Estonian mobility platform Bolt is mandating a return to office for its global staff, with CEO Markus Villig criticising remote work practices he ...

Estonian Bolt CEO calls remote work 'insanity'

Bolt CEO Markus Villig reportedly said it was a “disgrace” that less than half his workers were making it into the office at least two days a week.

Boss of Uber rival Bolt vows to crack down on remote work to stop ‘insanity of people working from Bali’

Bolt

bolt

Part 1: Getting Going with the Starter Kit Businesses depend on Slack for communication and Salesforce for data management. As one might expect, conversations in Slack don’t always correlate to changes in Salesforce records. Being able to share data between these two services can increase team productivity by eliminating the need to switch between them. In December of 2021, Salesforce produced using their APIs. Building on top of any platform can be intimidating: You have to learn about how authentication works, the methods you can call, the events you can listen for, and so on. Slack has and an SDK, , which reduces a lot of boilerplate logic, getting you more quickly from an idea to an actual app. a video series explaining how to build Slack Apps excellent documentation Bolt The folks at Salesforce have done one better. Taking into account Bolt’s development principles and tooling, they developed the . It’s an opinionated scaffolding framework designed to make it easy to build Slack Apps that integrate with Salesforce data. Slack Starter Kit In this series of posts, we’ll show you how to use the Slack Starter Kit and Bolt to create an application that allows users to view and change Salesforce records—entirely in Slack. By the end of this series, we’ll have a fully functional Slack app that communicates with the Salesforce platform. In this first post, we’ll go through the SDK and set up your development environment for future work! Prerequisites Before we begin, make sure you have the following software installed on your machine: —this is a tool designed by Salesforce to simplify platform interactions. The sfdx CLI A recent version of (>= 14.0) Node The , as well as an existing Heroku account Heroku CLI A Slack workspace where you can install Apps An existing Salesforce Dev Hub We’ll first create a Slack App, which will provide us with tokens and other Slack-specific information we’ll need before building our app. To do that: Navigate to and click . https://api.slack.com/apps Create New App In the prompt that pops up, select . From scratch Set the name of the App to , and choose a workspace where the App can be installed. SFDCContactEditor That’s it! If you scroll down, you’ll see your App Credentials. We’ll be referring to these in the next section. On the left side nav bar, click on App Manifest. Your App Manifest defines some metadata about your app, such as the permissions it requests and the events it handles. Paste the following YAML into that box, overwriting what was there by default: _metadata:
  major_version: 1
  minor_version: 1
display_information:
  name: SFDCContactEditor
features:
  app_home:
    home_tab_enabled: true
    messages_tab_enabled: false
    messages_tab_read_only_enabled: true
  bot_user:
    display_name: SFDCContactEditor
    always_online: true
  shortcuts:
    - name: Whoami
      type: global
      callback_id: who_am_i
      description: shows Salesforce org details
oauth_config:
  scopes:
    bot:
      - chat:write
      - chat:write.public
      - commands
      - users:read
settings:
  event_subscriptions:
    request_url: https://heroku-app.herokuapp.com/slack/events
    bot_events:
      - app_home_opened
  interactivity:
    is_enabled: true
    request_url: https://heroku-app.herokuapp.com/slack/events
  org_deploy_enabled: false
  socket_mode_enabled: false
  token_rotation_enabled: false Click . If you get an error about a URL being unverified, don’t worry—we’ll address that soon! Save Changes Next, clone the , and then navigate to the directory: Slack Starter Kit scripts git clone https://github.com/developerforce/salesforce-slack-starter-kit
cd salesforce-slack-starter-kit/scripts Install the dependencies there with ; then pop up a folder, and install those dependencies: npm install npm install
cd ..
