fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Mental Models For Dummies
By: Brian Pennie
Tags: Leadership, Decision Making, Life, Thinking, Psychology

Blind spots, big blind spots

Having a variety of mental models at our disposal is particularly important when facing complex problems, as it provides us with an ability to see the world through multiple lenses.

Unfortunately, however, society tends to look at reality through a single lens, dividing it into discrete topics to make it more accessible for study. Shane Parrish captures this nicely in his latest book The Great Mental Models:

“Most of us study something specific and don’t get exposure to the big ideas of other disciplines. We don’t develop the multidisciplinary mindset that we need to accurately see a problem. And because we don’t have the right models to understand the situation, we overuse the models we do have, and use them even when they don’t belong.”

For example, an economist will often think in terms of supply and demand. A behavioural psychologist will think in terms of reward and punishment. Through their respective disciplines, these individuals only see part of the situation, the part of the world that makes sense to them.

“None of them, however, see the entire situation unless they are thinking in a multidisciplinary way. In short, they have blind spots, big blind spots.”

To better navigate the complexities of life, and to help us to see our blind spots, we need what Charlie Munger — one of the most successful people in the world — calls, a “latticework of mental models” (see image below).

Source: Example of a latticework — interlacing strips of material forming a lattice

A latticework is a great way to conceptualise mental models because it demonstrates the interconnected nature of knowledge. Reality is not comprised of a unique set of disciplines. We only break it down that way to make it easier to digest.

However, once we learn something, we need to place it back into the interconnected system from which it came. Only then can we begin to build an understanding of the whole. This, as Shane notes, “is the value of putting the knowledge contained in mental models into a latticework.”
Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You
By: Shannon Ashley
Tags: Success, Comedy, Life Lessons, Inspiration, Writing

Back when I was still in high school, I was a bass clarinetist in the Minnesota All-State Band. One year, we had a conductor from Texas who told a story about his college days in California.

You see, this conductor was heavily immersed in the school’s arts programs, and he told us about a classmate named Steve.

Steve was an actor. Well, Steve was a wannabe actor, and he was known for “stealing the scene” in every production.

Supposedly, it was a bit of a joke on campus that this dude was so over the top that he drew attention to himself even when he had non-speaking roles.

Our conductor animated his story with flailing arms and overeager expressions to illustrate how Steve could always be seen in the background of any performance.

I sat there on stage listening to this story over twenty years ago, so who knows what details or nuance I’m forgetting. But I believe the conductor’s point was to stress the power of perseverance, and the punchline of the whole thing was that this kid who couldn’t quit drawing attention to himself was none other than Steve Martin.
The Art of Demotivation
By: Ryan M. Danks
Tags: Self Improvement, Motivation, Self, Life Hacking, Inspiration

Use negative self-talk to your advantage

Memes and quotes that motivate you to greater achievement, that create the sort of behavior that will make you more successful in all that you attempt to do in life? You’re not going to use any of that.

In the art of demotivation, you’re going to do just the opposite.

Find or make up negative quotes or memes that judge behavior. The effects of negative self-talk are widely known to derail your attempts to get better at something.

Sounds effective in stopping you cold, doesn’t it? Why not use that to your advantage?

As an example, say you want to lose weight. Rather than positive messages that your mind knows are fake, like “carbs are bad” or “my caveman ancestors didn’t need it, so neither do I,” try something like this:

“What you eat in private you wear in public.”

That’s pretty negative, right? But it makes you think twice about running for the pantry, doesn’t it?

Here’s another for someone who’s trying to quit smoking:

“You’re friends hate how you smell becaues you smoke all the time.”

That one gets even worse if your friends have actually said something like that to you. If you’re single, make it instead about how kissing a person who smokes tastes like licking an ashtray.

This point may sound harsh, but there’s a reason negative self-talk regarding self-esteem ruins any attempts at happiness: it’s effective.
Startups In The House! Innovators In Residence Join 8-Week Bootcamp
By: Chris Mclemore
Tags: Entrepreneurship

The Oakland Startup Network, Apps Without Code, and Kapor Center for Social Impact have partnered to announce a unique program for entrepreneurs building the tools of tomorrow — Innovators Residence at Kapor Center Innovation lab (iLab). Our goal is to guide local founders from prototype to product and monetization via hands-on curriculum and mentoring.

A total of 6 tech startups based in Oakland were selected to receive full scholarships to the 8-week bootcamp, and be the first incubated cohort of innovators residing in the Kapor Center iLab. The teams selected are to receive curated coaching, mentoring, as well as co-working space to effectively scale their business and generate revenue.

Sonam Swati is founder of bossy, a fintech organization localizing crowd-lending spheres by encouraging small businesses to create incentives on products or services they offer.

The goal of bossy, is to create a connected community of grass-roots organizations, and women entrepreneurs, by providing a web and mobile platform that will seamlessly feature, process, and celebrate loans given to women following their dreams.

