

But you’ve read this far, so you haven’t given up yet. That’s good.

There are benefits to writing as a career. It’s certainly more pleasant than some other jobs I’ve had, such as cleaning houses. But in some aspects, it’s harder. There are no guarantees. You can’t clock in at 8 a.m. and out at 5 p.m. and then get a paycheck every two weeks.

On the flip side, you’re not limited like you are in a job. You can set your own hours. Your output can determine how much money you make. And that could potentially let you earn much more than a lot of jobs.

The barriers to entry are also low. You don’t need a college degree, or the corresponding student loan debt. You don’t need letters of reference. You can just show up and write.

The self-discipline required is great for some people, and terrible for others. It can take awhile to get the ball rolling. Especially with freelance work or writing on spec, money can be sparse at first, and unpredictable. But it is there, so don’t give up.
My Dad’s Fried Chicken Wings Algorithm Has Kept Us Connected This Year
By: John Maeda
Tags: Computational Thinking, Chicken Recipes, Design

Ever since COVID-19 landed, it’s become impossible for me to fly across the country to visit my mom and dad. On the one hand, my mom is always easy to connect with via regular text messages and calls. On the other, ever since my dad had a stroke he’s never been the same. We’re totally out of touch.

And because writing doesn’t come naturally to him — he left home when he was 13 to work and is functionally illiterate — it’s even harder to make a remote connection to him.

My father in the moment of preparing a plate of chicken for me. He didn’t say much because his craft is what spoke for him instead.

The way my father traditionally communicated with others around him was through his body. He spent his entire life as a physical laborer, and never spoke much. Every day he would work like a machine for our family:

wake up between 1am and 3am start making tofu so that it would cool for transport by 8am work throughout the day, moving intricate or very heavy items from one place to another get home around 6pm repeat

There were only slight variations in the day depending upon the weather, the temperature of tap water, and the kind of soybeans that he had sourced. You could say that his personality resembled the machine-like process in which he played a key part.

The job he left home for at 13 was to shine shoes on a merchant boat. Over time he rose to become a cook on that same ship. Hundreds of people needed to be fed, and thus his machine-like nature likely evolved from the many meals he produced from an early age. As I got older, I noticed that the only way my dad could show any visible evidence of love was through what he cooked for others. And if there was one thing that everyone loved about my dad, it was his fried chicken wings.

My dad before his stroke. Unfortunately he can no longer cook

Since his stroke, dad has no longer been able to cook for himself, and so the communicative power of his physical labors are now gone. When I consider what a stroke can do to a person who is physically centered versus what a disease like Alzheimer’s can do to a mentally centered person, there are times when I perversely wished Alzheimer’s had afflicted my dad instead. Without the confident use of his body, it’s like he’s completely vanished. And with that, his ability to express his love. Yet these days I think that one of his algorithms still exists.

Since his stroke, dad has no longer been able to cook for himself, and so the communicative power of his physical labors are now gone.

A recipe is an algorithm. When created by a human that we care about, it has the ability to last well beyond its creator. Tasting the outcome can be what activates your connection to the originator. Or, the act of cooking the recipe can spark a connection by triggering memories of when you were first taught it. I’m well aware that people who code can strike a similar emotional connection to numerical recipes and such, but I personally believe that fried chicken wings easily trump anything nerdly.
“Son of Steve Garvey”
By: Luke Esterkyn
Tags: Stroke 9, Lyrics

“Son of Steve Garvey”

Lyrics to “Son of Steve Garvey” by Stroke 9

Listen free here.

It’s really all the same although the times have changed

just another game that we have to play

I like to entertain

I wanna feel the pain

I wanna know how it’s gonna be

when you decide that you’re bored and you’re done with me

Now more than ever before

you find me belly-up to the bar

How about I take you to the show

How about I open the door just to let you know

Someday you’re going to tell me what you like doing

So I can take your breath away again

If I was the son of Steve Garvey

Maybe you’d see things my way

Or at least see me again

My father would come home and tell me

“son go about be a Garvey”

He would tell me I could win

not that I never should begin

The only way he ever played

was with all out desire, it’s insane

He’s on the television and I’m at home

I’m watching dad run the bases but I’m alone

He’s going to first, he’s rounding third

My old man sure could play

He’s coming home in fifteen days
7 Things I Learned from Participating in Toxic Friendships
By: Emily Rosenberg
Tags: Life Lessons, Lists, Tips, Relationships, Friendship

