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Embracing technology during Covid-19
Tags: Webinar, Technology, Events

Webinar | Embracing technology during Covid-19

With remote work becoming the new normal, businesses are looking to level up their cyber-security and process automation.

Update: Link to the recording of the full webinar at the end of this story!

Covid-19, and the mandatory stay-at-home situation, has led to a massive shift in the way we work. For many, remote work will likely become a norm. In this new normal, businesses are looking more closely at cyber-security and robotic process automation.

Join us on Sunday, 31 May 2020 at 11:00 AM as we find out more about these technologies shaping business.

Webinar Details

Date: 31 May 2020, 11:00 AM — 12:00 PM

Participants are welcome to post in their questions during the session. A curated selection will be discussed after the keynotes.

About the Speakers

Venkat Iyer

Venkat Iyer

Director, Cyber Security at PwC

Venkat Iyer is a Director with the consulting team at PwC. Deeply passionate about technology, he has over 17 years of experience in the cyber security, digital, social media, analytics and mobility space having led teams across Asia, North America, Europe and Africa.

Prior to working with PwC, he also served as Marketing and Strategy Head for Telecom & Digital technologies at Tech Mahindra and has also co-founded multiple start-ups in the digital space focused on cloud, security and social media.

His recently co-authored publication, titled “Cyber Security India Market 2019-22 — What lies beneath?” released in Dec ’19 in partnership with Data Security Council of India, gives detailed insights into how the domestic demand for cyber security in India is going to evolve in the next few years.

Venkat holds a Masters in Management Studies (Finance) from Jamnalal Bajaj, Mumbai and a Bachelors degree in Engineering from Mumbai University.

R. Karthik

R. Karthik

Senior Automation Associate, S&P Global

Karthik is a Senior Automation Associate at S&P Global with over 14 years of experience in the data business. He has varied experience of working with technology teams and he is currently working to bring automation solutions to the business using various tools including RPA solutions. He is Blue Prism Level 1 certified. A self-professed technology geek, he has diverse interests including computer hardware, data analysis, and emerging technologies. He has been assembling his computers since he was a teenager and is a keen photographer. You can find his work at rkarthik.info
Red Flags I Completely Missed at the Beginning of My Relationship
By: Carrie Wynn
Tags: Psychology, Relationships, Self, Mental Health, Women

When you are in the midst of or at the very end of an unhealthy relationship, it can be easy to realize that something was… off.

However, it’s important to remember that red flags are often far from obvious. They are subtle and while it’s easy to notice them in hindsight, it’s much harder when you are in the situation yourself.

When I reflect on the beginning of my relationship I can see that I had warning signs from the very get-go. I just didn’t pay attention.

Not all red flags mean that a relationship is abusive, it can simply mean it’s unhealthy and/or toxic.

There is one particular relationship that I am now able to look back and recognize that the red flags presented themselves very early in the relationship.

For example…
Beat the Odds with Jackpocket Pools
Tags: Feature, Lottery Pool, Powerball, Mega Millions, Tips And Tricks

For instant lottery fun, just add water. The Jackpocket lottery app is excited to announce that Jackpocket Pools are here! Our new lottery pools feature lets you team up with other players to get better odds of hitting massive Mega Millions and Powerball jackpots. Swimmers take all!

Play the Lottery as a Team

With Public Pools, you play the lottery with fellow Jackpocket players — friends, strangers, and Stan from accounting. Everyone adds their ticket to the pool and splits the spoils.

Because playing together is more fun. Marco Polo is better with a bigger crew. So is playing the lottery.

Increase your chance to win. Every time someone joins the pool, the odds of winning go up. Who doesn’t like better odds? Not to mention, the extra lottery tickets you didn’t have to buy. Our biggest Pools have cleared 3,000 players!

Cement your place in lottery lore. We have epic plans to set a world record. Imagine: the biggest lottery pool in the world winning the jackpot together. Wouldn’t you like to tell your grandkids, “Hey, I was a part of that! Now excuse me while I dip my dentures in frosting.”

How It Works

It just takes 1 ticket to dive into our Olympic-sized Mega Millions or Powerball pool. You always stay anonymous. Only pool members can view the entries, but you can see how many people are in the pool at any time. After the drawing, see how much you won. Pool members split the dough! Our prize-sharing agreement keeps you safe and explains exactly what happens when you win. Ready for more? Simply add your ticket for the next drawing to splash into the Pools action again.

Invite Your Friends (and Get Rewarded)

Ask your friends to join the pool party and get 5 free entries ($10 in credits) after they fund their account! Tell your nemesis, too. And that weird guy.

So Get Started!

