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Website Inspiration: BlurHash

Clear representation of how the product works in the header of the Landing Page for BlurHash. A BlurHash is a compact representation of a placeholder for an image. When integrated they really improves app designs by replacing boring grey boxes with smoother loading images. Full Review




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Article: 25 Beautifully Dark-Schemed Landing Pages for Inspiration

There is something instantly remarkable about a website with a strong, dark color scheme.







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Website Inspiration: Barrel Recap 2019

Fun Annual Report One Pager (built using Webflow) by Barrel recapping their 2019 year. It’s busting with flavor from colorful changing backgrounds, cheeky thick-line illustrations and the playful bouncing social media icon footer. Also worth a shout is the responsive design, scaling up perfectly on huge screens while rearranging content well on small. Full Review





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Remapping the Neural Pathways of Humanity

The pandemic has changed the daily lives of everyone. How we work, how we shop, and how we interact with each other are all shifting. Comparing life as it is now with how it used to be can lead to sadness or despair and what's called "ambiguous loss."





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McDonald's Workers in Denmark Pity Us

Nicholas Kristof: Before the coronavirus pandemic, I crept behind [expletive] Danish lines to explore: How scary is Denmark? How horrifying would it be if the United States took a step or two in the direction of Denmark? Would America lose its edge, productivity and innovation, or would it gain well-being, fairness and happiness?




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Scientists Obtain 'lucky' Image of Jupiter

Astronomers have produced a remarkable new image of Jupiter, tracing the glowing regions of warmth that lurk beneath the gas giant's cloud tops. The picture was captured in infared by the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, and is one of the sharpest observations of the planet ever made from the ground.




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Dan Pink: If You Believe In It. Share It.

Dan Pink is a bestselling author and was the host & co-executive producer of “Crowd Control”, a television series about human behavior on National Geographic. He’s appeared frequently on NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN, and other TV/radio networks worldwide. His provocative books include Drive, A Whole New Mind, To Sell is Human, and his latest book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. I love Dan’s books. He’s a ruthlessly practical thinker and in this episode he doesn’t hold back. We get into: How to see trends or unlikely connections across by absorbing and learning from a wide variety of sources, whether that’s audio programs, books, documentaries, or episodes of Silicon Valley. Using lists to track influences, sources, and even random ideas or curiosities to spark new ideas Selling isn’t a dirty word, it’s required to get our ideas out there. If we believe in our work, we have a moral obligation to share it. and so much more… Enjoy! FOLLOW DAN: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make […]

The post Dan Pink: If You Believe In It. Share It. appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.




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Smashing Podcast Episode 15 With Phil Smith: How Can I Build An App In 10 Days?

In this episode of the Smashing Podcast, we’re talking about building apps on a tight timeline. How can you quickly turn around a project to respond to an emerging situation like COVID-19? Drew McLellan talks to Phil Smith to find out. Show Notes CardMedic React Native React Native for Web Expo Apiary Phil’s company amillionmonkeys Phil’s personal blog and Twitter Weekly Update Getting Started With Nuxt Implementing Dark Mode In React Apps Using styled-components How To Succeed In Wireframe Design Mirage JS Deep Dive: Understanding Mirage JS Models And Associations (Part 1) Readability Algorithms Should Be Tools, Not Targets Transcript Drew McLellan: He is director of the full-stack web development studio amillionmonkeys, where he partners with business owners and creative agencies to build digital products that make an impact.




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Google Lens now copies handwritten text and pastes it straight to your computer

Are there still folks among you who, like me, prefer handwriting to typing? If you’re in this group, you’ll love this new feature on Google Lens. The app now lets you scan your handwritten notes, copy them, and paste them straight to your computer. I gave it a spin, and I bring you my impressions […]

The post Google Lens now copies handwritten text and pastes it straight to your computer appeared first on DIY Photography.




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Nikon has confirmed that their flagship D6 DSLR will start shipping on May 21st

It feels like forever since Nikon announced their newest flagship DSLR; the Nikon D6. It’s actually only been three months, but that hasn’t stopped some people getting anxious. Recently, customers were being told that the D6 would start shipping right about now, but now Nikon has officially come out to announce that the Nikon D6 […]

The post Nikon has confirmed that their flagship D6 DSLR will start shipping on May 21st appeared first on DIY Photography.





