Apache Guacamole is a clientless open-source web-based gateway that provides remote access to servers and even client PCs via a web browser using protocols such as SSH, VNC and RDP. Apache Guacamole comprises 2
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Long story short, Recently I was assigned to a project in my work where I have to create a lot of bash scripts. I am from a python background and using Jupyter Notebook for
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‘I never used to say the word racism; I just used to say, it’s territorialism.’
Naomi Campbell stuns in a white dress by Dior Haute Couture for the cover of Vogue’s November 2020 issue.
The supermodel opens up to the publication about using her platform to tackle racial disparities in the fashion industry and advocating for Black models.
“I never used to say the word racism; I just used to say, it’s territorialism,” she tells Vouge. “I never wanted people to say that I used that as an excuse, that I was throwing that word out. Now I’m happy that everyone’s all on the same page, that everyone feels comfortable to come out about their experiences without feeling some stigma. But for me, nothing’s changed. I’m going to speak the same way.”
Read More: Naomi Campbell’s ex-boyfriend files lawsuit claiming she owes him $3M
As a fashion icon, Campbell is still dealing with the challenges of being misunderstood. When it comes to the “angry Black woman” label, Campbell says “I am quite over it.” Adding, “Is it now that we have permission to speak? Well, I have always spoken.”
Continuing, “There were a few things that I would do when I was younger that I was told were bad for my race… Now the things I do are not just for me anymore. I think more of my culture and my race, as opposed to thinking about just me.”
Read More: Naomi Campbell reveals she eats only one meal a day
For her Vogue feature, she also makes time to condemn the British media and calls out her country for not addressing its racism problem.
“They haven’t learned how to be not-racist, period!” Campbell tells Vogue. “I’d rather have racism be right in front of my face and know what I’m dealing with, than to have it suppressed. No disrespect to the country I was born in, but we need to dig it up and bring it up and deal with it. No more chucking it down the sides.”
As for her hope for the future… “I think as a generation, as a whole, can we get reparations for our culture, for what we’ve been through? I absolutely believe we are going to get the positive outcome we deserve,” Campbell said.
“But we have to do our work in making sure we get it. I think reparations are important for the people to really see that this is something that’s been taken seriously,” she added.
Vogue’s November issue is available on newsstands on Oct. 27.
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Earlier this year, the actress put the wedding planning on hold amid the coronavirus crisis.
*Taraji P. Henson and her fiancΓ© Kelvin Hayden have called it quits nearly two years after the former NFL star proposed.
The actress confirmed their break up during an appearance on The Breakfast Club, noting that they just couldn’t bounce back after hitting a rough patch, PEOPLE reports.
“I haven’t said it yet but it didn’t work out,” said Henson, 50, of her romance with Hayden, 37. “I tried, I said, ‘let’s do the therapy thing’ but if you’re both not on the same page with that, then you feel like you’re taking it on yourself and that’s not a fair position for anybody to play in a relationship.”
Read More: Taraji P. Henson to host and produce ‘Jacked: Rise of the New Jack Swing’ podcast series
Henson did not go into details about the reason behind the breakup, she simply stressed the importance of self-care.
“My happiness is not his responsibility and his is not mine. We have to first learn how to make ourselves happy, to make each other happy. So when one person is taking on the weight of the entire relationship, it’s never going to work,” she added. “You have to show up, yes you want to be understanding but you can’t lose yourself in that understanding. You have to still stand up for yourself and be there for yourself but it’s hard to do if the other person isn’t doing that either.”
Earlier this year, Henson put the wedding planning on the backburner amid the coronavirus crisis, theGRIO previously reported.
Read More: Taraji P. Henson nabs talk show focused on mental wellness on Facebook Watch
The actress also revealed at the time that she was mourning the death of her uncle whom she suspected suffered from coronavirus complications.
“I’m pausing because there’s so much to take into consideration now. We’ve all been changed after this. There’s so much to consider — my grandmother who is 96, his grandmother who is 86, my mother he’s now 70, my aunts and uncles who are up there,” she told Access Hollywood.
“I just lost an uncle who we think may have had complications of corona. It’s a lot to think about, and I just think we should pause, stop, and just think this thing through. Humanity will be forever changed after this!”
Henson and Hayden’s nuptials were originally set for April, but had to be rescheduled due to personal and professional commitments.