Just tap “Pools” in the Jackpocket app to jump in. It’s as easy as…CANNONBALL!
How four leaders on the frontlines are fighting to save their communities
By: I, Climate Voices
Tags: Flooding, Justice, Racial Justice, Activism, Climate Change

DeSoto, Missouri

Susan Liley was tired of seeing her community devastated by flash floods year after year. Following the drowning of neighbors trapped in their cars, and the drowning of horses trapped in a barn during flash floods, Liley and a few friends formed the Citizens Committee for Flood Relief to find viable solutions. The Citizens Committee connected with the US Army Corp of Engineers Silver Jackets program, who undertook a flood study and worked with the community to develop a flash flood warning system, so local residents can monitor rainfall and water levels to the inch on their phones, and get life-saving advance warning of a deadly flash flood. Liley is still pushing elected leaders to prevent dangerous “fill and build” real estate practices that leave more families vulnerable to flooding, and to implement natural solutions to absorb floodwater at its source.

On Predatory Real Estate Practices:

“We’ve got to work hard on ‘re-buying flood homes.’ We’ve got to stop that practice… We don’t need to have another family come in and go through the same pain that the other family has already been through. Repetitive loss homes should never be sold. People will contact me at least once a week and say ‘hey, how about this home?’ and I’ll say, ‘well maybe water didn’t get inside, but a car washed away.’ Or, ‘a huge 60-yard dumpster went down the creek there,’ but people feel like these homes are so cheap, and it’s not going to happen again. It is going to happen again. We’ve got to stop the repetitive loss flooding.”

“A lot of people these days think that ‘fill and build’ is the solution. ‘If you fill it up and make it higher, you’re not going to flood.’ Well that doesn’t work out either. Somebody else is going to flood because you build. These people in town, their homes are at least 60 to 100 years old. They didn’t build in a floodplain, the floodplain built around them.”
From the window of the bus #973, Tsim Sha Tsui East — Stanley: a short trip to Hong Kong
By: Mai はな
Tags: Hong Kong, Short Story, Travel, Blog, Bus

From the window of the bus #973, Tsim Sha Tsui East — Stanley: a short trip to Hong Kong

Travel blog

Stanley is one of the most popular spots for tourists in Hong Kong. It’s located in the southern part of Hong Kong Island. There are lots of Western style cafes and bars. You can enjoy the sea breeze and drinks after shopping at the Stanley market.

It’s not a place only for tourists. When I lived in Hong Kong, I used to go there on my holidays. I lived in Tsim Sha Tsui, the area on the peninsula — China mainland side, and I loved travelling from my place to Stanley by bus.

The bus towards Stanley from Tsim Sha Tsui is the #973 which we took in this trip. The whole journey takes about 80 minutes. It’s quite long, but you will love the scenery from the windows on the way.

It departs Tsim Sha Tsui East and travels to Hong Kong Island via the underwater tunnel. Then, you will see the old town stretched out on the steep slopes.

It goes down south, on the east side of the island. After climbing up the narrow road where the tropical tree branches scratch the roof of the bus, you suddenly have a turquoise blue ocean view on your right hand.

I recommend you have seats on the right side on the upper deck of the bus, by the way.

When the bus starts going down, you might be slightly disappointed, but your journey hasn’t finished yet.

It goes through Aberdeen which is one of the fishing ports in Hong Kong. You will see a cute pier where some wooden boats are moored.

After the small town with industrial buildings, it goes up on the hills again. The bus continues going up and down a few slopes and then it reaches the beaches. There are a few sand beaches on the south coast of Hong Kong Island and you can see the luxurious apartments facing the ocean along the beach as well.

Finally, you arrive at Stanley Plaza where there is a shopping mall, restaurants and bars. After you walk through those fancy cafes, there will be an arcaded path sided by gift shops.

It’s fun to have drinks in a seaside restaurant or shopping in the market, but the 80-minute bus journey is also enjoyable and it costs only HK$14.5.
Paratii Review #7: Kate Perry’s crypto nails; our Foundation; Ehthillionaires on Tesla’s neighbourhood
Tags: Ethereum, ICO, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain

Feel free to send us any valuation methodologies, selfies of your crypto nails or technical feedback by writing to we@paratii.video.
How to design a great iPad app with the newest iPadOS 14 features
By: Nathália Miguel
Tags: iPad, Ipados14, Interface Design, User Experience, Design

We all know that iPad Pro already has a seriously powerful computing power and that it’s possible to create meaningful stuff with Apple Pen.

But do we really know how to design great apps for iPad taking advantage of this powerful device to offer better experiences for the users?

At this year’s WWDC, Apple announced many new features for the iPadOS 14 interface and experience. Grant Paul, from the Apple Design Team, reinforces that "just because the iPad is between the iPhone and the Mac, it doesn't mean that is halfway between them, and a great iPad app needs to be dedicated to what is unique and especial about the iPad."

It means that a great iPad app experience is not defined by an adaptive interface that scales to the different window size, but through understanding how to take advantage of the unique capabilities of iPad and its large Multi-Touch display to offer an experience even more distinctive.

So, let’s see how you can do that in your apps.

Layout

Flatten your navigation

Update part of the screen at a time instead of using full-screen transitions.

Some interactions that work very well on the iPhone, do not work as well on the iPad, such as large screen transitions. In addition to leaving a large empty space on the screen that could be better used, navigation ends up getting longer and slower.

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Showing more content

If you have a bigger screen, you’ll need more content to fill it. Now the Photos app has been updated on iPadOS14 bringing the new Sidebar navigation, filling the old empty space with content, such as your photos and also the navigation control on the left.