npm install Walking through the Salesforce Starter Kit With the Salesforce Starter Kit available and its dependencies installed, it’s time to take a look at what the Starter Kit can do. The primary goal of the Starter Kit is to get your environment set up for building, testing, and deploying a Slack App that integrates with Salesforce. It does this by: Setting up a Salesforce scratch org Setting up and deploying a sample application to Heroku Using Bolt to abstract away details with authentication Setting up a project structure that favors convention over configuration Let’s see this in action. First, make sure you’re authenticated to your Salesforce Dev Hub by running . Then, run , and a CLI prompt will take over. sfdx auth:web:login node scripts/deploy.js You’ll be asked to provide some information: For the Heroku App Name, we’ll use . Make sure to select a unique name for your Heroku App, since app names need to be unique across all Heroku apps. sfdc-contact-editor For the Slack Bot Token, go to the OAuth & Permissions page in your Slack App overview, and copy-paste the Bot User OAuth Token into the terminal. For the Slack Signing Secret, go back to the App Credentials section of the Basic Information page on Slack’s site. Copy-paste the provided signing secret into the terminal. Provide the name of your existing Dev Hub alias. You can name your scratch org anything you like—the default of is fine! scratchorg Now, grab a beverage and sit back, as the Starter Kit sets up some accounts for you. It creates a brand new scratch org and a new Heroku app, and it defines some essential environment variables for the deployed app to use. : if you receive a failure about a missing , make sure you have . If you receive a failure about a missing public key or permissions when pushing to Heroku, run . Note OrgCreateCommand enabled Dev Hub heroku keys:add After some time, you’ll receive the following message: Done deploying Heroku app sfdc-contact-editor In order to verify that the application was configured and deployed, you can perform two separate steps. First, run the following command in your terminal window: sfdx force:org:open Navigate to , and you should see an app titled “Connected App For Slack.” This is the Salesforce platform policy that the Starter Kit created for your Slack app. Manage Connected Apps Next, go to , and you should see your brand new app listed there. https://dashboard.heroku.com/ Now that we have a production version of the app available, we’ll need to make one more change to our Slack configuration to unite the two. Open up your and find the lines that identify your Heroku endpoint: App Manifest two request_url: https://heroku-app.herokuapp.com/slack/events Replace the placeholder with the actual name of your Heroku app. Click . Slack will inform you that your request URL isn’t verified; click to make that happen! heroku-app Save Changes Verify Watching it work Let’s try interacting with our app to ensure that everything is wired up correctly. Remember: we have a production app running on Heroku which intercepts a user’s Slack activity and communicates with Salesforce. We haven’t added any of our own functionality yet; everything was preconfigured by the Starter Kit. First, . You’ll be asked to authenticate with Salesforce; click on the button to do so. Then, head into any Slack room, and run the : add the app to your Slack workspace whoami shortcut provided by the app Voila! Next, let’s take a quick look at what’s inside the Starter Kit. Open up the project in your IDE, and navigate to the folder. In here, there’s a file called . This is where the entirety of the Salesforce authentication takes place. We don’t need to do anything to this file, but it’s useful to know just how much is being abstracted away for us. salesforcelib connect.js Next, open up the folder. This folder contains all the app logic for listening to and responding to events from Slack. Open up , then . This file contains all of the functionality for the shortcut we just issued. There are two important things to point out: listeners shortcuts whoami.js The first method called in the function is . Slack requires that an app acknowledge an event within three seconds of it occurring, and is responsible for sending that message to Slack. ack ack In the next line— —we fetch our connection information from Salesforce. const conn = context.sfconnection Lastly, let’s take a look at the user-interface folder. As you might have guessed, this folder contains all of the UI definitions for our Slack app. (We’ll definitely take a deeper look at how to build a UI in our next part.) Inside here, open up the modals folder, then open . The Starter Kit takes care of the actual definitions for designing and prompting the UI modal we saw. The only thing we can customize is the box text. Let’s get cheeky and add an exclamation point to the end of this sentence: whoami-response.js Successfully connected to salesforce instance ${instanceurl}. Authenticated with user ${username}! Let’s deploy this app live to production! If you don’t know how, you should familiarize yourself with . Put simply, however, all we need to do is push our committed change to our Heroku remote: this article on deploying to Heroku $ salesforce-slack-starter-kit (main): git add apps/slack-salesforce-starter-app/user-interface/modals/whoami-response.js
$ salesforce-slack-starter-kit (main): git commit -m "Add an exclamation point" 

