We all know elections matter. Local elections matter in particular because these elected officials have significant impacts on our daily lives. Government here in our community impacts us through our schools, in our streets, and on our property.

Electing a sheriff is unique because it’s a direct link between the voting public and a law enforcement official; we all have a stake in the sheriff election. The public should take a critical look at each candidate, examine the candidates’ goals, and their plans for attaining them. Look at the substance and nature of their campaign. Scrutinize their grasp of the office.

I’m running because I see where the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office can improve our services and have specific plans to achieve these goals. My campaign has focused on engaging people and groups across the county to listen to what is important to people when selecting a sheriff and sharing tangible, achievable goals to keep the Sheriff’s Office moving forward.

Perhaps most important, though, the next sheriff must also understand the role the office holds in county government. It is vital to understand the scope of the office as well as the legal and ethical boundaries that the sheriff is held to and must operate within.

I’m confident that my experience within the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office — and appreciation of the responsibility — provide voters with an additional measure of comfort when casting your ballot.

When electing a sheriff, voters should examine the career, character and commitment to the community displayed by the candidate. As a lifelong resident of this community and a career public servant to Johnson County, I’ve grown with this community and have a deep understanding of where we’ve come from and where we’re going. A sheriff’s office is a complex organization, and my experience as a deputy sheriff is invaluable to understanding the dynamics of the different divisions within the office. I also have important budget and personnel experience through service on the Solon City Council and on nonprofit boards. The sheriff is also a department head and it’s important to have a strong grasp of finance and management skills.

I’m proud of my proven record of service to public safety, public office and our nonprofit partners in Johnson County, and I will continue my commitment to service as the next Johnson County sheriff.

Brad Kunkel is a candidate in the Democratic primary for Johnson County sheriff. kunkelforsheriff.com

After more than a decade in the making, the Tea Party moment has finally arrived.

The movement originated in 2009 as a challenge to runaway taxes, spending and regulation. Organizers sought to restore the constitutional balance of power between the states and the federal government.

Eventually, the Tea Party devolved into a catchall for right-wing populism, and a magnet for xenophobes and culture warriors. In 2016, its early adherents overwhelmingly fell in line with President Donald Trump, choosing protectionism over freedom.

But that original Tea Party spirit — the charge to buck the national government in favor of local control — was on full display recently from two unlikely sources.

Trump decided early on in the coronavirus pandemic that the federal government would not centrally coordinate the purchase and distribution of medical supplies. That might have worked fine, except the Trump administration actively undermined state governments’ efforts. The federal government has outbid state buyers and even seized products from states.

After 3 million masks ordered by the Massachusetts governor were confiscated in New York, Republican Gov. Charlie Baker decided to sidestep the usual procurement process. He sent a New England Patriots’ private airplane to bring supplies back from China.

In Maryland, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan coordinated a large COVID-19 test order from South Korea. The delivery was facilitated by the National Guard and state police, and the tests were put in a secure location with armed security.

“We guarded that cargo from whoever might interfere with us getting that to our folks that needed it,” Hogan said last week in an interview with Washington Post Live.

Hogan and Baker don’t fit the common perception of the Tea Party mold. They both have harshly criticized President Donald Trump and supported the impeachment inquiry. Hogan openly considered challenging Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

They are among the last vestiges of moderate conservatism in American executive office, and yet they are the ones waging a battle over federalism and states’ rights.

The political minds built for this moment — the ones who have long fantasized about escalating the state-federal power struggle — are not up to the task. The conservative firebrands who should be taking up this fight instead are beholden to Trump and whatever cockamamie plans he comes up with.

At a news conference last month, Trump made a striking claim about his powers in managing the public health crisis: “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total.”

That should have been a flashpoint for conservatives, the beginning of a revitalized Tea Party that recognizes the enormous threat Trumpism poses to our values.

But it wasn’t. Loyalists brushed it off, again, as Trump misspeaking.

The small-government philosophy is founded on the likelihood that the levers of government power will eventually be grabbed by some menace, an incompetent or malicious figure. But when that menace is your friend, your fundraiser and your public relations manager, it proves hard to slap his hand away.

adam.sullivan@thegazette.com; (319) 339-3156

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors consists of five at-large members. Recently some people in the rural community have advocated for a board elected from districts within the county. A House Study Bill a few years ago would have required counties with a population greater than 150,000 to elect supervisors from districts, though a similar bill had failed earlier.

While districting a board of supervisors may appear to provide more representation to rural residents, the opposite would result. Currently, any resident anywhere in the county has five supervisors to whom they can communicate their needs. With districts, residents would have only one supervisor representing them.

There are many reasons electing supervisors from districts is not a good idea for Johnson County. But here is why, in fact, it’s a bad idea.

In Johnson County, our current practice for funding projects is determined using a needs assessment approach. This can be seen in our Five-Year Road Plan and works quite well. It is a triage of sorts, with the greatest need addressed first. With districts, it would become necessary to rotate projects based on the district in which it is located rather than the greatest need.