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And it makes it easier and faster to do things like drag and drop, since the target that you want to drop is already visible on the screen since you start dragging.

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Stay in context

In iPhone apps it's common to be focused on a specific thing as there isn't much space on the smaller screen.

And on iPadOs 13 it was the same behavior, and you didn’t see anything but the file you were renaming, losing all the context on the screen below.

But on the iPad we have enough space to show more than one thing at the same time, right?

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Now, iPadOs 14 brought file renaming in-line, allowing that the rest of the interface still useful when renaming a file. So see if your app is providing people with useful context or if they're blocking other parts of your app. See if it would work better if your controls were at the same level, rather than overlays.

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Create immersive experiences

This is about going deep on a specific piece of content. And compared to a Mac, this ability to focus in on a single piece of content is something that’s really unique and special about the iPad.

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For example, In Music, the Now Playing screen takes over the entire display, so you can focus on the music and the lyrics that are playing.

Like it’s become the piece of content. It leaves your app feeling like more than the sum of its parts.

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If You’re still using these Fonts… You need to stop.
By: Larry Kim
Tags: Marketing, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Digital Marketing, Writing

CREDIT: Getty Images

Like most rational people, I’ve never been a fan of Comic Sans. In fact, I die a little inside when I see that this font is still used on some websites and blogs! Imagine my delight when I happened upon a website called BanComicSans.com, whose sole purpose is to banish this font to the nether regions of the Internet.

Their online petition (that’s right, they started a petition) has attracted more than 5,000 signatures, which leads me to believe that many people really, truly and passionately dislike Comic Sans. But let me be devil’s advocate for just a minute here, because as much as Comic Sans makes my toes curl, it’s not even the worst font out there.

Typography is pretty important — in fact, it can speak louder than words. I liken it to our style of clothing, which speaks to who we are. How many times have you met someone and based solely on how they dressed, instantly thought they were cool and someone you want to talk to?

That same process happens every time someone lands on a website. In a split second, we take in the typography, the colors, the imagery, the white space, the overall style. In that split second, we make a judgment: is this somewhere want to hang out for a few seconds/minutes, or am I automatically discounting this and bouncing away?

Comic Sans makes people bounce. It’s that awful.

But like I said, some fonts are even more offensive and awful. Here are 10 examples Carly Stec over at HubSpot came up — I made a visual out of her list because you have to see these bad boys to truly appreciate just how much they need to die:

Originally published on Inc.com

About The Author

Larry Kim is the CEO of Mobile Monkey and founder of WordStream. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Hollywood’s Future Comeback
By: Phil Rossi
Tags: Television, Film, Culture, Entertainment, Coronavirus

As in years past, Hollywood has dealt with various types of disruption. Sagging economies, World War II, and now a pandemic. One of our most resilient and determined industries, The Movies, will survive. And once again, find a way to thrive and prosper.

Despite the recent sea changes, the masses will always seek entertainment. Yes, the movie portal has evolved. From Nickelodeons to the movie theater. The drive-ins to the Internet. From single-screen movie theaters to the multiplex. The multiplex morphing into the IMAX with digital projection and stadium seating.

All playing into the hands of Hollywood.

As consumers evolve, Hollywood pivots. As tech progresses, Hollywood delivers. Pound for pound, the best counter puncher in business.

As more people skip the theaters and opt to remain home, they still seek and yearn content. To answer this trend, more films have premiered faster or right away. From Pay-Per-View to Video-On-Demand. The industry answers. In our I want it now culture, more and more content is premiering online. Again, as the public demands, Hollywood provides.

Among many things, Hollywood is smart and resilient. It always keeps the pulse of the wider audience. What they want.

Hollywood answers with both devised and revised schedule slots. Days, evenings, and nights. Fall versus mid-season runnings. Renewals, cancellations, and cast changes.

Hollywood listens and responds. It practices the ultimate customer service model with the money, talent, and will to satisfy the public.
“For A Woman” (Pour une Femme) by Diane Kurys (2013)
By: Rene Hirsch
Tags: Post War, Romance, Movies, Female Directors, Female Lead

Movies directed by women

Homage to Diane Kurys (1/6)

Last facet (for the time being) of Kurys’ introspective journey into the life of her parents and into her origins, with each facet bringing some differences and variations on the lives she tries to reconstruct but for most part must imagine.

Unfortunately, this last movie in Diane Kurys’ quest lacks the emotional charge that her preceding movies on the same theme had.

Cast: Benoît Magimel, Mélanie Thierry, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Sylvie Testud, Denis Podalydès, Julie Ferrier, Clotilde Hesme, Clément Sibony

Director: Diane Kurys

Writer: Diane Kurys

Director of Photography: Gilles Henry

Music by Armand Amar

Film Editing by Sylvie Gadmer
Self Portraits and Inner Life in Death Valley
By: Pixel Magazine
Tags: Depression, Photography, Inspiration

The following is an excerpt from our interview with landscape and portrait photographer Ville Kansanen. We talk about his project Procession of Spectres, in which Kansanen explores his own recovery from depression, which he likens to a loss of selfhood that requires reconstruction.