> salesforce-app@1.0.0 precommit
> lint-staged

✔ Preparing...
✔ Running tasks...
✔ Applying modifications...
✔ Cleaning up...
[main 44aac80] Add an exclamation point
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
$ git push heroku main When Heroku is finished, you can return to Slack, issue the same shortcut, and see your new change live. whoami Learning more Whether you’re an experienced developer or just getting started, the Slack Starter Kit can save you so much time. In our short time together, we were able to: Create a new Salesforce environment Create a new Slack app Deploy the Slack app to Heroku Wire up Slack, Heroku, and Salesforce Issue a Slack shortcut and see the results The Starter Kit has essentially solved a lot of problems around authentication and API tokens by automating much of this for us. Every app will need these aspects configured, and since the Starter Kit has made these repetitive processes easier, we can now concentrate on what matters most: developing an incredible Slack app. With this foundation established, we’re ready to continue building on it in our next installment! We’ll look a little closer at the architecture of the Starter Kit, and add a new command of our own. Also Published . here

How to Build a Slack App That Changes Salesforce Records Within Slack

The top 3 headlines from across the pond for Tuesday, May 26, 2020. Bolt Raises $109M The -based on-demand transport company (and competitor to Uber), Bolt, has picked up an additional €100 million ($109 million) in a convertible note. According to , Bolt also confirmed that is now valued at €1.7 billion (or nearly $1.9 billion at today’s rates). Estonia Tech Crunch "Bolt, a rival to Uber and others providing on-demand ridesharing, scooters and other transportation services across some 150 cities in Europe and Africa, is today announcing another capital raise as it weathers a difficult market climate where, because of COVID-19, many are staying in place and avoiding modes of transport that put them into contact with others." source The latest episode of features none other than Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. Worth tuning in to hear his insider perspective on a transport industry under lockdown, and also to hear the legendary Swisher lay down those labour relations questions like it ain't no thang, as she does. RELATED: vox.com's Recode Decode with Kara Swisher Senior Adviser to Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Refuses To Resign After Driving Far Distance After Lockdown No citation required, because this story is literally all I've heard around these parts for the last three days straight. somebody British and important drove his kids to their grandparents during Stay Home orders because he and his wife were sick and/or very busy and important, as aforementioned. The nation is, to put it mildly, TS;DC (Too Stupid; Don't Care): outraged. SURPRISE! Non-Corona News Is Still A Thing, And Libya Appears to be Hosting an Important Proxy War, With Increasingly Less Deniable Support From Turkey * source: The Monocle Daily Briefing for May 26, 2020 "Libya has been in the midst of civil war for almost a decade. However, in the last year, the conflict has escalated and become a regional proxy war. This matters because Libya is a gateway for migrants coming to Europe and because whoever wins in Libya will emerge a powerful figure in the Middle East. Eastern Libya is run by Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army. He is principally backed by the UAE, Egypt and Russia; and he appears to receive support from France, Saudi Arabia and Greece. The government in Tripoli is backed by Turkey and Qatar. Haftar poised to take Tripoli in recent months but his allies in Abu Dhabi, Cairo and Moscow have suffered setbacks. They have not been able to get Haftar over the line. seemed Libya is the Middle East’s most important proxy conflict today." ( ) source a fascinating discussion around what's viewed as a 'natural' collapse of social distancing measures in Europe, with Monocle's Zurich-based Switzerland correspondent affirming the trend I'm seeing here in Amsterdam. *Also in this podcast :

'European Uber' Raises $109M · The UK Has No Chill · Libya is Waging a Proxy War

Authors:
(1) Luyang Zhu, University of Washington and Google Research, and work done while the author was an intern at Google;
(2) Dawei Yang, Google Research;
(3) Tyler Zhu, Google Research;
(4) Fitsum Reda, Google Research;
(5) William Chan, Google Research;
(6) Chitwan Saharia, Google Research;
(7) Mohammad Norouzi, Google Research;
(8) Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, University of Washington and Google Research. Table of Links Abstract and 1. Introduction 2. Related Work 3. Method 3.1. Cascaded Diffusion Models for Try-On 3.2. Parallel-UNet 4. Experiments 5. Summary and Future Work and References Appendix A. Implementation Details B. Additional Results A. Implementation Details A.1. Parallel-UNet A.2. Training and Inference TryOnDiffusion was implemented in JAX [4]. All three diffusion models are trained on 32 TPU-v4 chips for 500K iterations (around 3 days for each diffusion model). After trained, we run the inference of the whole pipeline on 4 TPU-v4 chips with batch size 4, which takes around 18 seconds for one batch. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Luyang Zhu, University of Washington and Google Research, and work done while the author was an intern at Google; (2) Dawei Yang, Google Research; (3) Tyler Zhu, Google Research; (4) Fitsum Reda, Google Research; (5) William Chan, Google Research; (6) Chitwan Saharia, Google Research; (7) Mohammad Norouzi, Google Research; (8) Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, University of Washington and Google Research. Authors: Authors: (1) Luyang Zhu, University of Washington and Google Research, and work done while the author was an intern at Google; (2) Dawei Yang, Google Research; (3) Tyler Zhu, Google Research; (4) Fitsum Reda, Google Research; (5) William Chan, Google Research; (6) Chitwan Saharia, Google Research; (7) Mohammad Norouzi, Google Research; (8) Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, University of Washington and Google Research. Table of Links Abstract and 1. Introduction Abstract and 1. Introduction 2. Related Work 2. Related Work 3. Method 3. Method 3.1. Cascaded Diffusion Models for Try-On 3.1. Cascaded Diffusion Models for Try-On 3.2. Parallel-UNet 3.2. Parallel-UNet 4. Experiments 4. Experiments 5. Summary and Future Work and References 5. Summary and Future Work and References Appendix Appendix A. Implementation Details A. Implementation Details B. Additional Results B. Additional Results A. Implementation Details A.1. Parallel-UNet A.2. Training and Inference TryOnDiffusion was implemented in JAX [4]. All three diffusion models are trained on 32 TPU-v4 chips for 500K iterations (around 3 days for each diffusion model). After trained, we run the inference of the whole pipeline on 4 TPU-v4 chips with batch size 4, which takes around 18 seconds for one batch. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv

The Nuts and Bolts of Parallel-UNet: Implementation Details

A Brief Introduction to The Boltzmann Brain Theory

বোল্টজম্যান ব্রেন থিওরির একটি সংক্ষিপ্ত ভূমিকা

Eine kurze Einführung in die Boltzmann-Gehirntheorie

Una breve introducción a la teoría del cerebro de Boltzmann

Une brève introduction à la théorie du cerveau de Boltzmann

बोल्ट्ज़मैन मस्तिष्क सिद्धांत का संक्षिप्त परिचय

ボルツマン脳理論の簡単な紹介

볼츠만 뇌 이론에 대한 간략한 소개

Uma breve introdução à teoria do cérebro de Boltzmann

Краткое введение в теорию мозга Больцмана

Boltzmann Beyin Teorisine Kısa Bir Giriş

Giới thiệu tóm tắt về Lý thuyết bộ não của Boltzmann

玻尔兹曼脑理论简介

Today we will be creating a SlackBot that reacts to every message sent by a specific user. Useful, right? 😄 Creating a New Slack App The first thing we have to do is create a new app. We do this by navigating to and navigating to . Slack api.slack.com Your Apps -> Create New App We’ll call our app . Next up, we have to set up , a , and . reacting-bot event subscriptions bot user permissions Socket Mode The first thing we have to do is enable Socket Mode. Turning on Socket Mode will route your app’s interactions and events over a WebSockets connection instead of sending these payloads to different Request URLs. To enable Socket Mode, navigate to and hit . You will be prompted to add scopes and generate an app-level token. Give the token a name, e.g., “token”, and add the following scopes: Settings -> Socket Mode Enable Socket Mode & connections:write authorizations:read As the names suggest, these will give our app permission to read and write messages. Event Subscriptions Next up, we need to enable Event Subscriptions, which can be found beneath in the left-side menu. After enabling Event Subscriptions, you will need to add the following Event Subscriptions. Features Subscribe to bot events: message.groups Subscribe to event on behalf of users: message.channels Bot User If a Bot User has not yet been created, it can be set up on the tab. Here we can set a display name and its username. App Home Permissions Lastly, we need to ensure that the SlackBot has all the correct permissions needed. Head over to and add the permission to the . OAuth & Permissions reactions.write Bot Token Scopes We have now set up the SlackBot, and we are ready to start coding! Writing The Bot We will be using the library as an interface to the Slack API. It comes with many useful features that make creating SlackBots a breeze. bolt-js While in a new directory , we can initialize the project using . This will create a file that looks like the following: reacting-bot npm init -y package.json {
  "name": "reacting-bot",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC"
} For this project, we are going to need two packages. and . is an interface that we use to communicate with the Slack API, and is used to access environment variables. We can install the packages with the following command: @slack/bolt dotenv Bolt dotenv npm install @slack/bolt dotenv Next up, we need to create the file which should store our environment variables for when we are running this project locally. The file should contain the following: .env SIGNING_SECRET=5c24e...
TOKEN=xoxb-...
APP_TOKEN=xapp-...
USER_ID=UCF8... can be found on the page SIGNING_SECRET Basic Information (xoxb) can be found on the page TOKEN OAuth & Permissions (xapp) can be found on the page under APP_TOKEN Basic Information App-level tokens can be found when viewing a slack profile under USER_ID More In , we start by importing and , and we initialize a bolt application in socket mode in the constant : index.js @slack/bolt dotenv app const { App } = require("@slack/bolt");
require("dotenv").config();

const app = new App({
  signingSecret: process.env.SIGNING_SECRET,
  token: process.env.TOKEN,
  socketMode: true,
  appToken: process.env.APP_TOKEN,
}); We then write the logic that uses the method to attach a listener for messages. message() app.message(async ({ message, context }) => {
  if (message.user === process.env.USER_ID) {
    try {
      const result = await app.client.reactions.add({
        token: context.botToken,
        name: "heavy_plus_sign",
        channel: message.channel,
        timestamp: message.ts,
      });
    } catch (error) {
      console.error(error);
    }
  }
}); We check any given message is sent by the user with the . If we find a match, we use the function to add a reaction to the message. ID USER_ID app.client.reactions.add() Lastly, we add a function that runs when the application starts. This function will start up the Slack App: (async () => {
  const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
  await app.start(port);
  console.log(`⚡️ reacting-bot is running on port ${port}`);
})(); And that’s it! You can now run the app using the command, and the bot will start reacting to messages once it has been added to the correct channels. npm start This is what the final code looks like: const { App } = require("@slack/bolt");
require("dotenv").config();