Eugene Baah is founder of Resoltz, a wellness tech platform designed for physical education instructors. The digital learning platform allows higher-education instructors to create fitness programs, track nutrition, and deliver meditation/mindfulness programs, while verifying activity using affordable wearable branded devices.

Resoltz increases the access of physical education resources to students on and off campus, it allows instructors to spend less time creating course content, and to monitor student progress more efficiently.

Pamela Martinez is founder of Prezta, a platform that will allow borrowers and lenders to agree on a payment plan, receive reminders about payments, and track how much money has been paid back over time. This platform plan to solve the lending problem in the U.S., and empower people to leverage relationships in times of financial need and build sound financial habits.

Vicente Garcia is founder of Woke, a digital media space and entertainment network for content that is truly diverse and representative. Woke disrupts the status quo of media and entertainment by showcasing content from underrepresented identities in bold and creative ways. The main product is an online streaming service that allows users to access and pay for diverse streaming content that represents their values.

Alivia Blount is founder of PreUni, a startup dedicated to eliminating the paper trail during the application process in preschool databases. By issuing a unique form submission, PreUni enables parents to create a single profile for themselves and child to create a streamlined application. The goal of PreUni is eventually establish a system which tracks a student from pre-school to high school.

Elon Hufana is founder of Shasel, a marketplace that delivers timeless mobile personalized travel experiences and itineraries that align with your interests, schedule, and budget.
Georgia O’Keeffe on Daily Work, Happiness & Success
By: Larry G. Maguire
Tags: Work, Self, Art, Happiness, Creativity

Georgia O’Keeffe on Daily Work, Happiness & Success

Certain people come our way that reinforce our inherent thoughts and ideas. Georgia O’Keeffe is one of those

I once believed that there was someone out there with the answers — somebody somewhere who knew what I didn’t. All I needed to do to find them and extract their knowledge was to be persistent.

I was sure I would discover the secret in a mentor’s words, in the lines of an old book, at a conference, or a business networking event.

Whatever the magic ingredient, I didn’t have it. Instead, it was out there, and I was going to find it.

I didn’t find it.

Not for a moment did I consider that my pursuit would come to nought, that I would lose all material gain made over the previous fifteen years. I was swallowed by my own insatiable appetite for external validity.

In some respects, you could say that I wasted fifteen years chasing ghosts. Perhaps, but I learned something valuable that the right course would never have taught me.

“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing, and keeping the unknown always beyond you.” ―Georgia O’Keeffe, Artist

I learned that the first and maybe the only reason to work is for the inherent enjoyment we get from it. What other reason is there ever to do anything? Have we not learned that working this 9-to-5 thing, or whatever variation of it you want, is a waste of a life?

I think we all individually need to come to this realisation on our own. Eventually, we get it that there is nobody to please, no extrinsic reward that can ever make us happy. There are no short-cuts, no hacks, no quick fixes.

It’s simply about the work.

In the meantime, this is one of our most significant challenges because many of us work for what we can get out of it. We need to make a living, pay bills, fulfil commitments, and subsequently work becomes a chore. Happiness eludes us.

Success, or the lack thereof, becomes our dominant focus, and daily work suffers. Writer’s block, creative block, or simply a downright funk kicks in and momentum keeps it going.

Until we can snap out of it, we can’t.
Dear web designer, let's stop breaking the affordance of scrolling
By: Rodrigo Muniz
Tags: UX Design, UX, Design

We can do better than a "Scroll arrow"

Huge's research can tell us one thing or two about how some users can skip your content once you break the affordance of scrolling and about the solutions to that problem. Even though the scrorrow had a very successful result, is it really a solution to be tested? Compare the results between "Scroll arrow" and "Short image". They're literally the same. Now compare the "Scroll arrow" with "Control image". I mean it's obvious to me that in the case of the arrow users scrolled cause the page was yelling at them. In other words, it works but it doesn't provide a good experience. If people perceive content bellow the image, they’ll naturally scroll.

Using subtle animation to communicate (not an animated arrow though)

Animating the elements of the page can give great clues about the content below that huge picture. I'm not saying I have the perfect solution for every case, but I'll use animation to brainstorm other ways to handle this.

In the first example, our content pops from the bottom and disappears right after. It's like saying "Hello, I'm here. If you need me, just do your thing:"

If you're using a parallax effect in the main picture, take advantage of it to help give that sneak peek a less subtle effect — also to be consistent with the page's behavior. After all if the picture zooms out when the user scrolls, it should do the same on that page load hint:

In case of multiple blocks, the content can be nicely choreographed:

Don't hide the content, take control of it

Google Fit Android app uses just part of the first card from below the big circular chart to indicate that there’s more content to see. This approach is intuitive and elegant cause it's using no additional elements to talk to the user. It’s just them hanging out on the land of good perception, while leaving a lot of room for that main circle to shine.

This isn't new. In 2006, Jared Spool was already discussing the use of the cut-off look to improve the affordance of scrolling.

On the web you can achieve something like this getting the picture section to fit around 90% of the viewport max-height, with just one line of CSS or some quick JavaScript (if you need to support old browsers).