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‘I didn’t stop being great at my craft because of where I lay my head.’
Niecy Nash is not losing any sleep over fans feeling bitter about her marriage to soul singer Jessica Betts.
The actress and comedian surprised fans with her secret wedding to Betts in late August, months after her divorce was final from her second husband Jay Tucker. The former couple wed in 2011 and announced their divorce in October 2019.
“I was asked, ‘Is this your official coming out?’ and I was like, ‘Coming out from where?’ I wasn’t anywhere to come out of,” Nash explained in a recent interview with Good Morning America. “I never lived a sexually repressed life. I just love who I love when I love them.”
Read More: Niecy Nash addresses misconceptions about her sexuality since marriage to Jessica Betts
On Instagram, the star of Claws and Reno 911 posted an intimate photo of her and her wife, under which a fan commented, “Just wondering have you noticed you have lost a lot of fans that was loyal to you before you came out?”
Nash fired back with, “If I lost a fan because of who I love then that wasn’t a real fan. Who/how I love has nothing to do with my art. I’m still a skilled, Emmy nominated, award-winning actress. I didn’t stop being great at my craft because of where I lay my head.”
Read More: Niecy Nash announces marriage to Jessica Betts: ‘Love wins’
Nash went on to say that she’s “happy” and all her current Hollywood projects are lit.
She shared with People in September that her marriage to Betts has “nothing to do with gender.”
“It has everything to do with being an amazing person and she is the most beautiful soul I have ever met in my life,” she said. “I love who I love. At one point in my life, I married twice and I love those people. And today I love this person,” she explained.
“I’ve done everything I wanted to do on my own terms and my own way. So my choice now in a partner has nothing to do with who I’ve always been. It’s a matter of who I am in this moment,” Nash added.
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The rapper has rejected supporting the president in the past.
Rapper 50 Cent took to social media on Monday to endorse Donald Trump after Joe Biden unveiled his proposed tax plan for the rich.
The rapper, real name is Curtis James Jackson III, shared a post on Instagram showing Biden’s tax rates by state for Americans earning more than $400,000 a year. In New York, the tax rate would be 58 % while Biden would tax residents in New York City 62 %, Daily Mail reports.
50 captioned the post, “WHAT THE F*CK! (VOTE ForTRUMP) IM OUT, Man — F*CK NEW YORK The KNICKS never win anyway. I don’t care Trump doesn’t like black people 62% are you out of ya [f***ing] mind,” he wrote.
Read More: Biden campaign warns Trump ‘can still win this race’
Fans were quick to slam the rapper turned media mogul for riding the MAGA wave, with one Twitter user writing: “50 Cent is a member of the 1% elite that earns over $400,000.00/year and thinks the general population should be overburdened so he can save a few dollars. Don’t stream @50cent’s music, pirate it.”
Influencer Ricky Davilia tweeted, “50 Cent literally just declared himself a MAGA lunatic because he doesn’t want to pay more in taxes than impoverished Americans. How nice of him to show he’s part of the same redhat wearing money grifting group as Ice Cube and Kanye West. Makes me physically ill.”
CNN’s Keith Boykin noted, “50 Cent ain’t worth two quarters.”
Author Clay Cane wrote “50 Cent doesnt care that “Trump doesnt like Black people.” Folks making over $400k paying fair taxes is too much for him.Think of the folks who made under $100k who made him millions,” he wrote. Adding, “Greed over community. Black folks exploiting Black folks. Black capitalism won’t save us.”
Read More: 50 Cent gives away $30K in cash to Burger King employees in Queens
YouTuber Pardes Seleh defended the hip-hop star, tweeting, “I’m with 50 cent. I DGAF what your social politics are, your personal life, who you’re “associated” with. If you can’t keep your hands out of my pocket I’m gonna kick you to the curb.”
Some social media users mocked 50’s bankruptcy controvery from a few years ago, claiming he’s only down with the Trump administration so he can receive a financial bailout. 50 responded by joking, “I just remembered i’m bankrupt, so i’m looking for a gracious loan can anyone help a brother out.”
His endorsement for Trump comes days after he shared an Instagram video of the president dancing on stage at a rally. 50 Cent captioned the clip, “Still no f**** given. The BOTS support Trump.”
50 Cent previously revealed that he turned down Trump’s $500,000 offer to come to his 2016 inauguration, saying, “All money’s not good money.”
