fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
The Answer To Hunger
By: Edward Anderson
Tags: Food, Society, Culture, True Crime, Humor

The Answer To Hunger

Florida Man broke into a Wendy’s to satisfy his craving.

Wendy’s logo courtesy of Wendy’s Corporation

Do you want fries with that? It's a sales pitch to increase the volume of food sold at fast-food chains around the world. The phrase has been used to comedic effect many times over the years. News anchors also used it to lead to one audacious crime spree by a mystery man in the Sunshine State.

One Florida man was so hungry that he could not wait until the restaurant reopened for his Wendy’s fix. What is one to do when the craving for a Frosty hits. Really, it’s the hamburger chain’s fault for being so delicious.

As with most “Florida Man” crimes, the motives are not simple. These are complex human beings that have desires that most of us would not understand. Or they live in Florida and live under a different set of rules than the rest of us, you decide.

In With A Brick

With everything happening globally, we are reminded that original protesters used bricks to ward off the New York Police Department. Our Florida man used bricks to gain access to the Wendy’s. Both were technically crimes, one started a revolution for gay rights, and the other adds to the plethora of jokes about Floridian men's wacky tendencies committing crimes.

This Florida man broke a window with a brick and allowed himself entry into the Jensen Beach area restaurant. After getting in, he fired up the grill and threw a hamburger on. Robbing people is hard and really builds up an appetite. It’s selfish to think he should have just taken the money and left. Or not robbed the restaurant chain at all.

Not The Only Robbery

As with most crimes in Florida, this was not an isolated incident. Our Floridian suspect left the Wendy’s after eating and taking money from the safe; he went to another restaurant and followed the same pattern. No word on what he made this time, maybe a nice pasta.

However, he must have been worried about the police catching on because this time, he didn’t open the safe; he just took it with him—a time saver for sure.

He also tried to rob a gas station. This time he failed, though.

Mostly because the police were already in the area and on the hunt for the burger-loving criminal, once he realized this, it is believed he hightailed it out of the area.

The man left behind some evidence, though the police did not indicate what it was.

Keystone Cops

The police are still searching for a suspect and the right hamburger chain. They released a statement about the crimes but seemed to think McDonald’s and Wendy’s are the same things. They wrote on their Facebook page:

“A suspect coined as the modern-day Hamburglar doesn’t appear to have any problem making himself right at home after breaking into local food establishments to make himself a burger.”

Despite the suspect being caught on camera, this may be one crime that is too delicious to solve.
Come to Me Now
By: Shringi Kumari
Tags: Grief, Music, Poetry, Life, Death

Come to Me Now

Poetry

Neolithic wall painting from Tell Bouqras at the museum of Deir az-Zor. Public Domain

The meat —

Tender and sweet

Falling off the bones

The blood —

Glistening nimbus

Exiting the rind

Come to me now

Bare, scraped

Thinly wrapped in life membrane

Come to me now

Bleak but warm

Soft but dead

Pretty but derelict

White as a corpse

Silent but pounding

Down but in command

Song in the sea, people in a circle

Flowers and gauntlets, swords and rayon

Come to me now

Tears and laughs

The only place — home

There is no shame, in pleading for a place

For life in the mud. For life after all

Come here, you know

We don’t end

We fly in the nets

As a woman and her cloud

As a man and his kite shaped gut

We fall off the bones

We are tender and sweet

We stay in the hole of life

We are the white ends of death

Alive in a way. Burnt but

plastic ash flakes that do not ~ dissolve
A simple yet effective guide on Natural Language Processing(NLP) using Python
By: Prateek Nima
Tags: Machine Learning, Naturallanguageprocessing, Software Development, Artificial Intelligence, Interview

As we know while building any Machine Learning model the first step is to clean and transform the data which can then be recognized by machine learning algorithms and help in training the overall model.

The most important library while working with NLP is Natural Language Toolkit wiz NLTK. It consists of numerously inbuilt functions such as tokenization, lemmatization, stemming etc. which forms an integral part for cleaning and transforming the text data before we train the Machine Learning algorithms.

Removal of Rows with Null values

Although, we are considering a single sentence in this case when you are working with a real-world dataset you are dealing with millions of records at the same time. So the first step is to check whether if the current sentence is null or not. If it is a null value we need to discard it and iterate through the next row. This is an essential step since it is quite common to deal with null values in a dataset or even when you are extracting data from any website.

2. Tokenization of Data

Tokenization helps us to divide a sentence into words, as our brain analysis the sentence word by word the same goes with the machine. This helps us to deal with the words one by one.

3. Removal of stopwords

These are the most common words present in every sentence but does not add value in the meaning of the document thereby it is not necessary for analyzing the data. Stopwords include words such as ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘an’, ‘this’ and many others which need to be removed before any further processing.

