71% of Millennials and 79% of Generation Z in the U.S. admit to feeling lonely. 60% of Tinder users say the same. NFT vows, social connections in the metaverse, the harm of loneliness, and what the heck do dating apps have to do with it. Startup waka shares trends in user behavior. Last waka-updates Waka is a mini-application for gamified dating inside of the Telegram messenger. We help people find friends based on their interests and preferences - meme swipes, horoscopes, personality tests, anonymous chat mechanics, etc. The product consists of a web application (where all the gamification takes place) and a messenger bot (for authorization and push notifications). We have 50,000 users and in Telegram now. We will launch a discord version in January. you can try waka Features launched in the last 3 months: We built Gamified rooms, 5 of them in total. All the rooms are located in a separate tab - waka fun. Swipes are gone, now we help people find friends based on their interests, various contexts, and tests in special "rooms". This is one of the reasons why we call ourselves "anti dating app". Instead of a single visual filter swipes, we give the user more information about a potential friend to turn the matches into real communication. Desktop version. Many people have asked us to add a desktop version, and we've done it. It's not perfect yet, but now waka can be used from a laptop. Since we are not an app, but a mini-app within messengers - we do not need to be downloaded, which significantly affects the cost per registration. We reduced it to $0.16 , which is really good compared to the traditional dating apps. Why rooms are better than swipes Our anti-dating approach is reflected in metrics as well. Users who come to the rooms show higher retention (metric of users returning on different days) than those who use swipes. N-day retention of users on 1/7/30 day (percentage of users who returned to the app on a particular day): With each new room, metrics for the entire product grow, because people like the feeling of novelty. With the introduction of the first meme room, the 1-day retention of the entire product increased by 6%. When we made 4 rooms, we moved the room screen to the first screen so the user could see it right away. In November we launched a room with horoscopes and a hate room matching people based on a quiz, which identifies what is annoying for the user, and just a couple of days ago we launched a personality test room. You take a test to find out your personality type and get a connection with a relevant person; we developed it together with a psychologist. It is too early to draw conclusions about the metrics in the new rooms the sample is too small, preliminary 1/7/30 day retention is like that: Horoscope room ― 40% / 22,9% / 17,4% Room “hate it!” ― 30,7% / 10,8% / not enough data yet. Let's move on to what we will do in the future and which trends in user behavior we will consider in 2022. How the Metaverse Changes People, and why it's not about VR: What it has to do with us Even though many still think that the metaverse is a complete transition to a VR/AR space where everyone communicates exclusively through glasses, I don't think that's true. Our team likes the position that the metaverse is not about moving everything into VR, but about superposition, about intersecting the physical and digital worlds in good products today and in almost any product in the near future. Don't tell me that you don't live on the Internet! Watch this video where - he's used to everything being interactive. the child wants to swipe a regular paper magazine ** These numbers have increased over the past two years, also because of Covid. People are getting more and more submerged into the online world, and it's making a big difference in their behavior. Virtual Worlds are now becoming the 3rd place in a person's life, after Home and Work ARK Invest that in the next 5 years, the average time spent on video games should increase from 1.1 hours to 1.5 hours per person per day. The percentage of in-game purchases will increase from $130 billion in 2020 to $350 billion by 2025. Gaming is becoming the 3rd place in a person's life, after home and work. When I say online gaming, I also mean metaverse, and here is why. predicts The concept of the metaverse is influenced by other technologies such as 5G. Wireless research and development company Qualcomm the impact of this technology on the global economy at $13.1 trillion and 22.8 million jobs by 2035. Telecom-operator companies that are installing 5G towers realize that they can't recoup their costs. But they from the additional services that will arise due to the high speed of data transfer. These services are closely related to the metaverse. estimates can get the biggest profits For example, SK Telecom, South Korea's leading telecom operator, has launched , a platform "that allows users to communicate in different virtual environments using avatars”. Ifland People Prefer Virtual Worlds for Socialization Now let's see how the domain of dating apps fits into the metaverse industry (and it fits very well). People willingly go to the metaverse, first of all, for socialization. More and more teenagers choose online games not so much to have fun, but to socialize. Any game designer or product designer will confirm that adding socialization to games adds retention = user engagement to the game. Recently Fortnite <the battle royale game> introduced " " - peaceful maps. Interestingly, in a game where you have to shoot and kill, a completely different mechanic arises - mini-games and communication with people. Fortnite and Epic Games (the company that developed the game) are considered one of the possible leaders of the emerging industry. Party worlds Zoomers and Millennials are Lonelier than Anyone We are developing our app based on research of the US market, because that is our target market. Here's what the . Survey Center on American Life found out In the 1990s, 3% of Americans had no friends - now it's 12%.  Also at that time 33% of Americans had 10 or more friends - now only 13% have so many friends. Another striking statistic is that today one in five Millennials have no friends at all! The pandemic contributed to this problem. Many people have lost their friends, especially girls. By the way, there are fewer females in dating apps than males, but not in waka. According to our data, in traditional dating apps, the ratio of males to females is about 30/70, while in waka 48.5%/50.8% with just under 1% of non-binary people. This is due to our positioning - the app is for finding friends and most users are not only looking for people of the opposite sex. So what are the implications of loneliness? Maybe that's the way it should be? But 71% of Millennials and 79% of Generation Z in the U.S. to feeling lonely. 60% of Tinder users . admit say the same Loners need Oxytocin, and It's in Deep Connection Stanford University professor Robert Malenka in 2016 that strong social ties influence oxytocin production. Oxytocin is a hormone that induces feelings of satisfaction and calm, reducing anxiety. In addition, the release of oxytocin plays a central role in the stimulation of dopamine pathways. What's interesting is that skin contact is not required for the release of oxytocin. So people can communicate in both messengers and in metaverses to feel less lonely. But what matters here is not quantity but quality: deep friendships, romantic relationships, communication between parents and children. Close healthy social connections <including online> are very important to our bodies. proved Single zoomers and millennials are good at sensing how much they need companionship and friendship. On Tinder, for example, there has been a threefold in offers to go roller skating, not just to meet people. The app doesn't have that functionality, so they just write it in the description. People are looking for real communication, they're wondering what they can do together, where they can go. Do dating apps cater to their needs? I wouldn't say so. Quick-matches are more about quick dopamine, the moment of a flashy "Match!" screen, after which nothing happens. increase So the main goal of waka is to enable people to find quality and healthy social interaction, online and offline! Instead of swipes <visual filter elevated to the max we bring people together through micro-personalization - by memes, horoscopes, common contexts, hobbies. This serves as an icebreaker and an additional opportunity to get to know the person as an individual, more likely to turn a match into the conversation. In the future, we plan to create a meta-room with all the important information about the user's personality type and preferences - what memes, movies, the music he likes. And I wouldn't worry about losing some retention in the future. People need more friends than sexual partners. And people will appreciate a product that solves their problem. Legalize relationships in the NFT - why not? Recently, my girlfriend and I made a bet, which we secured with NFT. It turned out to be very easy, it's literally a matter of two clicks. , except it has more value - because the post belongs to Instagram, and the NFT you created belongs to you. It's saved on the blockchain, so no one can delete it. It's very much like an official document. I thought - why not use this technology to secure a connection with another person? Why not make marriage 3.0 using NFT? It looks like an Instagram post NFT technology can turn quick matches into more lasting connections. And it's again about superposition and the crossing of online and offline. My team and I came up with NFT vows. If a person is somewhat significant to you, then why not anchor it and show it in a new, previously unavailable format? We'll soon show our vision in this direction. Unresolved Issues waka is supposed to be a connector for people in different online spaces. We want to connect people where they already are, but don't yet have a user-friendly interface for dating. For now, we are in Telegram, but soon we will be in Discord, Snapchat, and online gaming. And another thing that's definitely coming to waka soon is the constructor. In 2022 we will make templates so that users can create their own quizzes and rooms. Right now we are developing those rooms, but we can see how quickly the creative economy trend is developing - people like to create things themselves. With this, we plan to increase the percentage of matching and improve the quality of connections. We're an indie startup that wants to change the way people meet online, and we can't do that alone. We'd welcome your thoughts in the comments. If you like what we're doing, and for those who want to help us develop the product, we've created a - please join us! Discord community

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As much as digitization and cyber simplified banking, the Fintech sector has left digital payment activity exposed to malicious and suspicious activity. With financial crime being estimated at 2% to 5% of the global GDP (or $1.6 trillion ), it is alarming that this year, companies around the world are expected to spend more than $1.45 trillion on detecting, preventing, and investigating financial crime. According to the latest report from Experian, the COVID-19 pandemic is driving people to work and bank remotely. This exposes vulnerabilities in the systems of many companies and banks, leaving them vulnerable to data leakage and DDoS attacks. Since 2020, DDoS attacks against banks and financial institutions have become strikingly common. The DDoS method overwhelms target servers or websites with artificially generated traffic with crashing load levels that disable any server’s ability to operate. Last year, threat actors forced the New Zealand Stock Exchange to be offline for almost an entire week and asked for ransom to stop the DDoS attacks.  The Russian tech giant Yandex was hit with the internet's largest-ever recorded distributed denial-of-service or DDoS attack in September and Amazon Web Services (AWS) defended against a 2.3 -terabit-per-second (Tbps) distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in February. And these are just three of the most high-profile DDoS attacks in the past 12 months. As banks are running multiple cloud-based apps – they also run a high risk of exposure through data leakage. This makes it all the more crucial to identify ways to keep data protected, and secure. There are several measures that banks and financial institutions can use to protect their data and operations from a DDoS attack and data leakage. From implementing network segmentation and applying Firewalls, to developing and enforcing policies on mobile devices, implementing End-to-End security solutions is of urgent need by these institutions. Banks need to have appropriate protection tools installed for both their networks and their applications. This includes such key tools as firewalls, network monitoring software, anti-virus and anti-malware programs, as well as threat monitoring systems. Solutions such as HUB Security's D.Storm provide  extended cyber threat intelligence (XTI) that combines both Threat Intelligence, Risk Protection, and External Attach Surface Management Services are of immediate essence to banks. Several companies undertook the challenge of protecting these financial institutes from notorious MitM/B attacks. HUB Security, for example, launched “D.Storm”, a system that collects data from the bot attacks in real-time and presents it to the user for in-depth analysis. The solutions thus provide the actionable and timely intelligence context banks need to manage the risks in the era of transformation. Implementing a pro-active threat identification, mitigation, and protection strategy means going through the bank’s system and working out any possible security vulnerabilities, as well as defining a clear response from the organization in the event of a DDoS attack. There are other solutions banks can rely on to prevent DDoS attacks and data leaks. Companies like Cloudflare and Akamai offer comprehensive protection against attacks of various types. As leaders in the field of cybersecurity and CDN, their on-demand and always-on types of services can cope with up to 1.3 TBps attacks. As banking becomes increasingly digital, the company’s infrastructure is not limited to the website and is constantly exposed to external attacks. This makes it worthwhile to consider a hardware solution for autonomous protection against DDoS. Specialized tools like BeeThink Anti-DDoS Guardian and Cloudbric protect Windows servers from most DDoS attacks. And may also protect Windows Remote Desktop Connection from password brute force attacks. Detecting threats as early as possible remains the best way to prevent a DDoS attack from taking down important network infrastructures and affecting end users. When choosing a DDoS protection service, banks should first evaluate their online customer base and the possible monetary impact of DDoS attacks. New technologies are only as effective as each organization’s cyber-risk culture. Banks must be aware of evolving risks and establish a plan for continuity to stave off the attacks that will continue to impact the security of intellectual property and money transfer systems.

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The success of the decentralized finance (DeFi) movement has been one of the highlights of the crypto and blockchain space in months. However, the influx of millions of people into these protocols has placed tremendous pressure on Ethereum, the network that hosts of decentralized applications (dapps). nearly 80% As the demand for the world's second-largest blockchain continues to skyrocket, so too have gas prices on the decentralized network. Ethereum participants often have to contend with infuriating gas fees that sometimes reach $100 for a simple token transfer. Such untenable costs have become a dilemma even for high-cost users, who often consider moving to cheaper chains like Solana and Avalanche. As more investors try their hand at DeFi, gas fees are shooting over the roof, making engaging with decentralized apps uneconomical for most users. The ongoing has clogged the network even more, causing gas fees to run red hot while threatening the network's top-dog status. NFT-mania This guide seeks to help readers understand the gas fee menace on Ethereum now and in the future. It also examines leading projects that provide solutions and workarounds to optimize gas fees on the popular network. What Are Ethereum Gas Fees? Gas fees are the amount of ETH tokens a user pays to perform an action on Ethereum. The amount is paid to miners, who process/validate transactions and secure the decentralized network. Gas is a fundamental element that allows users to pay for inclusion in the highly sought-after blockchain. Users need to pay gas fees when minting NFTs, sending tokens, trading in DeFi apps, works, or interacting with smart contracts. These charges have risen to insane heights since the DeFi boom in the summer of 2020. Demand for block space on Ethereum has since shot up, primarily driven by an auction-like system, where users who bid higher prices get priority. Miners are incentivized to process transactions of the highest bidder; this fees structure creates a severe problem as thousands of people compete to access limited block space and have their transactions processed promptly. Transaction costs have evolved from being just an annoyance for people looking to use Ethereum to an actual cost that threatens to push many crypto users out of the network. Moreover, the rise of multifaceted DeFi protocols that process highly complex transactions increases the blockchain's stress and exacerbates the fees crisis. Ehtereum Developers Are Handling the Gas Fee Crisis Ethereum currently holds the undesired reputation of being the most expensive blockchain in the market for transacting and building dapps. Per data from Ycharts, the average gas charges on the network hit an all-time high of $373 in February of 2021. Ethereum Average Gas Fees in 2021 | Source Ycharts.com Ethereum developers have implemented various solutions to curb gas fee hikes before the advent of Layer 2 scaling solutions and the final shift to Ethereum 2.0. For instance, the core dev team launched the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 in August 2021. This significant technical adjustment altered how transactions are processed on the network and tightened the supply of ETH. The developers have also rolled out several in the that helped ease congestion and tackle the gas fee problem on the network. Berlin hard fork Gas fees are not expected to be a significant cause of concern in the long run, as these costs should decrease significantly with the transition to a proof-of-stake model. However, the shift to ETH 2.0 has faced and is scheduled to roll out in several stages that could drag on well into 2023. multiple delays Projects Optimizing Gas Fees on Ethereum The issue of skyrocketing fees is an immediate threat to the dominance of the second-largest blockchain network. For Ethereum users seeking an instant remedy to the problem, here are four projects offering fee subsidies and other workarounds to help them make huge savings on ever-rising gas charges. Arbitrum Arbitrum is a top layer 2 scaling solution developed by to speed up transaction throughput within the Ethereum network. Launched in August 2021, the project empowers Ethereum participants to settle transactions away from the chain and experience economic efficiency without limits. Off-Chain Labs The relatively new project has introduced the ideal scaling solution within Ethereum's layer-2 ecosystem, enhancing DeFi adoption via its optimistic rollups that integrate enhanced scalability and ultra-low gas fees. The project integrates distinctive features designed to scale any Ethereum contract, offering investors unprecedented compatibility with the leading decentralized network. The Arbitrum Layer 2 protocol derives its security from Ethereum, empowering crypto opponents to optimize their user experience and boost growth in the decentralized finance world. EMETH is a new NFT game that introduces a new Play-to-Collect concept eliminating prohibitive gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain. EMETH The EMETH team recently unveiled its first NFT collection. They plan to launch soon their second mint that integrates a business-savvy solution that alleviates the high gas fees hindering growth in the NFT community. Essentially, the blockchain game reimburses gas fees up to 100%, encouraging users to mint more NFTs regardless of whether gas prices tick upward on Ethereum. The project’s intuitive approach opens the door for gaming fanatics worldwide to participate in grand battles and generate passive income by renting their rare digital collections to members of other NFT communities. Balancer , a popular non-custodial portfolio manager, released the V2 version of its protocol early this year promising to slash transactions and gas charges on Ethereum. The new product introduced an innovative on-chain trading model for ETH tokens that pools all the liquidity locked in its secure protocol into one big vault. Balancer The v2 service radically reduces gas fees for DeFi trades by swapping unlimited tokens and only paying for going into and out of Balancer. It also benefits active traders with cheaper transactions by allowing them to create pools of numerous tokens as they see fit. KaibaDeFi ($KAIBA) is a revolutionary project committed to helping Ethereum users cut down on exuberant gas fees on the network. The project backers have developed a robust smart contract tech at the heart of its ecosystem in the form of KaibaSwap. KaibaDeFi delivers a decentralized gas-efficient infrastructure powered by an Internal Virtual Chain. The experienced developers of KaibaSwap are building an L1 blockchain, dubbed the Lightning Blockchain. The flagship technology will offer gas efficiency, ultra-high-speed, and security while remaining fully compatible with the Ethereum blockchain. KaibaSwap The project plans to expand its next-generation smart contract tech powered by an Internal Virtual Chain across the ERC-20 token ecosystem. The move promises to herald the beginning of the end of crippling gas charges on Ethereum. Final Thoughts Following a wildly successful spell for DeFi and NFT projects over the course of 2020 and 2021, Ethereum has become progressively valuable amid unprecedented demand from crypto fans and investors. Unfortunately, that explosive growth has attracted astronomical gas fees that threaten to make the network unusable by most regular blockchain users. The good news is that ingenious project developers are constantly discovering new ways via which ordinary folks can engage with decentralized applications on Ethereum more efficiently.