Imagine what might have happened in the 2016 emergency situation on the Highway 965 bridge over the Iowa River! During routine bridge inspections, county engineers determined repairs to that bridge to be our county’s greatest road need. It was an issue of public safety. Our at-large Board of Supervisors approved that project for immediate repairs.

Had we had districts, that project would land within my district and might have been put on hold, waiting for my district to have its turn at a big roads project. Just a couple years later, Swan Lake Road bridge over I-380, also in “my district” was deemed in need of immediate repair. While there is not a lot of traffic on that bridge, it is an essential route for farmers in the area. The closure was inconvenient during one farming season, but is now open and in good repair.

With districts, that bridge, in particular, would still be closed because it would be unfair for one district to have two big bridge repair jobs done before other districts had one done.

There are many other reasons why Johnson County’s Board of Supervisors should continue as an at-large body. Each county should be allowed to determine its own board of supervisors structure.

Lisa Green-Douglass is a candidate in the Democratic primary for Johnson County Board of Supervisors.

Right now, there are so many things that are hard to believe. It’s hard to believe we’re in the midst of a global pandemic. It’s hard to believe how much things have changed how incredibly quickly. It’s hard to believe I’ve only been the Iowa Department of Human Services director for six months. What is not hard to believe is how our team at DHS has stepped up during this public health emergency. In my short time in the great state of Iowa, I have seen our team do incredible things. In honor of Public Service Recognition Week, I want to take a moment to talk about #TeamDHS and their unwavering dedication to those we serve.

The DHS mission is to help Iowans achieve healthy, safe, stable, and self-sufficient lives through the programs and services we provide. To accomplish this mission in typical times, our team wakes up every day to do difficult work. Our front-line staff often work holidays, evenings and weekends, sacrificing time with their own families to serve others. Our team members hear difficult stories, make tough decisions and assist families when they are at their most vulnerable. Their jobs are tough under normal circumstances — navigating a global pandemic has challenged everything we do, but the work has not stopped, because the work cannot stop. Iowans need us now more than ever.

COVID-19 impacts the way social workers support families. It impacts the way facilities support and protect the individuals we serve. It impacts the mental health of countless Iowans. It impacts the needs of Medicaid members and Iowans receiving other assistance.

As an agency impacted from top to bottom, I’m proud to share our collective response effort. The Medicaid and Adult, Children and Family Services (ACFS) teams kicked into high gear and set forth waivers that will truly help those most in need; ensuring access to medical care, food and economic assistance. Our income maintenance workers stand ready to assist those families who have questions or find themselves now in need of supports.

DHS went from an agency with no telecommute policy, to deploying more than 2,000 people to work from home. Our IT team stepped in to help disassemble and lift computers for those team members who couldn’t. Our fiscal team shifted paper approval processes to electronic streamlined processes to assist our new telecommute capabilities and continues to source supplies to meet our entire system’s personal protective equipment (PPE) need. We’ve even been able to help some of our partners out in the community obtain PPE. And many, many team members have stepped into new roles when asked because there was a need.

If this isn’t teamwork, I don’t know what is.

Many of our staff continue their work on the front line every day, despite these uncertain and unprecedented times. I know for many of them it is challenging, and our work and our lives are changing in ways we would never have imagined just weeks ago. We know there is more to come, and our response effort must pivot on a dime. So, to my team, thank you for stepping up and leaning in. And to my fellow Iowans, I ask you join me in thanking them, and all of our public servants and essential workforce during Public Service Recognition Week.

Public Service Recognition Week (PSRW) is May 3-9, celebrated the first week of May since 1985 (beginning on the first Sunday of the month) to honor the men and women who serve our nation as federal, state, county and local government employees.

We’re asking individuals whose lives have been positively impacted by one of our team members, to reach out to them directly with an email or video message to thank them. Whether it’s a case worker, social worker, income maintenance worker or direct care staff, now more than ever they deserve to hear how they’re improving the lives of Iowans.

We’re hoping we can count on you to get the word out and support our public servants. Notes directly to DHS team members are a really impactful way to personally show gratitude. This week we’ll also be encouraging people to thank those in public service using the hashtags #PSRW and #TeamDHS. Stay tuned to our social media to see how you can help celebrate our public servants.

The bravery, grace, and sacrifice our team shows every day is what true public service looks like. From one very proud DHS team member to her more than 4,100 colleagues — thank you. Public service is indeed a noble calling.

Kelly Garcia is the director of the Iowa Department of Human Services.

Are you seeing a 503 service unavailable error in WordPress? The problem with the 503 error is that it gives no clues about what’s causing it which makes it extremely frustrating for beginners. In this article, we will show you how to fix the 503…

Here is a really neat trick! Access your PHP5 while running PHP4. If you haven’t created a .htaccess file, you may want to check out the WordPress Codex on permalink structure. Anyway, open any text editing document and paste in this code: AddType x-mapp-php5 .php That’ it! Save your text document as .htaccess and your […]

The post Run PHP5 on your PHP4 Server appeared first on WPCult.