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eagereyesTV Episode 2: Unit Charts, Dot Plots, ISOTYPE, and What Makes Them Special

Charts usually show values as visual properties, like the length in a bar chart, the location in a scatterplot, the area in a bubble chart, etc. Unit charts show values as multiples instead. One famous example of these charts is called ISOTYPE, and you may have seen them in information graphics as well. They’re an […]




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Paper: Evidence for Area as the Primary Visual Cue in Pie Charts

How we read pie charts is still an open question: is it angle? Is it area? Is it arc length? In a study I'm presenting as a short paper at the IEEE VIS conference in Vancouver next week, I tried to tease the visual cues apart – using modeling and 3D pie charts. The big […]




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eagereyesTV Episode 3: 3D Pie Charts For Science!

How do we read pie charts? This seems like a straightforward question to answer, but it turns out that most of what you’ve probably heard is wrong. We don’t actually know whether we use angle, area, or arc length. In a short paper at the VIS conference this week I’m presenting a study I ran […]




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Corners Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/sunday-matches/corners-picks-sunday-17-september-2017/

Corners Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

MATCH CORNERS PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 1.55 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Chelsea - Arsenal Soccer: Premier League OVER 9.5 CORNERS 1.55




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Half Time Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/sunday-matches/half-time-picks-sunday-17-september-2017/

Half Time Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

HALF TIME PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 7.43 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Half Time Our Pick Odds Alaves - Villarreal Soccer: Spain - LaLiga HALF TIME X 2.01 Zenit Petersburg - Ufa Soccer: Russia -…




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Goals Scored Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/sunday-matches/goals-scored-picks-sunday-17-september-2017/

Goals Scored Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

MATCH GOALS PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 6.44 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Amiens - Marseille Soccer: France - Ligue 1 UNDER 2.5 1.85 AC Milan - Udinese Soccer: Italy - Serie A…




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Fulltime Result Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/sunday-matches/fulltime-result-picks-sunday-17-september-2017/

Fulltime Result Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

FULLTIME PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 3.88 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Waregem - Mouscron Soccer: Belgium - Jupiler League 1 1.61 Sassuolo - Juventus Soccer: Italy - Serie…




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Double Chance Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/sunday-matches/double-chance-picks-sunday-17-september-2017/

Double Chance Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

DOUBLE CHANCE PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 2.80 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Las Palmas - Ath Bilbao Soccer: Spain - LaLiga X2 1.45 Chievo - Atalanta Soccer: Italy - Serie…




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Both teams to score Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/sunday-matches/teams-score-picks-sunday-17-september-2017/

Both teams to score Picks *** Sunday *** 17 September 2017

BOTH TEAMS TO SCORE To return: ??? USD Odds: 5.36 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   BTS Our Pick Odds Tosno - Spartak Moscow Soccer: Russia - Premier League Both to score NO 1.53 Chelsea - Arsenal Soccer:…



  • both teams to score picks
  • both teams to score tips
  • Both teams to score
  • Sunday Matches

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Double Chance Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/monday-matches/double-chance-picks-monday-18-september-2017/

Double Chance Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

DOUBLE CHANCE PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 2.03 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Espanyol - Celta Vigo Soccer: Spain - LaLiga 1X 1.29 AFC Eskilstuna - Sundsvall Soccer: Sweden -…




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Fulltime Result Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/monday-matches/fulltime-result-picks-monday-18-september-2017/

Fulltime Result Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

FULLTIME PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 3.77 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Plzen - Zlin Soccer: Czech Republic - 1. Liga 1 1.39 Odd - Aalesund Soccer: Norway -…




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Both teams to score Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/monday-matches/teams-score-picks-monday-18-september-2017/

Both teams to score Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

BOTH TEAMS TO SCORE To return: ??? USD Odds: 5.26 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   BTS Our Pick Odds Lokomotiv Moscow - Amkar Soccer: Russia - Premier League Both to score NO 1.50 Astra - FC…



  • both teams to score picks
  • both teams to score tips
  • Both teams to score
  • Monday Matches

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Corners Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/monday-matches/corners-picks-monday-18-september-2017/

Corners Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

MATCH CORNERS PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 1.55 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Espanyol - Celta Vigo Soccer: Spain - LaLiga OVER 9.5 CORNERS 1.55




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Asian Handicap Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/monday-matches/asian-handicap-picks-monday-18-september-2017/

Asian Handicap Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

ASIAN HANDICAP PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 5.83 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction goes for Odds Lokomotiv Moscow - Amkar Soccer: Russia - Premier League L. Moscow -0.5 1.55 Odd -…




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Goals Scored Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/monday-matches/goals-scored-picks-monday-18-september-2017/