const app = new App({
  signingSecret: process.env.SIGNING_SECRET,
  token: process.env.TOKEN,
  socketMode: true,
  appToken: process.env.APP_TOKEN,
});

app.message(async ({ message, context }) => {
  if (message.user === process.env.USER_ID) {
    try {
      const result = await app.client.reactions.add({
        token: context.botToken,
        name: "heavy_plus_sign",
        channel: message.channel,
        timestamp: message.ts,
      });
    } catch (error) {
      console.error(error);
    }
  }
});

(async () => {
  const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;

  await app.start(port);

  console.log(`⚡️ reacting-app is running on port ${port}`);
})(); Thanks for checking out this guide! You can view the code for this project on my . GitHub Also published here.

How to Create a Slackbot With JavaScript Bolt

The Nuts and Bolts of Crafting Quality Content

Photo by on Christopher Campbell Unsplash Hey Hackers! I’m and I’m the Mike Todd CEO and Founder of . Near-Life First of all, I’d like to say a huge thank you to the community for recognizing as the winner of: HackerNoon us The Top Startup in Bolton Reporter: What does it mean for you to win this title? HackerNoon There’s been huge development and development and change in the Greater Manchester region over the last two decades - but Bolton, specifically, has faced its own set of challenges. This town has a history of creativity and innovation that we’re proud to be part of and we want to play our part in the revitalization of the area. How do you or your company intend to embrace the responsibility of this title in 2022? Continuing to do what we’re doing. We want to push on with the work we’ve started to make a leading player in the world of interactive and immersive content. We stand by our founding ambition to be the first interactive video and VR authoring tool for everyone. Near-Life What are some of the goals you’re looking forward to accomplishing in 2022 (whether it be through company initiatives or your personal journey)? We’re looking to raise investment this year to take us to the next level of our journey. We have already have users all over the world but we want more people to understand who we are and how we can improve the way content is created and shared. We are still only at the foothills of what interactive video and interactive VR can offer. After participating in this journey, is there anything that you would like the team to know? HackerNoon Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy. You’re constantly trying to communicate your belief to others. Not everything is plain sailing. But it is a rewarding struggle to try and create and build something that you feel can make a difference in the world. What is something special about you or your company that you’ve rarely had the chance to properly share but really wanted to? (Give this one a proper think, I’ll know if you didn’t!) We’re very much rooted in the idea of democratising creativity - empowering our users on their own journey of innovation and creativity. We came from a creative content background and were always inspired by the idea that creativity is part of the human condition, something that we all benefit from. We think our interactive authoring tool has the potential to make the world better at communicating. Ambitious, I know. What are some concepts you wish people knew more about? Interactive video and immersive content is still an emergent space. We spend a lot of time trying to share an understanding of the value it can bring. If people already knew more about that, we’d spend less time making the case of the concept - and be able to fast forward to helping explain why our solution is the best and how it can save time, money, effort - and improve results! Is there anything else you’d like me to know? It can be anything. If you, or anyone, is interested to find out more about what we do at Near-Life…you can sign up for a at any time! demo or free trial For more information: Read the FAQs about or . To see all of the winners you may visit , pick any city and view the name that appears at the top. Or follow for posts with the list of names released over the course of the week of February 14, 2022. Startups here here this site this account Thank you to all of our sponsors! We truly appreciate your contribution to the tech world and thus the future! : Startups , , , , , , , , , , Blockster Brex FreeCodeCamp LaunchDarkly Coil Udacity Udemy Vercel Asia Pacific Transgender Network Bybit Everscale Network