“I fail at being myself in so many other aspects of my life but when I create photographs, I feel my most authentic self, and it seemed like a natural progression to put myself literally into them. The performance aspect of my work is at times intoxicating and hypnotizing, and at times it is very painful and agonizing. I know it sounds trite but I feel it is a very spiritual experience; it overrides all my conceptions of comfort and limitations. There is something incredibly special about actually touching the landscape instead of merely recording it.

The contemporary industrialized view and use of nature and land is as inventions. Nature is something we vacation in, put into pictures, or subjugate for industry. However, our self is tied to an on-going natural evolution — it is not separate from anything that we see in the world. I feel like that process has been psychologically diverted from nature by our inventions. I try to use landscape as a framework to communicate the internal friction we experience being “outside of the natural world” by placing myself directly into it. That act changes how the landscape is read — it becomes an internal, metaphysical world.

Places like Bonneville and Death Valley are never entered — they are encountered — you became acutely aware of being at the mercy of the heat, howling wind, dry air, the corrosive salt, and sometimes freezing cold. Everything you thought of, precautions, plans, and sketches refined in the comfort of your home are likely going to fail to a certain degree. I always have a threshold period of adapting to that sense of elemental chaos and it always produces disastrous and wonderful accidents. You just need to let go of control and let inquiry and intuition take over.

Landscape is also about space. We travel from one various-sized space to another in our daily lives. You can theoretically go for days without seeing the horizon. Everything is constantly obscured by something man-made. I find that deeply depressing.”
Creating an Impressive GitHub Profile README
By: Vibhor Chaudhary
Tags: Profile, Github Actions, Github, Readme

GitHub has launched a new feature called “GitHub Profile” that allows users to create profile level README which can also be used as user’s portfolio. This article will show you how to access this new feature and create an amazing GitHub profile.

This is how a normal profile looks:

This is how the new GitHub profile will look :

Why should you try out this new feature?

The GitHub profile level readme allows you to add more content than the profile bio. README supports MarkDown which means you can play around with the content and do amazing stuff.

How can you create a profile Readme?

You need to create a new repository with the same name as your GitHub username. For instance, my GitHub username is vibhorchaudhary, so i will have to create a new repository with the same username which is vibhorchaudhary.

When you do that, GitHub shows this message :

“You found a secret! vibhorchaudhary/vibhorchaudhary is a ✨special ✨ repository that you can use to add a README.md to your GitHub profile. Make sure it’s public and initialize it with a README to get started.”

Go ahead and make this repository public and initialise it with a README.

Once you successfully create the repository and go to your GitHub home page, you will see something like the image below. Github initialises your profile readme with a “Hi there 👋” gesture message.

Now to add more details to the profile, edit the README file in the same repository and when you do that, you will notice that GitHub is trying to help you with a few messages to get started.

README.md uses MarkDown so if you are not familiar with MarkDown then you can use a website called stackedit which will help you writing in markdown or you can also refer to this MarkDown cheatsheet and you can further paste it to your README.md file and commit.

Now since GitHub README profiles are written in Markdown which means you aren’t just limited to texts, emojis and links, you can include GIFs and images as well and make your profile standout. If you’re really ambitious you can also use GitHub Actions to dynamically pull data into your README.md and make it even more interesting.

You can always refer to my profile on GitHub : vibhorchaudhary.

I have also used “Github Readme Stats” in my GitHub profile which was developed by “Anurag Hazra” which dynamically generates stats for your GitHub README’s.

You can follow me or reach out to me on LinkedIn, Github, Medium, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.

Thanks for reading!!
Eco-Track Supply Chain And Recycling Services using IOTA
By: Yehia Tarek
Tags: Iota, Recycling, Ipfs, Blockchain, Supply Chain

Since August 2019, I started working on my graduation project idea which is a supply chain system to keep track of products from manufacturing to end-users. Where end-users could earn some IOTAs as rewards for putting their products in our smart trash. Eco-track consists of a mobile app for the supply chain, one for the recycling and a website for registration. I used nodejs, IOTA and IPFS to create a REST API. I documented all my graduation project development journey through these four articles :

Parsing Data

Track Products API

Tangle &IPFS database

Recycling System

All these articles demonstrate the logic. Now I am going to share the final output with you. But before that, I am going to explain what Eco-Track do.

What Eco-Track Do Exactly?

Eco-Track is a supply chain system interested in two ledgers. The first one is the factorization of products till end-users. Each end-users with the supply chain mobile app can update the product’s status and gave his feedback to achieve the highest transparency.

The second ledger is from the end-users to the recyclers and it uses another mobile app for recycling. I explained this ledger in details in the Recycling System article.