Just like in Mac OS X, you can change the DNS servers on your iPhone. This can significantly speed up Safari and other iPhone apps that use the Internet. For a general introduction to DNS, and to learn why you would want to change the DNS servers on your iPhone, see How to Change Your Mac's DNS Servers.

Before we start, you should know a couple things about how iOS handles DNS. First, these instructions only work for Wi-Fi connections - iOS does not allow you to change the DNS servers when connected to cellular networks. Also, the changes are network specific, so you'll need to change the DNS servers every time you connect to a new wireless network. The good news is that iOS remembers the settings, so you won't have to do anything the second time you connect to a network.

Here's how to change your iPhone's DNS servers:

1. From the iPhone's home screen, tap Settings.
   
   
2. Tap Wi-Fi. The screen shown below appears. The available wireless networks in range of your iPhone appear, as shown below.
   
   
3. Find your wireless network in the list, and then click the arrow. The screen shown below appears.
   
   
4. Tap the DNS field.
   
   
5. Delete the current DNS servers, and enter the new DNS servers. (If you enter more than one DNS server, be sure sure to separate the servers with commas.)
   • To use OpenDNS, enter 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
   • To use Google DNS, enter 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
6. Test your new DNS servers to make sure they're working.
   • If you're using OpenDNS, visit the OpenDNS test page.
   • If you're using Google Public DNS, follow these testing instructions.

That's it! You've updated your iPhone's DNS servers!

Related Articles

• How to Find the Best DNS Servers
• How to Change Your Mac's DNS Servers
• How to Change Your iPad's DNS Servers
• Change an AirPort Extreme's DNS Servers

Meet Your Macinstructor

Matt Cone, the author of Master Your Mac, has been a Mac user for over 20 years. A former ghost writer for some of Apple's most notable instructors, Cone founded Macinstruct in 1999, a site with OS X tutorials that boasts hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month. You can email him at: matt@macinstruct.com.

Back in late 2016, we introduced Speech Recognition at Auphonic. This allows our users to create transcripts of their recordings, and more usefully, this means podcasts become searchable.
Now we integrated two more speech recognition engines: Amazon Transcribe and Speechmatics. Whilst integrating these services, we also took the opportunity to develop a complete new Transcription Editor:

Screenshot of our Transcript Editor with word confidence highlighting and the edit bar.
Try out the Transcript Editor Examples yourself!

The new Auphonic Transcript Editor is included directly in our HTML transcript output file, displays word confidence values to instantly see which sections should be checked manually, supports direct audio playback, HTML/PDF/WebVTT export and allows you to share the editor with someone else for further editing.

The new services, Amazon Transcribe and Speechmatics, offer transcription quality improvements compared to our other integrated speech recognition services.
They also return word confidence values, timestamps and some punctuation, which is exported to our output files.

The Auphonic Transcript Editor

With the integration of the two new services offering improved recognition quality and word timestamps alongside confidence scores, we realized that we could leverage these improvements to give our users easy-to-use transcription editing.
Therefore we developed a new, open source transcript editor, which is embedded directly in our HTML output file and has been designed to make checking and editing transcripts as easy as possible.

• Edit the transcription directly in the HTML document.
• Show/hide word confidence, to instantly see which sections should be checked manually (if you use Amazon Transcribe or Speechmatics as speech recognition engine).
• Listen to audio playback of specific words directly in the HTML editor.
• Share the transcript editor with others: as the editor is embedded directly in the HTML file (no external dependencies), you can just send the HTML file to some else to manually check the automatically generated transcription.
• Export the edited transcript to HTML, PDF or WebVTT.
• Completely useable on all mobile devices and desktop browsers.

Examples: Try Out the Transcript Editor

Here are two examples of the new transcript editor, taken from our speech recognition audio examples page:

1. Singletrack Transcript Editor Example

Singletrack speech recognition example from the first 10 minutes of Common Sense 309 by Dan Carlin. Speechmatics was used as speech recognition engine without any keywords or further manual editing.

2. Multitrack Transcript Editor Example

A multitrack automatic speech recognition transcript example from the first 20 minutes of TV Eye on Marvel - Luke Cage S1E1. Amazon Transcribe was used as speech recognition engine without any further manual editing.
As this is a multitrack production, the transcript includes exact speaker names as well (try to edit them!).

Transcript Editing

By clicking the Edit Transcript button, a dashed box appears around the text. This indicates that the text is now freely editable on this page. Your changes can be saved by using one of the export options (see below).
If you make a mistake whilst editing, you can simply use the undo/redo function of the browser to undo or redo your changes.

When working with multitrack productions, another helpful feature is the ability to change all speaker names at once throughout the whole transcript just by editing one speaker. Simply click on an instance of a speaker title and change it to the appropriate name, this name will then appear throughout the whole transcript.

Word Confidence Highlighting

Word confidence values are shown visually in the transcript editor, highlighted in shades of red (see screenshot above). The shade of red is dependent on the actual word confidence value: The darker the red, the lower the confidence value. This means you can instantly see which sections you should check/re-work manually to increase the accuracy.

