Month: December 2022 | Bach Seat

Archive for December 14, 2022

RB | December 14, 2022

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What is your Grinchiness Index?

While more than 90% of Americans celebrate the Christmas holiday, not everyone is happy about it. Between cold temperatures, early sunsets, and holiday shopping stress, there are plenty of people who feel a bit Grinchy this time of year. FinanceBuzz looked at the grinchiness of cities across the U.S.. They analyzed nearly two dozen metrics across the 50 biggest U.S. cities to measure which cities are full of cheer or just full of it this holiday season

The Grinchiness index

New York City takes the roast beast as the Grinchiest city in America. The Big Apple has America’s lowest rates of holiday decoration shops, Christmas tree lots gift shops, and food banks. Additionally, only 23.3% of New Yorkers volunteer annually — the fourth-lowest percentage in the country.

Los Angeles is only slightly less Grinchy than the Big Apple. LA features just 2.4 shopping centers per 100,000 people — the lowest rate in the country. The percentage of Angelenos that volunteer is among the lowest in the country. The percentage of LA denizens that donates at least $25 to charity annually is in the bottom 10.

Just a few hours from Grinchy NYC, the two cities with the most holiday cheer. Hartford, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island finished high in holiday metrics like the number of ice rinks, Christmas tree lots, gift shops, holiday festivals and events.

What is Detroit’s Grichiness?

The Motor City scored just below average for holiday grinchiness. Motown’s overall score grinchiness score is 44.5. According to FinanceBuzz, the average is 45.1 The article says the lower the score, the higher the “Grinchiest.” The details.

Detroit ranked 15 for holiday season of giving score with an 11. The holiday season of giving score includes:

Number of food banks.
Number of homeless shelters.
Percentage of the population that volunteers annually.
Percentage of the population that donates at least $25 to charity annually.

The Motor City ranked number 19 on communal celebrations and decor with an 8.3 result. The communal celebrations and decor score includes the number of:

Holiday events and festivals.
Ice-skating rinks.
Holiday decoration shops.
Christmas tree farms/lots/shops.

Detroit scored 5.7 points in the holiday shopping. That was only good enough to be ranked 26. The holiday shopping score is made up of the number of holiday markets, toy stores, gift shops, department stores, shopping centers and malls.

The D scored 15.8 on the holiday jeer category. This score put Detroit in 13th place for holiday jeeriness. Holiday jeeriness was measured by looking at Google Trends score over the last five years these anti-Christmas terms; “bah humbug”, “I hate Christmas”, “Christmas sucks”, and “the Grinch.”

Detroit ranked very low for holiday cheer at 47th place, with a score of 3.8. The study look at Google Trends score for Christmas terms over the last five years. The holiday cheer phrases the searched for were:

“Christmas Party”
“Christmas Lights”
“Christmas Concert”
“Christmas Festival”
“Christmas Market”
“Christmas Dinner”

Other cities in the region grinchiness score

Chicago = 24.7
Columbus= 30
Indianapolis = 33.8
Cleveland = 54.3,

The average score of the 50 metropolitan areas studies score was 45.1

City	Overall city score
Hartford, CT	74.8
Providence, RI	74.8
Minneapolis, MN	70.7
Orlando, FL	68.3
Pittsburgh, PA	65.8
Riverside, CA	62.7
Atlanta, GA	62.5
Salt Lake City, UT	62
Baltimore, MD	60
Cincinnati, OH	58.9
St. Louis, MO	57.6
Buffalo, NY	57.3
Milwaukee, WI	55.2
Cleveland, OH	54.3
Richmond, VA	52.2
Birmingham, AL	52.1
Tampa, FL	50.1
Miami, FL	49.8
Seattle, WA	48.4
Portland, OR	47
Raleigh, NC	45.6
Detroit, MI	44.5
Denver, CO	43.4
Kansas City, MO	43.4
Boston, MA	43.3
Washington, DC	42.5
New Orleans, LA	42.4
San Francisco, CA	40
Sacramento, CA	38.8
San Jose, CA	38.4
Las Vegas, NV	36.4
Nashville, TN	35.3
Charlotte, NC	35.1
Louisville, KY	34.9
Virginia Beach, VA	34.9
San Diego, CA	34.4
Indianapolis, IN	33.8
Austin, TX	33.7
Philadelphia, PA	31.9
Jacksonville, FL	31.6
Houston, TX	30.8
Oklahoma City, OK	30.5
Columbus, OH	30
Dallas, TX	29.7
Phoenix, AZ	28.3
Memphis, TN	25.7
Chicago, IL	24.7
San Antonio, TX	22.7
Los Angeles, CA	19.6
New York, NY	18.9