What about combining it with an animation and setting a lower opacity for the content? That way it can't take much of the user's attention from your beloved main picture:

Let's just be careful about the level of opacity. If it's too low we're doing no good. Oh and let's not forget to set the opacity back to 100% when the user scroll the page or interact with those elements as well :-)
Writer’s Block
By: Katya Davydova
Tags: Writing, Reading, Stuck, Resistance Poetry, Wordplay

Photo by Pedro Araújo on Unsplash

I keep waiting for truffles to

tumble out; perfect decadence from a pen

to graze your mind

and instead: doubt

stale sequences squeeze their way

between the lines as your brain’s narrator

a slithering sine, an up-and-down elevator

of thoughts, signs of homeostasis

but I want for you an oasis of fire:

I want you to be ablaze

for my tritest words to spark

electricity, for a phrase

to hitch your breath

and steal it away for microseconds

what happens instead

is your eyeballs hopskip letters laden with lead, heavy

you read slowly and continue to

inhale and exhale
Regular Expressions Are Still Useful For Chatbots
By: Cobus Greyling
Tags: Conversational UI, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, NLP, Chatbots

Regular Expressions Are Still Useful For Chatbots

Using Regular Expressions With LUIS & Bot Framework Composer

Introduction

The concept formed during the 1950’s by an American mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene. He formalized the description of a regular language.

Regex Entities in LUIS

A Regular expression (regex) is a sequence of characters defined by a pattern.

A regex is a standard textual syntax which represents a pattern we want to match in our text.

A degree of flexibility can be introduce by using wildcards.

The entity is a good fit when:

The data are consistently formatted with any variation that is also consistent.

The regular expression does not need more than 2 levels of nesting.

A good way to think of employing Regex in your chatbot is where you want to extract an entity which have a limited format…The format of the number might be very constant, but with high variances of letters of numbers.

Examples of such numbers are:

Reference Numbers

Flight Numbers

Ticket Reference Numbers etc.

An added advantageous of Regular Expressions is the fact that is is lightweight and a compact way to extract specific information. You do not have to worry about training examples, contextual awareness or specific intents necessarily.
[Paper] DB-CNN: Deep Bilinear Convolutional Neural Network (Image Quality Assessment)
By: Sik-Ho Tsang
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Quality Assessment, Convolutional Network, Deep Learning, Iqa

In this story, Blind Image Quality Assessment Using A Deep Bilinear Convolutional Neural Network (DB-CNN), by Wuhan University, New York University, and University of Waterloo, is presented. I read this because I recently study IQA/VQA. In this paper:

For synthetic distortions , a CNN is pre-trained to classify image distortion type and level .

, a CNN is pre-trained to . For authentic distortions , a pretrained CNN for image classification is adopted .

, . The features from the two CNNs are pooled bilinearly into a unified representation for final quality prediction.

The entire model is fine-tuned on target subject-rated databases.

This is a paper in 2020 TCVST where TCSVT has a high impact factor of 4.133. (Sik-Ho Tsang @ Medium)
Masturbation May be The Solution to 80% of Our Problems
By: Dona Mwiria
Tags: Growth, Women, Men, Science, Sexuality

Masturbation May be The Solution to 80% of Our Problems

Here is the science to back it up.

Photo by Francesca Zama from Pexels

A friend once said 9 out of 10 people masturbate, and the tenth person is a liar. She was right, masturbation is one of the first things we learn to do in the womb. This curiosity continues with us through toddlerhood, childhood and adulthood. But somewhere in our formative years we learn that self-pleasuring is wrong.

Growing up, I remember the shame around masturbation and sex. I remember how adults tiptoed around the subject claiming the slightest knowledge would destroy our innocence.

I remember how religious instructors preached that our bodies were temples that housed God and masturbation would threaten that union.

Despite these teachings my childish mind couldn’t comprehend how something that felt so good was so wrong. But soon guilt and shame kept me in check. This is where my self-hate began.

We all have stories that follow this same narrative. Stories that taught us shame and guilt and consequently made us detached from ourselves and healthy sexuality.

If we’re to improve in any way, we have to remove the stigma around masturbation. By understanding how masturbation translates to self-love and how it impacts our overall health our journey is made easier. So read on to find out.
Take Action to Combat Fear and Move Forward
By: Don Simkovich
Tags: Self Improvement, Productivity, Success, Entrepreneur, Fear

How do you know if your plans will succeed?

Sometimes you don’t, but imagine if you do nothing. Assess where you currently are, like what resources do you have and what people do you have on your side? How much money do you have, or don’t have?

For those of us who rely only on ourselves for income, then laying out plans and taking action is necessary. It’s important to first create a structure or framework.

I know a financial planner who made a spreadsheet with his financial goals each month and that includes developing leads. He gives himself points to attend a certain number of meetings and networking events. Then he gives himself additional points for conversations.

It’s an area where I need to improve so I continue to have a steady number of leads coming through.

Knowing your people's resources include who are the most likely people to send potential clients your way? For me, individual marketing consultants needing content written are often helpful.