4. Removal of Non-Alphabetic text

Now our input text is free of the stopwords but still consists of numerics and special characters. Non-alphabetic text cannot be processed by the machine learning algorithms and have no impact by its presence in the data.

5. Stemming of Tokenized Words

Stemming is a process of retrieving the root word from the given word. E.g. a word like dance, dancer are different forms of the word dance. If we won’t stem these words or do not transform to their root word we would end up making vector for each one of them and end up putting extra work on the algorithms. The ‘nltk.stem’ package provides us with stemmer which can be used to convert a word into their root word.

6. Combining the Words to form a Sentence

After the above processes have been performed the tokenized words need to be again combined into sentences before they are converted into the vectorized format.

For illustration(excitement😜) purposes, I have taken dialogue from the movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets which goes as follows

“It is not our abilities that show what we truly are…it is our choices.”

As good as it sounds, we now have transform this sentence to appropriate form before we feed it to our machine learning algorithm.
Everybody is Always Trying Their Best
By: Rob Mann
Tags: Life Lessons, Positive Thinking, Productivity, Empathy, Potential

As a self-proclaimed workaholic who measures my value almost purely on productivity, I tend to be incredibly hard on myself if I’m not getting enough done, and on others who I feel aren’t catching up fast enough or are getting in the way of my own progress.

That’s an awful tendency.

Why would I think the only thing I — or anybody else, for that matter — have to offer is output. It’s great to hear that my ideas and experiences with personal finance or sobriety have helped others, but that can’t be everything. I’ve got to be more than just my work. Right?

In a world where people like Casey Neistat and Gary Vee are idolized for their productivity, we’ve created that idea where the only thing worth celebrating is our work, and if you don’t have as much visible, measurable output as the person next to you, you’re falling behind.

Sure, it’s beneficial to see how hard work really can pay off, and being productive has been proven to give a sense of meaning and purpose, improve our ability to deal with stress, and increase self-confidence. But what happens when measuring productivity becomes counter-productive? Everybody has a different set of abilities and responsibilities; is it fair to compare a YouTuber to an accountant? A writer to a dishwasher? A carpenter to a stay-at-home parent?

Not only does how you make your living impact your so-called output, but judging somebody’s value based on their productivity is fucking dangerous. In theory, we could always do a little bit more, whether that’s publishing another video, scrubbing an extra set of pots and pans, or crunching more numbers.

But honestly, as much as we could technically get more work done, the work never ends. There’s no actual finish line to be crossed. We’ve all got an endless to-do list, and no matter how much you’re doing, it’s always getting longer.
Why Do People in the West Hate Face Masks So Much?
By: Midori Writes
Tags: Health, Life, Covid 19, Culture, Self

Why Do People in the West Hate Face Masks So Much?

It’s a Cultural Issue, Not a Scientific One

Photo by Paul Merki on Unsplash

When Covid-19 began to spread to my home town, Hong Kong, people didn’t spend an extra second to think about getting face masks. In fact, most of us would’ve some leftover from SARS days, and immediately put them on and buy more.

Pandemic or bioterrorism, conspiracist theorists or the general public, no one want to get infected by this shocking virus.

Yet, the west suddenly feels so insecure about having their faces covered, so much so people are protesting on the street without masks on. People call it a human right to not wear face masks and all the other excuses.

I don’t know whether this is ignorance or arrogance. But no one is immune to this, not a person. It’s a cultural issue the west has about face masks, the fear that somehow a piece of cloth will take away our freedom and humanity.

Stupid people kept saying “it’s not right, it’s not right.” The thing is we are all trying to do what we possibly can do, then let’s forget individualism and embrace true humanity with selflessness and consideration.

To say social distancing and other measures are disrupting your everyday course of business and lifestyle is the most short-sighted and selfish thing one can say. It’s so stupid that it prolongs the whole pandemic until today.

Sadly, as the pandemic goes on, a year now since it started in China (or Italy, whatever), celebrities and politicians still have to educate and influence the public to put that bloody simple piece of cloth on their face.

Look at the statistics, Asia is recovering from this painful event and the US passes 300,000 deaths.

It doesn’t really matter if you believe face masks work or not. Look at the world, with it, at most we have a restriction on how many people we can meet at a time; but without using it, lockdown measures will need to be enforced.

Lockdown is no different from discipline measure imposed by our teacher to naughty students. Because we don’t know how to behave appropriately.

The question should no longer be whether face masks work. We should have become desperate enough to wear the masks regardless. If it works for people in Asia, then let’s try it for ourselves.

Because being angry and rebellious about it is not the point, we could be the one who dies. Where’s your logic?