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Now, if you've been around this space for as long as I have, then you'll probably be the last person to Google something as obvious as "what's an NFT". OK, I'll admit it. I did all that Googling in 2017. I mean, sure, I'd heard about Crypto Punks a year earlier but that damned CryptoKitties Dapp led me to look into ERC-721s and NFTs and all of that. And I've been asked quite a lot this year about NFTs and since I never give out financial advice, I tend to beat around the bush a lot (I can be self-aware too) before giving a version of an answer that seems to fit the person asking the question the most. If the person's a crypto user, I go right to the token design. If the person's a collector, I talk about NFT collectibles. Or, if like most people out there, the person's really just wondering about whether NFTs can make them rich, then I just give them a sound "no". So don't worry. This isn't going to be another "what are NFT" article. There's more than enough of those to go around to last us till next Christmas, so no need to fill your reading stocking with this! Instead, I thought I'd share a collection of my favourite tid-bits from around the industry on what other people think NFTs are. They could be general blockchain experts. They could be artists. They could be game developers. They could be blockchain strategists. And despite the straightforwardness of the ERC-721 token standard, you'll find, like I did, that people actually have quite a diverse range of ideas about what they think NFTs really are. Proving, after all, that variety really is the spice of crypto life. So here goes. All NFTs are trying to do is create an agreed-upon story on digital “objects” that we can all collectively decide to value. If some people collectively decide to value something, it has value. -- Taylor Foreman, entrepeneur, for The Startup. writing Foreman's idea of NFTs is probably one of the most practical and simplistic explanations of what they are. He doesn't really nail down future use-case of NFTs (simple transferable ownership) but it is spot on what is driving the hype surrounding them today. Cause if someone decides an ugly 3D model of a luxury yacht is worth $650 million, it's worth $650 million, right? The way I describe it to my family members and friends is like, people buy Supreme clothes, or they buy a Rolex. … There are all these ways to tell everyone that you’re wealthy. But a lot of those things can actually be faked. And .” -- Clayton Patterson, founder, Pudgy Penguins with an NFT, you can’t fake it If an NFT project founder's staunch insistence that an NFT can't be faked puts you off, you'll forgive that Patterson's only 23 years old and he probably was trying to dramatise the whole thing during his interview with the New York Times. You can, by the way, fake an NFT... NFTs are a major economic innovation because they allow creatives anywhere in the world to share and receive payment for their work. -- Tiana Laurence, partner, Laurence Innovation, for Forbes writing Now I thought it was worthwhile to share this opinion from one of those many pre-seed investment funds now looking to back up all kinds of NFT startups with millions of dollars. Clearly, we can't ignore that NFTs have opened a new way for creatives (musicians, artists, writers, etc.) to get eyes on their work and to receive compensation for it. Personally, I think it's great that artists don't have to suck up to big art houses to try and showcase their work, or to fight for clicks and views on social media (although now the NFT scene is getting crowded, stragglers may find they have to go through the same struggle). So say what you will about NFTs, they've done a fair share of good for many artists around the globe. Pengu... cute, but actually you only semi-own a number that points to a non permanent link on a centralized server which may return some info and a jpeg. Maybe a pengu today and a goat tomorrow and a 404 the day after -- , founder, BentoBox @Boring_Crypto Sorry, I really didn't mean to bash Pudgy Penguins club or whatever they call themselves these days but it's when you talk to actual coders who can study smart contracts that you realize how flimsy NFTs really are. As shown in the NFT API above, what most NFT buyers don't realize is that all they're buying is a number that points them to a server somewhere that tells them what resides there. Because most NFT servers are actually centralized, it's entirely likely that the information your NFT is pointing to isn't even permanent. One of my favourite descriptions of an NFT so far I heard on a podcast I can't even remember but it went something like this: "An NFT is a finger pointing to something in the sky, like the moon. But the moon moves, and sometimes out of sight. You're not buying the moon, just the finger pointing to the moon." I thought that was apt! So one day, if you do decide to buy NFTs that don't have any obvious use to you (in-game NFTs are another story altogether), just make sure you're not surprised to wake up one day to see this screen below when trying to look up your million-dollar NFT:

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Image taken via IGN Sekiro is a title well-known for its difficulty. Through updates from the developers and self-imposed challenges that can be activated on later playthroughs, Sekiro is a title that only gets harder the more you play it. And yet, it’s been on the forefront of numerous discussions on whether games should have more difficulty options - despite practically starting on an “easy mode” when you first launch it. Nothing accentuates Sekiro’s love for difficulty better than the Demon of Hatred boss. An optional battle found only during the endgame, some people consider it to be harder than the final boss itself. Such a sentiment is easy to understand when you consider its fire attacks and larger-than-life bestial form. Defeating Sekiro’s Demon of Hatred will require a full understanding of the game’s mechanics, including some tricks not used very often by most players. Preparing for Sekiro’s Demon of Hatred Image taken via Fextralife No items in this section are required to defeat the Demon of Hatred. However, they will make the fight much easier, and can help you survive situations that would otherwise kill you. If you haven’t already, you might want to . If you’re particularly having trouble, you may even want to defeat the final boss first; you can choose whether to move on to New Game + after beating it, so you don’t have to leave the Demon of Hatred behind. get every Gourd Seed, Prayer Bead, and Memory you can A particularly strong item to use during the fight is the , a prosthetic tool that’s upgraded from the . You can use it to stun the Demon of Hatred during its fight, leaving it open to your attacks. This is particularly useful with stronger combat arts that utilize the Mortal Blade, if you have them unlocked. Be warned that this tool will only work three times during the fight; it won’t have any effect after that. Malcontent Finger Whistle Crafting the Malcontent The item to craft the Finger Whistle is dropped by the Guardian Ape, so you’ll likely already have it. The upgrade requires: x2 Adamantite Scrap x2 Lump of Grave Wax x4 Scrap Magnetite x4 Lump of Fat Wax You’ll also need the Malcontent’s Ring, which is only dropped by the Shichimen Warrior in the Headless Ape’s second boss arena. You’ll need to sever the ape’s immortality and complete Mibu Village to get the miniboss to spawn. Also useful is , which acts as an upgrade of the . It will defend against fire attacks, making it especially helpful for some of the Demon of Hatred’s deadlier moves. You can avoid many of its fire attacks with practice, but the umbrella will act as a fine last-resort option. Suzaku’s Lotus Umbrella Loaded Umbrella Crafting Suzaku’s Lotus Umbrella In order to get the Loaded Umbrella, you’ll need to purchase the Iron Fortress item from Blackhat Badger. If you’ve missed it by the time you reach the Demon of Hatred, you can purchase it from the offering box at the Dilapidated Temple. The upgrade requires: x2 Adamantite Scrap x2 Fulminated Mercury x6 Scrap Magnetite x6 Yellow Gunpowder Most of these can be found throughout the world, though Fulminated Mercury can be difficult to search for. You can find a few around Ashina Castle and the outskirts during the endgame. Other useful items include Divine Confetti, which offers a damage boost, and the , which helps in mitigating the Burn status. You can purchase the gourd from the Pot Noble at Hirata Estate; just be sure you have two Treasure Carp scales. If you’ve used the True Precious Bait from the Pot Noble at Fountainhead Palace, you’ll need to speak with him instead to purchase the gourd. Withered Red Gourd The Demon of Hatred only becomes accessible after obtaining the Divine Dragon’s Tears, which will trigger the game’s final sequence. To reach the Demon of Hatred fight, you’ll need to head out from Ashina Castle and find a certain kite to grapple onto. It will bring you over to the Ashina Outskirts; you’ll know you’re in the right place if you encounter Shigekichi of the Red Guard. Just head through the area and you’ll come across an idol at the end, allowing you to access the boss arena. Battling Sekiro’s Demon of Hatred Image taken via EIP Gaming The Demon of Hatred is a highly aggressive foe, able to deal large amounts of damage in mere moments. It’s one of the tallest, most imposing enemies in the game, but that size is also its weakness. Stay Close The fight won’t start immediately when you first enter the Demon of Hatred’s arena. The moment it sees you, it will strike a pose - you should take that time to move in as fast as you can. Staying near the boss will limit its capabilities, keeping it from effectively utilizing many of its ranged attacks. By getting close enough, certain attacks will actually miss you entirely, letting you get in some free hits. Dash Constantly and Stick to its Right Side By staying near the Demon of Hatred, you force it to use a certain number of moves. Stomps, kicks, and other attacks with its body can easily be deflected, but its flaming left hand will inflict burn if you try blocking it. However, by abusing Sekiro’s unlimited stamina, you can constantly dash around the boss, avoiding many of its strongest attacks. You’ll want to stay by the Demon of Hatred’s right side; if you were playing on a keyboard, holding the W and A keys together would be your best chance at victory. Focus on Attacking and Less on Deflecting In general, the boss’s posture bar won’t decrease much. Your focus should be less on deflection and more on attacking. You should also try to wait until the third phase of the fight before using the Malcontent, if you have it. The third phase is by far the most dangerous, so stretching out all three stuns during that time will prove immensely helpful. Surviving Sekiro’s Demon of Hatred Image taken via Rock Paper Shotgun You’ll need to train your reflexes if you want to avoid taking too much damage, but many of the Demon of Hatred’s attacks are highly telegraphed. Its stomps and slams are easily learned, and some players might not even see its full moveset. Even so, there are some attacks that can catch even the best players off guard. Here are some of the trickiest attacks, as well as how to handle them: - The Demon of Hatred will jump into the air and slam straight down in an explosion. The actual attack isn’t hard to avoid, but a gust of wind will fire from the blast, knocking you down. The boss will gain a grapple point you can latch onto to avoid the knockdown. You should wait to jump and grapple until the boss finishes its slam, in order to avoid being knocked away at the end of your animation. Jumping Slam - A short-range string of attacks. The Demon of Hatred will first swipe its fiery arm at you, then swing it upwards before trying to stomp you, ending with another flaming swing. You should jump backwards if you see the initial attack, as well as back and to the right during its final swing. Despite appearances, both attacks in the middle of this combo can be deflected without any burn buildup. Fire Combo - An attack only performed at medium range. The Demon of Hatred will throw numerous fireballs at once, launching one volley after another. Because it only uses this when you’re far away, your best bet to avoid the attack is staying as close as possible to the boss. If it manages to get far enough away from you, dashing directly towards the Demon of Hatred will make it easier to avoid the attack; running slightly to the left can allow you to avoid the first volley entirely, if you’re lucky. Bursting Fireball - A perilous attack. The Demon of Hatred will sweep the ground, running a large distance away before striking a pose. Jumping back and away from the boss will allow you to easily dodge the attack, and you should run towards the Demon of Hatred before it can start to use any more dangerous ranged moves. Sweep In phase 2, this attack will usually be followed up with a second one. The Demon of Hatred will swing his hand through the air before slamming down, creating a spread of fire in front of him. If he does this, do not run towards him. Run left or right and jump the moment his hand crashes into the floor. A grapple point will appear on the boss, allowing you to avoid the flaming ground before landing. In phase 3, the Demon of Hatred might instead use a second sweep attack with its flaming arm. Time your jump carefully and do your best to stay away from it until the attack is finished. You’re safe to close the distance when you see its signature pose. - A ranged attack. The Demon of Hatred will swing its head around, spawning balls of fire before launching them towards you. Running diagonally towards the boss is the best way to avoid this attack, but it can be unavoidable if either of you is too close to a wall. After the final ball, the boss will strike another pose, leaving it open to more free attacks. Meteors - A perilous attack. The Demon of Hatred will sweep its flaming arm in a circle, raising it up before performing a second sweep, creating a massive ring of fire around the area. The first sweep can be avoided with a careful jump, and staying behind the boss during the attack will leave you relatively safe. Flaming Whirlwind If you find yourself unable to avoid the ranged attacks, Suzaku’s Lotus Umbrella can mitigate most - if not all - damage from the flames. Any attack not listed here can be easily avoided through deflection or strafing, and keeping these moves in mind should make the fight much more manageable. Bonus: Extra Dialogue Image taken via YouTube You can trigger extra dialogue before and after the Demon of Hatred fight. You can only do this earlier in the game, particularly before the Great Shinobi boss. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, this guide won’t go too in-depth on that, but here are the important parts: Give Ashina Sake, Unrefined Sake, and Monkey Booze to the Sculptor at the Dilapidated Temple Eavesdrop on him and Emma after reloading the area Talk to the Sculptor one more time after reloading the area Other requirements can be fulfilled as you progress through the game normally, such as obtaining the Finger Whistle, exploring Hirata Estate, or curing Dragonrot. The Demon of Hatred’s difficulty cannot be understated, but it isn’t invincible. Keep at it and eventually you’ll learn how to take it down. Though it might not be a necessary fight to complete the game, very few things compare to how satisfying it is to finally take down one of Sekiro’s greatest challenges. More in gaming: 1. The Game Awards 2021 Recap: Winners and New Announcements | Hacker Noon 2. An Essential Dark Souls Mods Guide: The Best Mods from Dark Souls 3 to Dark Souls Remastered | Hacker Noon 3. How to 'Git Gud' at Elden Ring Before its Release | Hacker Noon

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How to Defeat Sekiro’s Demon of Hatred Boss

We never could have predicted the events of 2020 that would shape our world and change the global corporate workforce as we know it. For a corporate culture agency specializing in corporate retreats and travel, the closing of borders and grounding of flights was daunting, to say the least. However, we chose to rise to the challenge and pivoted from connecting people through travel to doing so in the virtual world when that became the only option. We used our eye for creative culture building to create our signature memorable team experiences again, but this time, in a remote setting. With over eight unique experiences, we work with clients like Google and Coca-Cola and have managed to grow our team, adapt our circumstances, and succeed in a new medium. Here’s how we did it. virtual team building Reevaluating Our Role in Corporate Culture Building When companies made the switch to working remotely, it amazed us how quickly employees felt they lost touch with their colleagues. With no preparation for such a large and dramatic shift in their work environment, many of the activities meant to connect employees online were not engaging enough or simply didn’t happen at all. Both the personal connection and sense of community that are so vital to positive company culture were lost. The companies we once planed retreats for were still leaning on us to help them reignite and maintain that engagement even in a work from home setting. We realized that we were never just a travel company to our clients; we were actually a one-stop-shop for them to outsource culture-building. With this realization, we could spring into action and take what we already knew about creating team events and apply it to the virtual world. Avoiding Analysis Paralysis “Ready, Fire, Aim”. , our Founder and Managing Partner at Moniker, uses this mantra as a reminder to take risks, learn from mistakes and then make the necessary changes along the way. Businesses often get stuck in overthinking the potential consequences of a risk and remain indecisive, leading to analysis paralysis. Instead, we did our homework, made educated decisions, and took calculated risks that lead to huge benefits for us and our clients. Sean Hoff We looked at the online social events happening at the time and found much of the same: virtual yoga sessions and online happy hours. Lacking structure and variety, these online activities were starting to feel more like a chore where you were obliged to show face, rather than a fun way to connect and have a laugh with fellow employees. Virtual call fatigue is very real, and we recognized that the challenge lay in creating events that seamlessly integrated team-building and events that people would look forward to. Once we had this base understanding, we could move forward without getting stuck in the overthinking stage. We had our goal, take what we know best and build on it to make the immersive web events. So we set to work to identify and develop unique ways to keep the remote workforce engaged and connected from the ground up. Using Our Hidden Talents With a lot of creativity, imagination, and brainstorming, we created and offered 3 interactive virtual experiences in the first few months. We teamed up with a group of professional actors who enacted these events, from murder mysteries to virtual escape rooms to lunar distaster scenarios. Zoom However, this didn’t happen overnight. Switching from the travel world to a virtual platform meant completely changing our whole team’s day-to-day tasks, and operations as a whole. Our creative and hard-working team was willing to jump right in, try new things, and especially bring all their other talents to the table. What was originally a team that planned and executed our elaborate trips was now a team of talent managers, casting agents, Escape Room puzzle designers, certified SEM specialists, murder mystery scriptwriters, 3D renderers, and so on. Thinking outside the box and encouraging our team members to contribute different skills than they normally employ for their positions was what skyrocketed us to the eight high-caliber and immersive virtual experiences we have now. Looking Forward During this massive shift we were actually able to expand our team and continue to evolve and innovate in the corporate field. Our team’s willingness to take risks, learn from mistakes, and act on new ideas is what allowed us to thrive in the pandemic era. As the end of 2021 approaches, it’s clear that the remote work population will only continue to grow. With travel also returning to the stage, we are moving forward in both realms. By staying on top of current trends and constantly learning, we will move with the times while maintaining our core values and signature authenticity. We’re confident that we’ll continue to captivate our clients and cultivate community for many years to come.