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Television host and attorney Eboni K. Williams announced the launch of her new podcast ‘Holding Court’ available soon on iHeartMedia.
Eboni K. Williams has announced a brand new podcast Holding Court on The Black Effect podcast network featured on iHeartMedia.
Read More: Eboni K. Williams to host, executive produce ‘Revolt Black News’
The podcast network is a new partnership between iHeartMedia and Charlamagne Tha God dedicated to bringing the most influential and trusted voices in Black culture to the podcasting space, according to a press release. Williams, along with co-host Dustin Ross, will use their airtime to cross-examine cases trending in news and provide teachable moments to navigate the criminal justice system.
“There’s no way around it, the legal cases we hear about in the news are shaping social justice and popular culture. We need to dissect them from a Black perspective in a way that doesn’t hold back. Dustin and I will give you the facts straight and our takes will be highly unfiltered,” said Williams in a provided statement.
Williams earned her J.D. from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. As a practicing lawyer, she specializes in family law and civil litigation, providing legal advice on high-profile divorce, spousal support, and custody cases. The host also worked as a public defender and a private defense attorney representing criminal matters including murders, rapes, high volume drug cases, sex crimes, and federal offenses.
“I’ve been waiting two years to deliver this love child…” she wrote in an announcement on Instagram.
Williams has another high-profile gig on the way. The attorney was recently announced as the newest member of The Real Housewives of New York City, making her the first Black castmember, theGrio reported.
“[I] can’t wait to share a slice of life in this city that hasn’t been seen before,” she shared. “Anyone who’s aware of my work knows I don’t hold back. I’m going to keep it just as real here as I do everywhere else,” she said.
Williams believes her background as a lawyer prepared her for a career in television. During an interview with theGrio, she revealed that both professionally and personally, she operates freely and with intent.
Read More: How Eboni K Williams’ law background prepared her for a career in television
“I’ll speak for me. One thing I’m able to do because of the sacrifices of my lineage is I’m able to be way more intentional about romantic partnership, for instance. Right? I’m able to be way more intentional. My mother raised me as a very confident, very business savvy, brilliant, single Black mother. It’s a beautiful thing, but I am in a position now where I can choose to do that, or I can choose to do it a different way. So that’s an opportunity there for me.”
Williams is also currently the host & executive producer of Revolt Black News.
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She is the first Black woman since 1992 to moderate a presidential debate on her own
A Black woman will be the moderator for the next presidential debate, the first to do so since 1992.
Kristen Welker will moderate the final presidential debate between President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden. The Harvard Unversity graduate and NBC News White House correspondent is now the co-anchor of Weekend Today. The Philly native is the first Black woman to moderate the event solo since Carole Simpson in 1992, according to an NBC press release obtained by theGrio. If you are unfamiliar with the journalist’s history, here are five things you should know.
She has a long history with NBC.
Welker, 44, started as an intern with Today in 1997 and worked as a weekend researcher there. In 2011, she began covering the White House for the outlet. She traveled with President Barack Obama, the first lady, and former vice president Joe Biden and in 2016 she covered Hillary Clinton’s campaign. She was named co-anchor of Weekend Today in January.
Read More: SNL spoofs Pence-Harris VP debate in cold open
This isn’t Welker’s first time moderating a presidential debate
In 2019, she joined fellow journalists Andrea Mitchell, Rachel Maddow, and Ashley Parker for an all-female panel to moderate the presidential debate. The women received raved reviews and their coverage won them a Special or Variety – Breakthrough award at the 45th annual Gracie Awards.
She’s an award-winning journalist and stellar reporter
Welker is familiar with receiving accolades. She was recently honored with the Outstanding Journalism in Broadcast Television award at the 7th Annual Washington Women in Journalism Awards. The reporter also received praise from viewers – and her colleagues – for showing professionalism during a live report that went awry. Despite an errant gust of wind during the segment, Welker quickly recovered without missing a beat.
Welker met her husband after being set up by their mutual friends
The journalist married her husband, John Hughes, a marketing executive, in 2017, according to The New York Times. After their first date, he initially thought she was out of his league. He told the outlet, “I remember thinking to myself, ‘If I can just make her laugh, maybe I’ll have a chance.’”
Read More: Biden, Trump to participate in competing town halls instead of second debate
Trump once praised her, but then slighted her after she was announced as debate moderator
The president congratulated Welker at a press conference this year after she was named co-anchor of Weekend Today. “They made a very wise decision,” he said.