Sorry for the rant, but please, stop being a kid.
Announcing AI Localism: A new platform supporting the responsible use and design of AI at the local level
By: The Govlab
Tags: Cities, Data Stewards, Governance, Covid 19, AI

Announcing AI Localism: A new platform supporting the responsible use and design of AI at the local level The GovLab Follow Sep 30 · 2 min read

Today, The GovLab is excited to launch a new platform which seeks to monitor, analyze and guide how AI is being governed in cities around the world: AI Localism.

AI Localism refers to the actions taken by local decision-makers to address the use of AI within a city or community. AI Localism has often emerged because of gaps left by incomplete state, national or global governance frameworks.

“AI Localism offers both immediacy and proximity. Because it is managed within tightly defined geographic regions, it affords policymakers a better understanding of the tradeoffs involved. By calibrating algorithms and AI policies for local conditions, policymakers have a better chance of creating positive feedback loops that will result in greater effectiveness and accountability.”

The initial AI Localism projects include:

The Ethics and Practice of AI Localism at a Time of Covid-19 and Beyond — In collaboration with the TUM School of Governance and University of Melbourne The GovLab will conduct a comparative review of current practices worldwide to gain a better understanding of successful AI Localism in the context of COVID-19 as to inform and guide local leaders and city officials towards best practices.

Responsible AI at the Local Level — Together with the NYU Center Responsible AI, The GovLab will seek to develop an interactive repository and a set of training modules of Responsible AI approaches at the local level.

Join us as we seek to understand and develop new forms of governance to guide local leaders towards responsible AI implementation or share any effort you are working on to establishing responsible AI at the local level by visiting: http://ailocalism.org
A Better Reading Experience with iOS Dark Mode
By: Thomas Williams
Tags: iOS, Design, Dark Mode, Insights, Apps

Adapting our Color Palette

When it came to our color palette, we determined that it was important that we remain consistent as possible with our standard color palette, and to only introduce new colors where absolutely necessary. This was done to both provide a consistent experience for our readers and to minimize the complexity of our design system. In many cases we were able to leverage existing colors in the palette, and map an equivalent color in dark mode.

There were however instances where new colors were required specifically for dark mode. Examples of these are lighter variations of our blue, gold, green and red. It was necessary to introduce these to maintain our high level of readability and meet AA accessibility standards.

Accessibility

One of our primary objectives for dark mode was to make our apps more accessible and to increase the readability of our content. Using a ‘light mode’ app in low-light conditions can be too bright and cause strain on the eyes. By implementing dark mode we can provide immediate relief for the reader and greatly reduce fatigue.

In addition to mapping our color palette, we also introduced many small adjustments to further the user’s experience and to meet our stringent accessibility standards. An example of this is introducing a light grey (#F4F4F4) instead of pure white (#FFFFFF). While this is mostly indistinguishable to the user, it provides a noticeably softer and more comfortable reading experience.

Selecting these colors and adding this level of nuance to our apps required a lot of trial and error. As color renders differently on desktop screens, and different iOS devices, we spent a significant amount of time testing, evaluation and refining to ensure the best possible result for the largest number of readers.
Using Standard Deviation in Python
By: Reza Rajabi
Tags: Data Science, Standard Deviation, Python, Data Visualization

Standard Deviation in Practice

Using Standard Deviation in Python

Mean, Standard deviation, and Error bar in Python

As this article mentioned, with Standard Deviation you can get a handle on whether your data are close to the average or they are spread out over a wide range. For example, if an employer wants to determine if the salaries in one of his departments seem fair for all employees, or if there is a great disparity, he can use standard deviation. To do that, he can find the average of the salaries in that department and then calculate the standard deviation. One scenario could be like the following; He finds that the standard deviation is slightly higher than he expected, he examines the data further and finds that while most employees fall within a similar pay bracket, four loyal employees who have been in the department for 15 years or more, far longer than the others, are making far more due to their longevity with the company.

In general, a low standard deviation means that the data is very closely related to the average, thus very reliable and a high standard deviation means that there is a large variance between the data and the statistical average, thus not as reliable.
Sight and Sound
By: Esther Spurrill-Jones
Tags: Flash Fiction, Art, Fiction, LGBTQ, Music

Sight and Sound

The Purest Art, The Most Exquisite Music

“person playing violin” by Madelon 🇫🇷 on Unsplash

Circles and swirling spirals across skin, a never ending panoply of invisible pictures. Fingertips trailing shivers, lips painting kisses, bodies crafting passion, hearts creating ecstasy.

John’s eyes drift shut as he dips his head over the richly polished wood of his violin, the nimble fingers of his left hand flickering over its slim neck. He draws the bow across the strings, shaping a pure clear melody that rings out into the quiet room and trembles in Erik’s bones where he lolls across the rumpled sheets. The notes flow through Erik like liquid, like light, and he sees past the walls of their tiny flat into infinity.