Where can you be consistent and take action to stave off fear and uncertainty? It may not have to be in business but it could be at home. Are there issues with children and their schooling or in your relationships?

Break down the specific areas where you can gently and respectfully raise issues and then talk about needs.

I’m launching a fifth novel and for the first time, my writing partner and I have come up with more of a comprehensive marketing strategy. It’s not perfect by any means but it gives us a framework so sales don’t just fall flat and fall off the radar.

I can look ahead to the next year and see that it’s realistic to create a novel, a novella, and a few short stories. I’ve found inexpensive services like Book Doggy to use for promotion in addition to our own social media and email list.

We have a plan for taking action and evaluating, which is far superior to wondering why nothing is happening and possibly letting fear settle in and grip us.

As the old saying goes, it’s easier to steer a boat that’s sailing instead of one moored in a harbor.
School Java Project Chess (1)
By: Golden Thumb
Tags: Tutorial, Java, Chess, Kids Programming, One On One

School Java Project Chess (1)

Printing out an empty game board

Let’s create a simple chess app which can be used like a non-digital chess board, meaning that we can use mouse to move pieces around on board. It will look like the following when finished.

This is the first post of the series so we’ll kick off Java Hello World at the same time. Our goal is to print out a simple empty chess board represented with 64 dots.

a b c d e f g h

8 . . . . . . . . 8

7 . . . . . . . . 7

6 . . . . . . . . 6

5 . . . . . . . . 5

4 . . . . . . . . 4

3 . . . . . . . . 3

2 . . . . . . . . 2

1 . . . . . . . . 1

a b c d e f g h

We simply follow the board style shown on this Chess Wiki page.

The following is the computer I used. If you are using one other than MacOS, you may need to adapt some of your tools to follow, although the Java source code you find here should work on your machine too, compatible I mean.

You can bring up app terminal by pressing Cmd + Space and start typing “term…”.

Terminal window looks like the following. The default command line prompt could be “$” or “%” or something else.

The next step is not necessary. But for fun let’s change the default prompt from “ zhijunsheng@mbp2012 ~ % ” to “🄹 ”.

Make sure you have Java installed on your machine. I won’t go to the details about how to install Java on your machine. Here is one way of doing it. If you don’t have homebrew installed you can run the following.

Then run brew install java .

Make sure java is installed properly:

🄹 java -version

java version "1.8.0_20"

Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_20-b26)

Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.20-b23, mixed mode)

Create a chess directory, or folder, somewhere in your file system.

🄹 mkdir chess

🄹 ls -l

total 0

drwxr-xr-x 2 zhijunsheng staff 64 8 Jan 23:05 chess

🄹 cd chess

🄹 ls -l

🄹

The first program we’ll write is Hello Chess. We use vim text editor to edit source code. Two spaces, instead of tab key, are use for indentation. Run vim Chess.java to start typing in source code. If you don’t know how to use vim it’s a good time to make friend with it since most of programmers can use this tiny but powerful text editing tool.

🄹 vim Chess.java

The complete code has 5 lines:

class Chess {

public static void main(String[] args) {

System.out.println("Hello, Chess!");

}

}

Compile Chess.java with javac and run the app using java.

🄹 javac Chess.java

🄹 java Chess

Hello, Chess!

Congratulations! We got our first Java program working perfectly.

BTW since programmers are lazy the above two commands can by put together like this:

🄹 javac Chess.java && java Chess

Hello, Chess!

There is no need to type the same command manually every time after you update the source code because Up Arrow key 🔼 brings you through the command history in terminal.

If you check your current directory you’ll find a new file Chess.class which was the output of command javac Chess.java .
Faded Sense
Tags: Time, Poetry, Life, Mental Health

Original Drawing by JusTee

The moments out of control frighten me

Seeming to increase with age

So much to wonder

And even to fear

Without explanation or purpose

And the consequences

Spread like dandelions in the lawn

Little tears needed for life

Or harmony through chaos

Impacting hidden branches of the mind

White coats and gloves for help

Practicing only on the weak

Glue for the breaks

Through new cracks

With reality lost like it was real

Pits in the ground caused to stumble

To remember the earth

And the salt of the ground

Only to look up

For less weight of the hold

And the tears are secret

Beyond wrinkles and lines

Time always different

To where it happened

Or when or why it was
How to create a Web-Based Document Viewer in Python
Tags: Document Viewer, Python, Create, Web Based

Setting up web views for documents can be the source of a great many headaches for Python users. That’s why today’s solution will be as simple as calling a function, then using the HTML embed code that it provides. Our total setup time is going to be just a handful of minutes.

