I spoke with <strong>theSkimm</strong> cofounders Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin on how they’re furthering <strong>theSkimm</strong>&#x27;s mission and effecting industry and social change in new ways.

In Dialogue: theSkimm Cofounders Danielle Weisberg And Carly Zakin On Risking It All And Redefining News Media For Women, Part 2

Yesterday, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a measure shielding IVF providers, clinics, and patients from legal liability.

Alabama has a new law aimed at protecting in vitro fertilization (IVF). | theSkimm

theSkimm is a mission-driven media company dedicated to giving millennial women the information they need to live their smartest lives

theSkimm

I founded to help every developer advance their career. Raise.dev It started with a pilot that kicked off last year. The goal was to help early-career developers overcome the experience gap and get their first jobs in industry. I'm proud to report that the results have been outstanding: 100% job offer rate (highlights: DigitalOcean, thoughtbot, American Airlines, theSkimm) $53k/year average increase to base salary (equity, health insurance, perks excluded) Six months average time to job offer (from three to ten months) The developers came from a wide range of backgrounds: 100% from underrepresented groups in technology Education: From no college to masters degree Gender: Majority identify as women Age: 20s to 40s Parents Transitioning from established careers Today, we're opening our doors for early-access and inviting you to to advance your developer career. join the network The Experience Gap Breaking into a career as a software developer is a classic chicken-and-egg problem: it's next to impossible to get a job without relevant work experience and it's equally, if not more difficult, to get the necessary experience without a job. There's no doubt that the barrier to entry for programming has drastically reduced in the last decade. Software development is more accessible as a career in large part thanks to the deluge of free and inexpensive online resources and the rise in popularity of trade school style coding bootcamps. Even so, early-career developers still face the paradoxical "experience gap" when applying for their first jobs. Studying Didn't Help I've heard repeatedly from developers struggling to get their first job due to a lack of experience and I personally experienced the same challenge in my career. When I was starting out, I applied to close to 30 software developer roles and I was consistently turned away due to a lack of experience. So, the question is, I've spent many years trying to answer this question in service of my own career. "how do I get the skills I need to advance my career as a developer?" My first crack at it was to go the academic route. I racked up a mountain of debt studying computer science at a private university. The experience was somewhat valuable, but school didn't prepare me for a job in the industry. I also tried to teach myself. I read books and tutorials. I worked on side projects. Progress was unbearably slow. I'd spend hours and sometimes days or weeks at an impasse because I lacked some fundamental understanding that was necessary to solve my problem. Solving Real Problems with People My biggest leaps forward as a developer always came from working with people to solve real problems. A few years before I got into the industry I was lucky enough to make friends who were more experienced developers. They helped me get into Linux and build some small web applications with PHP. Most people aren't so lucky to have ready access to experienced people who are willing to help. The biggest step change in my ability as a developer came from an experience with a coworker. I needed to upgrade an open source web framework on a widely-used production application. It was uncharted territory for me and incredibly daunting. Any misstep could cause a major outage. Someone that I looked up to volunteered to pair program with me on the project. It was the first time I had ever pair programmed. They helped me write automated tests and make the necessary changes one by one, each time fully verifying that there were no adverse side effects. We managed to complete the upgrade, but what stuck with me were these new techniques that completely changed how I program. They're commonplace to experienced developers. While you can learn about pair programming and testing in school, the techniques don't really sink in and become useful until you've been able to apply them in the real world. That pairing session was the most impactful learning experience of my developer career. It gives me confidence that the best way to learn is by doing the work with guidance from an experienced collaborator. The Obvious Solution: Give People Jobs I've spent my career at the intersection of software development and education. I've worked in ed-tech, helped start an ,  marketed , and given millions of students . online university APIs by teaching free access to real-world developer tools The problem of the experience gap had been troubling me for some time. I put care and thought into how to help early-career developers overcome the seemingly insurmountable hurdle. I came to a simple, albeit impractical, conclusion: just give people jobs. If they have a job they will get experience and, in turn, will become more hireable. Last year, I decided to see what would happen if I did just that. I announced that I was hiring for a Software Developer Apprentice and within a week I had more than 500 qualified candidates. on Twitter To be qualified didn't require experience, but it did require knowing how to code, being highly motivated, and having a demonstrated need for the opportunity. At first I was surprised, but it seems obvious now that there would be essentially infinite demand for such an opportunity. I originally intended to work with one person, but there were so many deserving candidates that I ended up selecting a small group. I found that the time I spent with the apprentices was both rewarding and impactful. Giving early-career developers real projects and providing hands-on support gave them the experience they needed to get hired by some great companies. All of the apprentices who participated in the pilot received job offers for full-time developer roles from great companies including DigitalOcean, thoughtbot, American Airlines, and theSkimm. Connecting Candidates, Coaches, and Project It's not practical for us to hire every developer candidate – that would never scale. Instead, we been hard at work building a platform to connect developer Candidates with expert Coaches to work on real-world Projects. The platform involves three major components. Candidates, Coaches, and Projects: Candidates get exposure to the tools and techniques that are essential for a career in industry. Coaches give back, learn valuable leadership skills, and also solidify their skills through pair programming, code review, teaching, and mentoring. Projects involve helping non-profits, contributing to open source, and doing real work with engineering teams from our hiring partners. Early-access for Candidates Begins Today Following on from the success from the pilot, we're opening the doors to the platform to developer Candidates for early-access. Starting today, you can to be matched with a Coach who will help you create and execute a personal project-based learning plan. Raise.dev is free during early-access. sign up We're excited to help you advance your careeer. . Meet your Coach Also published on: https://raise.dev/blog/bridging-the-developer-experience-gap