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From Travel to Virtual: How We Pivoted in The Pandemic Era

Free Software Versus “Open Source” In 1980, a brand new Xerox 9700 printer was installed in an office of MIT’s computer science department. It often jammed. Several people in that department probably could have fixed it if not for the fact that it ran on proprietary Xerox software. One of those people, Richard Stallman, tried to at least program it to notify the rest of his office when it jammed, but wasn’t allowed to do that either. Whenever he and his colleagues needed a printout, they had to go check if it was jammed first. It was on a different floor. Stallman begged a colleague with Xerox connections to share the code for the driver. The colleague, despite having access, was contractually obligated to say no. This experience broke something in Stallman’s brain. It was a catalyst that solidified his resolve to give free software a permanent place in the world. If he couldn’t make all software free, he could at least lay the groundwork for free alternatives. He had the skills to help the world preserve the possibility of fixing your own printer, or asking a nerdy neighbor to do so, rather than remaining at Xerox’s mercy. He would not tolerate a society where people were actively discouraged from helping each other by the fact that Xerox’s profits might suffer a little. He soon left MIT to work on GNU, which stands for “GNU’s Not Unix.” Unix was an operating system built and owned by AT&T. Stallman’s goal with GNU was to build a completely free alternative that could run on any computer. Crucially, when he did this, he created a new type of copyright license to protect it called the GNU General Public License. It’s also called a “copyleft” license because it reverses what a traditional copyright license does: the GPL states not just that anyone can modify or distribute the software, but that any modified versions fall under the same rules. Corporations who tried to build on top of GNU, for example, would have to be careful in how they did so lest their product become free software. His vision was no pipe dream. In the early 1990s, a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds used what already existed of GNU to finish a central piece of the operating system, known as the kernel. The GNU/Linux operating system was born. Stallman, Torvalds, and their globally distributed team showed the world that wildly successful software could be developed both remotely and without corporate funding. Many tools that developers take for granted today, such as the version control system Git, have been developed for this project. Likewise, many huge companies owe much of their profit and success to it. GNU/Linux got so good that countless software giants began using it extensively, such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and even Microsoft, despite Steve Ballmer once calling the GPL a “cancer.” (They’ve been careful, of course, to not do so in a way that makes their products free.) That such a project could be built this way feels obvious now, but it wasn’t obvious at all back then. In 1997 a hacker named Eric Raymond, inspired by his experiences working on GNU/Linux, published an called “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” arguing that building software in this open, communal, bottom-up way, rather than the private and top-down way favored by most companies, yields inherently better results. Putting vastly more eyeballs on a project’s code, as it turns out, makes it vastly harder for bugs and security flaws to take root. It doesn’t hurt when a lot of the contributors work on it out of pure interest and fun, either, rather than economic need. essay A year later, a browser company called Netscape did something crazy. Desperate to stop Microsoft’s Internet Explorer from cutting into their market share and inspired by this essay, they publicly shared the code for their latest web browser, inviting the world to build it with them. In the same initiative, with help from supportive hackers like Raymond himself, they also coined the term “open source.” The nascent open source community ended up , but the move heralded the future. Companies were now allowed, even encouraged, to start projects where large chunks of development, along with distribution and branding, still happened in-house, but where the whole world could contribute. (Projects like React continue to see great success under this model.) From their perspective, it makes perfect sense: if people are going to build free software anyway, why not benefit from that? scrapping the browser and starting Mozilla.org instead In giving companies a free pass to enter the “open source community,” however, certain hackers said “take what you want and give what you want” to a bunch of organizations built around maximizing the ratio of the former to the latter. Here we are with Schrödinger’s open source, both broken and unbroken. It’s unbroken in the sense that people still write terrific software because they can and want to, and the world still benefits from it. There is also, of course, a darker side. The recent is merely the latest dancer in a long conga line of problems stemming from the unholy marriage of the cathedral and the bazaar. Companies adapt an open source library without contributing; the library falls into disrepair because its maintainers can’t work for free forever; security vulnerabilities arise that the companies, building their cathedrals, don’t notice or address until irreparable damage has been done. log4j fiasco These companies often have the nerve — as Microsoft did in 1998 in response to Netscape’s “stunt” — to claim that the open source maintainers are the ones being risky, and that the cure is pouring even more trust and resources into their company, which know what it’s doing. Again, though, they’re incentivized to be this way. Software consumers like you and me, instead of rallying around better free software, want and use their products. The collective demand that this puts on good cheap software has direct impacts on the maintainers of the free software underlying it. Facing increasing pressure without proportionate rewards, maintainers can burn out. Even Guido van Rossum, “benevolent dictator for life” of Python, . Linus Torvalds from Linux. Jacob Thornton, whose on the history of open source I’ve been paraphrasing large chunks of, references “cute puppy dog” syndrome: you start a project because it’s fun, but then it grows. It becomes a more thankless job. While it’s hard to pass off your baby to people who won’t care for it like you did, it’s often harder to take care of Clifford the Big Red Dog when everyone wants to play with him and no one wants to finance his kibble. stepped down took a break talk Filippo Valsorda, an engineer on the Go team at Google with extensive open source experience, forcing companies to “professionalize” (invoice without hiring) the maintainers of the open source projects they use. I suspect this suggestion will grow in popularity; it lets companies part with some extra cash rather than their fundamental assumptions about how freely shareable software should be, or about who should have input in decisions about software that affects the entire world. (Some have carried the torch of questioning these assumptions, like the late Aaron Swartz in his unfinished work about the , though they’re few and far between.) recently suggested Programmable Web In a 2001 where he told the Xerox printer story, Stallman noted that in the 1970s, the heady days of free software being the norm, none of this was an issue. The survival of your project didn’t depend on funding or software licenses. It didn’t really even depend on what your project had. People contributed work they cared about. They debated it carefully. They delegated decisions about specifics to people who clearly knew and cared about those specifics, probably because they’d already worked on them. There was also no insane reactionary erasure of all governance whatsoever, as some have found in “flat” organizations; there was no leaving people to grapple with the — informal cliques of power — and no driving people to because they cared more than the higher-ups knew how to handle. (Or because they kept running into buggy proprietary software they weren’t allowed to fix.) speech model of governance Tyranny of Structurelessness burn out and disengage It was all a “do”-ocracy. People weren’t in it for power and clout; they were in it for fun and community. “Cooperation was our way of life,” Stallman said. The Indigenous Critique For a long time after the Renaissance, European culture actually stayed pretty authoritarian, hierarchical, and bound by strict puritanical codes of morality. People like Jean-Jacques Rousseau who finally started touting “Enlightenment” values — individual liberty, questioning authority, rational debate, all that good stuff — often did so with traceable influence, sometimes even explicitly-stated influence, from Native Americans, many of whose nuanced and well-reasoned critiques of the West (read up on for a good example) found their way into widely-read books written by New World explorers. Kondiaronk In fact, it was natives of the American northeast and Great Lakes regions who were already living these values. They prized and prioritized personal autonomy, doing virtually nothing they morally disagreed with, to an extent that would make any modern libertarian jealous. They went so far with those principles as to automatically ensure a social safety net. When you’re going hungry or otherwise in mortal danger, you don’t have much personal autonomy, as you’re just trying to survive. The community would help you out. One could say the reverse was true; in caring for each other, they protected personal autonomy. It doesn’t really matter. This was just how they lived. Cooperation was their way of life. There was no blind, reflexive, dogmatic reverence to the authority of the humans you lived with beyond their ability to morally and logically convince you. Words like “lord” and “commandment” were hard for early missionaries to translate into the natives’ languages. Rigorous notions of private ownership were not really a thing; in practice, these amount to telling everyone else in your community “you cannot access this, even if you find it helpful; it’s mine.” Amassing power over others wasn’t really a thing either. The mechanisms that allowed it in European society, like money and social status, were simply not that important, even if they existed. The European reflex to sanctify and protect ideas like these was alien, especially when it came at the cost of actual human life. This had the interesting effect of translating directly into the kind of “equality under the law” that the Founding Fathers began enshrining. (If anything, the Greco-Roman traditions that my high school history books instead pointed to when explaining the Founders’ talk of “equality” merely kept it limited to property-owning white males.) The natives, in living this way, flouted the European cultural assumption that individual liberty and social cohesiveness were at odds. It was literally revolutionary. In the centuries since, the tendency of Western historians and anthropologists, lulled by stereotypes of the “noble savage” (or simply the “savage”), has been to discount the direct shoutouts of people like Rousseau, as though they couldn’t be accurate. These thinkers must have been trying to seem “exotic,” or were just joshing us, right? Indigenous cultures were too “simple,” “innocent,” and “primitive” to know what they were talking about when it came to statecraft, right? possibly The time has come to show my hand again. Much of what you’ve just read is a direct paraphrase of the beginning of the book by David Wengrow and David Graeber. They go on: The Dawn of Everything What if the sort of people we like to imagine as simple and innocent are free of rulers, governments, bureaucracies, ruling classes and the like, not because they are lacking in imagination, but because they're actually more imaginative than we are? We find it difficult to picture what a truly free society would be like; perhaps they have no similar trouble picturing what arbitrary power and domination would be like. Perhaps they can not only imagine it, but consciously arrange their society in such a way as to avoid it. The historical record shows that even the Europeans preferred these ways. Benjamin Franklin himself wrote puzzled and disgruntled accounts of how pretty much anyone with years of experience living among both indigenous people and Europeans (via adoption, kidnapping, etc.) would overwhelmingly end up choosing to live amongst the Native Americans. As Wengrow and Graeber write: “There is the security of knowing one has a statistically smaller chance of getting shot with an arrow. And then there’s the security of knowing that there are people in the world who will care deeply if one is.” Decriminalizing Caring The type of world you live in comes from the way your society values and prioritizes different freedoms. Everyone, by nature, is “free” to do anything, including murder; when we deny the freedom to murder, though, it protects our freedom to do much more. So while freedom is not always a zero-sum game, like when people write useful free software that enables greater autonomy for all, there can be tradeoffs. The current trouble with open source comes from the fanatical worship and defense of one particular freedom at the exclusion of others. It is the freedom to own and hoard property — to keep software (or land, or whatever else) private and maximally-profitable by all means necessary — even at the cost of our freedom to help each other, breathe clean air, enact a 4-day workweek that lets us write more free software, or not be by Chevron. wrongfully imprisoned As those examples show, the freedom to hoard is tied up in a vicious cycle (well, virtuous for some) with the freedom to use money to influence laws. People from a certain class, like Billy McFarland of Fyre Festival infamy, get 6 years in prison for committing tens of millions of dollars in wire fraud, and that’s when they get caught and publicized; poor people routinely go to jail for life for . stealing $50 of food As Stallman mentions in his 2001 speech, when something (like a computer, or a justice system) is broken, people stop caring as a defense mechanism: You know if the computer is constantly frustrating to use, and people are using it, their lives are going to be frustrating, and if they're using it in their jobs, their jobs are going to be frustrating; they're going to hate their jobs. And you know, people protect themselves from frustration by deciding not to care. So you end up with people whose attitude is, "Well, I showed up for work today. That's all I have to do. If I can't make progress, that's not my problem; that's the boss's problem." And when this happens, it's bad for those people, and it's bad for society as a whole. The status quo is that workers in many industries, not just open source software, are increasingly overburdened and undercompensated, largely due to the same dynamics that hobble the justice system. Companies take, and fail to give, as much as the law will allow, and “money as speech” means the law will allow a lot. The minimum wage, especially compared to inflation, remains a sad joke. In tandem with spending less time caring about and helping each other, then, we therefore have to spend more time grinding, hustling, and seeing each other as competition, which compounds the problem. Our financial rewards for doing so are artificially suppressed by both corporate lobbying and government unresponsiveness (but I repeat myself). Charlie Warzel makes this connection in a recent though unfortunately paywalled called . There is a growing realization — not just among software developers, but among Kellogg’s workers and healthcare professionals and others — that we need to force necessary changes in how companies not only pay the workers, but also invest in the systems, that sustain them. article Guardians of the Internet Our world obviously depends on systems: software systems, energy systems, healthcare systems, and more. The legwork of keeping these systems going falls to workers. We have to incentivize caring for those people more than the brand names that leech off of them, lest those people, and those systems, fall apart. I urge you to ask yourself, not just once but often, if it’s really worth prizing private property and its protection as we do (i.e. above the protection of all else) or instead if, as the natives did, we should prize community and personal autonomy, perhaps even more — crazy, I know — than private property. Ask if you want your laws to enshrine the freedom to care only and solely for yourself, or the freedom to cooperate. As the early free software community shows, living in a complex technological world doesn’t mean the latter is blocked. It can be harder, of course, given all the corporate resistance one may face, but it’s possible. Since I value autonomy, I’ll respect your choice; I just find it a pretty obvious one. Previously published here.

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Cooperation, Survival, Open Source, and Decriminalizing Caring 

Scene: “ You just got back from a flight and immediately pull out your phone to call an Uber. It's a busy day as always at the airport, with people bustling out of the airport in search of their cars. But you manage to track down your Uber and get in. After that, it's an uneventful ride back home. But you have one thing left to do before you start browsing for your next trip. Finally! You need to rate the Uber ride experience. If everything went well, and you don't have complaints, perhaps you'll give it a 4 or 5. But what if you had hailed the ride in peak hours. Your bill jumped up exponentially, and just to get home 1 mile away, you had to pay $100. What rating do you give then? How about if you've never ridden in an Uber before and don't know what to expect?” We think we may be giving a rating depicting the prowess of the driver, but do we think to account for our own biases and emotions? Or even the design of the rating system? Did you know if your driver's rating drops below , they get suspended? If I can find a 4.6 star rated restaurant on Google I think I probably wouldn't have any complaints. But the two systems have very different ranges of operation. ~4.6 See tweet here. How do People Assign Ratings? Unless the driver did something absolutely preposterous or was a terrible driver, I likely would give them a rating of 5. Sure, Uber averages the past ratings, so even if I did give them a low rating, it likely wouldn't have an impact. 500 But, once they do drop below the threshold, they're out. So for me, there is a norm for handing out 5s. For restaurants, I'd probably give them a 4 unless they were subjectively excellent or marginally terrible. The question is, how do these norms overlap between groups of people? 1. Lashing out and Sharing the joy As hard as I might try to remain logical throughout my reasoning, emotions tend to creep through. Unfortunately for goods and service providers, they can sometimes be at the mercy of the emotions of people. Have a bad day before you go to eat out at a restaurant? Maybe every minute your food doesn't arrive makes you even more upset. Now you feel you have to warn the rest of the world of your terrible 1-star experience. Conversely, if you find yourself hailing an Uber to go hang out with your friends might put you in a giddy enough state where you give a 5-star rating and a $10 tip without even thinking about it. What are the conventions for giving reviews and assigning ratings? What are we motivated by and what manipulates us into giving reviews that we might think are very much our own? 2. Rating not Based on the Object, but Your Expectation Ratings are never absolutes. What does a 5 mean? What does a 3.34 mean? If there was only one product in the world, does it even matter what rating it has? What this means is that when people assign ratings, they are comparing the product/service relative to others. But also, to the expectation of the ratings. What do I expect a 4.5 star rated laptop to feel like? If they don't live up to the expectations of what other relative 4.5 star rated laptops have given me, I might give it a lower review. Where does that expectation come from? And how high (or low) can that expectation be? Kimberly was skeptical about the effectiveness of a carpet cleaner, but ended up giving a 5-star review afterward! Would it be just 4 stars if she didn't have such low expectations? Even if the product worked perfectly? 3. Do you Need Social Proof? How often do feel like you need to conform to the group? Usually, when you don't already have strong preferences, you are susceptible to being into action. nudged One such way is through social proof, where people will copy the actions of others when faced with a decision they may be unsure about. We know that these behavioral designs can affect consumer behavior, as analyzed in this literature review on nudges. What this means is that we can also be 'nudged' into providing reviews that align with the current rating of the product/service. At least when we don't have clear preferences. Asked to review a place on google maps? Just pick the average it currently has. I must admit, it's the most simple strategy to badge up on . Local Guides Conversely, those who wish to defy the norm will go against the grain. A study published in the showed that people might use writing reviews as a way to develop their brand and worth. Journal of Interactive Marketing If there is a sea of bad reviews, writing a strongly positive review tends to stand out, especially if you think the bad reviews are unhelpful. This bolsters one's image as a connoisseur within the domain. Design Rules us all These online review systems aren't built randomly. Most companies will design some form of system to get them what they need from the reviews. Here, take a . look What this means is that different products and services define the conventions around them. Uber has designed their system where drivers get kicked off below a threshold. This creates high sensitivity where a driver with a 4.9 is vastly better than one with a 4.8-star rating. But that also means the range is pretty useless. We know what a 1-star driver would look like because we have no way to compare. don't So we might use other cues like relative experiences and expectations. If we see that they have received a high rating before, they might not have to do much to even get us to give them a high rating! So what does this mean for us? Well, if you're about to get into an Uber, understand that there might be multiple reasons for their current rating, and maybe the best way to rate is off of a heuristic. If you would ride with this driver again, a 5 would make sure they don't drop below the threshold from your review. Maybe a restaurant you really couldn't be bothered with again but was still decent is a 3. To others, it is a 4, or maybe a 5. Rating systems have a lot of bias so treating them with a grain of salt might be worth it, right?