Colours blend and fuse, creating new shades and shapes upon the canvas. Erik tilts his head and chews his lip, fingers gripping the brush’s metal ferrule as the soft bristles move almost without thought, quickly filling in a depiction of John bent over his violin. It is an image that is permanently etched upon Erik’s soul, and he has pencilled and inked and painted it many times, but never to his own satisfaction. He cannot capture the euphoria in oils or charcoal, cannot delineate the exaltation in watercolours. Still, he tries.

A rhythm, a pulse within the blood, hearts keeping time with a primal beat. Bodies moving as one, dancing to a music old as time. Breath and voice join together, singing a deep chant of rapturous bliss.

The sun rises. Golden light sneaks through the frosted glass to creep across the blankets, gilding faces. John’s green eyes flutter open first, then Erik’s browns, and they smile into each other. This is the purest art, the most exquisite music — this is riches.

♥

This piece is part of the short fiction challenge of the LGBTQ Fiction Project, hosted on Crossin(G)enres. This week’s theme is “Work of Art.”

Other Stories:
Universal data tool weekly update 4
By: Wafaa Arbash
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence

If you haven’t heard of the Universal Data Tool, it’s an open-source web or desktop program to collaborate, build and edit text, image, video, and audio datasets with labels and annotations. You can get started with the Universal Data Tool

This is our fourth community update! We’re hoping by releasing these we can better engage the community and encourage new contributors. There’s also a video version. Let’s get started…

New Feature: Universal Data Tool Courses

With this update, we are introducing the training courses for Universal DataTool. With this feature now you can ensure that your labeler team is working not only in a streamlined way but with the best quality as well. The people working on a dataset will have to complete it before they can begin working on the labels.

Creating a training course is super easy and it can be done in just a few minutes. You can insert a dataset of your choice to be put in the training. This training contains questions, exercises, tests, and different editable options.

New Feature: Text Entity Relations

This is a much-awaited feature that was missing in the NLP(Natural Language Processing). This feature allows you to draw between different texts to create the relation. You can do it just by using a one-line command and it works super fast. Not only that but you can also click on read more options to get additional commands and ways to use them which can be useful in different scenarios.

New Feature: Download Mask Button

This is a small but very useful feature that we have added in the latest update. With this feature, you can download the colored masks just by clicking on the button which is in the download options list.

New update: Brand new layout

With this new update, you can see a totally new layout of the options. It’s less cluttered and different options can be seen in different tabs. This makes using the Universal Data Tool easier than ever.

Other updates:

Feedback button: Now you can share the feedback with us by clicking on this little button on the right bottom corner of the page. It allows you to add the screenshots as well. (thanks @moufette)

Now you can share the feedback with us by clicking on this little button on the right bottom corner of the page. It allows you to add the screenshots as well. (thanks @moufette) New Homepage: Now we have a redesigned and cool looking Homepage which can give you more information and insight into the Universal Data Tool

That’s it for our fourth community update, be sure to follow us on Twitter, or join our Slack to hear more!
10 JavaScript One-liners You Have Got to Add Your Arsenal as a Developer
By: Twan Mulder
Tags: Programming, Software Engineering, JavaScript, Web Development, Technology

JavaScript can do a lot of amazing things!

From complex frameworks to handling API’s, there is just SO much to learn.

But, it also enables you to do some awesome stuff using just one single line.

Check out these 10 one-liners to step up your JavaScript game!
How NEAT Might Be the Key to Your Weight Loss Goals
By: Ashley Richmond
Tags: Self Improvement, Lifestyle, Health, Weight Loss, Advice

How NEAT Might Be the Key to Your Weight Loss Goals

Simple changes in your day can have a huge impact on your body composition.

Photo by Ryan Moreno on Unsplash

Trying to lose weight can be frustrating. The information we receive is confusing — we don’t know what to eat, what exercises to do, or what an ideal weight even is for us. It’s common to experience plateaus and lose motivation. It’s hard to feel like we’re restricted in what we can eat, and it can be exhausting and frankly just non-sustainable to do intense workouts every single day.

But losing weight doesn’t need to be complicated, or difficult. Sometimes, the smallest change can be the tipping point in our weight loss journey. So here is one simple change you can make in your life, that can have a big impact.
4 keys to improving your Design
By: Othmane Agoumi
Tags: UX, UX Design, Creativity, Habits, Branding

Let’s begin with you, are you a creative person? I think you are. Do you know why? because you’re a human who has knowledge and awareness of your daily needs and wants, and how you serve yourself; by thinking, finding solutions for your problems and requests.

Creativity isn’t a gift from God is a Continuity of practice, is a to cross your Cognitive bounds to reach the next level of thinking and creation. Let’s do it.