You can see a simple demonstration of the two apps here

Sharing the Eco-Track With You

Now, after I got my grade which is A+ by the way💃 . I am glad to share Eco-Track as a public repository. I did not only share the source code but I included all the resources I found or used like:

Blueprints, articles, papers and projects similar to Eco-Track. Diagrams I created for the graduation project. My own created Prototypes simple apps + some IOTA tools I tried like IOTA decentralized data marketplace. DevOps: parsing test cases then deploy a website using IPFS (incomplete test cases). Three mobile apps (supply chain, recycling and NFC tag read/write). I included my seed filled with some faucet IOTA from coment Tangle.

You can check the readme file. I tried to be as clear as possible. If you face any problem, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Also, Read
Sometimes Hope Is All You Have
By: Harsh Kundulli
Tags: Poetry, Life, Poem, Haiku, Hope

I publish a poem every day. The Haiku are here. The others are here.

Stay in touch with me here.
Mengapa Anak-anak ?
By: Obed Nugroho
Tags: Sharing, Anak, Education, Gereja, Anak Muda

in In Fitness And In Health
Free-fall
By: James Khan
Tags: Life Lessons, Addiction, Poetry, Mental Health, Alcoholism

Free-fall

the bottom of the downward slope

source: Tom French ( https://stowe-gallery.com/products/tom-french-vessel-2018)

sixteen years of drunk delusions

smeared across the bathroom tiling,

hammerheads of skull contusions

self-inflicted while I’m smiling,

mumbling words to classic numbers,

Cash and Cooke and oh, I’m praying,

all the while the hate encumbers,

breaks my back like millstones weighing,

bloodstained lips and sputtered prayers,

knee-bound, free-fall just like Petty

strips away my human layers,

curses thrown like glass confetti,

now the deadened aspiration

drying on a dirty pavement

shows this life of castigation-

all I bought was wet enslavement.
A fireside chat with Matt Cutts, USDS Administrator, and Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO: Culture
By: U.S. Digital Service
Tags: Government, Interviews, Civictech

A fireside chat with Matt Cutts, USDS Administrator, and Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO: Culture

Watch part two of a series that shares the conversation between Matt Cutts and Satya Nadella during a USDS staff meeting.

Our mission is to deliver better government services to the American people through technology and design. At USDS we live by our mission and values. They drive our decisions and have shaped our culture from the beginning, even with change of leadership.

In part two of a discussion between Matt and Satya, they discuss the Microsoft culture, sense of mission, and shifting to a focus on AI and innovation.

Satya shares his thoughts on the idea of concept, capability, and culture as a machine that you must constantly iterate on.
『Scrum其實是很老派的』 之 談Agile的獲利原理
By: Yu-Song Syu
Tags: Agile Methodology, Agile Development, Profit, Agile, Scrum

Kuma老師的軟體工程教室

Welcome to the Kingdom of Software Engineering
Five Data Science Interview Questions that you must be able to answer
By: Monika Sharma
Tags: Statistics, Machine Learning, Interview, Data Science

Question 1: Can you explain cost function of decision trees?

Answer: Before we answer this question, it is important to note that Decision Trees are versatile Machine Learning algorithms that can perform both classification and regression tasks. Hence their cost functions are also different.

Cost function for classification type problems:

Gini impurity is an important concept before we can understand cost function, so let me first explain that.

Equation I: Gini Impurity

where “p” is the ratio of class k instances among the training instances at the ith node. What does that mean? Let’s understand from an example below. Figure I displays a simple visualization of Iris Decision Tree of depth 2. Top level is the root node. The concept of dividing a training set into a set of decisions is fairly simple in the algorithm. Here, for instance, Iris data set is divided into two subsets based on a single feature called “petal width” at the root node. If petal width is less than or equal to 0.8, then the algorithm goes to depth 1, left. If not, it goes to depth 1, right. Where it further divides instances based on an additional feature of “petal width”. Depth 1, right node has a sample of 100 instances and applies 0 instances to Iris-Setosa, 50 instances to Iris-Versicolor and remaining 50 to Iris-Virginica.

Figure I: Iris Decision Tree, Source

So this node’s gini impurity is 0.5:

Figure II: Gini impurity calculation

Similarly, at depth 1, left node, Gini impurity is zero because all training instances apply to the same class. The node is essentially “pure”.

Now that understand what is Gini impurity, let’s get into the meat of the answer. Decision Trees use Classification and Regression Tree (CART) algorithm for training purposes based on a simple concept that the data set will be split into two subsets using a single feature (k) and threshold (t) . In Iris data set the feature was “petal width” and threshold was 0.8. How does it choose k and t? It searches for the pair (k, t) that produces the purest subsets. So the cost function that the algorithm tries to minimize is given by below equation:

Equation II: Cost function of a classification type decision tree.

where G left or right represent gini impurity of subsets while m represents instances of the subsets.

Cost function for regression type problems:

For regression trees, cost function is fairly intuitive. We use Residual Sum of Squares (RSS). Equation III displays cost function of regression type trees, where “y” is ground truth and “y-hat” is the predicted value.
3 Key Elements that will Make or Break Your Digital Ad Campaign
By: Maggie Clapperton
Tags: Content Marketing, Advertising Technology, Programmatic Advertising, Digital Marketing, Digital Advertising

So, you’ve crafted your content and documented your strategy… Now, how do you ensure a successful campaign set-up? We’ve run thousands of content campaigns, and while we recognize that each one has distinct objectives, we’ve discovered that no matter the industry, there are three elements that significantly impact the success of your digital ad campaign. Make the most of your media dollars by following these best practices.