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Critical Musings: Psychology, Validity, and Reliability of Online Ratings

Developers are people who tend to follow the latest tech news very carefully. They have to stay up to date to remain competitive and sustain their expertise. A new JS framework or library is likely to appear every other day. Communities of developers are very rich sources of information, as they unite colleagues and IT enthusiasts who are ready to share the knowledge and reviews on the latest trends in the world of technologies. Another source of information for IT specialists is a wide range of blogs and sites. In this overview, we have compiled a list of popular sites, as well as JS blogs that are worth reading and keeping in your bookmarks. We start from the sites full of IT information. Stack Overflow **__ **A true giant in this overview. This platform is one of the 50 most popular websites in the world. The platform includes articles, podcasts, news updates, ratings, research, as well as the opportunity to ask a question on the forum or even become part of the team and place your materials. This is the place where “developers learn, share, and build careers”. ** **As you already know (being on this site as we speak). HackerNoon is a tech publication with various articles related to IT and software development. A distinctive feature of this platform is its old-school font and acid green color. Hackernoon ** **Well-known open-source storage of available web solutions, as well as an online platform where various freelancers, remote developers, and other IT specialists place their projects. There can be found snippets, code examples, updates, as well as contact details in case you decide to find an outsource developer for your project. Github JavaScript Weekly ** ** A weekly subscription to the latest JavaScript tutorials, reviews, tools, and so on. You need to provide your e-mail and useful information will be sent right to your device. The subscription is easily terminated. Habr.com ** **This is a platform for Russian speaking IT community. Includes a wide range of helpful information on developing, coding, maintaining, as well as blogs of big IT players. Webix is a JS UI library. Their blog includes information on the widgets of the library, as well as case studies with the customers and more general information on creating apps and enhancing UI performance. y Webix JS UI Librar One more JS library with a well-structured blog. The articles are mostly about the products and the ways of their integration. DHTMLX Echo JS This is a community-driven news site. All the articles are related to JS, HTML5, and front-end news. Ember JS The blog has regular releases of Ember Times Issues. Those issues include articles and posts on the latest updates, new releases, as well as other related topics. jQWidgets This is a rich JS UI library. The blog is focused on Angular, React, Vue, web components, and HTML5 widgets. Updates can be found by tags and categories. Oracle One more vast collection of IT-related articles grouped by topics. Texts cover specific topics like JS, cloud technologies, AI, and more general topics like a career path, Black Friday, and marketing. Meteor This is a platform for creating JS apps. The articles of the blog are about their products releases, updates, and Meteor news. React Native This is a blog focused on React and creating native apps with JS. Finally, we share a couple of worthy personal blogs. David Walsh Blog Mr. Walsh was Mozilla’s senior developer. In the blog, there are hundreds of articles on the most popular languages, frameworks, and tendencies. The range of topics includes HTML, JS, WordPress, AJAX, and so on. Raymond Camden Blog Another personal blog. Mr. Camden is a senior developer for Adobe. He mostly focuses on JS, document services, and cat demos. Ben Nadel’s Blog As Mr. Nadel states himself, his blog is a “platform for experimentation and community interaction”. The posts feature JS, UI/UX, Node.js, and other topics. Stefan Judis Blog The blog has posts, talks, and screencasts about JS. Jack Franklin Blog A blog that is organized in a very simple way. The articles are about popular frameworks, coding, dependencies, and so on. Dailygrind A blog by Sergio Martino, a front-end software engineer. The topics include JS, Typescript, HTML/CSS, Frontend Tooling, and Software Engineering. JS Diaries This is a blog created by Gareth Dunne. It produces high-quality articles and applications focusing on Angular 4 and Ionic 3. Zsolt Nagy Another blog of a software engineer. Articles are about JS, HTML, frameworks, libraries, building web applications. Bonus: video sources YouTube There are thousands of YouTube videos not only about JS but about all the programming languages ever created, as well as videos on building web apps and integrating them into any environment. Ted Talks This is a collection of short and long videos on any imaginable topic. Ted-Ed videos are educational videos on various subjects. IT and programming fields are among others that can be found in the search. Medium Another huge platform for sharing various ideas, not necessarily connected with IT. Any person or company can become a member to get unlimited access to all the materials of the site and to post their own articles. To sum up The range of sites and blogs is stunning. Every developer is likely to find a couple of useful and interesting online resources according to their tastes and preferences. The only requirement is motivation. Who seeks shall find.

Adobe

Oracle

2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Javascript

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Javascript

24 Best JavaScript Blogs and Websites

An Interview With Uplogix CEO Lisa Frankovitch What are some of the biggest changes to IT that we can expect going into 2022? One of the evolving areas in IT (that we’re excited about being a part of at Uplogix) is Edge Computing. Our solution is based on the idea that the best way to manage network infrastructure at the edge is locally. We typically deploy our solution in the rack with routers, switches, firewalls, servers, and more, to remove dependence on the network itself which is a limitation of traditional centralized network management software. With edge computing, more hardware is moving from the data center to remote sites where the data is generated – think on a factory floor, or a wind farm out in West Texas. This means more mission-critical gear needing management. Are there new network management and network security technologies rolling out that could revolutionize information technology? Always! While Uplogix has created the advanced out-of-band management space, the changing needs of our customers and the flexibility of our platform is an ongoing source of innovation. We’ve found that modern technologies often carry old dependencies that we’re able to help with. For example, customers deploying network function virtualization (NFV), where they put server running software-defined networking applications for functions like route/switch/firewall, still benefit from having an out-of-band management component. NFV, in many ways, simplifies operations and reduces costs of deploying a number of devices, but also tends to “put all the eggs in one basket.” Having an out-of-band management plan lets our customers remotely troubleshoot issues and benefit from automated continuous monitoring and secure remote access to their gear. You are currently CEO of Uplogix, a remote enterprise network IT management intelligence that you refer to as “going beyond out-of-band.” Can you explain that a bit? Out-of-band is the concept of accessing networking gear remotely. It’s a technology that’s been around for years using a device called a console server that combines access to the management port on the networking gear (it’s what an admin connects their laptop to for making changes on a device), with a modem to “dial in” to the device, remotely. Uplogix took the console server and built it into a platform for advanced automation and security by adding processing, storage, and . We go Beyond Out-of-Band with functionality for continuous monitoring of managed devices, secure AAA (Authentication, Authorization & Accounting), automated runbook actions for device recovery, configuration management, and secure access. network management software When it comes to access, users can take advantage of what works best at each site, whether that’s a cellular modem, POTS line, a secondary network over fiber or Ethernet, or even an LEO satellite modem. We can truly say you can access your gear anywhere on the planet. What is the distinction between how an enterprise network is managed for a government agency versus a private sector corporate network? These days security is everyone’s priority. The terminology varies by vertical, but the best practices of networking apply to everyone. Whether your network carries traffic for a government agency, details of your company’s secret sauce, or payment information for your customers, security drives it all. We sell the same product across the multiple verticals that we sell into, because we solve basic issues that anyone running an enterprise network has. What are the main issues that cause networks to crash or glitch? The single biggest cause of network errors are people. Humans are prone to taking shortcuts, neglecting to pay attention, or really just making honest mistakes. Sometimes these errors result in network users experiencing slowdowns or even downtime, other times it opens the network to malicious attacks. With the automation that Uplogix brings to IT teams, some of the opportunities for human error are removed. This can be because Uplogix takes care of an event, so admins don’t need to worry about it, or because Uplogix provides a framework for admins to work within, and that takes care of common issues like failing to fully log out of a session with a device. Is there any such thing as a breach-proof or crash-proof network? Probably not. By definition, a network is going to have multiple endpoints, and networks are built by humans. Most networks are built to survive the last breach, not the next one to come. Network security is like a tug-of-war. Every time the good guys make incremental progress, the bad guys come up with something new and powerful to secure the advantage. How can companies protect themselves against the dark web? There are a host of tools that focus on monitoring the dark web. That said, some of the most important techniques that a company can employ to protect themselves are to embrace two-factor authentication for their applications and utilize password managers wherever possible. What unique innovations have you brought to the information technology field during your career that you are most proud of? I’ve been honored to be a part of several innovative teams, both on the product side and services side of the information technology field. I’ve also spent time on the Venture Capital side of the equation, working with a variety of young portfolio companies that traverse the technological spectrum. So, whether it’s helping an idea get to market, being part of a team that successfully launched 2 IPOs, or leading the M&A strategy to achieve scale and shareholder value, I have enjoyed every moment and it would be difficult to single out one. Can you share what you are currently working on as CEO of Uplogix? We launched our newest line of products in December of 2020, and we are seeing a big uptick in customer adoption and market validation. We are continuing our innovation around the automation of network infrastructure management and security as well as developing a product that will be utilized in extremely difficult customer locations, and provide end-to-end network infrastructure management and security. What is your advice for someone first getting into information technology, and what should someone expect in the early part of their career in IT? , like every other career field, needs a variety of people and skills. If you like a fast-paced and constantly changing environment, information technology is an excellent choice. Information Technology Stay open and curious, and there are no “stupid” questions, so ask a lot of questions. Absorb as much information as possible, and take on the challenging assignments. That is where the “magic” happens, and you discover a passion for something that you never knew you were interested in, previously.

UNUS SED LEO

On the Edge of a New Year: IT Predictions for 2022

Photo by on Konstantin Evdokimov Unsplash Can you believe it’s been over two years since the global pandemic shook up the way we work? The beginning was tough, but now, with the end of 2021 right around the corner, we are already used to remote working environments and expect the market to catch up with “the new normal.” The demand for innovation and collaboration improvements for remote teams (and dev teams in particular) is probably one of the strongest trends we can currently observe in the industry. In this short post I rounded up 5 relatively new dev tools that have recently been on my radar and I believe have the potential to improve our daily workflows. 1. GitLive 🤕 Problem/Pain: Lack of communication tools designed specifically for developers. 💡 Solution: GitLive  —  extend your IDE with real-time collaborative superpowers. Assuming your team uses Git, then GitLive is a no-brainer enhancement of your IDE’s built-in Git functionality. Once installed it adds a team view showing all work in progress for each collaborator from your Git repository. Any non-stale branch ahead of master/main is considered work in progress and you can inspect diffs of the files changed as well as view the associated issue or pull request. But my favourite feature is probably the automatic merge conflict detection. The difference between your local changes and the work in progress of your teammates is shown for your current open file in the gutter of your editor. It shows you the type of change (addition, deletion, modification or conflict) and you can inspect it to see the diff, what branch it’s from and even cherry-pick into your local file. GitLive can be very useful for larger teams and especially useful for open or inner source projects as these features even work across forks. What’s also cool is as the data comes straight from Git, there’s no manual entry required to keep it up-to-date. 2. CodeSee Maps 🤕 Pain/Problem: Sophisticated, dense codebases and a lack of shared understanding of how all the code and functionality map to each other. 💡 Solution: CodeSee Maps  —  a tool for developers to visually map their codebase. CodeSee Maps provides auto-generated, self-updating code diagrams. They sync your codebase as code evolves so that you can quickly identify cross-code dependencies and navigate between files and folders. It can really improve your understanding of the codebase and guide onboarding, planning, and reviews. The tool is mainly targeted at developers, but it’s of great value for anyone who interacts with the team. To get started using CodeSee Maps, you will need to authorize CodeSee on your GitHub user account, then install and authorize the CodeSee Architecture Diagrams GitHub action on the repositories you’d like to create maps for. At the moment they only support GitHub, but BitBucket and GitLab are both on the roadmap. 3. DeepSource 🤕 Pain/Problem: Time-consuming code-reviews prone to a human mistake. 💡 Solution: DeepSource  —  fast and reliable static analysis platform DeepSource is a static code analyzer that can help you with automating the code reviews and save your team a lot of time. It can find issues in the codebase and automatically submit PRs to fix them (and even evaluate incoming code in PRs and fix them too). Supported analyzers include, among others, Docker, Java, JavaScript, Go, Python, Ruby as well as PHP and SQL currently in beta. It integrates with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket (self-hosted is also available). There is also a possibility to deploy on-premise. How can it improve the way your team works? Their website states that using the tool can save 3.8 hours on average per developer every week, so you do the math! 4. Appsmith 🤕 Pain/Problem: The need for numerous CRUD apps within an organisation, which turns out to be a repetitive and often time-consuming task. 💡 Solution: Appsmith —  an open-source framework to build internal tools. Appsmith describes themselves as “The UI Tool for Busy Developers” and it really is that! It’s great for teams that build a lot of internal apps that are hosted inside their own infrastructure and firewall. You can easily build great-looking admin panels, workflows, and dashboards, by dragging and dropping pre-made, customisable widgets. You can integrate with any REST or GraphQL API and use JS or a library to create logic for your app. 5. WayScript 🤕 Pain: Setting up internal tooling and applications is time-consuming and keeps developers from the actual problems they are trying to solve. 💡 Solution: WayScript  —  the fastest way to turn your local code into a hosted app. WayScript is a development hub for internal tools. It provides pre-configured containers that you can build into so that the code works with your team’s existing infrastructure. You can quickly set up APIs (which traditionally is a long task, but also a must for technical customers), servers, cron tasks, custom inpoints, interfaces and more. When the tool is ready you can deploy it with one click and send it to your team. You can use it by downloading the local app or via the web application. We can’t be sure what 2022 will bring, but I am positive that trends we’ve seen evolving in the past months will continue to grow. I hope some of the tools I proposed in this article will help improve your workflows and make a transition to a remote working setup smoother. Previously published here.

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2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Developer

2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Developer Tools

2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Productivity

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Developer Tools

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Developer

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Productivity

Prepare for 2022 With These Developer Tools 

Photo by on Kate Stone Matheson Unsplash What does it mean to be lazy? According to the Cambridge dictionary, it means to: “not be willing to work or use any effort.” But how does that translate into a programmer’s job? Being a Developer, the Hard way Without a doubt, the work of a programmer is full of challenges. But what makes a programmer ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at his or her job? I often hear that the best programmers are the lazy ones. The Internet even promotes such an attitude in a developer’s work! However, it seems that, that expression oversimplifies the issue very much. First of all, you can’t be lazy and also become a programmer. Programming is not a piece of cake. You won’t learn it with an attitude of: “I’m not willing to work or use any effort.” Willingness to work and invest energy will be crucial here! You also won’t become a programmer in one night. For example, it took me almost a year to learn to program in Javascript! ! Sometimes I lost hope that it would even be possible. It was a relentless battle of difficulties. And it was a year full of problems A lazy person wouldn’t be able to handle it. They would just give up. Lazy or Efficient? Coders approach life in an efficient way. According to them, it’s all about making your life easier instead of doing the same boring stuff over and over again! Why spend countless hours on routine tasks if you can create a program to do the same thing almost instantly? Programmers are often employed because they can solve problems effectively! A good programmer will wrap repeating code in a reusable function. Need to do something time-consuming by hand? A good programmer will write a script that will do it for him. Let’s consider that for a moment: Is it really a sign of laziness? In a sense. However, I would prefer to call it efficiency mixed with impatience and willingness to improve work and make life easier. To execute this sample script that does something for you, you need to put sophisticated work into it. It will not do itself 🙂 ( at least until you program it to ;)). I also often hear that ‘a lazy developer doesn’t want to waste time on repetitive, boring activities’. But is this really about being lazy? Or maybe is more about good problem-solving skills. Not Lazy Enough We also touch on one more critical issue here: too much diligence. Another thing to note is that you can be the hardest-working programmer in the world, but be inefficient. In other words, only work to work. That may result in you actually not being good at what you do. The saying “work smart, not hard” is applicable for programmers. We can call it laziness, efficiency, and wisdom, but  - as with most other things - context is really important. Personally, I think this ‘lazy’ term is overused. What are your thoughts on this subject matter? First published here.