This level of simplicity is achieved through use of an API, which we will install now.

pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client

Our function is named viewer_tools_create_simple, which will also require a new API instance. Set this up in the following manner:

from __future__ import print_function import time import cloudmersive_convert_api_client from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException from pprint import pprint # Configure API key authorization: Apikey configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration() configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY' # Uncomment below to setup prefix (e.g. Bearer) for API key, if needed # configuration.api_key_prefix['Apikey'] = 'Bearer' # create an instance of the API class api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ViewerToolsApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration)) input_file = '/path/to/file' # file | Input file to perform the operation on. try: # Create a web-based viewer api_response = api_instance.viewer_tools_create_simple(input_file) pprint(api_response) except ApiException as e: print("Exception when calling ViewerToolsApi->viewer_tools_create_simple: %s

" % e)

And now input the file path for your document. Moments later you will have your embed code. Effortless.
ECOMI Is Flying to See You!
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Startup, Cryptocurrency, Conference

For the Months of June & July ECOMI is in the air to meet you! With new blockchain conferences appearing every month, we’re taking our project on the road so you can get familiar with ECOMI products and tech, and have the team answer any questions you have face-to-face.

Catch David Yu, CEO and Daniel Crothers, COO at a number of events across Asia. The team will have the ECOMI Secure Wallet with them to show and tell, and can demo the beta version of ECOMI Collect’s augmented reality feature! To organise an interview, or if you just want to make sure you catch them for a chat, please reach out to the pair on telegram @DanECOMI or @davidECOMI.

You’ll also have the chance to hear David speak about all things collectibles, and licensing, in the digital space at the 2018 Asia Blockchain Summit in Taipei, Taiwan.

Dates and Events:

June 2018

Tokyo — Japan

26th & 27th June 2018

Japan Blockchain Conference

Venue: Tokyo International Forum

www.japan-blockchain-c.com/en/

The first event of its kind in Japan, this national blockchain conference is expecting more than 10,000 attendees with a line up of more than 100 experts in cryptocurrency, blockchain companies, and organisations from all over the world, including CEO of bitcoin.com Roger Ver, and former CEO of Ethereum Charles Hoskinson.

Seoul — South Korea

28th & 29th June 2018

Blockchain Open Forum

Venue: Nonhyeon-ro 508, Yeoksam 1-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 1st Floor AMORIS

www.en.blockchainopenforum.org

Open forum on the current state of blockchain, as well as an expansion of use cases, spanning from entertainment, media and payments to real estate and social impacts.

July 2018

Taipei — Taiwan (Speaker Day 2 | 2:55–3:30pm)

2nd & 3rd July 2018

2018 Asia Blockchain Summit

(Please see discount ticket coupon)

Venue: Taipei Marriott Hotel

www.abasummit.co

David will be speaking about ECOMI, collectibles and licensing in the digital space alongside keynote speakers include Charlie Lee (Litecoin creator), Changpeng Zhao (Binance CEO and founder).

Hong Kong (Booth & Speaker)

9th to 12th July 2018

RISE

Venue: Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre

www.riseconf.com

More than 15,000 attendees covering blockchain, new tech, robotics, AI and the expected outlook of crypto over the next 24 months.

Hong Kong (Booth & Speaker)

24th to 26th July 2018

NIFTY CONF

Venue: Grand Hyatt Hong Kong

www.nifty.gg

Discussing the ‘bleeding edge’ of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), collectibles, and blockchain gaming. Event sponsored by ECOMI.

Let us know which event(s) you’ll be attending, and what you are the most excited about in the comments or on twitter!

And don’t forget to reach out to the ECOMI team on Telegram for your chance to chat to David and Dan about ECOMI, collectibles and all things blockchain!
Uloom al Quran
By: The Niqabi Coder Mum
Tags: Quran, Books, Islam

Ever wondered what are the different Qiraat of Quran? Curious about how the Quranic text was compiled? Who gathered the whole Quran in one mushaf for the first time?

Uloom al Quran by Mufti Taqi Uthmani of Karachi is a very good book for a beginner student of Quran which answers all of the above questions and many more.

Although the book packs a lot of research, the simple writing style makes it easy and light to read.

Originally written in Urdu, this book has been translated in English and can be found at any book store which stocks Pakistani Islamic books.
Revisit your own work, you will be surprised…
By: Joseph Emmi
Tags: Wrtiting, Motivation, Life, Personal, Journal

As I was preparing to share a private piece with someone that is going to be its sole recipient, I took the time to navigate my old published pieces (I’ve been writing regularly on Medium since 2017 and not so regularly even before that). To my surprise, I enjoyed it, and the more I scrolled, the more I liked it. Suddenly, I craved it.

The more I saw, the more I wanted to see. The more I remembered, the more I felt and then more I wanted to feel like that again. The joy of creating, the pride of publishing and be able to go back in time to revise my thinking, my ideas, my proposals, offerings and questions to the world. I loved it.

So I did it, and here I am now, putting these words together; asking myself, why, if it feels so great did I ever stop?

The answer is easy, life. Life gets in the middle, and it will always do; the real question then needs to be, “why it took me so long to get back?” or “why it was so difficult to start again?”, because if there’s one thing that I can add beyond joy and happiness, that is the ease that you can feel when let go and started again. That’s all it takes.

All you need is to grab an idea and turn it into a moment. Let that moment be the first one of many more. Just write one word and the rest will follow.