1. HEADLINES

Despite the age-old wisdom of David Ogilvy, headlines continue to be hastily thrown together without the time & thought they deserve. Your headline is your first impression, and there are no second chances.

2. IMAGES

Our brains process visual information about 60,000x faster than text. Images, therefore, not only enhance your content, they catch the interest of readers who scroll through mountains of content every minute.

3. DEVICE SPLITTING

As a savvy digital advertiser you’ll want to make sure you’re considering diverse user experiences and traffic behaviour across desktop, mobile, and in- app, and ensure you’re optimizing performance by creating separate digital advertising campaigns for each.

Following these simple best practices to maximize the success of your digital ad campaigns. To get started with StackAdapt, Request an Invite here!
Victoria
By: Felipe Acosta
Tags: Depression, Life, Sadness, Love, Loneliness

Victoria, I’d love to call you my friend, but the sun simply looks odd today. Who are you? You tend to ask yourself, without much clue on the path to an answer.

Vicky, they call you, sometimes Vic. And as I see you, I know it’s been one of those days for you. Utterly lonely. No one to talk to, no one to see. Victoria, today you’ve managed to kill tons of time; most of it, to be precise. And you’re no child anymore, you are very well aware of the fact that you, Victoria, are lonely and that you don’t like it.

Today you didn’t leave your house. Not for work, and for leisure. You’re afraid for, who would you go out with, anyways? Solitude is perhaps a bit more bearable when you know you’re the only one aware of it. Not easy to be lonely, but to be perceived as such? Not ever.

You wrote a letter to a guy you like, Vic, but you will never send it. “Perhaps a telegram”, you think, knowing you will never actually write it. You know his eyes pretty well at this point, it must be admitted, and you’ve refined your description of it by now. Words deeply thought and so felt, but so unseen.

You cry alone Victoria, and live by commissions; those commissions other people pay up by placing responsibilities onto you and expecting your existence. Your mom, your brother, your sister, not a single reason should be for them to think of you, you think and hold your death to no exception. The rope is under the bed, Thomas needs your reports every Wednesday at three, after all.

One thing that makes this a bit more complex, Vic, is that it has always been like this. There are moments in which the conversational logistics of some mundane interactions compel you into laughing with someone fooling you to think they might be your friends. Still, deep down, Vic, you know none of them would kick a stone for the sake of you. Not your peers, not the postman, not your mother.

On these kinds of days, you often like to indulge in a glass of wine. Your new position allows you these kinds of privileges. It used to be low-quality rum, but despite the wine getting palpably more expensive, no difference is made to the roughness of swallowing a liquor alone on your bathroom floor.

You think a lot, and you do so over the same things often. You become fixated and neurotic on the commonplace. This week it was about this boy. You wanted to talk to him, yeah. You know him from your commute, which has given you plenty of opportunities to talk to him, yet this has only translated to multiple opportunities to uncomfortably wonder about talking to him and stressing over the idea of him and, maybe, both of you. No need to talk to him for you, maybe. You don’t know and you don’t need to, specially or he ought not to be the last one, not by a long shot.

You think of going quietly, but you have realized that living is even more silent in your case.
ICO Ratings: Facts or Fake?
By: Kel Dennis
Tags: News, Ico Ratings, Ico Review, Initial Coin Offering, Fraud

After doing some research, we come to find that Dripcoin doesn’t even have a secure website, much less a whitepaper featuring any detailed summaries of the initial coin offering’s purpose.

Can we really blame DJ Khaled for Centra’s failure? ICO ratings site ICO Bench gave a 4/5 rating to an ICO under criminal investigation with the SEC. Therein lies the inherent problem with ICO “expert” ratings. What exactly distinguishes on as an expert on something as new as initial coin offerings?

D.Y.O.R. — Do Your Own Ratings?

Outside of celebrity endorsements, there are numerous ICO listing sites popping up that offer ratings in exchange for tokens. A heavy presence of ICO rating sites is emerging.

Alexander Lielacher, an ICO journalist, wrote a piece on why you should not trust ICO ratings.

They make money from ICOs paying for reviews. These reviews are allegedly curated by “crypto experts.”

Markus Hartmann launched an investigation into a visible ICO rating site known as ICO Bench. The investigative results were disturbing and gained the attention of thousands of readers this week. Take a look for yourself:

Hartmann, with very little effort, showcases how he uses their service to manufacture a fraudulent ICO “expert” in order to manifest an equally fraudulent review. Let’s be honest. His article highlights how well aware many are that ratings can simply be bought or self-published. This is why investors should be beware of ICO ratings in their entirety.

Hartmann’s team managed to purchase artificial ratings and reviews for just a few hundred dollars each. Despite the team’s publication of the process — and a cryptic retweet of a translation of the article by the ICO listing site they selected — the fraudulent ratings were still live days afterwards.