Goals Scored Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

MATCH GOALS PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 4.56 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Astra - FC Viitorul Soccer: Romania - Liga 1 UNDER 2.5 1.60 Espanyol - Celta Vigo Soccer: Spain - LaLiga…




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Half Time Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/monday-matches/half-time-picks-monday-18-september-2017/

Half Time Picks *** Monday *** 18 September 2017

HALF TIME PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 8.39 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Half Time Our Pick Odds Espanyol - Celta Vigo Soccer: Spain - LaLiga HALF TIME X 2.07 Lokomotiv Moscow - Amkar Soccer: Russia…




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Goals Scored Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/tuesday-matches/goals-scored-picks-tuesday-19-september-2017/

Goals Scored Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

MATCH GOALS PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 6.27 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Burnley - Leeds Soccer: England - Carabao Cup OVER 2.5 2.00 Schalke - Bayern Munich Soccer: Germany -…




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Half Time Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/tuesday-matches/half-time-picks-tuesday-19-september-2017/

Half Time Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

HALF TIME PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 6.93 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Half Time Our Pick Odds Crystal Palace - Huddersfield Soccer: England - Carabao Cup HALF TIME X 2.10 FC Augsburg - RB…




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Asian Handicap Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/tuesday-matches/asian-handicap-picks-tuesday-19-september-2017/

Asian Handicap Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

ASIAN HANDICAP PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 4.08 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction goes for Odds West Ham - Bolton Soccer: England - Carabao Cup West Ham -0.5 1.55 Bologna - Inter Soccer:…




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Double Chance Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/tuesday-matches/double-chance-picks-tuesday-19-september-2017/

Double Chance Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

DOUBLE CHANCE PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 1.95 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Bournemouth - Brighton Soccer: England - Carabao Cup 1X 1.20 Wolfsburg - SV Werder Bremen Soccer: Germany…




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Fulltime Result Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/tuesday-matches/fulltime-result-picks-tuesday-19-september-2017/

Fulltime Result Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

FULLTIME PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 5.40 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds GAIS - Frej Soccer: Sweden - Superettan 1 1.82 Bologna - Inter Soccer: Italy - Serie…




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Corners Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/tuesday-matches/corners-picks-tuesday-19-september-2017/

Corners Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

MATCH CORNERS PICKS To return: ??? USD Odds: 1.55 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   Our Prediction Odds Valencia - Malaga Soccer: Spain - LaLiga OVER 9.5 CORNERS 1.55




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Both teams to score Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

We have a new preview on https://www.007soccerpicks.com/tuesday-matches/teams-score-picks-tuesday-19-september-2017/

Both teams to score Picks *** Tuesday *** 19 September 2017

BOTH TEAMS TO SCORE To return: ??? USD Odds: 4.75 Stake: 100 USD   Starting in   Teams   BTS Our Pick Odds Schalke - Bayern Munich Soccer: Germany - Bundesliga Both to score YES 1.60 Leicester -…



  • both teams to score picks
  • both teams to score tips
  • Both teams to score
  • Tuesday Matches

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Compact manifolds of dimension $ngeq 12$ with positive isotropic curvature. (arXiv:1909.12265v4 [math.DG] UPDATED)

We prove the following result: Let $(M,g_0)$ be a compact manifold of dimension $ngeq 12$ with positive isotropic curvature. Then $M$ is diffeomorphic to a spherical space form, or a compact quotient manifold of $mathbb{S}^{n-1} imes mathbb{R}$ by diffeomorphisms, or a connected sum of a finite number of such manifolds. This extends a recent work of Brendle, and implies a conjecture of Schoen in dimensions $ngeq 12$. The proof uses Ricci flow with surgery on compact orbifolds with isolated singularities.




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Minimal acceleration for the multi-dimensional isentropic Euler equations. (arXiv:2005.03570v1 [math.AP])

Among all dissipative solutions of the multi-dimensional isentropic Euler equations there exists at least one that minimizes the acceleration, which implies that the solution is as close to being a weak solution as possible. The argument is based on a suitable selection procedure.




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Aspiration can promote cooperation in well-mixed populations as in regular graphs. (arXiv:2005.03421v1 [q-bio.PE])

Classical studies on aspiration-based dynamics suggest that a dissatisfied individual changes strategy without taking into account the success of others. This promotes defection spreading. The imitation-based dynamics allow individuals to imitate successful strategies without taking into account their own-satisfactions. In this article, we propose to study a dynamic based on aspiration which takes into account imitation of successful strategies for dissatisfied individuals. This helps cooperative members to resist. Individuals compare their success to their desired satisfaction level before making a decision to update their strategies. This mechanism helps individuals with a minimum of self-satisfaction to maintain their strategies. If an individual is dissatisfied, it will learn from others by choosing successful strategies. We derive an exact expression of the fixation probability in well-mixed populations as in structured populations in networks. As a result, we show that selection may favor cooperation more than defection in well-mixed populations as in populations ranged over a regular graph. We show that the best scenario is a graph with small connectivity.