How to Bridge the Developer Experience Gap with raise.dev

Each day is an opportunity to do better, live better, grow, learn more, and be more. Seize it. The first hour after you wake up sets the tone of your entire day, so it’s vital to make the most of it. These tools can help you seize opportunities, achieve goals, and become the person you want to be. From news to wisdom to self-development, for fun and for business, these apps, newsletters, and routines can help you live a little more every day. 1. Shine Shine is the mindful living app to help you set a mood each morning. This tool sends a daily text message with a quote, piece of advice, helpful article, or suggested action that you can try that day to freshen up your routine and help you see things from a new perspective. 2. Highbrow Highbrow teaches you something new every day. As you sip your morning coffee and rub the sleep from your eyes, Highbrow delivers a short, 5-minute email lesson to help you learn anything from art and philosophy, to business and personal development. Lessons are delivered one-at-a-time, for 10 days, and are followed by fun, knowledge-testing quizzes at the end of each course. With over 250 courses in the Highbrow catalog, you’ll never run out of new things to learn. 3. The Five Minute Journal App Capturing daily moments is the only way to fully appreciate the bounty in your life. The Five Minute Journal app specifically reminds you to take time out of your busy day-to-day to reflect on the good, learn from the bad, and capture the magical moments that really matter. Daily journaling has been shown to increase life satisfaction, decrease feelings of stress, anxiety, loneliness, and depression, and to help people improve the record of their life’s milestones. 4. theSkimm There’s a lot going on in the world, and The Skimm is designed to help you make sense of it all. The Skimm is a daily inbox newsfeed to give you context about current events, in less than 10 minutes each morning. Wake up to a quick and easy-to-understand summary of big topics that people will be talking about, and save yourself the trouble of picking through news that you don’t want to find the news that you need. 5. Blinkist Thousands of books are published every day, from experts all over the world, on topics that affect your life. How could you possibly read them all? Blinkist might be the answer. Choose from their database of thousands of nonfiction books, and read/listen to 15-minute summaries of each book’s content. 6. Poncho Sure, there are plenty of boring weather apps, and you’ve probably had experience using a weather app that was wildly inaccurate. But there’s nothing quite like Poncho — the personalized, entertaining, and (actually) helpful weather app that livens up your day. 7. Headspace They say that life happens in each breath. Headspace is a daily meditation program to help you learn how to control your breath, improve your life, and think your way to an overall better experience. A handy, progressive guided meditation app that helps beginners learn to focus inward, while challenging more experienced users to take their meditations to new levels. Choose from meditation courses that specifically help you control food cravings, lower anxiety, improve sleep quality, and more. 8. Morning Brew Like to start your day with a coffee and business news? Then you need the Morning Brew. A daily email newsletter that arrives every morning just in time for your morning cup o’ Joe, and an easy way to catch up on what’s going on in business and technology, so you can stay ahead of the day. The world didn’t stop while you slept, and you can’t afford to fall behind. Instead, get your Morning Brew of business news topics that interest and affect you. 9. 7 Minute Workout Just seven minutes of movement each day can improve your overall health and well being. That’s the philosophy and science behind the 7 Minute Workout. A guided series of exercises that require no equipment and use your own body weight and resistance, this workout is easy for anyone, anywhere, without working up (too much) of a sweat. As an overall body workout, or to focus on toning areas you’re most concerned with, this routine is a great way to start the day with your workout already checked off your list. 10. Finimize “Finance doesn’t have to be rocket science.” That’s what they say at Finimize. This email newsletter boils down each day’s essential financial news topics and delivers them to you in bite-sized updates you can absorb in three minutes or less. If you like this post, you might also like these posts: _The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in…_medium.com The 30 Best Websites To Expand Your General Knowledge _“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”_medium.com Best Learning Tools for Those with Short Attention Spans _For those who don’t know, a New Year’s resolution is a tradition, in which a person makes a promise to do an act of…_medium.com 25 Best Websites To Help You Stick To Your New Year’s Resolution in 2018