If you’re a designer you know your priority is the users or consumers, so you know that you’re designing for humans, not aliens and we are aware of how we think and how we behave thank you psychology. if you read books or you have ideas about their subject you know Atomic habits by James Clear one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. what I learned from this book that tiny changes are the most impact on our lives our works our thinking. this practical strategy has principles 4 principles Cue-Craving-Response-Reward so how I use this method in my design.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. — HERBERT SIMON, recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and the A.M. Turing Award, the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science”

What is the first thing you begin your design with, get a good first impression, A big Headline, or a strong CTA that is the aim of the first page, so when you grab your users attention you build that curiosity to explore, the next step is to give more to grow that craving for knowledge simply to behave and what is the shape of that behavior is to respond by buying your product or using your services and this is the reward.
PR: ECOMI to Participate at RISE Conference Hong Kong 2018
Tags: Startup, Blockchain, Conference, Altcoins, Cryptocurrency

Join us at Asia’s largest tech conference and see ECOMI Collect’s augmented reality in action!

SINGAPORE, July 6, 2018 — ECOMI has announced its participation at RISE Conference 2018, taking place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) on 9–12 July.

ECOMI will exhibit in the Gaming, VR, and AR industry category as part of the RISE ALPHA Program on Thursday, July 12. The brand will feature interactive demos and will have a dedicated team available to answer any questions about ECOMI’s ecosystem of products.

ECOMI’s CEO, David Yu, and Chief Operating Officer, Daniel Crothers, will be attending the event to showcase the Secure Wallet and the ECOMI Collect augmented reality feature with licensed tokidoki characters.

“We are very excited to be a part of the ALPHA Program at RISE,” said Yu, “Blockchain technology has exploded among consumer interest over the last couple of years, and we can’t wait to showcase our cold-storage hardware wallet that can also bring digital collectable characters to life.”

Conference attendees hoping to preview ECOMI’s line of consumer crypto products, and to speak with CEO, David Yu, can stop by Stand A-226 in the ALPHA Startup Zone on the third day of the conference. Attendees will also have a chance to win Secure Wallets on the day.

CEO David Yu and COO Dan Crothers showing off the ECOMI Secure Wallet

For more information on ECOMI, visit ecomi.com, and follow ECOMI for real-time updates on Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Bitcoin Talk, LinkedIn, and Medium.

About ECOMI

ECOMI’s vision is to create the world’s best platform to pay, protect, and collect using blockchain technology. ECOMI delivers the freedom to secure and control your digital collectables, data, and cryptocurrencies via a user-friendly solution. Our approach is a connect-the-dots strategy, with each solution, or ‘dot’, contributing to the greater ECOMI blockchain ecosystem. The ECOMI all-in-one ecosystem includes ECOMI Collect, ECOMI Vault, ECOMI Secure Wallet, and ECOMI One card and mobile apps. For more information, please visit www.ecomi.com.

About RISE Conference Hong Kong 2018

In July 2018, people from the world’s biggest companies and most exciting startups will come to Hong Kong to share their stories and experiences. They’ll be joined by major global media, hundreds of investors and thousands of attendees for three days of legendary networking.

RISE Conference is operated by the team behind Web Summit. In 6 short years, Web Summit has become Europe’s largest tech conference which last year attracted 53,000 attendees from 136 countries around the world.

-END -

For more information, contact:

Melissa Vitale

Melissa@MelissaAVitale.com

+1 (908) — 528 -6573
Radio frequency with the raspberry pi
By: David Vassallo
Tags: Work, Development, Raspberry Pi

…. these will make a good addition to the homecontrol center

Getting notifications when a 315MHz radio button is pressed:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRTDYcQ4I8A&w=1280&h=720]

And using it to control a mains-connected nightlamp:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8haKhGthD_I&w=1280&h=720]

… Read more at David’s Blog
by Martino Pietropoli
By: Martino Pietropoli
Tags: Humor, Psychology, Monday, Comics

First thing in the morning: a glass of water and a cartoon by The Fluxus.

Follow
The Definitions of Strategy and Tactics: Why You’ll Always Need Both
By: Darren Matthews
Tags: Strategy, Leadership, Business, Business Strategy, Startup

Business Tactics

Business tactics are short-term plans that don’t deviate from the overall strategy. These are the actions that influence the success or failure of a business strategy. Because they define an action, they’re often time-limited and can be quite fluid. Being fluid allows different tactics to be used depending on the situation. Often these come about because something that a business believed proved not to be the case. This means that tactics may vary massively, both negatively and positively!

For example, if a competitor reduced a price on a product that was part of a strategy, the effect might require a response. A response might be to do nothing or to change tactics. A change of tactics might be to reduce the price, but that could lose margin. Another step might be to differentiate by creating a promotion to add value for the customer.