But today, when asked by media at a press stop, he’d changed his assessment.
“Kristen Welker is a radical left Democrat,” he told media assembled to talk to him on the tarmac at a campaign stop in Phoenix, Arizona. “I told you about the last one and I was right and I told you about Savannah Guthrie and I was right,” he said. “Then ask her why did she delete her account,” he continued. “Kristin Welker should put all of her statements back on. She deleted her entire account. She shouldn’t do that.”
It’s unclear what account Trump was referring to, as Welker’s Twitter account is still active. It was deactivated temporarily earlier this month when CSPAN host Steve Scully claimed his account was hacked before the scheduled, then cancelled, Oct. 15 presidential debate.
The final presidential debate on Oct. 22nd airs at 9 p.m.
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The unidentified man was loaded into an ambulance Monday morning after a 13-hour standoff.
Traffic was blocked off on Sunday after a man dangled from a rope on the side of the Chicago Trump Tower demanding to speak to President Donald Trump.
The 20-something Asian man streamed himself on Facebook Live, where he declared that he was a member of Black Lives Matter and demanded to speak to the president or he would cut the rope.
The man was loaded into an ambulance Monday morning after a 13-hour standoff with Chicago police.
“I have a knife. If someone will try to pull [the rope], I will cut it, and I will probably die. But I don’t want to die,” the man said, holding a knife in hand, on a livestream video.
The man has not been identified.
Read More: Black-owned gym, Harlem Cycle, vandalized
He demanded to speak to Trump, saying, “If Mr. Trump, he promise something, he should do before the election.”
He didn’t make it clear what he wanted from the president.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that onlookers wondered if the scene was part of an action stunt for the upcoming Batman movie being filmed in the city.
Read More: Black businesses get fewer loan opportunities, study shows
Tom Ahern, the deputy director of News Affairs and Communication for the Chicago Police Department, tweeted during the standoff and provided an update shortly before 8 a.m. EST, declaring the “situation resolved peacefully by Negotiators. Suspect in custody. No injuries.”
Hostage negotiators spent hours on the tower’s observation deck trying to get the man down.
Trump Tower Chicago is 98 floors high; the man was hanging from the 16th floor. The tower was built in 2009 and is one of the tallest residential buildings in the world.
Read More: Millions of Americans missed housing payments in September
It remains unclear how he got on the side of the tower or why he demanded to speak to the president.
The White House has not issued a statement regarding the incident.
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Trump supporters at his rally responded with an ever-familiar chant: ‘Lock him up.”
President Donald Trump labeled the family of his political rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, a criminal enterprise.
“They’re corrupt people,” Trump said to a cheering crowd at a campaign stop in Carson City, Nevada. “But Joe Biden is from a failed and corrupt political class that enriched itself while draining the economic life and soul from our country.”
“They get away with it, you know why? Because those people are more corrupt than anybody,” he said, pointing to the media. “They don’t even ask him.”
The president was referring to stories about alleged emails reportedly found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop, a machine said to have been owned by Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s middle child. The New York Post has published several stories about the emails, which the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper claims were provided by Rudy Giuliani.
Read More: Rudy Giuliani’s daughter endorses Biden, slams dad and Trump in op-ed
Other news outlets have doubted the authenticity of the emails, one of which purportedly suggested a meeting had occurred between Joe Biden and a Ukrainian man with Burisma, a natural gas company in the Ukraine that counted Hunter Biden among its board members.
Giuliani has claimed that he chose to give the contents of the found hard drive to The Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.”
Read More: Black officers break from unions over Trump endorsements
The FBI has seized the laptop through a grand jury subpoena, according to NBC News.
An attorney for Hunter Biden said in a statement, “We have no idea where this came from, and certainly cannot credit anything that Rudy Giuliani provided to the New York Post, but what I do know for certain is that this purported meeting never happened.”
Read More: Trump, Biden go on offense in states they’re trying to flip
The Biden campaign has maintained that they were never questioned about the alleged emails or a meeting alleged in the messages.
“Joe, he’s corrupt,” Trump said. “And you know what, they found the laptop.”
“They call it the laptop from hell,” Trump claimed later. “Let’s see what happens with it.”
Read More: Supreme Court set to have 3 Bush v. Gore alumni sitting on the bench
Supporters responded by chanting, “Lock him up!”