Once you have edited the highlighted text, it will be set to white again, so it’s easy to see which sections still require editing.
Use the button Add/Remove Highlighting to disable/enable word confidence highlighting.

NOTE: Word confidence values are only available in Amazon Transcribe or Speechmatics, not if you use our other integrated speech recognition services!

Audio Playback

The button Activate/Stop Play-on-click allows you to hear the audio playback of the section you click on (by clicking directly on the word in the transcript editor).
This is helpful in allowing you to check the accuracy of certain words by being able to listen to them directly whilst editing, without having to go back and try to find that section within your audio file.

If you use an External Service in your production to export the resulting audio file, we will automatically use the exported file in the transcript editor.
Otherwise we will use the output file generated by Auphonic. Please note that this file is password protected for the current Auphonic user and will be deleted in 21 days.

If no audio file is available in the transcript editor, or cannot be played because of the password protection, you will see the button Add Audio File to add a new audio file for playback.

Export Formats, Save/Share Transcript Editor

Save/Share Editor

The Save Editor button stores the whole transcript editor with all its current changes into a new HTML file. Use this button to save your changes for further editing or if you want to share your transcript with someone else for manual corrections (as the editor is embedded directly in the HTML file without any external dependencies).

Export HTML / Export PDF / Export WebVTT

Use one of these buttons to export the edited transcript to HTML (for WordPress, Word, etc.), to PDF (via the browser print function) or to WebVTT (so that the edited transcript can be used as subtitles or imported in web audio players of the Podlove Publisher or Podigee).
Every export format is rendered directly in the browser, no server needed.

Amazon Transcribe

The first of the two new services, Amazon Transcribe, offers accurate transcriptions in English and Spanish at low costs, including keywords, word confidence, timestamps, and punctuation.

UPDATE 2019:
Amazon Transcribe offers more languages now - please see Amazon Transcribe Features!

Pricing

The free tier offers 60 minutes of free usage a month for 12 months. After that, it is billed monthly at a rate of $0.0004 per second ($1.44/h).
More information is available at Amazon Transcribe Pricing.

Custom Vocabulary (Keywords) Support

Custom Vocabulary (called Keywords in Auphonic) gives you the ability to expand and customize the speech recognition vocabulary, specific to your case (i.e. product names, domain-specific terminology, or names of individuals).
The same feature is also available in the Google Cloud Speech API.

Timestamps, Word Confidence, and Punctuation

Amazon Transcribe returns a timestamp and confidence value for each word so that you can easily locate the audio in the original recording by searching for the text.
It also adds some punctuation, which is combined with our own punctuation and formatting automatically.

The high-quality (especially in combination with keywords) and low costs of Amazon Transcribe make it attractive, despite only currently supporting two languages.
However, the processing time of Amazon Transcribe is much slower compared to all our other integrated services!

Try it yourself:
Connect your Auphonic account with Amazon Transcribe at our External Services Page.

Speechmatics

Speechmatics offers accurate transcriptions in many languages including word confidence values, timestamps, and punctuation.

Many Languages

Speechmatics’ clear advantage is the sheer number of languages it supports (all major European and some Asiatic languages).
It also has a Global English feature, which supports different English accents during transcription.

Timestamps, Word Confidence, and Punctuation

Like Amazon, Speechmatics creates timestamps, word confidence values, and punctuation.

Pricing

Speechmatics is the most expensive speech recognition service at Auphonic.
Pricing starts at £0.06 per minute of audio and can be purchased in blocks of £10 or £100. This equates to a starting rate of about $4.78/h. Reduced rate of £0.05 per minute ($3.98/h) are available if purchasing £1,000 blocks.
They offer significant discounts for users requiring higher volumes. At this further reduced price point it is a similar cost to the Google Speech API (or lower). If you process a lot of content, you should contact them directly at sales@speechmatics.com and say that you wish to use it with Auphonic.
More information is available at Speechmatics Pricing.

Speechmatics offers high-quality transcripts in many languages. But these features do come at a price, it is the most expensive speech recognition services at Auphonic.

Unfortunately, their existing Custom Dictionary (keywords) feature, which would further improve the results, is not available in the Speechmatics API yet.

Try it yourself:
Connect your Auphonic account with Speechmatics at our External Services Page.

What do you think?

Any feedback about the new speech recognition services, especially about the recognition quality in various languages, is highly appreciated.

We would also like to hear any comments you have on the transcript editor particularly - is there anything missing, or anything that could be implemented better?
Please let us know!

We are pleased to announce a new Audio Inserts feature in the Auphonic API: audio inserts are separate audio files (like intros/outros), which will be inserted into your production at a defined offset.
This blog post shows how one can use this feature for Dynamic Ad Insertion and discusses other Audio Manipulation Methods of the Auphonic API.

API-only Feature

For the general podcasting hobbyist, or even for someone producing a regular podcast, the features that are accessible via our web interface are more than sufficient.

However, some of our users, like podcasting companies who integrate our services as part of their products, asked us for dynamic ad insertions. We teamed up with them to develop a way of making this work within the Auphonic API.