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A Note on Approximations of Fixed Points for Nonexpansive Mappings in Norm-attainable Classes. (arXiv:2005.03069v1 [math.FA])

Let $H$ be an infinite dimensional, reflexive, separable Hilbert space and $NA(H)$ the class of all norm-attainble operators on $H.$ In this note, we study an implicit scheme for a canonical representation of nonexpansive contractions in norm-attainable classes.




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The Mapillary Traffic Sign Dataset for Detection and Classification on a Global Scale. (arXiv:1909.04422v2 [cs.CV] UPDATED)

Traffic signs are essential map features globally in the era of autonomous driving and smart cities. To develop accurate and robust algorithms for traffic sign detection and classification, a large-scale and diverse benchmark dataset is required. In this paper, we introduce a traffic sign benchmark dataset of 100K street-level images around the world that encapsulates diverse scenes, wide coverage of geographical locations, and varying weather and lighting conditions and covers more than 300 manually annotated traffic sign classes. The dataset includes 52K images that are fully annotated and 48K images that are partially annotated. This is the largest and the most diverse traffic sign dataset consisting of images from all over world with fine-grained annotations of traffic sign classes. We have run extensive experiments to establish strong baselines for both the detection and the classification tasks. In addition, we have verified that the diversity of this dataset enables effective transfer learning for existing large-scale benchmark datasets on traffic sign detection and classification. The dataset is freely available for academic research: https://www.mapillary.com/dataset/trafficsign.




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A Fast and Accurate Algorithm for Spherical Harmonic Analysis on HEALPix Grids with Applications to the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. (arXiv:1904.10514v4 [math.NA] UPDATED)

The Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelation (HEALPix) scheme is used extensively in astrophysics for data collection and analysis on the sphere. The scheme was originally designed for studying the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, which represents the first light to travel during the early stages of the universe's development and gives the strongest evidence for the Big Bang theory to date. Refined analysis of the CMB angular power spectrum can lead to revolutionary developments in understanding the nature of dark matter and dark energy. In this paper, we present a new method for performing spherical harmonic analysis for HEALPix data, which is a central component to computing and analyzing the angular power spectrum of the massive CMB data sets. The method uses a novel combination of a non-uniform fast Fourier transform, the double Fourier sphere method, and Slevinsky's fast spherical harmonic transform (Slevinsky, 2019). For a HEALPix grid with $N$ pixels (points), the computational complexity of the method is $mathcal{O}(Nlog^2 N)$, with an initial set-up cost of $mathcal{O}(N^{3/2}log N)$. This compares favorably with $mathcal{O}(N^{3/2})$ runtime complexity of the current methods available in the HEALPix software when multiple maps need to be analyzed at the same time. Using numerical experiments, we demonstrate that the new method also appears to provide better accuracy over the entire angular power spectrum of synthetic data when compared to the current methods, with a convergence rate at least two times higher.




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Keeping out the Masses: Understanding the Popularity and Implications of Internet Paywalls. (arXiv:1903.01406v4 [cs.CY] UPDATED)

Funding the production of quality online content is a pressing problem for content producers. The most common funding method, online advertising, is rife with well-known performance and privacy harms, and an intractable subject-agent conflict: many users do not want to see advertisements, depriving the site of needed funding.

Because of these negative aspects of advertisement-based funding, paywalls are an increasingly popular alternative for websites. This shift to a "pay-for-access" web is one that has potentially huge implications for the web and society. Instead of a system where information (nominally) flows freely, paywalls create a web where high quality information is available to fewer and fewer people, leaving the rest of the web users with less information, that might be also less accurate and of lower quality. Despite the potential significance of a move from an "advertising-but-open" web to a "paywalled" web, we find this issue understudied.

This work addresses this gap in our understanding by measuring how widely paywalls have been adopted, what kinds of sites use paywalls, and the distribution of policies enforced by paywalls. A partial list of our findings include that (i) paywall use is accelerating (2x more paywalls every 6 months), (ii) paywall adoption differs by country (e.g. 18.75% in US, 12.69% in Australia), (iii) paywalls change how users interact with sites (e.g. higher bounce rates, less incoming links), (iv) the median cost of an annual paywall access is $108 per site, and (v) paywalls are in general trivial to circumvent.