Near-Life is Bolton's Top Startup of 2021

The rise of the internet and social media created a significant impact on our purchasing behavior. A found that there has been a shift in the effectiveness of advertisements in the favor of peer recommendations. Nielsen survey The survey shows that the trust customers place in conventional ads has been on a steady decline. At the time the study was published, only 33 percent of people trusted general advertisements while 90 percent have faith in ‘earned’ advertisements such as peer recommendations, such as . influencer marketing Keeping in mind the study was published in 2011, those numbers may be even more inflated at this point. The initial release of Instagram for iOS happened in 2010, with the Android release following two years later. Seeing how Instagram changed the way online marketing has evolved, it’s currently a no-brainer for companies to use this effective and targeted marketing strategy. Instagram influencers offer access to a huge pool of potential customers. Because every influencer has a certain audience, it makes it cheaper to advertise effectively to your target group. In this article, we’ll discuss tips to find reliable and good influencers that will give you the highest return of investment. Now, how can you start getting a piece of the action? Types of Influencers Celebrities Macro influencers Micro influencers We will mainly focus on the second and third categories. The choice between them depends mostly on the budget. The first category, celebrities, are not a good choice as an effective marketing strategy. A concluded that celebrities are not a good choice as only 3 percent of buyers are influenced by celebrity endorsements. 2016 Collective Bias survey Further, you may be wondering where the difference between macro and micro influencers lies. The difference is based on the following they have: A ‘Macro’ influencer is someone who has managed to build up a following of more than 10,000 followers A ‘Micro’ influencer is someone who has built up a more modest, but still significant number of followers (1000 - 10,000) (Source: Screenshot from SocialBakers about types of influencers) The reason why your business should focus on micro influencers and macro influencers is because the 2016 study we mentioned above demonstrates that 30 percent of customers were more likely to purchase a product by a non-celebrity influencer. A brings forth another important aspect to keep in mind. We are talking about the balance of engagement and reach. Macro influencers may have a greater reach, but micro influencers have much greater engagement from their nice audience. survey by Markerley Macro influencers may have a greater reach, but micro influencers have much greater engagement. If you are selling a specialized product, it may prove to be more effective to opt for a greater number of different micro influencers instead of one single macro influencer. On the other hand, it takes more time to find the different micro influencers in the required niche. But the engagement of the audience of micro influencers means more people will actively come into contact with your product. Another factor that adds to the advantages micro influencers have over celebrities or even macro influencers is their authenticity. Often micro influencers have a narrow scope, but you can be sure they are effectively involved in their niche. This brings authenticity to the table, which is arguably one of the most important aspects of marketing. However, many companies face a challenge when trying to find authentic influencers with an engaged audience. How to Identify the Right Influencers? Picking the wrong influencers can be a costly mistake. Determining whether an influencer is a fit choice for your campaign takes time. There are several metrics to keep in mind when you are targeting influencers. The of their audience: This is probably the most important metric for a business trying to sell a product. Try to aim for influencers who have an for their posts. By engaging we mean, liking, commenting and sharing. engagement engagement rate of at least 2-4% Another important metric is the of the influencer. The overlap between their niche and the as possible. niche niche of your business should be as big The is also an important metric. Does the part of the audience that actively engages with the posts reflect the target audience you are going for? follower quality This is also a metric that shouldn’t be overlooked. If the cost is too high in relation to the possible reach it’ll get, you should probably look further. Post costs. To make your search easier it’s a good idea to use different tools to find suitable influencers. You could use tools like an Instagram influencer platform to quickly search through lists of influencers. A lot of platforms display useful information about the influencers and often offer the possibility to directly reach out to them. Next read? 14 Advanced Techniques for Getting More Instagram Followers Pro Tip: Use an Instagram Audit Tool to Avoid Fake Influencers (Source: Unsplash by Carlos Muza ) Another tool to ease your search for a fitting influencer is an . Using such a tool allows for quickly scanning accounts, discovering the hashtags they focus on, quickly calculating engagement rates across multiple posts. This saves you a lot of time reviewing each account manually. An audit tool can quickly give you a list of the most promising influencers you should further investigate and perhaps contact. Instagram Audit tool An audit tool can quickly give you a list of the most promising influencers you should further investigate. Furthermore, fake Instagram influencers are on the rise. An audit tool can quickly tell you if the engagement rate is normal or whether it is subpar. An account with a lot of fake followers will often have very low engagement. Real Instagram users tend to be able to evaluate accurately which accounts seem not genuine or have a lot of fake followers. Real users will unfollow, leaving the account behind with a majority of fake followers. Another way an Instagram Audit tool can detect fake influencers is by looking at the followers liking and commenting on the posts. If the influencer has an engagement rate of 2-4%, but has a low variety in the followers who comment and like posts, it may be a fake influencer. If it’s always the same people commenting, chances are they’re actually bots. Which Type of Influencer Campaign Should You Choose? There are several types of influencer campaigns you could choose from. Your type of campaign depends on your goals: brand awareness, promote a product, or gain more Instagram followers? Below we’ll discuss several campaigns you could choose from and which benefits they offer. Sponsored Posts This one is probably the most widespread due to its simplicity. The influencer creates a post highlighting your product and you pay them for it. Contests A contest is also a really good idea because it immediately ensures followers are engaged with the post because they can win a product. Branded Content Branded content means the influencer uses your product in an informative way that is engaging to their followers. Branded content is great because it allows the influencer the freedom to be authentic while displaying your product. Reviews Reviews are an optimal choice if you’re bringing a new product to the market. The influencer can then do an in-depth review demonstrating the advantages your product has. Brand Representative Program Sending your product to an influencer is also a great idea because it shows you are confident about your product. It may also be a relatively cheap option because you can use your own product. Influencer Takeover This is when an influencer takes over your Instagram page for a day. This is great when there is a significant overlap between your niche and the niche of the influencer. It can result in a mutual increase in followers. Track the Success of Your Instagram Influencer Campaign Depending on your campaign type, you can monitor different metrics to keep track of the performance of your campaign. For example, when you want to increase your follower count, you can simply track your daily follower growth starting on the day of your campaign. However, if you want to track more advanced metrics such as engagement levels or branded hashtag usage, you should consider using an Instagram analytics tool. Many Instagram analytics tools allow you to track your engagement levels. This correlates directly with the Instagram algorithm and is therefore important to track. If you’ve used branded content, you can also track your brand awareness. Has there been an increase in the number of times your branded hashtags have been used on Instagram since the start of the campaign? The key takeaways of this post include using influencers to do the heavy lifting of your marketing campaign. Finding the best influencers for your business or product can be made easier by using an Instagram influencer platform. And, an Instagram audit tool can help you predict the success of your campaign because it helps you weed out fake influencers. Good luck with your Instagram influencer journey!