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Holidays | Tags: 2022, Christmas, Detroit, Grinch, New York

RB | December 14, 2022

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Give Your Resume a Post-Pandemic Refresh for 2023

It is time to give your resume a post-pandemic refresh for 2023. You should make sure that your resume is focused on current job skills. To make your resume more modern, focus on current job skills instead of those that no longer are quite so relevant. Here is a list of things you should take off your resume. These obsolete skills take up space on your resume. FinanceBuzz says they may actually reduce your chances at landing a new job.

Packaging and shipping

In the past, mail rooms that packed and shipped memo, reports and packages were important to keep business moving. In 2023 you can delete the packing and shipping skills from your resume. These have been replaced by email and online programs that can print labels and track packages.

Typing

Typing is a skill that has become ubiquitous in the modern workplace. In the past, typing proficiency was reserved for people who held positions in which typing was regularly needed. Now, most employees have computers on their desks.

Filing

Filing is another office skill that computers have replaced. Files are no longer pieces of paper, to be managed, they are kept in computers. There is no need to boast of this skill.

Web browser use

Using a web browser is another skill employers assume your have. It is pointless to list web browsers such as Microsoft Edge, Firefox, or Google Chrome on your resume. Be sure to delete references to outdated browsers like Netscape or (gasp) AOL.

Data entry

With the rise of technology in the workplace, most workers have some understanding of basic data entry. You can skip mentioning proficiency related to data entry unless the job requires you to add large amounts of information to a database. In that case, mention a specific database entry program you understand thoroughly.

Online research

In 2023, online research can come off your resume. Online research is another universal skill for most workers. Most workers know how to use online search engines like Google or Bing to find the information they need. Save the space on your resume for more relevant skills.

Email

It used to be that understanding how to write, send, or receive emails was a new concept, but that’s obviously not the case anymore. You can also remove any references to your work with Microsoft Outlook, as well as web-based email such as Gmail.

Computer languages

You might have experience with multiple computer languages, but it’s probably better to limit your resume to mentioning languages specific to a job opening. Some computer languages are outdated now, so adding them to your resume might make you appear out of touch with today’s technology.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word has become so prevalent in the workforce that employers assume you know it already. Adding it to your resume might be seen as unnecessary bloat. Word isn’t the only ubiquitous application. You can remove other Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint from your resume.

Your address

City and state are really as granular as you need to get. These days, it can be dangerous to include anything more. “You don’t need everybody in the world knowing exactly where you’re living,” says CNBC. “A lot of people consider it a security concern, either for identity theft or because you don’t want someone showing up at your house.”

College degree

Don’t overemphasize your degree. Harvard says employers might not be as interested in your college degree as they once were. Did you major in a field that doesn’t have much relevance to your current position? Did you graduate more than a decade ago?

If you’re an older worker and want to keep your college degree on your resume, remove your graduation date. Instead, highlight recent certification programs or continuing education classes that are relevant to your most recent positions.

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Category: Uncategorized | Tags: 2023, Business, Résumé

RB | December 11, 2022

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Does This Dog Exist

Dog rescue Wags & Walks wants to know if you can spot the real puppy in a pack of artificial intelligence (AI) generated dogs. The rescue with locations in Nashville and Los Angeles features the game This Dog Exists. This Dog Exists is designed to promote the adoption of homeless pooches. The game is a clever use of artificial intelligence that serves the greater good.

This Dog Exists was created by Matt Reed, the creative technologist at the ad agency Redpepper. The page aims to reduce the population in dog shelters. Mr. Reed told Fast Company,

Every year we participate in an advertising industry event called Createathon where we donate work for nonprofits over the course of 24 hours … We stay up all night, and it is a blast. We also get very delirious, which is partly where this idea came from.