This doesn’t directly implicate the listing site, of course — the fraudsters seem to be independent. But sites with open review or “expert” systems are opening the door wide to this kind of activity.

At ICO Alert, we nail that door shut.
Lessons That Last A Lifetime: Boundaries
By: Kesia Alexandra
Tags: Relationships, Life, Self, Love, Dating

I used to have an ex that would hit me up every January without fail. This was someone I met back in 2011. This incessant contacting went on for years. We had not had a toxic relationship. In fact, I liked him well enough as a person, we just didn’t have the same goals for a romantic relationship. This was why it took me so long to block him. Honestly, it shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did. The simple fact is that the relationship did not serve me, and this was reason enough to block the kid and get on with life.

When we ceased contact it was because of a boundary I established for myself. It didn’t have anything to do with him other than he did not want the same things that I did. This doesn’t make him a bad person but it does make him a bad person for me. So why keep him around? Blocked.

I’ve made a habit of blocking exes. I used to want to keep them unblocked so they could see all of my glorious success. Now I understand how vain and toxic that mindset is. As it stands, my mode of operation is once the relationship ends, so does our connection via technology. It’s not the 1980s. Unless someone is a sociopath, they’re not likely to try to pursue you beyond realizing they’ve been blocked on every platform. After texting, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter inboxes and email have been exhausted, most people get the hint.

Of course we all think of exes or old friends from time to time. This is not something unique to this generation. However, the ease with which people can be reached has led to an uptick in folks trying to re-establish connections that have expired. Someone even joked under the thread for one of those Tweets that he sends that text to about five or ten women and see who bites the bait. Don’t bite the bait. Don’t be easy to reach. Block people, not for the sake of some reverse-psychological flex, but for your own sanity. I didn’t get one of these toxic texts this Thanksgiving and that is truly something to be grateful for.
Mars Rover Is Frozen in Place Following Software Error
Tags: Space, Science, Mars, NASA, Curiosity

by Ryan Whitwam

The Curiosity rover has performed admirably on Mars for more than seven years, but there have been a few bumps along the way. After all, it was only designed to last a few years. NASA reports that Curiosity has suffered a system failure that left the robot unaware of its position and attitude on the red planet. Until it recovers, Curiosity is frozen in place.

Curiosity arrived on Mars in 2012, making history with its wildly successful rocket sled landing system. Since then, it has traversed the terrain in Gale Crater and climbed the slopes of Mount Sharp, relaying data on the red planet’s geologic past. Thanks to Curiosity, we have a better idea of where water existed (and may still exist) on Mars, as well as where we might be able to find evidence of ancient life.

Mars is far enough away that we can’t directly control Curiosity in real-time — the rover gets batches of commands and then carries them out. That means it needs to have precise awareness of the state of all its joints, as well as environmental details like the location of nearby obstacles and the slope of the ground. This vital information ensures the rover doesn’t bump anything with its arm or clip large rocks as it rolls along.

Curiosity stores all this attitude data in memory, but something went wrong during operations several days ago. As the rover was carrying out its orders, it suddenly lost track of its orientation. The attitude data didn’t add up, so Curiosity froze in place to avoid damaging itself. While the rover is physically stuck in place, it’s still in communication with the team here on Earth.

Even careful positional awareness can’t save Curiosity’s wheels from Mars’ pointy rocks.

Since everything else is working on the rover, NASA was able to develop a set of instructions that should get the rover moving again. When transmitted, the data will inform Curiosity of its attitude and confirm its current state. This should allow the rover to recover and keep performing its safety checks. However, NASA also hopes to gather data on what caused the issue in the first place. The hope is they can avoid another freeze-up in the future.

While NASA hopes to get more use out of Curiosity, the agency is hard at work on the upcoming Mars 2020 rover. That mission is set to launch this summer, arriving on Mars in early 2021.

Now read:
Gamification — a key competitive advantage in the Bethereum solution
Tags: Gaming, Gamification, Retention, Esport, Betting

Greeting fellow Bethereans and gamers!

“It’s play that helps us do serious things better”, Daniel Debow

In Bethereum, we bring some innovative elements, that are unique to our solution, and therefore giving us a huge a competitive advantage. One of these key ingredients is gamification.

Gamification is the application of game design mechanics to non-gaming environments, to boost users’ engagement. Today, conventional betting operators have generally dismissed such features all together, missing the opportunity to tap into the huge potential, shown in studies, to increase players satisfaction and loyalty. Such loyalty is achieved by creating engagement of the users, which captures a customer’s willingness to invest his or her time with the company, for the benefit of both the player and the company. Simply put, if the customer is satisfied, he or she will choose to stay. In fact, we believe the focus should always be on building a community, where players want to stay and play, chat with friends, and share their achievements. This is what gamification is all about! Leaderboards, status badges, avatars and skins, and of course positive feedback from other community members, are only few of the gaming elements Bethereum is bringing!

Giacomo at the Crypto Games Conference in Minsk, 2019

Our solution will personalize the experience for different types of players, so no matter what type of player you are, we make it our mission to give you the best and most personalized experience out there! In the world of betting, this will immensely increase our competitive differentiation.