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Why do People Say: "Developers are Lazy"? 

If you’re like most IBM i users, you know how much value your IBM i data and applications bring to your business. Your end-users, however, may not. In today’s world of rich user experience, fast-paced application development, and constantly evolving customer expectations, IBM i applications are under increasing pressure to get with the times. Your customers have excellent digital touchpoints in every part of their lives. As a result, their expectations increase each time they encounter a better digital or customer experience like online stores and online banking. Digitally savvy customers increasingly expect their own internal IT teams to meet their real-time information needs whenever, wherever, and on whatever device that’s convenient to them. If your legacy IBM i apps and systems can’t meet these expectations, may be the way forward. IBM i application modernization Modernization is not a one-time project. Instead, it is a holistic approach to incrementally improving your existing platforms’ architecture, infrastructure, and delivery. A lot has been said about modernization over the years, but only a few sources provide a clear actionable guide.  In this article, we’ll dive straight in with six actionable insights on IBM i application modernization. Why Should You Web-enable Your IBM i 5250 Applications? The first on this cheat sheet is web-enabling your 5250 green screens. Technology advancements and the effect of the coronavirus have made remote work more common than ever. In addition to this, ever-improving browser-based user experiences have made web accessibility mainstream. Because of this, organizations must, more than ever, provide their partners, customers, and end-users easy access to tools and functionalities when and where they need them. IBM i applications, however, are often monolithic with 5250 green screens. Even worse, those green screens are only accessible on-site via centralized terminals or computers. The good news is that modernization is a way for IBM i users to take their applications to the web. With the right strategy and tools, you can simultaneously leverage your existing backend and incorporate web accessibility. How Can You Create a Modern UI for Your 5250 Applications? While the IBM i platform is effective, robust, and powerful, its applications produce green screens that modern users find difficult to navigate. Let’s look at it from the end-user perspective. Obviously, outside the office, your users are used to modern interfaces like Airbnb, Instagram, and Expedia. How do you think they react to returning to the multi-decades old 5250 green screens at work? Frustrated? Bored to death? Ready to migrate to your competitors offering modern UIs? At a time where digital transformation is a prerequisite for sustainable growth, you can’t afford to lag. This modernization strategy is also known as UI scraping or refacing. Its usually used when the goal is to create quick wins. However, the ROI is pretty low because you’re not adding much value other than just having a nicer presentation. But as you go further to enhance your refaced screens with better navigation, GUI controls, and various integrations, your ROI increases. Why Should You Mobilize Your IBM i Applications? Converting a 5250 application to display and receive information on mobile devices expands the application’s data gathering capabilities. It allows you to scan barcodes, obtain location coordinates, take photos or videos, and/or store data in a local database. Your applications can capture multiple data types, simplifying the data capture process and improving data quality. Why Should You Manage Your Spooled Files? Are you guilty of leaving spooled files unattended? Most IBM I administrators are. And this often leads to reports remaining on an output queue until someone mistakenly deletes or clears the queue in a bid to free up disk space. The way you handle spooled files directly impacts you and your end-user. It also presents a great modernization opportunity. With the right modernization tools, you can empower your team to effectively manage spool files from a browser. Why Should You Leverage Browser-based DB2 Query Tools? One of the most common DB2 tasks is retrieving information. DB2 query tools provide a unique solution for building and running queries against IBM i (System i, iSeries, or AS/400) DB2 databases from a browser. You can query DB2 tables, print the query results, and copy the results into applications like Microsoft Excel. In addition, you can create distributed SQL database queries for DB2 databases and any ODBC/JDBC accessible data sources. LANSA provides that do this for you. IBM i modernization tools Why Should You Automate Data Exchange Using Host Integration? Host integration solutions allow users to Integrate 5250 applications with web and line-of-business applications. This way, you can automate exchanging data with 5250 applications. Great host integration service providers leverage an application programming interface (API) that developers can use to write programs that automatically operate applications written with RPG or COBOL. With host integration, you can simulate a person’s actions entering data on screens in a 5250 application. This feature makes it possible to integrate existing 5250 applications with .NET, Java, or other 5250 applications. Are You Ready to Modernize Your IBM i Applications? In a pandemic-hit new economy, you must change at the same pace as your environment. Your customers and trading partners all require browser-based and mobilized solutions. Your modern users require modern interfaces. But what you need are the right tools to help you leverage the “6 cheats” discussed in this article to upgrade your IBM i solutions. LANSA’s aXes and RAMP provide all that’s necessary to implement these “6 cheats” and more. These tools allow you to quickly address the immediate needs of your employees, customers, and partners while giving you the flexibility to keep working toward your long-term goals. In IBM i Modernization

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2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Low Code

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Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Low Code

How to Modernize IBM i Applications

The HackerNoon Pixel Font 2.0 is now open sourced and available on and . brand.hackernoon.com GitHub In 2016, That publication as we know, later rebranded to HackerNoon, has become one of the many beloved place to among the tech community, who has familiarized themselves with the pixelated clock and the retro letters. a publication was introduced to the world by David Smooke. read/learn/publish by as part of the HackerNoon logo, the letters were developed into an official typeface back in 2018 and was since put into sparing use for special brand statements and emphasis. Originally designed Tom Snow HackerNoon has been marketing itself with the font everywhere we go - from our first that helped us raise over $1M to the debut of - the greenest annual tech awards. crowdfunding campaign The Noonies The HackerNoon Font has been here since day one, and like many of our 3M+ monthly readers, it has a special little place in our h̶e̶a̶r̶t̶ (I've always loved that from Chandler/Joey). full-sized aortic pump line And today, that font that you love is elevated. HackerNoon Font is now coming to you in 2.0. Just like the original font, #HF2 is designed using a in which each letter shares the same exact width and height as one another, making this font all the more unique in the first place. However, in this version, all the edges on each letter are now 100% curved, giving the font a cleaner and more modern look. five-by-five grid system #HF2 emphasizes more on - it is prompted to be utilized more in common settings like body text other than just headings and titles. readability and usability With #H2F, we at HackerNoon hope to keep our unique identity - a retro publication sprinkled with funkiness - but at the same time open ourselves to the modern world where soft and smooth traits speak technology louder than hard edges do. Get your free HackerNoon Font 2.0 - now available on and . And don't forget to tag brand.hackernoon.com GitHub @hackernoon! Until next time, this is Kien - your Brand Executive!

check out some cool shit https://kientdao.wixsite.com/kiendao

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Kien

OpenSea Collections

personal void 

Brand/Design Lead

HackerNoon The Beloved Pixel Font - Now Coming to You in 2.0

Many SaaS startups (including ChartMogul) offer their service at a discount to customers that are part of an incubator or accelerator which has become known as a startup program. Why should you consider creating a startup program for your business? Why build a startup program? 1. Revenue expansion from your successful customers Large companies such as Airbnb and Dropbox moved through incubators when they were still small businesses. A startup program is your chance to catch the next wave of large businesses early and to grow with them. 2. The startup program can become a lead source Once you have on-boarded enough members with a portfolio relevant to your product, you can attain a constant lead flow through your startup program. 3. Increased brand awareness and promotional partnerships Incubators, Accelerators and VC firms can offer many opportunities to promote your brand through internal and external listings, events, knowledge sharing and recommendations by members and partners. Initiating a startup program is easier than you think and will cost little to setup and maintain. This guide outlines the steps how you can build your own. Step 1: Value proposition The first thing you want to do is to think about the value proposition as well as the conditions. Answering these questions might help you define both: Why should a customer join this program? What makes this program exclusive? How long will the program be? How much of a discount is being offered? What profile does the customer need to have to be eligible to join? Be brief and specific to make it easy for the customer to understand the conditions. You want the program to be perceived as exclusive and beneficial by laying out actionable outcomes which the customer will get from using your product. Step 2: Landing page The next step is to build a dedicated landing page to promote your startup program. An effective landing page should include the following elements Value proposition Conditions List of a few key customers from the verticals you service Quote from customer or thought leader that demonstrates value List of supported incubators Sign-up form This landing page will enable you to market the startup program to potential customers as well as potential incubators. Important: Make sure you include a field that prompts a potential customer to supply a contact at their current incubator if it is not currently listed. This helps you to capture incubator leads from potential customers that are already interested in using your product. This is a great incentive for an incubator to agree to join your program. Make sure you include a way for people to recommend their accelerator, if it’s not listed. Route the form submissions through to your CRM so that you can easily manage and measure the conversations. At Chartmogul, we forward the data captured by the form submission to our Zendesk account. By adding a tag in the process, we can automatically categorize and route the ticket to the relevant party. Step 3: Incubator outreach The last step to get started is to research incubator programs that are suitable for your business in order to build a list for your outreach. You want to target incubators that have a sizable portfolio of the verticals your product aims to serve. I would recommend not only focusing on incubators and accelerators but to also target larger VC firms. I keep two lists for this in Google Sheets. One for incubators that I am already talking to or am planning to contact. The second consists of incubators that I have successfully on-boarded. Any CRM will also do to manage these lists and relationships. Promotion (spreading the word!) Now that the ground work has been completed, it’s time to tell the world about your awesome new startup program! To speed up the outreach, I would recommend preparing a number of macros for the common scenarios that you will encounter Incubator, accelerator, VC outreach first contact Follow-up with no response Scheduling call with incubator Onboarding incubator Onboarding customer You can adjust these macros as you learn the kind of messaging that’s most effective. Tip: One of the best ways I found to reach out to incubators is via introductions through your personal network or the network of your colleagues. Telling your team about your new startup program might surface a wealth of existing contacts you can utilize. Here are a few other key learnings that will help you spread the word: Ask your paying and potential customers for introductions to incubator programs they are part of. Turn those working in a customer facing role in your company into active promoters of your startup program. Ask the contact within an incubator that you have on-boarded already for recommendations to other incubators that could benefit. The best time to do so is right away when they have agreed to join your program. Most incubator programs have a person that is in charge of offers which is the best point of contact. Promote your startup program to potential customers and new incubators during SaaS meetups as well as conferences. You can often find a contact form or email address on an incubators website but be prepared to not hear back from many that you try to reach out to via this channel. The pitch “You will usually only get one opportunity to make your pitch. If you don’t garner enough interest during this conversation, chances are that your follow-up emails won’t be returned.” You might find that a good percentage that you contact or talk to in person will want to get on a phone call to learn more about your offer. Have a strong distilled value proposition ready that explains how their portfolio can benefit and be ready to give a product demo on the spot. While you have them on the call, you want to ask them for the things you need to complete the next step. You might want to ask for the incubators logo so that you can add the top ones you on-board to your startup program website. You could also ask them to tweet about the new partnership and offer to do the same. You will usually only get one opportunity to make your pitch. If you don’t garner enough interest during this conversation, chances are that your follow-up emails won’t be returned. Step 4: Incubator on-boarding Once your conversation was successful and you are ready to on-board an incubator, you can send your welcome packet to your contact by email. Sometimes there will be custom requirements your contact might need to share your program with their members. Many incubator programs have an internal offering web page that only they can access. Some might give you access to it so you can post up the data about your program yourselves. Others fire out a quick email to all their portfolio companies or message a select number that they think can benefit most from your offer. A good starting point would be to include the following in your welcome packet template: Description of your service with screenshots Company logo Offer description Redemption method I would recommend having program specific coupons so that you can easily track where a lead came from later on. After I send out the welcome package, I add the name of the new member to the list of supported incubators on our startup program’s website. In the final step of on-boarding, I share the new incubator member and a link to their website with our team. I fire out a tweet and LinkedIn post announcing the new partnership. I also add the contact(s) at the incubator as a new LinkedIn connection. Maintenance To maintain your startup program keep your members updated of changes, visit your incubators and accelerators when possible and carefully manage the retention cycle when your customers transition off the startup program losing their discount. Touch base with your incubator contacts whenever you have plans to visit their town to see if you can present to their portfolio. Many incubators love hosting events for knowledge sharing which is a great way to build your brand through education without directly trying to sell anything. To manage retention, pick a time at least a month ahead of the expiry of the startup program to see if there are any sticking points that would discourage your customer to renew at the non-discounted rate. We manage this process in our Sales CRM . Close.io Goals and KPIs In order to define what you want to accomplish with your startup program, I would recommend setting some clear goals and to establish KPIs that you can track from the beginning in order to see how they evolve over time. For example, your goal could be to on-board a certain number of incubators in x amount of time while on-boarding x number of customers onto the startup program. In terms of KPIs, you could track the following in your subscription analytics platform: Lead volume Customer number Retention rates at end of startup program Retention rates by incubator Average expansion per account In order to track these different metrics in ChartMogul, I added an attribute with the startup program they are on to the customer. I obtained the list of the customers who have used a particular coupon from the billing system. Takeaways Setting up a startup program is a long term investment in your business. It gives you an opportunity to attract early stage companies during a cash-sensitive stage. You will earn some positive brand awareness for supporting entrepreneurship which can easily translate into great word of mouth marketing. If done right, your startup program can blossom into a predictable revenue stream for years to come.

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Public Relations has evolved. While traditional PR agencies act mainly as connectors between their clients and third-party media publications, the genuinely innovative, results-focused, Modern PR agencies are revolutionizing the industry. As Lebron James said after his first NBA championship, "It's about time." The Difference Between Traditional PR Agencies and Modern PR Agencies Traditional PR agencies rely heavily on pitching journalists and editors. They are firmly attached to the news, and because of that, they usually build their strategy on press releases, funding announcements, and getting quotes for their clients in more broad news coverage. They spend most of the day pitching and trying to convince journalists to cover their clients. Modern PR agencies also pitch journalists and editors, but they don't rely on it; they have a more advanced content marketing strategy that includes owned media, influencer marketing, content amplification, and direct access to media outlets and contributors. They attach their tactics to KPIs such as target audience reach, website visitors, social sharing, brand mentions, and demand generation to their client's products and services. This lets Modern PR agencies gain more traction and results to their clients compared to traditional agencies. The Importance of Content Amplification and Multiple Touchpoints Today, the buyer's journey is more complicated. Buyers are exposed to many touchpoints created by you and your competitors; this includes advertising, product reviews, organic social, press articles, Youtube videos, podcasts, dark social, newsletters, and so much more. This means that it is not enough to get press, even on Forbes or Techcrunch. You need to know how to amplify it effectively. How to distribute it via platforms like LinkedIn ads to specific prospects, utilize platforms like Quora, Reddit, and various industry influencers who can enhance the reach of your content. This is extremely valuable, as this is the difference maker between a buyer choosing you over your competitor. They need to be convinced, consistently, that you are the right fit for them. Influencers as PR Agents If once PR agents were usually behind the scenes, today, a PR agent or a marketer, that is also an influencer in his space, is a huge advantage. This creates much more exposure for his clients when he reshares press coverage on LinkedIn or any other social platform. Also, influencers are constantly getting approached by media outlets to collaborate, making it easier for them to be connected to new press opportunities. Digital PR Modern PR agencies also have a deep understanding of PPC, SEO, and online reputation management. They know how Google's search ranking works and the importance of Do-follow links to their clients. They also use advanced software tools to track website demographics, trending content, brand and competitor mentions, and make sure to provide their clients with metric reporting. Content Generation, at scale If you work with a Modern PR agency, you know that they make sure to own all of your content strategies. Meaning they take an integral part in generating thought leadership blog posts, guest columns, podcasts & newsletter production in order to scale your touchpoints and create a content infrastructure that lets you rank high on Google, build a community, create demand generation, and attract journalists to your story and brand. Modern PR agencies also manage key team leaders' content strategies and make sure to position them as thought leaders in their verticals. Faster Results Because modern agencies are versatile in their content strategy, they can secure coverage more effectively and provide more traction and exposure for their clients without having to wait for a journalist to cover their story. They make sure to cover it first, Distribute it first. And utilize their direct relationships with contributors and influencers. Thanks for reading the article. Feel free to check out and contact me Via email, , or . Check out my new column for .  Also, subscribe to my newsletter . my website, LinkedIn Twitter New York Tech Entrepreneurs Studio