There are lots of points to consider and that’s the power of tactics. It makes no assumptions about the future but instead reacts to the current situation.

A business might also find itself in a positive position: a competitor going out of business or having supply chain issues, for example. All of them should compel a tactical response, enabling a business to make the most of the opportunity. Of course, that tactical change should be balanced against any strategy that’s in place.

At the outset of this article, I stated, “strategy vs tactics: don’t they mean the same thing?”

I don’t believe they’re the same thing at all. For me, it’s clear that a business needs both to be a winner. I say that with utter conviction from my experiences and seeing how important a good strategy is in achieving success.

Having an array of tactics enables a business to respond quickly, especially in times of change. These can include changes to the marketplace, competitors, and customers. All things that can’t be easily planned for.

The essence of navigating through this is down to one thing: leadership. Good leadership in business is a critical success factor. Leadership comes with a responsibility to make decisions. Simply put, using the right tactics at the right time to deliver the strategy.
100 Things You Should Know About People: #64 — Groups Are Swayed By A Dominant Personality
By: The Team W
Tags: Research, Decision Making, Psychology, Psychology Research

In the last blog post I talked about how groups end up making faulty decisions. How many times have you been part of a group discussion and decision-making process and there is one person who is dominating the conversation and the decision. Just because decisions are made in a group setting doesn’t mean that the entire group really made the decision. Many people give up in the presence of one or more dominant group members, and may not speak up at all.

Why does the leader become the leader? — Anderson and Kilduff (2009) researched group decision-making. They formed groups of four students each and had them solve math problems from the GMAT (a standardized test for admission to graduate business school programs).

Everyone agrees who the leader is — During the problem solving session the researchers videotaped the group conversations and reviewed them later to decide who was the leader of each group. They had multiple sets of observers view the videos to see if there was consensus about who the leaders were. They also asked the people in the groups who they thought was the leader of their group. Everyone agreed on who the leader was in each group. Before the groups started, everyone filled out a questionnaire to measure level of dominance. As you might imagine, the leaders had all scored high on the dominance measure. But that still doesn’t say how they became leaders. Were they the people with the best math SAT scores? (No). Did they bully everyone else into letting them be the leader? (No).

The leaders speak first — For 94% of the problems the group’s final answer was the first answer that was proposed, and the people with the dominant personalities were the ones that spoke up first.

The dangers of focus groups — This is one reason why I am skeptical about focus groups for user research (as opposed to one-on-one interviews or user testing).

What do you think? Do you use focus groups?

And for those of you who like to read the research:

Anderson, Cameron & Kilduff, G. (2009). Why do dominant personalities attain influence in face-to-face groups? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(2), 491–503.
Line of Sight
Tags: Poetry, Meditation, Music, Photography, Audible Sundays

Audible Sundays

Line of Sight

Photo by LB

In times of uncertainty, explore the refuge between breaths. A naturally hidden experience awaits your focus. If we sit with wonder, a sense of calm can be manifested. When the mind becomes secondary, bodily awareness becomes primary. An internal vista will emerge, stretching far beyond your line of sight.
A guide of UI design trends for 2021
By: Diana Malewicz
Tags: UI, Visual Design, Design, UX, Product Design

9. Brutalism

This is a trend that I have the most problem with (maybe not so much as with neuomorphism, to be honest). It’s called brutalism and it looks quite as the name suggests — strong contrasts, often unpleasant typography and many problems with the accessibility and readability. But I get the overall vibe — the main idea behind it is basically a deconstruction of what we perceive as beautiful and useful.

Surprisingly, I’m seeing many websites and apps actually pursuing this trend! (one of it being a polish radio station called Newonce).

I really tried but I am not a fan of it when it comes to UI. I would prefer it to stay on posters and in magazines.
9 React Testing Library Tips and Tricks
By: Paige Niedringhaus
Tags: React, React Testing Library, Tdd, Programming, JavaScript

What Is React Testing Library? And Why Is It Different?

Note: This is not a “Getting Started with RTL” piece. This article assumes you already have a pretty good understanding of how to use the testing framework. My aim is to show you some additional tricks to make writing (and debugging) tests easier.

With that said, I will give a brief overview of the whys and hows of React Testing Library before I dive into the meat of this article.

The why

Kent C. Dodds created the React Testing Library to address one problem: Other testing libraries encouraged developers to write tests that were too tightly coupled to the implementation details of the components they were testing. Dodds believed that the tests should only verify the end results (the behavior) of the components.

It makes sense when you think about it, right?

Why don’t we write integration tests closer to the way we write end-to-end tests? Tests that focus on the user’s perspective (how the component looks and behaves in the DOM). Because that’s what ultimately matters in the end: Do the components do what they’re supposed to do when a user interacts with them?