We are pleased therefore to announce audio inserts - a new feature that has been made part of our API. This feature is not available through the web interface though, it requires the use of our API.

Before we talk about audio inserts, let's talk about what you need to know about dynamic ad insertion!

Dynamic Ad Insertion

There are two ways of dealing with adverts within podcasts. In the first, adverts are recorded or edited into the podcast and are fixed, or baked in. The second method is to use dynamic insertion, whereby the adverts are not part of the podcast recording/file but can be inserted into the podcast afterwards, at any time.

This second approach would allow you to run new ad campaigns across your entire catalog of shows. As a podcaster this allows you to potentially generate new revenue from your old content.

As a hosting company, dynamic ad insertion allows you to choose up to date and relevant adverts across all the podcasts you host. You can make these adverts relevant by subject or location, for instance.

Your users can define the time for the ads and their podcast episode, you are then in control of the adverts you insert.

Audio Inserts in Auphonic

Whichever approach to adverts you are taking, using audio inserts can help you.

Audio inserts are separate audio files which will be inserted into your main single or multitrack production at your defined offset (in seconds).

When a separate audio file is inserted as part of your production, it creates a gap in the podcast audio file, shifting the audio back by the length of the insert. Helpfully, chapters and other time-based information like transcriptions are also shifted back when an insert is used.

The biggest advantage of this is that Auphonic will apply loudness normalization to the audio insert so, from an audio point of view, it matches the rest of the podcast.

Although created with dynamic ad insertion in mind, this feature can be used for any type of audio inserts: adverts, music songs, individual parts of a recording, etc. In the case of baked-in adverts, you could upload your already processed advert audio as an insert, without having to edit it into your podcast recording using a separate audio editing application.

Please note that audio inserts should already be edited and processed before using them in production. (This is usually the case with pre-recorded adverts anyway). The only algorithm that Auphonic applies to an audio insert is loudness normalization in order to match the loudness of the entire production. Auphonic does not add any other processing (i.e. no leveling, noise reduction etc).

Audio Inserts Coding Example

Here is a brief overview of how to use our API for audio inserts. Be warned, this section is coding heavy, so if this isn't your thing, feel free to move along to the next section!

You can add audio insert files with a call to https://auphonic.com/api/production/{uuid}/multi_input_files.json, where uuid is the UUID of your production.
Here is an example with two audio inserts from an https URL. The offset/position in the main audio file must be given in seconds:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" 
    https://auphonic.com/api/production/{uuid}/multi_input_files.json 
    -u username:password 
    -d '[
            {
                "input_file": "https://mydomain.com/my_audio_insert_1.wav",
                "type": "insert",
                "offset": 20.5
            },
            {
                "input_file": "https://mydomain.com/my_audio_insert_2.wav",
                "type": "insert",
                "offset": 120.3
            }
        ]'

More details showing how to use audio inserts in our API can be seen here.

Additional API Audio Manipulations

In addition to audio inserts, using the Auphonic API offers a number of other audio manipulation options, which are not available via the web interface:

Cut start/end of audio files: See Docs

In Single-track productions, this feature allows the user to cut the start and/or the end of the uploaded audio file. Crucially, time-based information such as chapters etc. will be shifted accordingly.

Fade In/Out time of audio files: See Docs

This allows you to set the fade in/out time (in ms) at the start/end of output files. The default fade time is 100ms, but values can be set between 0ms and 5000ms.
This feature is also available in our Auphonic Leveler Desktop App.

Adding intro and outro: See Docs

Automatically add intros and outros to your main audio input file, as it is also available in our web interface.

Add multiple intros or outros: See Docs

Using our API, you can also add multiple intros or outros to a production. These intros or outros are played in series.

Overlapping intros/outros: See Docs

This feature allows intros/outros to overlap either the main audio or the following/previous intros/outros.

Conclusion

If you haven't explored our API already, the new audio inserts feature allows for greater flexibility and also dynamic ad insertion.
If you offer online services to podcasters, the Auphonic API would also then allow you to pass on Auphonic's audio processing algorithms to your customers.

If this is of interest to you or you have any new feature suggestions that you feel could benefit your company, please get in touch. We are always happy to extend the functionality of our products!

I love paddling on the Horsetooth Reservoir in cold season. Boat ramps are closed, no power boat traffic, usually quiet and calm. Snow and ice can enhance scenery. A great time to paddle, train, relax or photograph. The Horsetooth stays […]

I didn't choose to be a programmer. Somehow, it seemed, the computers chose me. For a long time, that was fine, that was enough; that was all I needed. But along the way I never felt that being a programmer was this unambiguously great-for-everyone career field with zero downsides. There

We recently launched a redesigned website for Jeff Wilson Pool Service in Naples, Florida to continue to expand on their...continue reading

https://aralroca.com/blog/opencv-in-the-web

No one can deny that UX (user experience) is the foundation of any website. This is the main reason why many website owners always look for ways to improve it. Some even spend a lot of money on design because of it. So, what is UX design exactly? And what is the difference between user […]

Mobile user experience somehow ‘imposed itself’ with all the development and improvement of mobile communication devices. In fact, it is the quality of user experience that divides outstanding apps from their less outstanding counterparts. The same factor enables startups to learn from big brands and to improve their products. User experience for mobile applications – […]

Over the years I’ve shared how to perform a number of actions with cURL: how to send POST data, how to retrieve headers, follow redirects, check GZIP encoding, and more. Another useful cURL directive is sending the user agent, as some servers respond with different content or headers depending on the user agent. Let’s have […]

The post How to Specify User Agent with cURL appeared first on David Walsh Blog.