Instagram Influencer Marketing: The Nuts and Bolts Of It

The Lightning Network was built around the idea of financial inclusivity. Anyone can make a purchase and should be able to do so pseudonymously. What if conferences and hackathons were structured around these same core principles? As the world’s first online Lightning Network conference and hackathon, that’s exactly what the was designed to be. By hosting the event online, Bolt-A-Thon reaches a world-wide community, sets incredibly affordable ticket prices, and process all payments into Lightning Bitcoin. Bolt-A-Thon Hackathon The first part of the Bolt-A-Thon is for our hackers. They hackathon will start on April 5 with the kick off at 6pm PST and runs through April 7 at 2pm PST. Hackers will be provided a suggested theme and will have two and a half days to build their projects to then present in front of their peers and our judges. First, second, and third place winners will receive respectively. Blockstack PBC will also be offering an additional bounty of for the best project built with Blockstack. 0.3 BTC, 0.2 BTC, and 0.1 BTC $1000 Conference www.boltathon.com The second part of the Bolt-A-Thon is the conference. Our fantastic lineup includes representatives from all three major Lightning Network implementations: from Blockstream, from Lightning Labs, and Fabrice Drouin from ACINQ. This ensures diverse client coverage that will be available for current and future developers. Rusty Russell Conner Fromknecht Not a coder? Not to worry. The Bolt-A-Thon also offers alternative topics such as the Node Launching session with , Lightning Network games with , and even a sobering talk about the limitations of the Lightning Network with . Pierre Rochard Lightning Koala Alex Bosworth Voting One of the unique features of our website is that it allows people to submit posts to become a potential speaker for the Bolt-A-Thon. It also allows people from the community to vote on their favorite topic proposal with satoshis. The top posts will earn a spot to speak at the conference. Ticket Prices So join the Lightning revolution that is taking Bitcoin by storm. are (~$10) per session and to register for the hackathon. And if you don’t have a Lightning wallet, you can always pay on-chain with Bitcoin or Litecoin through submarine swaps. Tickets 250,000 satoshis 100 satoshis Buy Your Tickets Today!