Trump supporters had previously used the chant during the 2016 election against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Trump also falsely claimed Democrats are raising more money than his campaign because “they are making deals.”
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For sisters Tonya Thompson and Sharie Wilson, Co-Founders of the natural hair care line DreamGirls, hair styling was always a part of daily life. We spoke to Tonya and Sharie to hear from them firsthand about their journey to founding the natural hair care brand and turning their dreams into reality.
Growing up, the Tonya and Sharie were known as experts when it came to hair styling for school dances and continued to style hair on the side throughout their early careers. When Sharie came to Tonya with the idea of selling hair extensions as a business venture in 2006, the sister duo hit the ground running and opened up their first DreamGirls hair salon in the heart of their hometown of Los Angeles.
Fast forward to two successful salon locations and thousands of women empowered through their hair styling techniques, Tonya and Sharie knew it was time to expand their brand. They then launched DreamGirls’ signature product line to offer their techniques to individuals across the nation.
Although DreamGirls was launched six months ago, it has been nothing short of a success. The product line, which features the signature Healthy Hair Care System ($125) that promotes natural hair growth, immediately became a favorite of women across the country who raved about their newfound confidence due to their incredible results. “Through our unique techniques, we offer DreamGirls’ Healthy Hair Program that promotes natural growth for all hair textures. Our system consists of wearing a protective style of a weave that results in hair growth, not loss,” Tonya and Sharie explained.
The line continues to disrupt the beauty industry and break down stigmas surrounding natural hair. Although black shoppers contributed $473 million to the $4.2 trillion haircare and beauty industry in 2018, not all hair care brands are made with them specifically in mind according to a 2018 Nielsen report. “The goals of DreamGirls is to break the stereotype that black women can’t have long, natural hair, and to help build their confidence in knowing that they can do anything,” shared Sharie and Tonya.
The two always had a strong desire to help women, especially fellow black women with their hair confidence. “We’d see our clients’ confidence skyrocket after styling their hair and it was an incredible feeling,” they explained. “We use our salon chairs as tools to uplift, motivate, inspire and praise women for their natural beauty, both inside and out.”
As African American and female entrepreneurs, Tonya and Sharie faced many hardships along the way. They rose above the challenges and never stopped striving towards their goals. “We’ve been overlooked and have had to be ten times more successful than otherwise needed just to stand in a room next to a male entrepreneur,” the sisters shared. “Being a minority entrepreneur means that we have to go above and beyond, but that doesn’t stop us from believing in ourselves and achieving our goals.”
Despite the challenges they faced while building their brand during the global pandemic, DreamGirls was incredibly successfully in helping thousands of women feel more confident through hair results and recently achieved $1 million in sales.
Tonya and Sharie continue to empower women and encourage others to take initiative in both life and in business. The sisters previously held women’s empowerment speaking events to share their journey and key lessons they’ve encountered along the way. “It’s very rewarding to empower fellow women, and is the foundation of what our business was built upon,” they explained. “We want to see women succeed and help them by setting them up with the confidence that they can accomplish anything. We are an example of what is possible for women, and are a true testament to the fact that everyone has the ability to rewrite their story!”
Tonya and Sharie continue to expand their business and achieve their goals of helping women across the nation feel more confident. “As Los Angeles girls who came from a middle working class family, we didn’t always see a lot of wealth or even the possibility of what can be. As a result, we’ve always felt that we needed to see and do more. We want to bring our community with us and pour back into others to help them achieve their goals.”
According to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, there are anywhere from 115,000 to 125,000 beekeepers in the United States with over 2 million colonies producing 1.4 million pounds of raw honey for consumption. Like many industries, beekeeping isn’t the most diverse. One family used the chance to create a business in honor of their children after learning about the health benefits of raw honey.
Summer and Kam Johnson are the founders behind Zach and Zoe Sweet Bee Farm, a collection of raw honey made on their land in New Jersey and named after their children. The parents started beekeeping for health purposes when their son, Zach, started struggling with asthma and seasonal allergies and used honey to help. “We would regularly find ourselves in the emergency room and were constantly giving him steroids and medicine to keep his asthma in check,” wrote the Johnsons in an interview with BLACK ENTERPRISE via email.