We don’t necessarily care if it stores something in the Redux store or makes a particular API call to fetch data. Users don’t know or care about that — they care about if the screen shows the info they clicked on or the item they ordered is being shipped to them. And as developers, RTL’s stance is that we should care about that too.

To that end, Dodds recommends approaching testing in the following way:

Avoid dependencies on the implementation details of your components.

Make testing easy to maintain (i.e. refactoring the component implementation does not break the tests).

Avoid shallow mounting, as we want to test that the components integrate to solve a user problem (such as editing data in a form).

And this leads me to…

The how

The React Testing Library is a very lightweight solution for testing React components. It provides light utility functions on top of react-dom and react-dom/test-utils in a way that encourages better testing practices.

Here are some interesting aspects of React Testing Library:

It focuses on verifying actual DOM nodes rather than verifying instances of rendered React components.

It provides utilities for querying the DOM in the same way the user would.

It finds elements by their label text (just like a user would).

It finds links and buttons from their text (like a user would).

It provides a way to find elements by a data-testid as an “escape hatch” for elements where the text content and label do not make sense or are not practical or available.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff: the hot tips.
ARK Is Going To Asia: Sponsoring Korea Blockchain Summit
By: Rok Černec
Tags: Marketing, Crypto, Blockchain, Conference, Korea

With ARK mostly attending US & EU conferences to date, it is time to change the scenery and visit one of the biggest blockchain summits in South Korea. We can’t wait to meet our supporters in the region and make new friends as we continue to spread the word about ARK across the globe. If you are attending, be sure to stop by our booth, say hello, and grab some swag!

Korea Blockchain Summit (KBS) 2018 will be happening in Seoul, South Korea on the 12th and 13th of July 2018.

KBS will feature a number of different topics, including use case studies and technical discussions. KBS expects over 500 senior and targeted decision makers in attendance, coming from banking, finance, insurance, transport, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, retail franchises and over 1000 attendees that are interested in blockchain technology.

The speaker lineup consists of over 25 of the top minds in the industry, including our very own Dr. Scott McPherson.

The following ARK crew members will be present at the conference and available at our booth:

Travis Walker, co-founder

Chin Song, co-founder

Scott McPherson, co-founder

Simon Downey, ARK developer

To learn more about Korea Blockchain Summit please visit their website: https://koreablockchainsummit.com/

Follow us on social media ( Twitter | Facebook | Reddit ) and stay tuned to our blog on Medium and on Steemit.
Why Does Marketing Advice All Sound the Same?
By: Cassi Lowe
Tags: Marketing, B2B, Business, Online Marketing, Digital Marketing

You know how it is. You see a headline for a blog post that promises to solve your marketing problems. You click the link and skim through the article. It’s all information that you’ve read before.

It follows the same format as every other marketing blog post with basically the same content. You close out of the article and feel disappointed that it didn’t include anything new or ground-breaking.

You move on to the next article in your feed and continue to look for the one piece of information that will have a big impact on your business.

There are several reasons why most marketing advice sounds the same.

IT WORKS.

The simple fact is that the “generic” advice is tried and true. Most marketing articles will tell you to start with your target market or ideal client. Then they will outline how an online marketing sales funnel works.

It may sound boring, but these are the essential building blocks for online marketing. Many people try to skip these basics because they aren’t sexy or considered growth hacks.

Start from the beginning with your target market, then create a system for getting in front of those potential clients. Take a look at your marketing and determine if you have put enough thought into these steps, or if you are attempting to skip them in favor of something more complicated.

THERE ARE NO SECRETS.

It’s easy to get stuck in a loop of constantly trying to find the new “secret” or “shortcut” to find new clients. Sometimes it feels like the gurus are hiding something from you. If you could only figure out what it is, you could be successful.

There will always be new tactics to try or social media platforms to join, but ultimately it comes down to those basics mentioned above. Chasing new fads or falling for get-rich-quick schemes never works.

CONSISTENCY IS KEY.

Putting in consistent effort to provide value to your target market is the most reliable path for online marketing success. It’s a lot more work than searching for a big secret, but it will provide much better results.

Figure out who you are serving, then help them solve their problems on a consistent basis. This is advice that has been said over and over in many different ways.

Many will overlook this basic advice, because it can be hard work to follow through. But it is worth the effort you put in over time. You’ll attract higher quality clients and have a more sustainable business.

Your reputation will grow as a professional who provides real solutions. Gimmicks and fads will never help over the long run.

Not sure where to start? Click here for The Essential Guide to Online Marketing for B2B Professionals.

This article was originally published on RosyPost.com
Deploying a Flask API to Heroku
By: Seann Branchfield
Tags: Python, Programming, Flask, Heroku, Coding

In my previous article, I wrote about how to build an API with Flask. This article is about how to deploy it to Heroku, or more specifically, what steps you need to take to prepare your app to be deployed. If you have built your app correctly, it will need some modifications before you can deploy it.