Mr. Reed says they also wanted to try and do something to bring some extra awareness to their cause.

We explored a few different ideas but kept coming back to doing something with [the open-source AI generative image algorithm] Stable Diffusion … Contrasting AI dogs versus real dogs seemed interesting.

This Dog Exists is designed to be simple. It displays a grid of four dogs; one of them is real, and the other three were created by the Stable Diffusion AI. FC reports that the team used Lexica.art—a generative image search engine—to find the perfect prompt for the cutest puppy creation. If you fail to guess the real dog 10 times, This Dog Exists displays a message that says,

Woof! It looks like you need a real dog because you don’t know what a real dog looks like 🙂

Good for dogs

While Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and MidJourney still have problems creating believable human faces, Stable Diffusion seems to be pretty good at conjuring dogs. Except for a few imperfections, the fake dogs look pretty much like the real thing.

This Dog Exists isn’t groundbreaking in its use of AI technology, but it is a cute and fun way to engage people. “Even if it only gets one extra dog adopted, I’ll consider it a success,” Mr. Reed concludes.

AI programs called generative adversarial networks, or GANs. GANs were designed by researcher Ian Goodfellow and his colleagues in the year 2014. They can learn to create fake images that are less and less distinguishable from real images, by pitting two neural networks against each other. Researchers says that artificial intelligence can create such realistic human faces that people can’t distinguish them from real faces – and they actually trust the fake faces more.

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Needless to say, the ability to generate realistic faces raises all kinds of ethical questions, even if they don’t belong to real humans.

These massive-scale machine learning systems can harm marginalized people through deeply embedded biases that can’t be easily engineered out. AI’s frequently create racist and sexist stereotypes.

While AI engineers say they’re doing their best to create safeguards that prevent abuse, it’s likely we’ve only just begun to see these large AI systems are capable of—and what types of harm they might cause.

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Category: Artificial ntelligence | Tags: 2022, Dogs

RB | December 7, 2022

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2022 Adult Advent Calendars

There is a sleigh full of adult advent calendars available for the 2022 holiday season. The adult version of these kiddie holiday tradition, include wines and spirits. They variety of spirits from around the world. Here are the best wine and spirits advent calendars that can help you get in the holiday spirit according to the Thillist. Be sure to purchase early, because the best boozy advent calendars sell out quickly.

Namazake Paul 2022 Sake Advent Calendar

Portland, OR online retailer Namazake Paul is offering sake advent calendars. Sake is the national drink of Japan. It is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting rice.

What’s inside: What is billed as the “only” sake advent calendar carries 23 180ml cups of sake. There is also a full-size bottle to open on Christmas Eve. The package also contains a handbook written by Namazake Paul to get the background on each sake. It also contains a place to add your own tasting notes. The sake advent calendar promises a cup for each day “representing every major style of sake,” including Futsu-shu, Honjozo, Junmai, Ginjo, Daiginjo, Namachozo, Yamahai, Kimoto and Nigori.

Packaging: Each cup is glass with painted art on it. So you’re getting reusable glasses. The outer package is cardboard with wintry designs. Price: $300.

Flaviar’s Whiskies Advent Calendar

NYC- based Flavair, a self-described band of spirits enthusiasts, made the list in 2021. The box includes rare and hard-to-find whiskies from all across the world.

What’s inside: Flaviar’s whiskey advent calendar is one of the most sought-after boxes annually. It usually sells out before it starts shipping. The advent calendar includes rare and hard-to-find whiskies from all across the world. It also includes a tasting guide. Flaviar’s doesn’t reveal where the whiskies are coming from before you crack open the box. It does, however, promise that it includes Scotch, bourbon, and rye varieties, as well as at least one each from Rieger’s Kansas City Whiskey, Keeper’s Heart Irish + American Whiskey, and Akashi Blended Malt.

Packaging: The packaging from Flaviar is annually among the best you’ll find. The box comes with a well-designed tasting guide, a concrete coaster, and a Glencairn tasting glass. Price: $260.