(Mean Girls starring Lindsey Lohan, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, and Rachel McAdams)

“Are you serious!” I blurted out, shattering the silence of twenty seventeen year olds diligently completing math equations. I hastily shoved my phone back into its designated pocket and scurried out the door before any more attention could be drawn towards my sweaty, hyperventilating, ready to run self. I accidentally tripped over someone’s desk “I-I-I-I-II’m sorry,” I said. The teacher hurried after me, but disappeared after I speed walked around the corner of the hallway, insisting that I was fine. The rest of the school would know I wasn’t fine when I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran at the assistant principal, pointed my finger in his face and told him to “tell [friend] to leave me the f*** alone.”

This is only a highlight of several emotional outbreaks related to friends verbally attacking me. I once threw a burrito into the street. Another time I laid in the middle of the school hallway covered in ugly tears. In the past 10 years, I have been a victim of bullying, a friend to many, and a best friend to only a few; most of which ended in one of the ugly situations I took the leisure of describing to you above. I am now 18, about to head to college, and as I spend my last month planning socially distanced meetups, I realize that I finally found a group of wonderful people who I deserve and that deserve me. There are no miraculous secrets. There is no jealousy, passive aggressiveness or intentional extreme aggressiveness. Just fun, love, and support.

How I came about writing this article was through a game of truth or dare, or as my friends and I like to call: it truth & truth, since we only ask truth questions. Someone asked me… If I could go back and change one thing about high school, what would I change. Immediately, I jumped to my relationship with [Friend]. By the end of our friendship, we’d hurt each other so badly that I wished I never met her and I spent more time with better people instead. I quickly changed my answer. “actually. I would change nothing.” It’s because of these toxic relationships where I lied, fought every other day, and was extremely unhappy to finally understand exactly what I need while looking for friends in college. I realize that I’m only eighteen and still have plenty to learn, but these are the things I wish were drilled into my brain before I went to high school. So whether you’re twelve, sixteen, twenty-five, or sixty there’s always something new to learn about the complicated concept of human connection.
LEAD THE WAY sets date for inaugural Polar Plunge
By: Anthony Mazziotti
Tags: Polar Plunge, Donations, Swimming, Community, Nonprofit

LEAD THE WAY sets date for inaugural Polar Plunge

Plunge to take place in Williamstown and benefit residents

The Polar Plunge typically takes place at the shore to benefit the Special Olympics where supporters raise money and run into the ocean in the middle of winter.

Scott Whyte, the co-founder of Williamstown’s nonprofit LEAD THE WAY, took the concept and made it hyper-local. On March 10 at Hospitality Creek, LEAD THE WAY will host its inaugural Polar Plunge to benefit the Monroe Township community.

“I know people go down the shore for it, but why not do it in town?” Whyte said. “I presented it to Hospitality Creek and they loved the idea. It’s a win-win situation for them, us and the community.”

If one were to take the traditional Polar Plunge, they would have to fundraise prior to going. In the case of LEAD THE WAY’s event, anyone interested in taking a dip in the lake would have to donate a one-time fee of $20 for adults or $10 for kids. Additional donations are also accepted. To sign up, visit the Facebook event “LEAD THE WAY to the Polar Plunge.” Once on the event page, there will be a place to sign up via Eventbrite.

All proceeds from the plunge will go to LEAD THE WAY. From there, it will decide who to help.

“The money raised will help fund us to continue our work in the community for feeding homeless kids, disadvantaged families, purchase clothing, it helps us be able to do what we do in the community,” Whyte said.

This event is dual-faceted, while the plunge is a fundraising effort for LEAD THE WAY, it is also a chance to bring the community together in a fun environment.

“It gets everybody out to have a little fun and try something they may have wanted to try but never had the chance. Hopefully it’s a chance to bring Williamstown together, raise some money and help some disadvantaged families in our community.” he added.

Despite it being their first year, Whyte anticipates between 50–100 participants. Registration for the plunge starts at noon on March 10. The first dip for adults will take place at 1 p.m. with kids plunging at 1:30 p.m.. Whyte added there will be some giveaways for approximately the first 50 guests to show up in addition to coffee and refreshments.

“I want to make it a fun event,” Whyte said. “It’s on some people’s bucket list, they can stay right in town and do it instead of driving to the beach.”

For more information and updates on the event, visit the Facebook page “LEAD THE WAY to the Polar Plunge.”