Cheers to you mysterious and magical recipient, if you ever happen to read this, here’s another one I owe you, here’s another “thanks” to you 😉
Design Thinking is not bullshit
By: Marie Schweiz
Tags: Design Thinking, Design

No idea who told her this title would be smart. Maybe its more of a clickbait. Natasha Jens point, design thinking is waisting a lot of time and limiting ourself to a less good design result is understandable. In my opinion its only understandable from a single perspective.

Classic design is a discipline you can execute without dependencies except tools. Take your input, research the job, explore your possibilities and request critique — change. That was for a long time a process which worked for many designers. Until interaction design came along.

Interaction design is crafted and made by more than one designer. Tech companies learned, products get more excellent and polished by including everyone in a design thinking process. Interest and responsibility to create design is now distributed through a whole team instead of one graphic designer.

Design thinking is an excellent method distributing responsibility for design. Thats why these workshop are magical in the beginning or game changing milestones of a project. Teamwork, responsibility and results are provided by it (You need someone experienced enough crafting these workshops — otherwise your engineers get bored and grumpy). And even though the result isn’t that fancy as she pointed out for IBM Bluemix, it works. And we all know — fancy interfaces can be the wrong answer. Invest 5 day’s in a workshop and you have evidence why you invest your budget in this rather boring direction.

Natasha Jen is missing critique in this process and maybe pushing visual borders. Today, we have more designers than just visual designers. Because Design thinking is made for more than one “designer”, critique would be a bummer. Its a creativity killer. Design thinking workshops produce a lot of Ideas. In the end of the process we have a testing phase: critique from users.

For a long time we believed we are able to percept and imagine the factors and environment users have. And we can’t. Reality is the best critique we can ask for. And its the hardest one. We are less vulnerable to political design decisions because a usertest is neutral.

I believe design thinking is the revolution of design we need. With design thinking we are now able to invite everyone to the design process without loosing focus. We are all responsible for good design.

It became an awful buzzword, doesn’t make it less useful.
What is False-Consensus Effect?
Tags: New York, User Experience Design, Design Thinking, User Experience, User Interface

What is False-Consensus Effect?

When designing user experience keep in mind that: YOU ARE NOT YOUR USER.

Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash

As designers, we have tendency to assume that our users are similar to us. In fact, this is not just a problem that designers have — it is an example of a more general phenomenon, called the FALSE CONSENSUS EFFECT.

We always make mistake believing in that our users are like us when solving a design problem. For example when we react a certain way to a design, we may assume others will react the same way. In other words, we may assume there is an agreement or consensus when there is none (thus the name false consensus).

If we really want to design a user-centered design website, app or any other system. And we want to know how our users will respond to it— and we want to design something they will love, then we need to more systematic.

We need to take action that will ensure we are basing our design decision on genuine knowledge of our users. Most often this means, ‘testing our designs’ on real users.
14 Social Media Fails for Realtors
By: Jena Apgar
Tags: Facebook Marketing, Realtor, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Jena Apgar is an international speaker, digital agency CEO at Warfare Marketing, co-founder and trainer at Business Growth Network with the popular 90-Day Double My Business Challenge, and co-host of the popular videocast, DoubleFunnel.tv, which takes you through what it takes to build a 6–8 figure business, to double your business, leveraging marketing strategies, funnels and traffic tactics. Join the 4,000 readers getting a dose of my best and most controversial marketing & business content. Join here.
A Holiday Prayer From An Atheist
By: Christyl Rivers
Tags: Purpose, Nature, Philosophy, Poetry, Science

I think I am an atheist,

But…

Every day I pray there is a God.

Not a He. Not a She.

God is all of us, together. I pray.

It’s probably not what you think.

That all people are made in God’s Image.

Not that.

But that stars are we, and sea-stars are We, and

God is the Creation, creating We.

Hydrogen and deuterium protons spark into helium

And the sounds of the sun,

Somehow become silent photosynthesis,

That licks the morning dew off of all that becomes you.

Grass heads become your cereal.

Apple and orange trees juice our thirst.

Birds and bees babble and bumble,

Making the sweet honey music of daylight.

Dawn.

Making you.

But you are late for work, so you don’t notice.

Whitman saw the beauty in this cacophony, but you ignore it in disgust.

Work stress drags ragged nails across a blackboard of sky.

The belch and noxious grate of engines chant constant

percussion on your headache.

At the office, you expect, John and Maria steadily grind out petty grumbles.

You saw that article about drowning, newborn penguins.

You know how latest famines harvest the brittle bones of little children.

You read the Stanford report that our execrable extinction efforts are

accelerating ten times faster than the Cretaceous dinosaur die offs.

You’re aware that someone we think grips power tweets gripes.

You heard the searing news about drowned cities, or quiet California ash.

You cannot hear the birdsong, the bees whirring a world together,

Still.

I think you should look up. Glory in God for one reverberating breath.

Because it doesn’t matter whose God can beat up whose God.