Give Them Beer’s Whiskey Advent Calendar

Beer gift basket website Give Them Beer is offering a whiskey holiday treat. Their advent calendar does not offer the rare whiskey’s available elsewhere, but still seems enjoyable.

What’s inside: You’ll get good but not rare drams in tiny bottles here. This advent calendar includes releases from big distilleries like Jameson and Four Roses.

Packaging: Some of the bottles are plastic, some are glass. All are tucked inside a cardboard box with a faux-wood grain design sporting perforated doors on the top. But it’s not out of line with other calendars in this price range or what you get in most beer advent calendars. Price: $140.

Vinebox’s 12 Nights of Wine

If whiskey is not your thing, San Francisco based online monthly subscription service Vinebox offers a red or white wine advent calendar to help ring in the holidays.

What’s inside: Vinebox’s 12 Nights of Wine is a collection of wine samples in thin glass drams. It promises “crisp, bright, and vibrant wines” in its Holi-DAY box, while the ‘Twas the Night box contains “bold, silky, and rich selections.” Each year, Vinebox’s calendar is one of the most stylish options for wine lovers.

Packaging: It’s a beautifully designed box with thin glass bottles with screw-on caps. It has an elevated design that makes it a great gift. If you get it for yourself, you won’t mind having it out on display. Price: $129 for 12, $199 for 24.

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Category: Holidays | Tags: 2022, Advent calendar, Christmas, Whiskey, Wine

RB | December 3, 2022

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Bad Passwords 2022

Password manager proprietor NordPass has released it’s third annual list of most common passwords. The firm worked with security experts to cull the top compromised passwords for 2022 from 3TB of stolen password data found on the dark web. What they found is like déjà vu, all over again.

2022’s most commonly found password “password” has been in the top 5 since 2019. “Password” was found nearly 5 million times in the NordPass list from the dark web. Eight variants of “password” are included in the list.

Rank	Password	Count
1	password	4,929,113
34	pass@123	3,9046
56	password1	25,113
139	Password	12,029
173	password123	9,889
188	Pass@123	9,359
189	passw0rd	9,349
192	Password1	9,220

The second most popular password “123456” had held the number 1 spot in 2020 and 2021.

C-level passwords

NordPass also looked at leaked C-level passwords. The big bosses are not better than their staff. C-level staff use the same top ten bad passwords.

123456
password
12345
123456789
qwerty
1234
qwerty123
1q2w3e
111111
12345678

Other password facts

For the first time the Nordpass results were broken out by gender. Both men and women favored the same top bad passwords.

Movies on the list:

#125 “superman” was used 12,100 times.

#171 “matrix” was used 10,122 times.

#185 “batman” was used 9,407 times.

#196 “starwars” was used 9,091 times.

Hockey teams are popular for bad passwords. “Detroit Red Wings” and “Columbus Blue Jackets” were among the most popular sports themed bad passwords.

On the music front, “U2”, “Prince” and “Metallica” were popular hacked passwords.

Small cars are popular for lazy passwords. “mini”, “kia”, and “vw” were frequently used.

2022’s worst passwords

Rank	Password	Change from 2021
1	password	+4
2	123456	+1
3	123456789	-1
4	guest	New
5	qwerty	-1
6	12345678	0
7	111111	0
8	12345	-5
9	col123456	New
10	123123	-2
11	1234567	-1
12	1234	+5
13	1234567890	-4
14	000000	-2
15	555555	New
16	666666	+8
17	123321	+2
18	654321	+5
19	7777777	New
20	123	New
21	d1lakiss	New
22	77777	New
23	110110jp	New
24	1111	New
25	987654321	0

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It is worth pointing out again, and again again.

Make sure none of your passwords are on this (or any other list). If they are log on and change them immediately.
Use two-factor authentication, whenever possible. Even if a hacker has your password, they won’t have that random code and therefore won’t be able to get into your account. Not sure if your favorite website supports two-factor authentication, search the Two Factor Auth List to find out.
Consider a password manager. Your brain is no longer an adequate password manager.

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Category: Uncategorized | Tags: 2022, NordPass, Passwords