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At the end of 2021, digital transformation and the need to modernize business applications in the light of new generation enterprise technologies is hardly new. In fact, it’s a topic that has been kicking around for the last ten years. For many it may even seem like are no longer relevant. After all, companies have been aware of technology shifts and the need to modernize legacy apps for years — the majority of them must have already moved on from their 5250 green-screens by now. application modernization strategies Unfortunately, it’s just not true. Even though the number of digital transformations has increased,  they are far from pervasive. Legacy applications are still in use by a huge number of organizations. The one thing they all have in common is that they are reluctant about modernizing and don’t want to rush into it. Is Chain of Command Latency a Digitization Barrier? Let skip the fallacy about the short-sightedness of this approach and the long-term negative effects of postponing modernization. There are dozens of arguments justifying the transformation of business IT systems, but they only go so far. As always, the spread of technological innovations is hampered by the human factor also known as chain of command latency. Even top non-IT top managers aware of the importance of legacy tools transformation importance think twice before approving the budget for a new application project. The truth is, many CFO’s see these issues from a whole different angle. They are far more willing to prioritize other needs instead over costly and potentially risky changes to an IT infrastructure that seems to be doing fine. In order to convince them to take the plunge, you need more than anecdotes of digital transformations and a generational shift in IT solutions. So what does it take to get a CFO on board with an app modernization project? Overall, the approach to communicating the need to update legacy apps for new ones hasn’t changed much over the years. Be that as it may, there is n new sense of urgency to be considered — using legacy 5250 green-screens in 2022 is just not the same as relying on them in the late 2000s or early 2010s. 5 Tips to Justify App Modernization to Your CFO Based on our experience, and relevant to the current business environment ecosystem, here are a few tips for “selling” an app modernization initiative to your CFO. 1. Should I estimate financial losses due to legacy maintenance? It makes a lot of sense to lay a foundation by presenting your CFO with information explaining why maintaining the status quo is not a good solution from a financial point of view. The maintenance costs of legacy tools typically grow on a consistent basis, so it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with compelling numbers. Adding an estimation of financial losses caused by inefficient apps is a great way to demonstrate how modernization delays create financial burdens and budget leaks. 2. Should I showcase savings and profit losses due to not implementing a project earlier? Another move that tends to be effective with CFOs and other top managers is estimating missed potential savings and financial gains as a result of implementation delays. Seeing genuine expenses and lost potential gains rise consistently on a year-over-year chart is typically something that gets a CFO’s heart racing. 3. Is there a way to highlight the importance of time and the latest trends? On a more rhetorical note, remind your CFO that the times are changing and tardy front runners are falling far behind. After all, digital transformation is accelerating and driving rapid changes throughout business and industry. Recent global events, like COVID-19, also fuel the demand for Industry 4.0 solutions in a turbulent economy with changing market requirements. So remind your CFO that the need to modernize outdated legacy apps is much more critical now than it was five years ago. 4. Can I come up with estimated gains and measurable impacts? Another way to win over your CFO is through clear and well-presented calculations of the impacts and gains of app modernization. In general, it is always a good idea to list the measurable business impact of a modernized app. Estimating financial gains caused by the introduction of a modern business application is something your CFO can relate to. 5. Should I calculate expected risks? Potential risks are one of the main factors restraining top managers from actually greenlighting many modernization projects. This is why calculating the potential risks and negative impact of a modernization project is important. Identify all potential risks, estimate their likelihood, and present the expected costs of each risk to show you have done your homework. What is the Ultimate Tip? Use Affordable and Proven App Modernization Tools! That said, the best way to convince your CFO  is to present them with a modernization project they can’t refuse. If your budget is reasonable and you can mitigate the risks, your work is done. To do this, select the right tools for your app modernization project.  This allows you to minimize project costs, deliver new apps on time, control the process and reduce risks. is a low-code development platform. It enables accelerated application development by simplifying IBM i app development and minimizing the need for technical skills. Visual LANSA LANSA incorporates a variety of powerful tools. These include several instruments exclusively for IBM i that make modernizing its apps and systems as easy as possible. RAMP Rapid Application Modernization Process (RAMP) is an incremental modernization approach. It combines the advantages of both refacing existing applications and new development. By consolidating existing functionality with new capabilities with RAMP, you get the applications you want without throwing everything away. You modernize in stages, adding new functionality incrementally without serious impact to business operations. You also end up with a consistent user interface across all applications. LongRange LongRange is a mobile app builder for building native apps for IBM i with RPG, COBOL or CL programming languages. With LongRange mobile app builder, you can quickly and inexpensively deliver, maintain, and update mobile apps to your users. How can I Transform Outdated 5250 Green-Screens Instantly with aXes? LANSA’s tools may completely help you eliminate the need to reason with CFOs to approve modernization projects. With LANSA tools, you can update legacy apps with minimal time and effort. aXes for is the perfect example. IBM i modernization aXes allows you to automatically web-enable IBM i 5250 applications. Transform existing 5250 screens into web pages out-of-the-box, without changing source code. You can also change the modernization rules to suit your requirements and automatically apply your changes to all application screens. In , , , Application Modernization aXes IBM i Modernization RAMP

How To Convince Your CFO to Use Application Modernization

We all are aware of the importance of customer feedback in a business. Or, in other simple words, we can say, customer experience drives business growth. Wondering how? Umm…it's like by listening to customers' feedback one can get to know the plus points and drawbacks of a specific product. And if there are many drawbacks, companies can work on improving those negative points. Well, don't feel confused as in this blog, you'll read about how customer experience drives business growth. What Is Customer Experience? Customer experience is made up of a variety of factors, but it ultimately boils down to the customer's view of your company. Even if you believe your brand and customer experience are the same, the consumer's perception is what determines the real customer experience. So in simple terms, it would not be wrong to claim that businesses should understand the value of customer experience. You may believe you offer high-quality items and a positive customer experience, but if a customer receives a defective product that is not repaired, their opinion of your firm as low-quality becomes reality. Keeping this in mind, one of the most crucial things that businesses should do is manage client impressions. Everything a business does affects how a customer evaluates it, and thus the client experience, including the messaging it uses, the products it sells, the sales process, and what occurs after the sale, as well as internal factors like the business's interworking, leadership, and service or product technology. The totality of a customer's impressions and feelings as a result of encounters with a brand's products and services are known as customer experience. Customer experience refers to a customer's whole connection with a firm, starting before they buy a product and extending through active use to renewing or repeat purchases. A perfect customer experience strategy is needed if you really want to know what customers are thinking about your company or products. Why Is Customer Experience Important For Businesses? Customer experience is provided by any brand with customers, whether the brand acknowledges it or not. The term "customer experience" refers to the impressions and perspectives of customers. According to Customer experience statistics- Customers are the ultimate decider, regardless of whether a brand claims to provide a superior product or give excellent customer service. Customer expectations must be met or exceeded by brands. Brands that fail to create a positive client experience will perish. Customers that have a positive customer experience are more likely to purchase from you again. These clients may also become brand ambassadors or champions, referring friends, associates, and coworkers to a company's products and services. Many companies leverage customer experience as a competitive advantage, gaining market share by outperforming competitors. What Do You Mean By Customer Feedback? Customer feedback is information regarding a user's encounter with a product or service. Its purpose is to reveal their level of enjoyment and aid products, customer success, and marketing departments in identifying areas for improvement. Polling and surveying customers, questioning them, and asking for reviews are all ways for businesses to gather client feedback in advance. Teams can also collect feedback in a passive manner by giving users a spot in the product to leave comments, concerns, or compliments. One thing is certain: collecting client input in a proactive manner guarantees that you never wander too far from the requirements of your audience, even as those needs change. Feedback is a strong tool that can provide your leadership team with insights that can help them design a course forward for all aspects of their business, from product to UX and customer service. When it comes to client happiness, this is very crucial. What Is The Role And Importance Of Customer Feedback? Did you know that one unfavorable review may cost a business up to of its customers? Just four negative feedbacks can turn away 70% of potential clients, a situation from which any organization would struggle to recover. 22% The significance of consumer input is highlighted here. Businesses are on a never-ending journey to figure out what their customers want and give it to them precisely and quickly enough to suit their needs. Any company that wants to supply people with the products they want must collect and act on customer feedback. Yes, customer feedback can help increase sales using surveys. Customer feedback is critical for guiding and informing your judgment as well as influencing product and service developments and adjustments. It's also required for measuring customer contentment among current clients. It's critical to know how consumers feel about your products, customer care, and company. The following are the top reasons why client feedback is critical in the corporate world: Customer feedback aids in the advancement of new products and services Market research conducted before introduction can help you determine whether or not potential clients would be willing to purchase it, as well as provide you with suggestions on how to improve it. However, you will only hear about all of the benefits, problems, and their experience after your clients have used your product or service. Their comments will help you ensure that the finished version satisfies their expectations, solves their issues, and adheres to their specifications. Client feedback is useful for determining customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction and loyalty are critical indicators of a company's financial sustainability. It has a number of benefits, including higher market share, fewer costs, and more revenue. As a result, there's no doubt that you want to ensure that your customers are satisfied with your goods and services. Getting their feedback is, of course, the greatest approach to see if you've met their expectations. NPS is one of the most accurate approaches for measuring, managing, and improving customer satisfaction that has been used by many firms. Customer feedback provides you with information that aids in making business decisions Successful business owners collect and manage a specific type of information that aids in the development of future strategies. Only in this way will they be able to tailor their products and services to precisely meet the wants of their customers. Customer feedback is one of the most dependable sources of concrete data that can be used to make business decisions. Customer insights will assist you to gain a better understanding of your clientele and their needs. Put your clients at the core of your business and treat their input as the most significant source of information in your organization if you want to keep on top of things. Customer feedback boosts brand trust and social evidence Positive feedback is an excellent approach to counterbalance the negative effects of negative comments and can help your company operate better. When it comes to making a purchase, 92 percent of shoppers claim they read testimonials and customer reviews. It demonstrates that someone was pleased enough with your product and service to take the time out of their busy day to compliment it. Positive customer feedback not only provides social evidence for customers trying to make a purchase choice, but it also gives social validation for how others interpret and what they need to say about a product/ service. Customers enjoy being involved in the feedback process When you ask customers for feedback, you're demonstrating that you value their input. You engage them in the growth of your company to make them feel more invested in it. You give people the impression that your main purpose in the company is to solve their issues and meet their needs, not to make money. It places the customer at the center of your organization, which is the proper approach to managing a firm. Customers' voices can help you build stronger relationships with them if you listen to them. It's the most effective technique to find valued brand ambassadors who will spread the favorable word of mouth about your company. How To Collect Feedback From Customers? You should be aware that there are various frameworks when it comes to gathering customer feedback. Yes, you read that correctly. We all live in a time where technology is really important. And, because of technology, we don't have to walk door to door to get client input. There are a variety of customer feedback software options on the market that can help you collect important input from your users. Oh wait, are you not aware of what customer feedback software does? Or, how does it work? Here's the simple definition of customer feedback software: A customer feedback software is a tool that enables you to learn how your consumers feel regarding your products/services and analyze their experiences in order to develop a strategy for improvement. It is, in simple terms, software that records and analyses customer feedback on a certain product or service that your client has purchased from you. For instance, you might have heard a delivery man asking you to rate out the service or product delivered. But do you know why they ask you to do so? Well, it's because when purchasing a product, 90% of customers check for positive evaluations. When you review their goods, you raise the credibility of how well the products and services function, which boosts the company's goodwill. What Are The Best Tools For Collecting Customer Feedback? There are several such tools on the market, but deciding which one is the finest might be tough. Continue reading if you want to find out which feedback tool provides the greatest services. Fynzo Customer Feedback Software Forms and surveys are great for getting feedback from customers, but they can be off-putting if they're excessively long or boring. In this scenario, Fynzo customer feedback software is useful because it is user-friendly and the beautifully designed forms are entertaining to fill. Features you'll appreciate: Fynzo survey offers interactive forms that allow you to interact with more individuals and collect more data. When you are using Fynzo's customer feedback tool, you won't be whining about data delays. It stands out due to its ability to collect input in real-time. It enables users to receive real-time warnings from other users via their websites or mobile apps. It has the best features to make the customers' jobs easy. ProProfs Customer Feedback Tool When it comes to customer feedback solutions, ProProfs Survey Maker is one of the most user-friendly options. Designing a survey is incredibly easy, sparing you time and effort that might otherwise be invested in traversing complicated survey designs. Features you'll appreciate: It's also very adaptable, making it easy to create a wide range of surveys and forms, including quizzes and polls. You may get started immediately with over one million ready-to-use questionnaire items and 100+ survey templates. Qualtrics Customer Feedback Software With Qualtrics' customer feedback platform, you can swiftly collect feedback at every important touchpoint and evaluate their comments in real-time. Features you'll appreciate: You may conduct surveys, feedback, and quizzes using Qualtrics using a variety of distribution options. The results can be seen and downloaded as reports. You can use Qualtrics to share surveys and results, as well as cooperate with other users. SurveySparrow SurveySparrow's chat functionality is so appealing that it ensures 40% more responses than any other programme. SurveySparrow will make gathering customer feedback a breeze with its low prices, round-the-clock support, and outstanding tool. You can create chatbots for your website and receive input from your users even if you don't know how to program them. Features you'll appreciate: SurveySparrow is a one-of-a-kind continuous quality improvement platform that allows for the closure of the consumer feedback loop and the resolution of concerns. To improve interaction, even more, the site has now created a first-of-its-kind video survey. Survicate If you're looking for customer survey tools that integrate with your marketing platform, go no further than Survicate. It works with HubSpot, Mailchimp, Slack, and a variety of other applications. Survicate makes it simple to collect feedback from site visitors, embed surveys in emails, and learn more about your mobile phone users. Features you'll appreciate: Responses can be exported to XLS, CSV, Google Sheets, or your CRM system. For your comfort, it allows users to connect to a range of tools. Conclusion How many of you have pondered why Customer Feedback Software is so important? No matter how diligently you try to please your clients, it all comes down to one basic question: Have you ever asked or figured out why they quit buying from you? There's a fine line between bothering customers with unwanted emails and repetitive SMS while they're still in your shop or the midst of a purchase. Being careful is one thing, but becoming an annoyance is quite another. The objective of customer satisfaction survey tools is to leave a good impression on your customers while they are doing business with you and thereafter. By using sophisticated surveys, smooth interfaces, and smart designs, you may capture your customers' hearts while still giving them a portion of your thoughts. Optimizing customer experience, which encompasses everything from service quality to how well items fit into their life, will be a major focus for organizations in 2022. Brands will build on their achievements and learn from their failures over the coming year, employing technology-driven solutions to the difficulties of deepening customer connections and relationships. Another important reason that customer experience has an impact on business is that customers will invariably tell others about their experiences. A nice online review or recommendations to potential new consumers might result from a great experience shared with friends, family, colleagues, and even on social networking sites. After reading the entire article, one can readily understand how critical client feedback is for business growth in this day.