Gamification is all about engagement and fun, and placing a bet with Bethereum will always be kept simple, fresh and fun. Want to know more about gamification, and how it can boost engagement and retention in betting? Watch our CEO, Giacomo, speaking at Crypto Games Conference in Minsk.
Mirror in the Bathroom
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Self Love, Humor, Comics, Body Positive, Body Image

You’d be surprised what you can see in the mirror when you let the fog clear.
Here, Everyday
By: Shringi Kumari
Tags: Poetry, Life, Self, Time, Routine

I come to your well everyday

Tell you my story, every day

The same — the same — revolving cylinders

You take in what I built every day

Turn me and mine into slush, every day

I am here, telling you — again

Find me. See me. Recognize.

Now forget. All of it. We must rewrite.

My every move, my everyday

Empty wells

Water settled in them as steam, as damp air

You turn, I fill. You crush, I stack

I finish everyday, you reassemble

every day

For the dust you mine, For the coal I stack

For the skeletons you pound, For the cinders I neglect

For the days you atomise, For the ashy droplets I drink

My every day comes to you, to be considered

Your profound well, sucks it every day

~
Play It As Needed #1 — Una playlist su cui riflettere
By: Federica Carlino
Tags: Thinking, Music, Inspiration, Mental Health, Playlist

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I struggle with BPD. Why my mental illness does not define…
By: Meghadeepa Maity
Tags: Labels, Stigma, Mental Health

While overproduction of the thyroid hormone can give you a goiter, overproduction of the neurotransmitter cortisol frequently puts my body into fight-or-flight mode.

Maybe you have asthma. You’ll understand what it’s like to have a hyperactive immune system which reacts to harmless substances in the environment. It’s frustrating, isn’t it?

It’s equally tormenting for me when my amygdala (a brain structure) produces irrational responses to my surroundings.

It’s not only improper to define a person by his/her illness but potentially injurious.

Society and its ignorance are hurting the people who struggle with mental illnesses, learning disabilities and neuropsychiatric disorders.

I know, because for the longest time, I couldn’t remember that I had an identity beyond my disorders. The people I chose to share my struggles with, told me that I was “manufacturing my depression”. Borderline Personality Disorder defined my personality, which meant that it was ingrained into my existence, right? I couldn’t exist outside the spectral remains of my Post-traumatic Stress disorder since it held so much of yesterday.

I don’t need society to reinforce my identity-crisis.

The first step to recovery is acknowledging that sickness has an external causal agent. If all you see in your life is the disease, you become the disease, until you can’t fight it anymore.

And, when you’re fighting yourself, everyone knows that you’re losing the war.

I’m that girl who rebelliously resists the over-rated phenomenon called growing up, the kid who is way too ambitious for her own good, and the adult who spends entirely too much time overthinking things.

Ugh, I have so many problems besides a mental illness!

I suffer from Recurrent Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. But essentially, I have better things to do with my life than be sick.

You can’t contain me within the vessels of societal stigma.
Fifth Story: Henry
By: Josh Hallman
Tags: Director, Henry, H, Advice, Blog

The fifth and final video in the series and we switched it up a little bit. This is Henry… and he is the future.
Want to be a 360 video storyteller? Start here
By: Creative Lab
Tags: Virtual Reality, VR, Augmented Reality, 360 Video, Journalism

Want to be a 360 video storyteller? Start here

From tutorials to lessons learned, we’ll get you headed in the right direction

The art of 360 video storytelling is evolving, captivating and still pretty hard to do well. But if you’re starting from scratch our award-winning 360 team has some ideas of where to look.

Happy shooting, and let us know what you learn in the comments or on Twitter.
Reframing our relationship with data and living it
By: Michael Brenner
Tags: Data, Data Visualization, Emotions, Human Centred Design, Design

The framework of this essay was originally presented as a short talk at the Visualising Data London meet-up on 24 January2019.

It’s often said that a picture paints a thousand words.

But what if that image needs to communicate vital and complex information? Or tell an extremely important story? If it does, what happens if it is too abstract? And what if, despite trying its best to convey it, it is void of emotion?

If an image fails to build an empathetic or emotional bridge with its intended viewer, does it have any chance of fulfilling its objective? Will it communicate the desired message successfully? Will it inspire people to act?

These questions strike at the heart of what we practitioners do within the data visualisation space, and they call into question our field’s core objective. If we answer them collectively, I believe it will move us forward.

I’m not suggesting that we throw out the rule book, I’m encouraging us to actively question it. We need rules and guidelines to help us strive for transparency, accuracy and “factfulness” as defined and given to us by Hans Rosling. But, I’m worried that the formal attributes of traditional data visualisation methods are hindering us from connecting and communicating with people effectively on an emotional level.

When the intent is to present data to inspire action and facilitate change, we should reconsider its delivery. Of course, this doesn’t apply to all data communications and data types, but it’s an interesting problem to dig into, and is very much a core part of what we do at DATA4CHANGE.

These are some of the items from my reading shelf that helped me formulate and begin to explore these questions.