My preferred way of deploying apps is by connecting a Github repository to a service like Heroku or Netlify. It is so easy to deploy your production-ready branch once it is up there. All you need is an account. While it is very easy to connect, it won’t deploy properly if you simply connect it because Heroku needs things to be in a specific format.

Important Steps Before You Deploy

We need a web server, so install Gunicorn:

pip install gunicorn

In your project in terminal if you type in: pip freeze, you will get a convenient list of your dependencies. What we actually want to do is to save these into a requirements.txt file so type in the command:

pip freeze > requirements.txt

Once we have this file, which Heroku uses, we can delete our Pipfile and Pipfile.lock. I know that sounds horrible and scary! Feel free to do this on a new git branch or simply move them into a new empty folder somewhere if it gives you peace of mind. This is crucial because your app will not deploy correctly if this Pipfile is in your folder.

Now that Gunicorn is installed, we also need to make a Procfile. Create the file (named Procfile with no extension) at the base level of your project and then add the line:

web: gunicorn app:app

Make sure you add, commit and push your changes.

Your project folder should looks something like this

Actual Deployment

From here if you follow the steps to connect your git repository to Heroku. Create a new app and pick a name that is available. On the next screen where it says Deployment Method, you can select Github and find your repository. Alternatively, if you’d rather deploy from a command line (which is what you usually find when you search for “how to deploy to Heroku”), there are instructions conveniently on that screen as well.

Summary

In summary, you need to do three things to prepare for deploying a Flask app to Heroku: Install Gunicorn, create a requirements.txt file and then create the Procfile with one line. From there, deploying is easy using whichever method you prefer.
How to Resolve Git Conflicts Faster and More Easily in Your Favorite IDE
By: Živković Miloš
Tags: Python, JavaScript, Git, Programming, Version Control

2. IntelliJ

Git conflict in IntelliJ

If you click on Resolve right after Merge Conflicts , you will get this window. You are presented with some options similar to ones in VS Code. Accepting yours means you keep the changes from your branch (in our case, their changes are from the master ).

Let’s say you’re not happy with that. Then you double-click the problematic file:

Interactively resolve conflicts in IntelliJ

In this step, you can see what exactly is going to happen. The first tab is your branch, feature-2 . The middle tab will be the merge result. The third tab is the branch you are trying to merge ( master ).

You can select >> to add the changes or click on X to discard them.
Poetry Prompt: Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk
By: Katerina Canyon
Tags: Writing Prompts, Poem, Creative Writing, Creativity, Poetry

It is usually a good idea to avoid idioms in your creative writing. Most times, the terms have been over done, and idioms do very little to add value to creative endeavors. The exception to this is when the idiom is the topic or focus of the creative work.

For example, Nin Andrews uses the phrase, “Cleanliness is next to godliness” to write a beautiful poem about her grandmother. My poem ‘Blessings’ uses the idiom, “far cry from.”

Prompt: Choose an idiom and write a poem focusing on that phrase. Does the idiom bring an event or person to mind? Do you find irony in the phrase? Does the phrase make you feel happy, sad, or angry? Why?

Form Challenge: If you feel like you need an extra challenge, write a rondeau.

Sample Idioms: Kill two birds with one stone; a hot potato; take with a grain of salt; Elvis has left the building; see eye to eye; in the heat of the moment; a penny for your thoughts

Katerina Canyon served as Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, California from 2000 to 2003. She has a MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a BA in English, Creative Writing, and International Studies from Saint Louis University. She has been published in the New York Times and Huffington Post. Her most recent poetry was published in Black Napkin. Her latest collection Changing the Lines is currently available on Amazon. You can learn more about Katerina at PoeticKat.com.
What Spelling Someone’s Name Wrong Online Says About You
By: Jordan Gross
Tags: Humor, Creativity, Life, Life Lessons, Self Improvement

What Spelling Someone’s Name Wrong Online Says About You

Come on, it’s right in front of your eyes.

Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

Thanks so much, Jordon!

Have a great day, Gordon!

It was so nice chatting with you, Jason!

If this happens at the end of a live conversation with somebody I just met, I get it. It’s a simple mix-up. I fully understand somebody’s name slipping your mind after an in-person conversation. In fact, my friend of 10 years is so bad with names, I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t know my real name — only my nickname.

But there’s a difference between somebody’s name slipping your mind during a conversation, and blatantly getting somebody’s name wrong on the internet. Especially when their name is right there on the screen in front of you, and you had to actively see their name in order to reach out. To me, getting somebody’s name wrong online — unless it is a true slip of the finger, and is corrected after — shows more about somebody than many realize. To me, this is what it means.