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In this slogging thread, the team at Hackernoon discuss the greatest shows on TV at the moment. We outline our favourites alongside the ones we want to watch. This Slogging thread by Jack Boreham, Mónica Freitas, Sara Pinto, Ellen Stevens and Amy Shah occurred in slogging's official #random channel, and has been edited for readability. Jack Boreham Dec 6, 2021, 11:12 AM What are the greatest shows on TV at the moment? Mónica Freitas Dec 6, 2021, 2:01 PM Jack Boreham So, I'm the type that rewatches the same shows repeatedly. My anxiety likes it that way 😂 but I've just finished the last season of "La Casa de Papel" or "Money Heist" for English speakers. It was a great ending for a great series. Also, the second season of "The Great" is out, and it's the perfect marriage between comedy and historical drama. Oh, and the second season of "The Witcher" premieres next week, so I'm excited. Mónica Freitas Dec 6, 2021, 2:01 PM Jack Boreham What shows have you been binging lately? Sara Pinto Dec 6, 2021, 4:49 PM I've recently started "Glória", a Portuguese Netflix show about the dictatorship in Portugal and the Cold War. I've only watched the first 3 episodes, but I think it's promising! On the other hand, I finished the 4th season of "The Handmaid's Tale", and I can't wait for the next one, it's such a great show. Have you seen any of these? Ellen Stevens Dec 6, 2021, 9:56 PM The Blacklist Jack Boreham Dec 6, 2021, 10:12 PM Mónica Freitas hahaha, I get you. I'm the same with movies 😂. They all seem interesting; as a game fan, I've never seen the Witcher. Why do you like the show? Jack Boreham Dec 6, 2021, 10:13 PM So at the moment, I'm watching a show on Netflix called clickbait; it's about a guy who gets taken hostage and will die if the video he's in gets to 5million views. It's a great series full of suspense. It's one Netflix! 🔥 1 Jack Boreham Dec 6, 2021, 10:14 PM Sara Pinto, I like the sound of Gloria. It seems heavily inspired by history (of course). I love that stuff and learning about the cold war, do you? 😄 Ellen Stevens great show and mighty clever. 💯 1 🔥 1 🙏 1 Sara Pinto Dec 7, 2021, 12:11 PM Jack Boreham, I'm more of a period drama kinda girl. I'm not into contemporary history as much, so this show has been a breath of fresh air Mónica Freitas Dec 7, 2021, 12:28 PM Jack Boreham It's fun! Very much a guy's type of show, I'd say 😂 It's not on the level of GOT, though the vibes are similar. Yet, if you're a fan of the game, you're probably going to like the show. I want to give the books a shot as well. Jack Boreham Dec 15, 2021, 5:40 PM Sara Pinto, have you seen Downton Abbey. You might like it Jack Boreham Dec 15, 2021, 5:41 PM Mónica Freitas love it. I will definitely like it. Are you a big fan of lord of the rings? Mónica Freitas Dec 15, 2021, 7:13 PM Jack Boreham What I am about to say is almost a crime in the nerd universe, but I was never able to go beyond the first movie. I blame Frodo. He has this expression like he's always about to cry, and I just can't... 😂 I liked the hobbit, though. I've got to give LOTR another shot. Are you a big fan? Sara Pinto Dec 16, 2021, 12:59 PM Jack Boreham It has been on my list for a long time now. I have such high expectations for this show that I think I'm afraid to start it haha. Have you seen it? Jack Boreham Dec 16, 2021, 2:05 PM Oooof, Mónica Freitas, I think we might have to kick you out of this thread 😉. Hahaha, I am. Yeah, I love the hobbit as well. Jack Boreham Dec 16, 2021, 2:07 PM Sara Pinto, it will be, it will exceed expectations. GB drama usually is poor, but Downton Abbey is great! Give it a shot!! I haven't; I think I might get kicked out of my country for not seeing it 😂 Mónica Freitas Dec 16, 2021, 8:24 PM Jack Boreham, oof, gonna be excluded after this, I see. Amy Shah Dec 17, 2021, 5:52 PM I have been watching Bridgerton. Jack Boreham Dec 18, 2021, 2:05 PM Mónica Freitas 😂😂sorryyy rules are rules Jack Boreham Dec 18, 2021, 2:05 PM Amy Shah, oooh, what's that? Amy Shah Dec 18, 2021, 5:29 PM https://www.netflix.com/title/80232398 Sara Pinto Dec 20, 2021, 1:07 PM Jack Boreham Then I know what I'm binge-watching this Christmas time! And you better delete that message. They will come after you 😂 😂 1 Mónica Freitas Dec 20, 2021, 5:25 PM Jack Boreham RIP ME :smiling_face_with_tear: 😂 1

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What are the Greatest Shows on TV at the Moment? 

This year has been an exciting year for crypto investors who have seen Bitcoin witness two all-time highs, not to mention the rise of meme coins such as Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, as well as so-called Ethereum killers including Solana and Cardano. But let’s not forget it’s also been the year that saw Facebook change its name to Meta as the metaverse came to the fore in the mainstream. And in the crypto side of the metaverse, we’ve also seen the rise of virtual gaming worlds such as Sandbox and Axie Infinity which have also been top performers. Narrowing the choice down to just five top-performing cryptos is no easy exercise, but let’s start with what many consider the best long-term bet namely Bitcoin. Bitcoin (BTC) The performance of Bitcoin in 2021 has been volatile, to say the least, but it’s been backed up by some strong fundamentals which underscore why many investors believe it may top $100,000 in 2022. The volatility included an all-time high in mid-April, only for its value to plunge to around $30,000 in mid-July, before reaching a new all-time high in November at $68,000 before again dropping again to under $50,000. Part of the reason for the long-term belief in Bitcoin’s performance is several real-world developments in 2021. These include El Salvador adopting it as legal tender, the Taproot upgrade which allows for smart contract-based transactions for the first time, and the launch of the first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). But while mainstream coverage of cryptocurrencies has focused on Bitcoin, the best performing currencies that you should consider for your portfolio mirror the maturation of the crypto market in 2021. Axie Infinity (AXS) It’s a pleasure to see one of the top performers in 2021, with a year-to-date performance at the time of writing over 17,777% of the play-to-earn blockchain-based game Axie Infinity. The metaverse-powered gaming project enables players to breed, raise, and trade cute digital pets called Axies. The idea of the game is to get small love potions (SLP) to create new Axies. In turn, SLP is itself a crypto token that can be sold on an exchange, with top players earning up to 1,500 SLPs a day. As a further revenue stream, the game also allows you Axie can also be sold as an NFT, plus other in-game items. The monthly trading volume of all Axie Infinity NFTs is around $170 million. What’s more, it may be worth noting for investment purposes that the Vietnamese startup Sky Mavis’s core revenue and the performance of the AXS token are closely correlated. This is no doubt a reflection of the fact that most of the company’s revenue comes from Axie ‘breeding’ fees paid in AXS to the treasury, which in turn significantly has the effect of decreasing the circulating supply of AXS – an in-built supply-side squeeze mechanism which is good for maintaining Axie Infinity’s longer-term value. Of course, this success has also attracted many competitors in the blockchain gaming and GameFi space so it will be interesting to see in 2022 if it can maintain its popularity in the space. The Sandbox (SAND) Cryptocurrency is the ideal form of payment in the virtual world, and though we don't yet know which metaverse will win the competition for user engagement, already Sandbox players can purchase and build digital real estate and develop their games and NFTs. This functionality has driven the rise in the value of SAND tokens by over 14,000% since the start of the year. Users can upload their creations into The Sandbox marketplace, where first they are registered as ERC1155 tokens (ASSETS) on the Ethereum blockchain. These ASSETS can then be bought and sold using the SAND token. This is an Ethereum-based game that, like Axie Infinity (AXS), follows the GameFi "play to earn" model. The Sandbox now has more custom settings for users to choose from, and it places a greater emphasis on player-created NFTs. Users can create their own games and NFTs, as well as conduct transactions to gain benefits. Underlying its asset credentials going into 2022 Sandbox has announced several collaborations in recent months, including with NFT marketplace OpenSea, celebrity rapper Snoop Dogg, and TV show The Walking Dead. At the same time, it recently completed a US$93 million financing round. Dogecoin (DOGE) No discussion of the best performing cryptocurrencies of 2021 can be complete without pointing to the rise and rise of Tesla Elon Musk’s favorite meme coins, namely Dogecoin. It may not have performed as spectacularly as some with a 3622% rise over the year, but it makes up for it with its army of followers and celebrity backs. While this may sound trivial compared to the technical power of rival tokens, the importance of community cannot be underestimated in this mem-driven virtual metaverse-based economy. It’s no doubt one reason why TV Shark Tank entrepreneur Mark Cuban has thrown his weight behind the token, using it for payment purposes at his Chicago Mavericks basketball team. Indeed, despite its meme coin heritage, its growing adoption as a payment method with very low transaction fees and fast transaction times supports the thesis that it will become more mainstream. If Elon Musk and Mark Cuban are correct, and it gains in popular appeal beyond its core community, this core payment feature of Dogecoin may make it superior to other cryptocurrencies in terms of maintaining its value and sustained growth for the future. Solana (SOL) With close to a 12,000% rise in value the so-called Ethereum killer Solana has had quite an impressive year from an investment standpoint, despite bumps in the road such as network outages, and criticism from the Ethereum community directed at this contender. No doubt thought the rise of NFTs has played a significant part in SOL’s popularity, offering a price-competitive and speedier alternative to the NFT dominant Ethereum platform. Bear in mind that Solana is capable of processing 50,000 transactions per second (TPS) or more, with the potential as the network grows, to reach 700,000 TPS. Ethereum currently has a processing capacity of 15 to 45 TPS per second. If there are any issues with Ethereum's upgrade, Solana can take advantage of them to increase its market share. So at least before the arrival of Eth2, Solana has time to expand its developer base and take on new projects, and for those fundamentals, it’s worth investing in as a long-term play. Conclusion These are my top five selections for 2021. Of course, it’s somewhat a subjective selection, for example, some investors will want to go solely on percentage performance to decide the top five. While others might point to the strengths of Ethereum considering this year’s market focus on NFTs and the successful start of the Eth2 upgrade. Other investors may put more emphasis on the meme coin sector, in particular Shiba Inu’s spectacular rise over the year which benefited from a strong army of supporters, a feature of price sustainability in 2022 which will only become more pronounced. If I can add another 5 more cryptos to my list. It would be Kishu Inu- Rising star in the Ethereum Meme Scene, Safemoon- Godfather of Reflections, Light Defi- First photovoltaic plant with a 5 MegaWatt (MW) production capacity. , XRDoge- Most Promising Doge in the XRP Family, BNB- Platform Token of Binance, the World Crypto Largest Exchange. Looking forward to 2022 and what comes next.’

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is developing at incredible speed. With the COVID situation, businesses got even more creative, and the users got more enhanced with smart solutions. Among the most significant Fintech and digital banking, innovations are new platforms of Decentralized Finance, mobile-first solutions, and biometrics. Despite apparent benefits like the faster pace of innovation, higher transparency, more efficiency, and lower cost cross-border payments, these trends still bring various risks, volume shifts, and market manipulations. How to avoid these risks, and what is the future of these trends in 2022? Fintech What is DeFi? The first of the growing trends is the DeFi – Decentralized Finance. It is an economic system and Blockchain-based form of finance that aims to create an open, accessible, and transparent financial services ecosystem. DeFi protocols don’t rely on central financial intermediaries like brokerages, banks with traditional financial technology, or exchanges. These financial systems are based on blockchain technology and utilize smart contracts. Most of them run on the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem. The goal of DeFi is to develop a quality alternative to the traditional banking system with the help of decentralized technologies. DeFi is a tool that acts as an intermediary between the user and digital finance, skips the traditional intermediaries, and allows users to use many other services automatically. The main benefit of DeFi is easy access to financial services, especially for those who, for some reason, can’t access the traditional financial system. Another potential advantage of DeFi is the modular framework and the compatibility of applications based on public blockchains, leading to entirely new types of financial markets, products, and services. Why should you choose DeFi? The main functions of decentralized finance are: Loans and peer-to-peer credits. DeFi is an opportunity that enables the credit system for everyone. As there is no monopoly and intermediaries, the users can benefit from lower rates, higher transaction speed, the chance to use cryptocurrencies, and no need to review the credit history. Stablecoins such as USDC and DAI allows users to borrow money directly through the blockchain using smart contracts. Decentralized markets. Unlike centralized exchanges such as Coinbase, some DeFi tools allow you to buy and sell cryptocurrencies online. They turn down the amount of commission and speed up the transaction process. The use of smart contracts also makes the transaction process automated, which substantially increases reliability. As such trading platforms require much less maintenance, decentralized exchanges charge a lower fee for trading, unlike their centralized counterparts. Securities. You can use the DeFi protocol for traditional financial banking services. Some platforms work with the security tokens to provide their issuers with tokenized securities. Insurance. While companies spend vast amounts of money on intermediaries and brokers, the DeFi program manages insurance automatically. With the help of stablecoins, you can interact within the framework of traditional financial methods but with less risk and simplified transaction regulations. Obtaining a mortgage becomes more accessible and cheaper. Possible challenges of DeFi Using smart contracts is faster, easier, and reduces risks for both parties. On the other hand, smart contracts also create new types of risks and challenges: Low productivity. The blockchain system is relatively slow, so data processing speed slows down with many network nodes. Difficulty in learning. It seems hard in comparison with traditional ways of financial interaction. So many users are not motivated to learn this new mechanism. Variability of the ecosystem. The ease of creating DeFi applications has led to many inconvenient and fraudulent decentralized finance networks. No main governing body is fully responsible for the actions of the participants. In this case, the developers manage all services by themselves. Despite the word "decentralized," many owners of DeFi technologies have special keys that can be used to turn off systems in case of an emergency. High risk of user error. Since a specific person makes all decisions, and there are no intermediaries who can interfere, the chance of making a mistake increases. And as it’s hard to change the effect of smart contracts, the cost of this error can be very high. You can’t block or cancel the DeFi transactions. There may be errors in the DeFi protocol codes that lead to vulnerabilities. Hackers in this area interact with so-called "flash loans" on exchanges. Since this feature doesn’t involve a deposit, it allows you to borrow large sums of money. However, traditional banks may also suffer from similar problems. Mobile-first solutions Another critical trend is Mobile-first solutions that don’t require any download. They help to use mobile experience and various digital channels of communication. Mobile banking can improve the level of interaction with consumers. Smartphones allow not only to control credit limits on cards but also to place deposits, receive cash back from purchases, use new platforms for making payments. When implementing a mobile-first design strategy, a first releases a mobile version of its website. Only then does it invest time or resources in developing a desktop version. Often, an essential desktop website comes with a mobile version, but this desktop website can only consist of a landing page that links to a mobile app or basic information such as a FAQ page. company Another vital factor motivating companies to use a mobile-first design strategy is the additional data and features that mobile websites provide. Because smartphones now typically use touchscreen interfaces, owners of mobile-enabled websites can get detailed user experience (UX) data on how the user physically clicked or scrolled the page. In some cases, website owners may even receive data about the user's eye movements. This trend will continue to develop as consumer habits have changed during the pandemic. Now the banks switch to automation of banking operations and set up their CRM systems for marketing campaigns and communication with customers online. Financial technology businesses are increasingly prioritizing mobile versions of their web pages thanks to the growing popularity of phone browsing and online shopping among consumers. Biometric Security Systems Experts say the demand for biometric data is only growing. Customers show more interest in accurate and simple identification methods and the general improvement in the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence technologies. Instead of remembering a password or entering a PIN, users can choose biometrics as a better alternative. . Watch the presentation about KYC and customer onboarding in Fintech Unlike traditional authentication procedures, biometrics complicate the use of illegally obtained consumer credentials by attackers. However, this does not mean that there are no risks. In 2015, a US government database was hacked, and the fingerprints of 5.6 million federal employees were stolen. In addition, the usual forms of authentication can simply be changed, which is impossible with voice or face recognition systems. Today the biometrics offers the following types: ​​ Face recognition In recent years, face recognition technology has significantly improved its accuracy, approaching 98 percent. The other two percent are the detected methods of deception, user errors, and the defective face reader. Hackers could use biometric information stored in secure databases and print photos that can fool most biometric face recognition devices. Face recognition may also require the use of advanced, specialized cameras. Authentication accuracy depends on the device, which may not be quick. Many consumers report that it is quite difficult for them to adapt to this technology. They also can feel embarrassed to make "authentication selfies" in public. Fingerprint recognition Most touch scanners store only one fingerprint of each user in the system, and many use only three specific fingerprint points. The practice showed it is not always a reliable way of biometrics. Moreover, cybercriminals can intercept fingerprint data from Internet-connected biometric scanners while transmitting it for processing to a server. Until 3D fingerprinting becomes available, financial institutions should choose more secure authentication methods. Iris recognition The iris recognition technology is easy to use and difficult to deceive. Among other unique human characteristics, such as fingerprints, facial features, retina, etc., the iris is one of the most reliable biometric identification factors. The time of analysis and decoding images by the scanner is only 30 milliseconds. Biometric technology based on the use of the uniqueness of the iris is a faster method of authentication than others due to less time to image decryption. Voice recognition Today, voice biometric technology is used for eSignature, allowing customers to perform certain operations on the phone or other smart devices. A real-time voice authentication technology can detect a customer's voice in a noisy environment. The authentication method is reliable even when the user is sick. Voice authentication works with every language and every regional accent. If the voices don’t match, the subscriber is asked additional questions. Although many systems now use the same type of biometric identifier, it is expected that in the future the technology will include multifactor authentication, which will include fingerprint scanning, retina, and even heartbeat. This will ensure an adequate level of protection while maintaining comfort and speed of use. Generally, all these trends are an effective alternative to traditional financial systems, free from legal and political interference. DeFi networks, mobile-first approach, and biometric trends are actively developing. However, it is too early to say about the effectiveness of the DeFi financial system and its acceptance by the community. Read more about the future of Fintech in the . material about KYC (Know your customer)