“We wanted a natural solution to help his allergies and we read that raw honey could help with inflammation and introduce the body to pollen in manageable amounts. Back in 2015, we started with two hives and were pleasantly surprised to get a small honey harvest in the fall of that year. We kept growing each year and increasing the number of hives on our property and learning more about beekeeping.”
From there, the two started to produce honey for sale and created the company named after their children. The Johnsons learned that their presence also brought representation and diversity to those within the industry and that they are helping educate people along the way. “When we first started keeping bees, there weren’t that many Black beekeepers and we received (and still do) tons of questions and genuine curiosity,” they said.
“It’s been really fun to raise awareness around agriculture, farming, and the importance of bees and that’s one of the highlights for us—being able to teach about the topic and introduce communities, especially children, to bees. We do tours on our farm and with quarantine, have evolved into doing video tours of the bees. We live in a rural setting but we also know beekeepers who keep bees in major cities You don’t need a ton of space, just some patience, natural curiosity, and not mind getting stung on occasion.”
The Johnsons said it was important to make their children a part of the business and to teach them the mechanics behind running a business so one day they can pass the business down to them. “We named the business after our children and from the beginning, we envisioned a business that we could all play a part in,” they added.
“When they were younger, they would help with the beekeeping and they also helped with our retail shop. As they get older, we involve them in more aspects of the business and use it as a teaching tool on the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. We talk about [things like] operations, accounting, pricing, [and] fulfillment. They can see, firsthand, that starting and running a business is incredibly hard work but that if you keep at it, it can be really rewarding to see a business grow and flourish.”
You can’t rely on an employer to control or protect your career. Whether you have a “permanent” position, a temp-to-perm, or a temporary position, there’s no real job security. Therefore, you should look at your career differently. This is why everyone should have a consulting business.
COVID-19 has only made it worse. With over 60 million Americans losing their jobs since mid-March, the threat of losing your job is more and more real. In addition, pandemics, acts of God, and economic downturns give companies a “legitimate” reason to slash jobs. Since the rules have changed, companies feel free to fire or lay people off for little or no reason. So you should be prepared to make your transition before you have to.
Having a consulting business helps you to:
Companies don’t want to hire unemployed people. While this is illegal in some states, there are ways around it. Having your own company means you will have work. Be prepared to talk about projects you’ve worked on. This also means you don’t have to settle for a “just get your foot in the door” job to hold you over.
Many companies use a temp-to-perm strategy to find the right fit for their organization. You can use the same strategy for potential clients. Since consultants are not employees, there’s less risk to bring you in to do a specific job. You can learn about the company culture and decide if the company is a potential destination if they were to offer you a permanent position.
Entrepreneurship can be daunting, but you don’t have to go all in. You can slowly transition into entrepreneurship and test whether you can do it full time. You may find out it’s not for you and go back to working 9-to-5. Either way, you can do one or both as you figure things out.
Consulting was great for me when my mother-in-law had cancer. I was able to take days off to travel with my wife to the hospital for her treatments. Later, my father-in-law had a stroke and my mother got cancer. The days off gave me the ability to meet their needs. It also gave me the ability to pursue other opportunities and create my own schedule.
Everyone should have a consulting business, whether it’s part-time or full-time. Many professionals do consulting on the side. It creates a stream of income to help you to make a living or hold you over between jobs.
This is especially true for older workers. During the Great Recession of 2008 and now with COVID-19, the unemployment rate for those 55 and older is higher than the rate for workers 25-54. With more companies dumping older workers and fewer companies hiring them, it makes sense to use your experience to create a revenue stream for yourself.
Draw up a contract that outlines terms, relationships, the scope of services, compensation, etc. Then, market yourself and be confident in your ability as you step out and take control of your career.
This was going to be a four-part blog series. I figured that I’d covered most of what financial markets participants might be interested in hearing about when it comes to AI in the markets (and had probably bored the audience for long enough, all things considered). Then we did a webinar on the topic together with FactSet, had a great turnout, and got asked lots of great questions from our listeners — so many, in fact, that we had to answer them by email as we ran out of time. And the questions were sufficiently good that we thought you might be interested in reading the Q&A, too, so here goes.