It matters that every humming moment

Can exalt that we are One Earth, if we remember…

We belong. We belong. We belong.
The Problem With Mutable Types As Default Values in Functions in Python
By: Diwakar Singh Parmar
Tags: Python Programming, Python3, Programming, Python, Devop

Mutable and Immutable Objects

For those who don’t know, I will try to explain the concept of mutable and immutable objects in very simple terms.

Mutable objects are those which can be changed after creation. In Python, dictionaries are examples of mutable objects.

In the code snippet above, we have created a list and changed the item at index 2 . It ran without any problems because lists are mutable in Python.

Immutable objects are those which cannot be changed after creation. In Python, tuples are examples of immutable types.

In the code snippet above, we have created a string and are trying to change the item at index 1 . We got an error because strings are immutable.

Now that we understand how to write functions with default values and the concept of mutable objects, we will try to understand the problem with immutable types as default values.

For this demonstration, I will write a simple function that takes two arguments, appends the first argument to the second, and prints the second argument.

Now we will test this function.

As we can see from the code snippet above, when we provide the value for argument b , the function works fine. We start to see problems when we don’t provide the value for argument b because in the later function calls, the default value is no longer an empty list.

The problem is that each default value is evaluated when the function is defined — usually when the module is loaded — and the default values become attributes of the function object. So if a default value is a mutable object and you change it, the change will affect every future call of the function.

We can see the default values by checking the __defaults__ attribute of the function.

So, how can we avoid this problem?

There is a very simple fix for this. Whenever you need to use mutable types as the default value for an argument, use None as the default value.

Now, we can see that our function is working properly.

I hope this post will improve your understanding of functions.
Feature prioritizing: 3 ways to reduce subjectivity and bias
By: Slava Shestopalov
Tags: Product Management, Startup, Product Design, UX, User Experience

Originally published in Smashing Magazine.

When you’re working on a product, what is more crucial than choosing the right features to develop? However, the exercise often turns into a spectacle of team voting. As a result, decisions change many times down the road. Let’s talk about the pitfalls of popular prioritization techniques and approaches to reducing bias and disagreement.

How familiar is this scenario: the team employs modern decision-making methods and performs all design-thinking rituals, but the result remains guesswork. Or this: Soon after having prioritized all features, the key stakeholders change their mind and you have to plan everything again. Both situations have happened to my team and my colleagues quite a few times.

Feature prioritization succeeds or fails because of one tiny thing, and I won’t keep you in suspense until the end of this article to find out. The key factor is selection criteria. But first things first. Let’s see what can go wrong, and then we’ll talk about ways to mitigate those risks.

Flaws of popular prioritizing methods

Challenge 1. Non-experts and experts have the same voting power

Product teams strive to make the right trade-offs and marry an infinite number of options with limited resources. Typically, a decision appears as a result of collaborative activities, such as dot voting, the value-versus-feasibility canvas, MoSCoW, the Kano model, etc.

While these techniques were invented by different people, they essentially work the same way: Team members put sticky notes with all feature ideas on a board, and then they shortlist the most promising ones. Either participants rate the ideas with marks or votes or they arrange them along the axes according to how feasible, desirable, or innovative each feature is.
Census Cut Population By 570,000 People in 2017
By: Lyman Stone
Tags: Migration, Demographics, Census, New York, Culture

Census Cut Population By 570,000 People in 2017

And Other Interesting Stories From the New Population Estimates

The Census Bureau just released its new population estimates. They’ll be in the news. You’ll hear about the fastest and slowest growing places. That’s cool beans.

Let’s talk nerd. What revisions did Census make? Let’s start nationally.

Here’s Census’ revisions to national population each year versus the previous year, expressed as a percent of the previous vintage’s estimate.
Liderar la innovación con estrategias hacia la sostenibilidad — 7 de Febrero en Barcelona
Tags: Leadership, Sustainability, Fssd The Natural Step, Formación, Sostenibilidad

in In Fitness And In Health
Marker Genes and Gene Prediction of Bacteria
By: Vijini Mallawaarachchi
Tags: Genomics, Software, Bioinformatics, Biotech, Science

Marker Genes and Gene Prediction of Bacteria

What are marker genes, their usage and how to predict them?

When we think of the word marker, the first thing that comes to our minds is something that is used to indicate a place. For example, it can be your current location on Google Maps or it can be the place where you planted some seeds in your garden. Similarly, in genomics studies, we can find marker genes in bacterial genomes. In this article, I will introduce you to marker genes used in metagenomics analysis, how they are used and walk you through an example of a commonly used gene prediction tool.

Image by Mahmoud Ahmed from Pixabay

What are Marker Genes/Genetic Markers?

According to Wikipedia,

A genetic marker is a gene or DNA sequence with a known location on a chromosome that can be used to identify individuals or species.

As a result of mutations and alterations within the genome, these genes can vary depending on their composition and location.

What are Single-Copy Marker Genes?

In bacterial cells, single-copy marker genes are expected to occur once. In other words, each bacterial cell contains only one copy of each of these single-copy marker genes. These genes are essential for the life-functions and can be found in the majority of the bacterial species.