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DeFi, Mobile-first, and Biometrics will Change the Shape of Finance in 2022

A mobile developer is a specialist that creates applications for different mobile devices: smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc. As per data, in 2021 revenue from mobile applications amounted to over $693 billion. Statista Forecasts state that in 2023 this sum will increase up to $935 billion due to paid downloads and ads in applications. The statistical data speaks not only in favor of the popularity of mobile apps but also those who create them. In this article, we will help you understand how to hire mobile developers. To do this, we will walk through four key stages of the process: Platform Searching for a candidate Interview Cost Step 1. Platform There are two different approaches with respect to the development of mobile applications: and Native cross-platform development. Therefore, before starting to search for a mobile developer, . This will help you understand what mobile developer is required to meet your needs. figure out which approach suits you best Native App Development Approach Native development of a mobile app primarily focuses on development for a certain platform: iOS OR Android etc. Cross-Platform App Development Approach Applications are written for several platforms at once (iOS, Android) using one programming language, which makes it different from native languages. There are several mobile development solutions in the cross-platform approach: React Native, Flutter, Xamarin, Ionic, Flutter, NativeScript, etc. More often, the choice comes down to two frameworks: These are the most frequently used and elaborated frameworks. The chance of finding developers for these options is much higher. React Native and Flutter. Choosing an Approach The choice between native and cross-platform approaches depends on the need of your project, required functionality, target audience, timeline, budget, etc. Below there is a shortlist that might help you find your way around choosing an approach to better meet your needs. A Native Approach is a Good Option for You if: You are not short on budget; Your mobile application requires a more sophisticated functionality; There is no need of it working in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store; You want to ensure the best possible user interface; You plan to scale the application in the long-term  (making changes to native applications is easier). The Cross-Platform Solution Should be Your Choice if: You have a limited budget; You don’t need a complicated mobile application in terms of functionally; You need a prototype or an MVP to “probe” the market; You plan to get to the market of both platforms simultaneously; You need a single appearance for all platforms. Step 2. Searching for a Candidate Having defined the required platform and understood what developer you are looking for, move to the next step: Search for a candidate. It is quite difficult to find a professional developer of mobile applications. The place of the search depends on the goal: Full-time developers: Ask friends, place a vacancy ad on aggregators, your website, and in social networks, run paid ads; Need a developer for a one-off job: Use freelance platforms; Urgent need for developers: Contact companies offering services of on-demand developers (dedicated developers); Need talent: Work with higher educational institutions, follow the niche reputable sources. Step 3. Interview After you find mobile developers you like, you start the next phase: Interviewing. Traditionally, an interview is divided into two stages. The first one is a theoretical part of an interview. The second – coding. A is a technical interview aimed at assessing a developer’s programming skills. Check our article to learn about what coding is and where to find tasks to challenge your candidates. coding interview Top 8 Best Coding Interview Platforms The complexity and topic of questions in the theoretical part are determined by the level of the mobile developer you are looking for. Levels are divided into junior, middle, senior. You can find out details about each level and understand which one is right for you by reading our article . 5 Software Developer Levels: Whom to Choose In an interview you should thoroughly check the following: Mobile Developer Portfolio The work of the mobile developer speaks for itself. This is why his portfolio is so important. A portfolio can reveal all the details of the previous projects: requirements, problems and ways to address them, domains, technology stacks, and many other details. After studying the portfolio, you can download one of the applications that a candidate worked on. Thus, you can evaluate the work of the application from a user perspective: startup speed, performance, and interaction between various application functions. Note (!) before checking the application yourself, ask a developer to tell about the development process and his thoughts on the obtained results. You can find out that some drawbacks of the application are determined by circumstances that don’t depend on the developer. Mobile Developer Technical Skills When you are not a specialist yourself, and you don’t have an experienced technical director (СТО) next to you, it is pretty complicated or even impossible to assess the skills of a mobile application developer. Nevertheless, there are two options to follow: 1. If you have no technical background, you should employ an independent technical consultant (СТО) to interview a candidate. This person will help you determine how competent a developer is and to make the final decision. This option will require an additional investment but will be economically sound. Read about How to Hire a CTO for a Startup and Not Fail here. 2. If you have no budget to hire a CTO, we have prepared a couple of articles that can help you understand the responsibilities, learn and assess the professional skills of mobile developers, etc.: (native) (native) (cross-platform) How to Hire Android Developers How to Hire iOS Developers How to Hire React Native Developers Mobile Developer Soft Skills Soft Skills – are the personal traits of a candidate. They include communication skills, ability to learn, ability to work in a team, etc. Soft skills are of the same importance as hard skills. There is a simple reason standing behind this. Before your mobile application goes live, numerous meetings will be held. You need these meetings to clearly communicate the requirements of the role, make necessary corrections, evaluate the project progress, and many other things. You can learn more about what soft skills are, why they are worth paying attention to, and how to check their level in an interview in our article . Why Soft Skills Matter When Hiring a Software Developer In an interview, most attention is paid to hard skills since it is easier to assess them. Soft skills are worth assessing as well. Step 4. Cost Consider the below points when thinking about a budget: Model of Cooperation Find out what you are looking for. Depending on your business needs you may select a dedicated In-house team, freelancers, or a dedicated software development agency. Every model has its peculiarities. It is also worth getting familiarized with In-house vs Dedicated vs Freelance Developers: Whom to choose. Mobile Developer Salary Rates of mobile developers vary from country to country. For example, rates in Northern America (USA, Canada) are the highest, while in Asia (India, Nepal, and Pakistan) are the lowest. In terms of costs, Eastern Europe (Belarus, Lithuania) can become the golden mean offering a high level of competence. Model of Payment A model of payment forms the cost of services, timeline, and scope of work to develop a project. There are three frequently used models: – Fixed project price; Fixed Price – Fixed price per hour; Time and Material Model – Fixed price for each team member per hour or per month. Dedicated Team Model The model you choose depends on the complexity and duration of your project, the planned budget, required level of control, etc. More information on models of payment is presented in our article . 3 Most Popular Pricing Models In IT Industry Conclusion In summary, the above article covers the following main points: 1. Start by defining your application requirements. This means choosing the implementation process: A native or cross-platform approach. 2. Know that your ultimate goals will determine your search approach. This might be: finding a full-time employee, a one-off job developer for urgent or scheduled work. The purpose of the search determines exactly where you will search: in social networks, on freelance platforms, in dedicated agencies, higher educational institutions, etc. 3. You know that at the interview stage, it is important to check: – A developer’s portfolio, from which you can judge his experience and knowledge; – Hard and soft skills of a mobile developer and how to test them. 4. The cost of mobile app development pretty much depends on the geographical location of a developer, their cooperation, and payment models. Previously published here.

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Take a moment to think about these questions: Why do we cherish a freebie? Why are we thrilled when we complete our first 10k run? Why are some people keen on answering questions and spending hours writing articles on Wikipedia and Quora for free? Why are you even reading this article? What makes you tick? People do things for a reason. If we look deeper within ourselves and the world around us, we realize that we are all motivated by a myriad of drivers. These drives are what motivate us to act and commit to specific activities. Gamification The first thing that comes to our mind when we think about gamification is leaderboards, points, badges & levels. But the core idea of gamification goes beyond just adding these game elements to a product. It is designing human motivation into a system and placing the customer at the forefront of the design to make the overall synergy with the application, website, or product more seamless. According to Yu-kai Chou, one of the earliest pioneers of gamification, true gamification is when we tap into our core human drives that motivate us towards various decisions and activities. He then drilled down on these different motivations, which led to creating the groundbreaking gamification design framework: Octalysis, an octagon-shaped model bearing eight core drivers. Octalysis Framework Octalysis Framework The is a human-centric gamification design framework to help decipher all the motivational Core Drives that can be used to understand how to engineer and design for motivation within a particular setting and transform activities into meaningful and enriching experiences. Octalysis Framework Chou’s starting premise from within the Octalysis Framework was to maximize the motivation for desired behavioral outcomes through the use of 8 Core Drives (Meaning, Accomplishment, Empowerment, Ownership, Scarcity, Unpredictability, Avoidance). Let’s take a closer look. The 8 Core Drivers Every action we do stems from one or more of these core drivers. Without the presence of at least one of them, we will not be motivated or driven to act. Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning and Calling People like to feel that the work they are doing matters This core drive guides us to seek a higher purpose or meaning beyond our personal goals. It is the drive where the users are motivated as they feel like they are the chosen ones and are participating in something greater than themselves. Contributing for the good of others can be a great motivator. For Example : Wikipedia Stack Overflow The reason why people commit hours contributing to the above platforms is because of this Core Drive 1, where the users embark on the epic journey of making the world a better place by documenting and spreading knowledge. Free Rice Free Rice is a trivia-based website, supports the United Nations World Food Program by raising money to help 10 million people in the world have a meal, and they even made money off advertising while doing it. They did this by creating small challenges for their users. Upon successfully completing a challenge Free Rice donates 10 grains of rice to people in need, playing off a Core Drive concept called “humanity hero.” This is a powerful drive used by big businesses and leaders worldwide, asking you to put ‘the greater good’ above yourself. Apple Think about Apple. They don’t talk about their specs. They talk about “Changing the World,” and you were “The chosen one to make a difference.” Core Drive 2: Development and Accomplishment This drive is internal, as we all are driven to take on challenges to meet our desired goals. The crux here lies in the dimension of challenges since any reward is meaningless without feeling an actual accomplishment. There needs to be an effort, a hurdle that needs to be crossed. It should leave one with a sense of accomplishment as it is what pushes us to work harder to keep developing our skills and see ourselves progress. But not all progressions are intriguing and satisfactory. That’s why Yu-kai Chou underlines the importance of feeling proud of the new status. If there’s no interest in leveling up whatsoever, there won’t be any motivation either. What’s more fulfilling than looking back at the progress you’ve made? Many game elements aim at this core when showing the user their progress. We can find progress bars, badges, status symbols, and leaderboards among these tools. , many eCommerce sites these days make use of progress bars. When a consumer fills out payment details to purchase a product online, a progress bar indicates how far they are from finishing the process. It’s not by chance that this has become a staple for most sites to will their users onto the finish line, i.e., the purchase. For example Apps like such game mechanics as progress bars, badges, etc., to motivate their users to achieve their goals. Duolingo, Goodreads, and Fitbit use LinkedIn In the early days of LinkedIn, users rarely completed their profiles due to poor visual feedback of the progress made (insufficient Core Drive 2). That’s when LinkedIn introduced a profile progress bar, which helped increase the profile completion ratio by a staggering 60%. LinkedIn Progress Bar Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback Creation is beauty, all forms of it. We all have it. People need avenues to express themselves, and creativity is one of them. This core drive lets users use their creativity, view their results, get feedback and make adjustments. Here the user is engaged in a creative process where they try different combinations and strategies to get to a particular result. It can be as simple as making a playlist on Spotify or shooting a rainbow and posting it on Instagram. And the instant feedback that the users receive shows them the result of their work so that they can adjust their strategy if needed. Minecraft Minecraft is a classic example of Core Drive 3 because users are given the ability to express creativity by using simple building blocks (with thousands of combinations) to craft complex structures, can immediately taste the result of their choices, and make adjustments as they go. Core Drive 4: Ownership and Possession Everyone likes to own certain things, be it in the real world or in the digital world. The feeling of possessing something rare or expensive makes for a great motivator. In this Core Drive 4, users are motivated because they feel like they own or control something. This makes users want to increase, improve, protect, and even obtain more. It’s why we want to accumulate wealth or collect virtual coins. This Core Drive also provides emotional comfort and instills a sense of well-being and belonging to a society and cultural environment. Pokémon Go Pokémon Go focuses heavily on a Core Drive 4 concept called “ .” Each Pokémon captured is added to a collection and gives users a sense of ownership. Once players catch a few Pokémon, they are motivated to catch all of them, and the hunt continues. collection set Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness If used properly, it can be one of the most potent and long-lasting tools for motivating people. This core drive taps into all the social elements that motivate people: mentorship, social acceptance, social feedback, companionship, competition, and even envy. Has it ever happened to you that you bought something you didn’t need but just because it reminded you of your childhood? That’s relatedness which refers to the human need and tendency to nostalgia and emotional associations. Saregama — Caravaan One of the reasons why the Saregama Caravaan is so popular is Nostalgia. In an age of high tech Alexas, while everyone was busy adding more ways to listen to songs, Saregama Caravaan carved a niche for itself by looking the other way- back at a simpler age, an older time. Amazon People trust what they can relate to. Appealing to an emotional connection with other users builds a sense of trust and lowers the threshold to buy something. On Amazon, you must have come across the following statement while looking for products: “Customers who bought this item also bought…”. In fact, approximately 60% of Amazon’s revenue comes from the recommendations section. Leaderboards in fitness apps are another interesting example of social influence, as people check out their progress, compare and compete with others. Core Drive 6: Scarcity and Impatience If you can’t have it, you want it. We have all been there. It’s an innate desire of humans. And the sixth Core Drive addresses just that – the longing for something, simply because it is scarce, exclusive, or immediately unattainable. And because it is so difficult to obtain, its perceived value increases immensely. Even leading brands like have successfully used scarcity as a significant lever to influence choice. OnePlus Urgency has been greatly leveraged in eCommerce. You must have often come across sales promise bargains on eCommerce sites like Myntra, Nykaa, Amazon, etc., that are only available for a limited period like “70% OFF. Today ONLY!”. The impulse to push that button is immense. The existence of the sale is scarce, and people are motivated to act with a sense of urgency. Core Drive 7: Unpredictability and Curiosity We, humans, are hard-wired to seek thrill in uncertainty. We’re driven by the chase. We have no foolproof way of predicting the future, yet we’re always thinking about what will happen next. Unpredictability entails constant engagement as one does not know what will happen next, and our brain’s reward center lights up when we encounter such sensations. Unpredictability is a powerful force in motivating people to keep pressing on until they have clarified the unknown. This explains our love for surprises and our desire to seek new experiences. The virtual scratch cards on Google Play are a great example as we mischievously scratch them, knowing quite well that there’s not going to be much in there. Example: Gpay Virtual cards TV/Web Series A good web series will add a cliffhanger at the end of every episode to create a sense of anticipation for the next, which appeals to the audience’s curiosity and desire to clarify the unknown. Core Drive 8: Loss and Avoidance Humans are risk-averse by nature, and this core drive is our natural aversion to losing things we have worked hard to obtain. Avoidance and loss motivate through the fear of losing something or having an undesirable event occur. We can go to any lengths to minimize potential loss or risks wherever and whenever possible. According to psychology, we are more likely to act based on avoiding loss rather than making gains. Hence the fear of losing 1000 Rs is greater than the opportunity to gain Rs.1000. There’s nothing as powerful as offering an incentive upfront and then threatening to take it away. For example : uses streaks to encourage users to build a daily habit of using their app by giving you more XP if you maintain a streak. Learners or app users have to achieve their daily goals to save and improve their streak. Duolingo Duolingo Gamification – Streaks Miss one day and the streak is reset to zero. More recently, this option was replaced with one free ‘Streak Repair’ per month for premium members and a ‘ ‘ item that can be bought in the in-app shop with Gems. The urge to protect the daily streak motivates the users to put a small amount of effort every day to preserve their streaks. Streak Freeze Another classic example of this is the Marketing campaigns that often target our Core Drive 8 with tactics like, “If you don’t sign up/purchase now, you’ll lose this chance forever.” Black Friday Black Friday is an excellent example of how limited opportunity can motivate people to act with an extreme sense of urgency. Every year in the United States, products are priced a lot cheaper on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and people flock to stores to avoid losing out on sweet deals. Final Thoughts Gamification, or as Yu-Kai Chou calls it, human-focused design, is not about badges or leaderboards. It’s about human core drives, the most profound concept in gamification. And the Octalysis Framework tries to understand these nucleus motivations and uses them to drive behaviors. The more we understand the psychology behind our core drives, the better we will become at designing gamified systems and developing consistently good user experiences. First published here.

OnePlus

Decipher Your Mind: Gamification, the Octalysis Framework, and the Psychology of Motivation 

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive December 24th, 2021

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ChartMogul

@omrihurwitz
Omri Hurwitz

@lansa
Lansa

@oliviajones
Olivia Jones

@jackboreham
Jack Boreham

@jennyzheng
Jenny Zheng

@upplabs
UppLabs

@jaydevs
JayDevs

@upshotai
Upshot.ai