In one word: empirically. Remember that in financial markets, in particular, and time-series modeling in general, more history doesn’t automatically mean that you get better models. If a longer history means that you enter a different behavioral rΓ©gime, your model performance will deteriorate. So trying out different lengths of the training period can be a valuable way of discovering how persistent a behavior actually is. Don’t go nuts, though. You need to avoid trying out so many variations that you end up with something that, by pure randomness, looks good but doesn’t generalize. You can avoid this kind of overfitting by being specific in your hypothesis formulation and rigorously testing your candidate models on multiple out-of-sample, out-of-time datasets; at all costs, avoid selection and look-ahead biases.
We see machine learning models adding value in lots of different areas of the markets and many different asset classes. As previously discussed, we see particular power in predicting second-order variables (i.e. modeling variables that influence returns, instead of directly predicting returns) and in a variety of use cases that form part of the business of financial markets (see blog post 1).
One interesting pattern that we have noticed is that generally, the longer the prediction horizon or data frequency, the more difficult it is to build good machine learning models. So quarterly numbers tend to be very difficult to work with, and monthly numbers can be a struggle sometimes, too. With such infrequent data, there is a trade-off between using a very limited number of data points in order to not go beyond the current behavioral environment (limited data often makes it hard to build good models), or working with a longer history that spans multiple behavioral rΓ©gimes (thus being a worse fit for the individual ones, so again it’s hard to build good models). On the other hand, there are a lot of great use cases using tick and market microstructure data, which is a bit like a firehose: if you need some more data to work with, you just need to open the tap for a little while.
Another pattern we see is not a surprise: the less efficient the price discovery mechanism is, the more value that machine learning models can add—as long as there’s enough training data. So machine learning models probably won’t add much value on the U.S. Treasury Bond future, nor will they on a corporate bond that trades once every six months: the sweet spot will be somewhere in between.
One other thing that’s worth mentioning: simulation-type problems can be a bit of a tricky fit for supervised machine learning, as there’s often no clear concept of a “target variable” to predict. That said, you can use machine learning models to make the predictions which enter the simulations, instead of linear or parametric models; this generally doesn’t make the process any faster, but allows the simulator to take advantage of non-linearity, which can help. In some cases, machine learning can also be used to predict simulation outcomes as a function of the simulation input parameters; this can, for instance, make it much faster to price certain exotic derivatives.
Yes, very easily — DataRobot’s leaderboard ranks the different candidate blueprints, models and algorithms by their out-of-sample performance. If you don’t want to use a model based on, say, decision trees, you would simply select a model trained using another algorithm family. The leaderboard comparison will show you whether there’s a trade-off between that model and the tree-based models in terms of out-of-sample performance.
As a reminder: even if an algorithm is able to make predictions that go beyond the limits of the training data, those predictions won’t necessarily make any sense, as you have no experience on whether the behaviors inside the training data are consistent in environments beyond it. Proceed with extreme caution!
First, I’d check whether the predictors actually add any value to the model by building a few different variants of the model: one trained on the full dataset including the variables with limited history (let’s call this Model A), trained over the period for which the full data is available, and another trained over the same period of time but excluding the limited-history variables
(Model B). I’d also train a third model covering the full history that excludes the limited history variables (Model B*). If Model A performs better than Model B, I probably would take that result and not investigate further; if it doesn’t, the comparison between Model B and Model B* will tell me whether adding further history actually helps model performance. If it does, and it’s better than Model A, I’d look for proxies for the limited history variables with a longer history; if not, Model A is good to go.
If you’re referring to a scenario where you’re looking to backtest a strategy over a longer period of time and some of the data in your current model wouldn’t have been available in past periods, the solution is even simpler: evaluate a model built on just the longer history data for the period when the shorter history data isn’t available, then use a model built on the full dataset once it’s available.
So, tl;dr: try out different variants, empiricism wins again. Don’t go crazy with the different variants, as you don’t want to do the data science version of p-value hacking (quants will know this as the dreaded “data mining”). But comparing multiple models built in different ways usually gives good insights, especially when using DataRobot’s standardized analytics.
Generally, hybrid approaches in machine learning combine two or more different types of algorithms in order to reduce model error and potentially solve problems which the individual algorithms would be less suited to, or less performant at. DataRobot has quite a few blueprints (machine learning pipelines) which use such approaches, typically combining a supervised machine learning algorithm (one that is designed to predict a target variable by learning from historical observations) with one or more unsupervised learning techniques (clustering, dimensionality reduction). We find that adding clustering, in particular, to a supervised machine learning algorithm like XGBoost can reduce prediction error by 10-15%, depending on the use case.