This is it! Your one-stop shop for developer tools and resources. Designed to save you time and money, streamline project workflows, boost productivity, or all the above, Choosing the right tool for the job is never easy for several reasons. There’s a huge number to choose among, you have to know what to look for, […]

The post 6 Must Have Developer Tools and Services for Your Projects in 2019 appeared first on WebAppers.

One of life’s pleasures is discovering when some small action taken yields a highly positive, or even a game-changing outcome. A web designer could spend many hours creating a modern website with old tools. A single new tool or a single new service could cut the time required to do so dramatically and produce an […]

The post 15 Effective Tools and Services You Should Pay Attention To appeared first on WebAppers.

Find out what users love and hate and how to build the best website for your audience. From content and navigation to design and hosting, use our 5 top tips.

Shim was developed within the Boston Globe’s media lab as a way to study how Web sites look on various devices and browsers. A laptop intercepts all wifi traffic – this is redirected to a custom node.js server – which inserts a javascript, or “shim,” at the head of each web page that is visited. Read the rest...

“You can consult canada.ca/coronavirus to get the best updated information about the spread of the virus.” – Justin Trudeau, April 3rd, 2020 A daily mantra rings out from government officials around the world: The call to visit official websites to get the latest information on the COVID-19 pandemic and to access essential services. Yet to many constituents accessing […]

The post The Internet is an Essential Service appeared first on MOR10.

Punxsutawney Phil’s predictions for the coming of Spring on Groundhog Day haven’t been that accurate, and the U.S. National Weather Service is here to prove it with an infographic!

Every February 2, a crowd of thousands gathers at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to await a special forecast from a groundhog named Phil. If the 20-pound groundhog emerges and sees his shadow, the United States can expect six more weeks of winter weather according to legend. But, if Phil doesn’t see his shadow, we can expect warmer temperatures and the arrival of an early spring.

Even though he’s been forecasting since 1887, Phil’s track record for the entire country isn’t perfect. To determine just how accurate he is, we’ve compared U.S. national temperatures with Phil’s forecasts. On average, Phil has gotten it right 40% of the time over the past 10 years.

Using real data wins!

For what it’s worth, Phil didn’t see his shadow in 2020, and predicted that Spring would be coming soon!

Whether you call it a field visit, a contextual inquiry or a customer discovery interview, the goal of early stage research is the same: to uncover users' needs. Here are 5 mistakes I've seen crop up time and again in this kind of research.

To prevent spammers from flooding old articles with useless comments you can set WordPress to close comments after a certain […]

If a new user registers at a WordPress site the new user and the administrator receive notification mails: User: From: […]

According to the DHS document, along with the 11 active cases there are 23 members of the Secret Service who have recovered from COVID-19 and an additional 60 employees who are self-quarantining. No details have been provided about which members of the Secret Service are infected or if any have recently been on detail with the president or vice president.

Did you remember how was your life before Freepik and Flaticon. No I can’t remember the dark ages either. To celebrate this golden times, they are giving away once more an incredible package of 210 User Interface Icons in 3 versions: Flat, filled and lineal.  Download This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License …

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We’re a big step closer to a Canon EOS R5 release announcement now, as Nokishita Tweets that it has passed its Bluetooth certification. The belief is that the EOS R5 was originally scheduled to ship in July, and Canon Rumors reports that they’ve been told that’ll still happen. With lockdowns still in effect in much […]

The post The Canon EOS R5 release gets closer as it passes Bluetooth certification appeared first on DIY Photography.

With the coronavirus pandemic, many folks switched to working online. Things like teaching, business meetings and other face-to-face activities have been replaced with video calls. Home has become both home and workplace, and admit it: your wardrobe totally reflects this. Creative duo The Workmans shows this “fashion crossover” in their latest photo series #COVIDwear. The […]

The post #COVIDwear: a hilarious photo series showing quarantine fashion of remote workers appeared first on DIY Photography.

In this note, we unify and extend various concepts in the area of $G$-complete reducibility, where $G$ is a reductive algebraic group. By results of Serre and Bate--Martin--R"{o}hrle, the usual notion of $G$-complete reducibility can be re-framed as a property of an action of a group on the spherical building of the identity component of $G$. We show that other variations of this notion, such as relative complete reducibility and $sigma$-complete reducibility, can also be viewed as special cases of this building-theoretic definition, and hence a number of results from these areas are special cases of more general properties.