Finally, we present the design of a novel, automated system for detecting whether a site uses a paywall, through the combination of runtime browser instrumentation and repeated programmatic interactions with the site. We intend this classifier to augment future, longitudinal measurements of paywall use and behavior.




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Joint Prediction and Time Estimation of COVID-19 Developing Severe Symptoms using Chest CT Scan. (arXiv:2005.03405v1 [eess.IV])

With the rapidly worldwide spread of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), it is of great importance to conduct early diagnosis of COVID-19 and predict the time that patients might convert to the severe stage, for designing effective treatment plan and reducing the clinicians' workloads. In this study, we propose a joint classification and regression method to determine whether the patient would develop severe symptoms in the later time, and if yes, predict the possible conversion time that the patient would spend to convert to the severe stage. To do this, the proposed method takes into account 1) the weight for each sample to reduce the outliers' influence and explore the problem of imbalance classification, and 2) the weight for each feature via a sparsity regularization term to remove the redundant features of high-dimensional data and learn the shared information across the classification task and the regression task. To our knowledge, this study is the first work to predict the disease progression and the conversion time, which could help clinicians to deal with the potential severe cases in time or even save the patients' lives. Experimental analysis was conducted on a real data set from two hospitals with 422 chest computed tomography (CT) scans, where 52 cases were converted to severe on average 5.64 days and 34 cases were severe at admission. Results show that our method achieves the best classification (e.g., 85.91% of accuracy) and regression (e.g., 0.462 of the correlation coefficient) performance, compared to all comparison methods. Moreover, our proposed method yields 76.97% of accuracy for predicting the severe cases, 0.524 of the correlation coefficient, and 0.55 days difference for the converted time.




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Specification and Automated Analysis of Inter-Parameter Dependencies in Web APIs. (arXiv:2005.03320v1 [cs.SE])

Web services often impose inter-parameter dependencies that restrict the way in which two or more input parameters can be combined to form valid calls to the service. Unfortunately, current specification languages for web services like the OpenAPI Specification (OAS) provide no support for the formal description of such dependencies, which makes it hardly possible to automatically discover and interact with services without human intervention. In this article, we present an approach for the specification and automated analysis of inter-parameter dependencies in web APIs. We first present a domain-specific language, called Inter-parameter Dependency Language (IDL), for the specification of dependencies among input parameters in web services. Then, we propose a mapping to translate an IDL document into a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), enabling the automated analysis of IDL specifications using standard CSP-based reasoning operations. Specifically, we present a catalogue of nine analysis operations on IDL documents allowing to compute, for example, whether a given request satisfies all the dependencies of the service. Finally, we present a tool suite including an editor, a parser, an OAS extension, a constraint programming-aided library, and a test suite supporting IDL specifications and their analyses. Together, these contributions pave the way for a new range of specification-driven applications in areas such as code generation and testing.




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Constructing Accurate and Efficient Deep Spiking Neural Networks with Double-threshold and Augmented Schemes. (arXiv:2005.03231v1 [cs.NE])

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are considered as a potential candidate to overcome current challenges such as the high-power consumption encountered by artificial neural networks (ANNs), however there is still a gap between them with respect to the recognition accuracy on practical tasks. A conversion strategy was thus introduced recently to bridge this gap by mapping a trained ANN to an SNN. However, it is still unclear that to what extent this obtained SNN can benefit both the accuracy advantage from ANN and high efficiency from the spike-based paradigm of computation. In this paper, we propose two new conversion methods, namely TerMapping and AugMapping. The TerMapping is a straightforward extension of a typical threshold-balancing method with a double-threshold scheme, while the AugMapping additionally incorporates a new scheme of augmented spike that employs a spike coefficient to carry the number of typical all-or-nothing spikes occurring at a time step. We examine the performance of our methods based on MNIST, Fashion-MNIST and CIFAR10 datasets. The results show that the proposed double-threshold scheme can effectively improve accuracies of the converted SNNs. More importantly, the proposed AugMapping is more advantageous for constructing accurate, fast and efficient deep SNNs as compared to other state-of-the-art approaches. Our study therefore provides new approaches for further integration of advanced techniques in ANNs to improve the performance of SNNs, which could be of great merit to applied developments with spike-based neuromorphic computing.