In a nutshell: we first identify the set of all the machine learning pipelines (“blueprints”) that can be applied to the problem at hand, then use a combination of heuristics (to ensure algorithm diversity) and recommendation (to identify those blueprints that are likely to be performant) to identify the initial algorithms. Multiple rounds of model training ensue, starting with a large spectrum of blueprints that are trained on small amounts of data, gradually reducing the number of blueprints trained (filtering on out-of-sample performance), while increasing the size of the training data, finally cross-validating the best-performing algorithms and trying out some ensembles to see whether this will further improve the performance.
DataRobot does four main kinds of feature extraction and selection automatically:
Additionally, users have the flexibility to build a wide range of feature transformations using the DataRobot Paxata data preparation platform before pushing the data to DataRobot MLdev. The MLdev API also integrates seamlessly with Python and R’s powerful data preparation capabilities, as well as providing connectivity to other databases such as KDB.
Cutting edge data science and machine learning are simply unthinkable without open-source packages such as Tensorflow; this is where the innovation lies these days. That said, DataRobot is not built by the crowd. We have some 350 incredibly talented engineers and data scientists on our team, whose job it is to engineer our platform to enterprise grade and work with our customers to ensure that it meets their needs. This includes a number of contributors to popular open-source libraries such as numpy, pandas, scikit-learn, keras, caret, pic2vec, urllib3 and many others.
So we take the best of what’s out there in the open-source data science community and ensure that it’s suitable for enterprise use — contributing to the open source community itself when needed to make this happen. For example, recently members of our team were building some modeling pipelines, including elements from an open-source machine learning library which we had not previously supported. Their testing revealed some critical bugs under the hood and development efforts were then refocused towards fixing the actual open-source library and pushing those changes out to the community.
With a “best of both worlds” solution such as DataRobot, there’s still someone at the end of a phone to shout at if there’s an issue. And you don’t have to worry about making sure that all the parts of the open source stack are up-to-date either.
DataRobot is a powerful platform whose requirements exceed the capabilities of a single desktop computer. There are various ways of running the DataRobot platform:
Performance is managed dynamically by the DataRobot app engine, with the user being able to choose how much compute to apply to a modeling project by selecting the number of workers (each worker being able to train one machine learning model at one time). DataRobot runs entirely on CPUs, no expensive GPUs are needed.
I’d say that a certain amount of data literacy is important — I wouldn’t expect great results from giving DataRobot to an “old school” portfolio manager who struggles with Excel, for instance. We have two target user groups: first, people who understand the data well but aren’t quants or machine learning experts and want to be able to harness the power of machine learning without needing to get technical or learn how to code. We greatly automate the process with smart default settings and a variety of guardrails for this “democratization” audience. Through the process of using DataRobot and its built-in explainability and documentation, such users learn a lot about machine learning and how to frame machine learning problems, often quickly moving on to complex problem sets.
Our other target group is, of course, sophisticated quants and data scientists, who use DataRobot’s automation as a force multiplier for their productivity, by automating the boring, repetitive stuff where they don’t necessarily have an edge.
A wide variety of instructor-led and self-paced training programmes for different skill levels are available at https://university.datarobot.com/, with further resources and self-paced learning at DataRobot Community’s learning center: https://community.datarobot.com/t5/learning-center/ct-p/Learning
There’s also the DataRobot free trial, details at:
Great question. It’s a combination of several things that work together.
First, make sure that the machine gun has “safety mechanisms” such as built-in best practices and guardrails. For example, rank models strictly on their out-of-sample performance and no in-sample performance data ever being exposed, and combine the appropriate data engineering with each algorithm in the machine learning pipelines.
Second, train the users in “gun safety.” This doesn’t have to take that long — for instance, our Citizen Data Scientist Starter Quest takes an afternoon and is self paced; our AutoML I course consists of three four-hour sessions — but provides valuable context in how to frame machine learning problems and evaluate the models.
Third, make sure that the gun’s “scope” shows the users what they’re pointing at: provide users with sophisticated, standardized analytics that allow them to evaluate each model’s performance in-depth and understand the model’s drivers and how the model will respond in different scenarios.
What, over 2,000 words and you still haven’t answered my question?
Hot damn. Come on over to community.datarobot.com and we’ll do our best to answer it there.
Check out all of the blog series: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
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