We consider the stochastic 2-dimensional Cahn-Hilliard equation which is driven by the derivative in space of a space-time white noise. We use two different approaches to study this equation. First we prove that there exists a unique solution $Y$ to the shifted equation (see (1.4) below), then $X:=Y+{Z}$ is the unique solution to stochastic Cahn-Hilliard equaiton, where ${Z}$ is the corresponding O-U process. Moreover, we use Dirichlet form approach in cite{Albeverio:1991hk} to construct the probabilistically weak solution the the original equation (1.1) below. By clarifying the precise relation between the solutions obtained by the Dirichlet forms aprroach and $X$, we can also get the restricted Markov uniquness of the generator and the uniqueness of martingale solutions to the equation (1.1).

The article is devoted to the expansion of iterated Stratonovich stochastic integrals of arbitrary multiplicity $k$ $(kinmathbb{N})$ based on the generalized iterated Fourier series. The case of Fourier-Legendre series as well as the case of trigonotemric Fourier series are considered in details. The obtained expansion provides a possibility to represent the iterated Stratonovich stochastic integral in the form of iterated series of products of standard Gaussian random variables. Convergence in the mean of degree $2n$ $(nin mathbb{N})$ of the expansion is proved. Some modifications of the mentioned expansion were derived for the case $k=2$. One of them is based of multiple trigonomentric Fourier series converging almost everywhere in the square $[t, T]^2$. The results of the article can be applied to the numerical solution of Ito stochastic differential equations.

The Baumslag Solitar group $BS(2,3)$, is a so-called non-Hopfian group, meaning that it has an epimorphism $phi$ onto itself, that is not injective. In particular this is equivalent to saying that $BS(2,3)$ has a quotient that is isomorphic to itself. As a consequence the Cayley graph of $BS(2,3)$ has a quotient that is isomorphic to itself up to change of generators. We describe this quotient on the graph-level and take a closer look at the most common epimorphism $phi$. We show its kernel is a free group of infinite rank with an explicit set of generators.

Let $Gamma$ be a discrete group acting properly discontinuously and isometrically on the three-dimensional anti-de Sitter space $mathrm{AdS}^{3}$, and $square$ the Laplacian which is a second-order hyperbolic differential operator. We study linear independence of a family of generalized Poincar'{e} series introduced by Kassel-Kobayashi [Adv. Math. 2016], which are defined by the $Gamma$-average of certain eigenfunctions on $mathrm{AdS}^{3}$. We prove that the multiplicities of $L^{2}$-eigenvalues of the hyperbolic Laplacian $square$ on $Gammaackslashmathrm{AdS}^{3}$ are unbounded when $Gamma$ is finitely generated. Moreover, we prove that the multiplicities of extit{stable $L^{2}$-eigenvalues} for compact anti-de Sitter $3$-manifolds are unbounded.

The main purpose of this paper is to study and characterize the existing of general asymptotic regional gradient observer which observe the current gradient state of the original system in connection with gradient strategic sensors. Thus, we give an approach based to Luenberger observer theory of linear distributed parameter systems which is enabled to determinate asymptotically regional gradient estimator of current gradient system state. More precisely, under which condition the notion of asymptotic regional gradient observability can be achieved. Furthermore, we show that the measurement structures allows the existence of general asymptotic regional gradient observer and we give a sufficient condition for such asymptotic regional gradient observer in general case. We also show that, there exists a dynamical system for the considered system is not general asymptotic gradient observer in the usual sense, but it may be general asymptotic regional gradient observer. Then, for this purpose we present various results related to different types of sensor structures, domains and boundary conditions in two dimensional distributed diffusion systems

Event-related desynchronization and synchronization (ERD/S) and movement-related cortical potential (MRCP) play an important role in brain-computer interfaces (BCI) for lower limb rehabilitation, particularly in standing and sitting. However, little is known about the differences in the cortical activation between standing and sitting, especially how the brain's intention modulates the pre-movement sensorimotor rhythm as they do for switching movements. In this study, we aim to investigate the decoding of continuous EEG rhythms during action observation (AO), motor imagery (MI), and motor execution (ME) for standing and sitting. We developed a behavioral task in which participants were instructed to perform both AO and MI/ME in regard to the actions of sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit. Our results demonstrated that the ERD was prominent during AO, whereas ERS was typical during MI at the alpha band across the sensorimotor area. A combination of the filter bank common spatial pattern (FBCSP) and support vector machine (SVM) for classification was used for both offline and pseudo-online analyses. The offline analysis indicated the classification of AO and MI providing the highest mean accuracy at 82.73$pm$2.38\% in stand-to-sit transition. By applying the pseudo-online analysis, we demonstrated the higher performance of decoding neural intentions from the MI paradigm in comparison to the ME paradigm. These observations led us to the promising aspect of using our developed tasks based on the integration of both AO and MI to build future exoskeleton-based rehabilitation systems.