Bolt-A-Thon: World’s First Online Lightning Network Conference and Hackathon

The internet is filled with tutorials to get started with Deep Learning. You can choose to get started with the superb Stanford courses or , or Deep Learning AI if you are an absolute beginner. All except Deep Learning AI are free and accessible from the comfort of your home. All you need is a good computer (preferably with a Nvidia GPU) and you are good to take your first steps into Deep Learning. CS221 CS224 Fast AI courses courses This blog is however not addressing the absolute beginner. Once you have a bit of intuition about how Deep Learning algorithms work, you might want to understand how things work below the hood. While most work in Deep Learning (the 10% apart from Data Munging viz 90% of total work) is adding layers like Conv2d, changing hyperparameters in different types of optimization strategies like ADAM or using batchnorm and other techniques just by writing one line commands in Python (thanks to the awesome frameworks available), a lot of the people might feel a deep desire to know what happens behind the scenes. This is the list of resources which might help you get to know what happens inside the hood when you (say) put a conv2d layer or call T.grad in Theano. General Treatise Deep Learning Book is of course the most famous and well-known . Other good resources are Professor Charniak’s and which is a technical introduction to Deep Learning. There are other resources too which you might want to take up if you want to understand things from a particular perspective. For example, the was written from point of applied mathematicians and if you just want to start coding without going into any theory then read . One more recommended resource is Deep Learning course in PyTorch . This course talks about things bottom up and help you grab a bigger perspective. resource course paper tutorial here here Issues about Backpropogation There are many a time, when people are not sure about “how is gradient descent and backpropogation the same thing ?” or “what exactly is the chain rule and backpropogation?”. To understand the basics, we might choose to read the original paper by Rumelhart, Hinton, and Williams where it all started. The paper is located and is a very simple to understand document. here Some other very useful resources one can read on top of this are Karpathy’s blog on backward and explaining backprop’s derivation. prop derivation this video Linear Algebra and other Maths Anyone would redirect someone aspiring to learn Linear Algebra to goto Prof. Strang’s . This is probably the best resource on Linear Algebra on the planet. Similar is the case with Optimization course of Prof. Boyd or Calculus on Manifolds book for vector calculus (You can find a pdf when you Google “Calculus on Manifolds”). However, one doesn’t need to go through the depth at which these resources look at their subjects to jump into Deep learning. A very quick way to get started is to take the quick refresher on all prerequisite Calculus for Deep Learning which is available . There is also this very good set of to just look at convex optimization used in Deep Learning. Another good resource is Sebastian Reuder’s paper . I also like these lecture notes to understand derivatives on . course here here lecture notes here tensors Automatic Differentiation and Deep learning libraries Automatic Differentiation isn’t something that you absolutely need to know when you are doing Deep Learning. Most frameworks like Torch, Theano or tensorflow do it for you automatically. In most cases, you don’t even have to know how the differentiation is being done. That said, if you are determined to understand how Deep Learning frameworks work, you might want to understand how automatic differentiation works . Other good resources to understand how Deep Learning libraries function are can be found in this and . here blog video Convolutional Neural Networks: The most useful things you might need after you have done some courses which enable you to use basic convents is to understand how convolutions work on images. “What is output shape after you apply a certain type of convolutions on an input ?” , “How does stride affect convolutions ?”, “What is Batch Normalization ?” and stuff like that. The two best resources I have seen for these type of applied questions are the tutorial and Ian Goodfellow’s talk . A more thorough on Convnets is here if you want to get an idea. This is a very good resource in the topic. here here review review on object detection Deep Learning in NLP The Stanford 224 course I pointed out earlier in the blog is a very good starting point and you should be good enough for almost everything. There is also a course on youtube by Graham Neubig (which uses dynet) . There is also an by Yoav Goldberg which you might like. (Newer) advances of NLP after this book was written are reviewed . There is also a very common question about whether to use convnets or RNNs (LSTMs/GRUs) on text. A good overview is . here NLP book here here Reinforcement Learning Sutton and Barto is the bible to get started with these methods. The book is free and is available . A very good review of recent Deep Reinforcement Learning methods is available . There is this very interesting tutorial on Reinforcement Learning . here here here A good review of Monte Carlo Tree Search (which is a part of AlphaGo algorithm by Deepmind apart from Deep Reinforcement Learning techniques) is . I, however, used quick tutorial to learn about them. here this Some other good reviews/tutorials A good tutorial about GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) and generative models in general is what Goodfellow gave in ICLR 2016. It can be found . Neural Networks have been used to transfer art (for example in Prisma app), a detailed survey of methods to do that can be found . Another good survey on Multi Task Learning (combining multiple tasks by same neural network) by Reuder is here here here . Criticisms Although Deep Learning works amazingly well on multiple problems, we know there will always be some places where they have not reached yet. Some good criticisms to read are Failures of gradient-based learning by , this talk by Hinton which lists some difficulties for and how convnets cannot decipher negatives of images . Another criticism here went viral/controversial few days back is . There is also on the malicious use of Deep Learning. Shalev-Shwartz et al. convnets they train on this this extensive report Adversarial Examples This is a huge field of making artificial/real data points that can fool Convnets. I could have put it in in criticism sections but didn’t as they are not a technical challenge for all applications and I am not very well read on them. One very cool case to get started and interested is where they generate “adversarial objects” to fool neural networks. here You can also read about Machine Learning algorithms you should know to become a Data Scientist . here We hope you liked the article. Please for a free ParallelDots account to start your AI journey. You can also check demo’s of PrallelDots AI APIs . Sign Up here You can read the original article . here _Read writing about Deep Learning in Hacker Noon. how hackers start their afternoons._hackernoon.com Deep Learning - Hacker Noon

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