Previous efforts have been made to identify marker genes that can resolve closely related organisms. Protein-coding marker genes which are rarely horizontally transferred and exist in single copies within genomes have been identified [1]. These include a set of 40 marker genes [2,3] and 107 marker genes [3].

Usage of Marker Genes

Marker genes are commonly used in taxonomic profiling of environmental samples to identify gene families. These genes are also used in phylogenetic inference to reconstruct the evolutionary history of organisms.

Recently, reference-free binning tools such as MaxBin and SolidBin have used single-copy marker genes to identify the number of species in a given sample. Moreover, tools such as MyCC use single-copy marker genes to refine resulting clusters.

Gene Predictors

Gene predictors can be used to extract marker genes. Some popular gene prediction tools include,

Example Usage of FragGeneScan

Let us see how we can use FragGeneScan to predict genes. Firstly, you can download FragGeneScan from

You can follow the instructions provided in the README file to compile and run FragGeneScan.

You can see the following parameters and options of FragGeneScan.
Welcome to Hawaii
By: Phillip T Stephens
Tags: Marketing, Hawaii, Humor, Travel, Satire

Welcome to Hawaii

Drop by for a spectacular view

The volcano season has returned to Hawaii and tourism is down by half. This development came as a surprise to Honolulu’s Chamber of Commerce Chairman MK Buck. “We haven’t had a volcanic display like this since I was a kid. And people are staying away? F**king idiots!”

Buck’s solution? A nationwide ad campaign to remind tourists what we’re missing.

“This is a lifetime opportunity,” Buck swears. “How often do you have a chance to step into the path of fast running lava and capture video of the explosions on your iPhone?”

Hawaiian tour guides attract adventurous customers during the volcano season.

Hawaiian tourist bureaus now offer three packages with their “Love the Heat” campaign:

By Land. Led by a robotic tour guide, visitors wade up the lava flow wearing asbestos gators. While the guide points out the sites of former landmarks (now buried under rubble), guests capture memorable moments on their cell phones or with disposable cameras.[1]

Led by a robotic tour guide, visitors wade up the lava flow wearing asbestos gators. While the guide points out the sites of former landmarks (now buried under rubble), guests capture memorable moments on their cell phones or with disposable cameras.[1] By Sea. Guests approach the volcano in outrigger canoes steered by experienced native guides. While guides share native stories and folklore about Kilauea’s wrath, tourists can watch the toxic gasses rolling toward them with binoculars, or capture the memories on their phones. A few lucky guests who find themselves caught in the wind currents will experience the joy of paddling for their lives to escape surrounding fumes.

Guests approach the volcano in outrigger canoes steered by experienced native guides. While guides share native stories and folklore about Kilauea’s wrath, tourists can watch the toxic gasses rolling toward them with binoculars, or capture the memories on their phones. A few lucky guests who find themselves caught in the wind currents will experience the joy of paddling for their lives to escape surrounding fumes. By Air. Tourists fly over Kilauea in hot air balloons during explosions. The tour guide drops them into the crater while attached to a steel cable to video the emerging lava and fireballs.

This first rate collector’s edition t-shirt comes with your vacation package.

Every package is advertised with the slogan: “Dress for the heat,” and every guest receives an honorary t-shirt that reads: “I survived Kilauea” on the front and “Drop by for a spectacular view” on the back. Basic packages began at $12,000 per person to enjoy the luxury of pitching tents and camping on recent lava flows. Braver tourists will catch poisoned fish floating past to cook for dinner. Packages with hotel accommodations run as low as $35,000 per person.

“Bookings are up five percent,” Buck admitted. We hope to reach capacity before the Volcano goes dormant and people no longer have anything to attract them.

All packages are fully insured.[2]
Album(s) of the Day — October 7. Re-visiting the two Van Halen AOTD.
By: Keith R. Higgons
Tags: Rock, Music, Rock And Roll, Culture, Art

07.October.2020

Van Halen

RIP Eddie Van Halen

Thoughts and wishes for his family and friends.

The beauty of Eddie Van Halen was that his music transcended both time and age.

I began this by saying, “If you’re over a certain age…” but the truth is, it doesn’t matter. I recently watched two kids watch Eddie play “Eruption” live, and you can see their amazement.

In fact, the young kid says: “How does he even do that?” I dunno kid, it’s a question every person has been asking for decades now.

Now …imagine hearing that in 1978!

It’s the second one down:

There was, and never will be, a parallel to Eddie Van Halen. You’re going to read a lot of tributes about him and his music and contributions, etc.

Loads of celebrities will offer up their condolences.

I am not going to say too much here because really, what can actually be said?

One of my first Albums of the Day was the first Van Halen album:

It’s incredible (the album, not so much my writing).

And then, on my birthday, I selected my favorite Van Halen album. It was a toss-up between Women and Children First and Fair Warning, but Women and Children First won.

If you’re looking for a way to honor Eddie Van Halen’s memory, play his music tonight. Then play it again tomorrow. And then play it for someone who may have never heard it.