Recent studies have confirmed a growing trend, especially among youngsters, of using Online Social Media as favourite information platform at the expense of traditional mass media. Indeed, they can easily reach a wide audience at a high speed; but exactly because of this they are the preferred medium for influencing public opinion via so-called fake news. Moreover, there is a general agreement that the main vehicle of fakes news are malicious software robots (bots) that automatically interact with human users. In previous work we have considered the problem of tagging human users in Online Social Networks as credulous users. Specifically, we have considered credulous those users with relatively high number of bot friends when compared to total number of their social friends. We consider this group of users worth of attention because they might have a higher exposure to malicious activities and they may contribute to the spreading of fake information by sharing dubious content. In this work, starting from a dataset of fake news, we investigate the behaviour and the degree of involvement of credulous users in fake news diffusion. The study aims to: (i) fight fake news by considering the content diffused by credulous users; (ii) highlight the relationship between credulous users and fake news spreading; (iii) target fake news detection by focusing on the analysis of specific accounts more exposed to malicious activities of bots. Our first results demonstrate a strong involvement of credulous users in fake news diffusion. This findings are calling for tools that, by performing data streaming on credulous' users actions, enables us to perform targeted fact-checking.

In this paper, we propose a new nonlinear detector with improved interference suppression in Multi-User Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) system. The proposed detector is a combination of the following parts: QR decomposition (QRD), low complexity users sorting before QRD, sorting-reduced (SR) K-best method and minimum mean square error (MMSE) pre-processing. Our method outperforms a linear interference rejection combining (IRC, i.e. MMSE naturally) method significantly in both strong interference and additive white noise scenarios with both ideal and real channel estimations. This result has wide application importance for scenarios with strong interference, i.e. when co-located users utilize the internet in stadium, highway, shopping center, etc. Simulation results are presented for the non-line of sight 3D-UMa model of 5G QuaDRiGa 2.0 channel for 16 highly correlated single-antenna users with QAM16 modulation in 64 antennas of Massive MIMO system. The performance was compared with MMSE and other detection approaches.

Reinforcement learning methods have been used to compute dialog policies from language-based interaction experiences. Efficiency is of particular importance in dialog policy learning, because of the considerable cost of interacting with people, and the very poor user experience from low-quality conversations. Aiming at improving the efficiency of dialog policy learning, we develop algorithm LHUA (Learning with Hindsight, User modeling, and Adaptation) that, for the first time, enables dialog agents to adaptively learn with hindsight from both simulated and real users. Simulation and hindsight provide the dialog agent with more experience and more (positive) reinforcements respectively. Experimental results suggest that, in success rate and policy quality, LHUA outperforms competitive baselines from the literature, including its no-simulation, no-adaptation, and no-hindsight counterparts.

In this paper, we analyze the symbol error rate (SER) performance of the simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) enabled three-node differential decode-and-forward (DDF) relay networks, which adopt the power splitting (PS) protocol at the relay. The use of non-coherent differential modulation eliminates the need for sending training symbols to estimate the instantaneous channel state informations (CSIs) at all network nodes, and therefore improves the power efficiency, as compared with the coherent modulation. However, performance analysis results are not yet available for the state-of-the-art detectors such as the approximate maximum-likelihood detector. Existing works rely on Monte-Carlo simulation to show that there exists an optimal PS ratio that minimizes the overall SER. In this work, we propose a near-optimal detector with linear complexity with respect to the modulation size. We derive an accurate approximate SER expression, based on which the optimal PS ratio can be accurately estimated without requiring any Monte-Carlo simulation.

With the growing reliance on the ubiquitous availability of IT systems and services, these systems become more global, scaled, and complex to operate. To maintain business viability, IT service providers must put in place reliable and cost efficient operations support. Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) is a promising technology for alleviating operational complexity of IT systems and services. AIOps platforms utilize big data, machine learning and other advanced analytics technologies to enhance IT operations with proactive actionable dynamic insight.

In this paper we share our experience applying the AIOps approach to a production cloud object storage service to get actionable insights into system's behavior and health. We describe a real-life production cloud scale service and its operational data, present the AIOps platform we have created, and show how it has helped us resolving operational pain points.

Bob Duncan talks about what happened to his son when he returned to college and to his midterm exams only 24 hours after his concussion.

Did you know that 75% of opinions on website credibility comes from design? If you want people to look at your services and find you credible, you must invest in web design for services pages to provide your audience with a positive experience. By looking at some web design examples for service pages, you’ll get […]

The post 6 Service Page Web Design Examples to Inspire You appeared first on WebFX Blog.

The puppet's felt hair bounces as she stage-whispers to the other puppets, almost conspiratorially, about their plans.…

Methods, apparatuses and articles of manufacture for use in a mobile device to determine whether a dynamic user profile is to transition from a first state to a second state based, at least in part, on one or more sensed indicators. The dynamic user profile may be indicative of one or more current inferable user behavior contexts for a user co-located with the mobile device. The mobile device may transition a dynamic user profile from a first state to a second state, in response to a determination that the dynamic user profile is to transition from the first state to the second state, and operatively affect one or more functions performed, at least in part, by the mobile device based, at least in part, on the transition of the dynamic user profile to the second state.