10 Tools to Upgrade Your Morning Routine

You have the time to read these? Is the of reading in the dystopian world of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 in which are banned, or is it in the foreseeable event where our reading habit gets ‘condensed’ into short reads only?The first English novel “Pamela” by Samuel Richardson was published in 1740. It took another hundred years before yellowbacks or paperbacks made their appearance. Paperbacks introduced people to a new genre of reading-affordable leisure reading. future books By the end of the 19th century, there was a flood of paperbacks in the market. All of a sudden, there was too much content to read in early 20th century, just as it is so in the 21st century. So Much to Read and So Little Time To cope with the problem of , condensed formats made their appearance in the form of book reviews with Ralph Griffith’s The Monthly Review in 1749, followed by The Quarterly Review in 1809. This need for condensed information then led to the advent of the modern encyclopedia in early 20th century. In 1922, an icon was born to help people read ‘curated and condensed articles’- With its core proposition of helping people read more in lesser time using condensed articles, Reader’s Digest became the world’s highest selling paid subscription magazine and has stayed in that position for almost a century now. “so much to read and so little time” DeWitt Wallace introduced Reader’s Digest to the world. Wallace then followed up with Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, a quarterly publication that condensed few of the popular books of the day. In a sense, tl;dr (the youngsters’ lingo of “too long; didn’t read”) began as early as the 1920s! Close to 100 years later, today, in 2016, we are still in the tl;dr world. Do not have the time to read the newspaper? There’s inshorts app for you in India and theSkimm daily newsletter in America. Do not have the patience to watch a 2.5 hours movie — there are short movies like Ouch and Ahalya on . Do not have the time to read books in their entirety, you have apps that convert non-fiction books into snackable bites or short summaries. YouTube tl;dr is Not a Fad So when folks wring their hand and despair that the youngsters today are not reading as much as their previous generations, you can sit back and relax. And what about these apps that summarize books so that you do not need to read them? Well, Reader’s Digest saw it as an opportunity in 1922, and the world surely is a better place with Reader’s Digest. Too many books to read and too little time as a problem statement goes back to early 20th century-it’s at least a 100 years old problem. The Future of Reading People will continue to read. And that, clearly, is good news. What will keep changing is the content (long format/short format/tl;dr format) and the container (paper/screen/audio). If they like what they see in their few minutes of skimming, they will possibly dive deep into the content. Whether authors and publishing industry like it or not, sampling will be the gateway to reading books or long format content in the future-just like it was 100 years ago. What is equally likely to happen is people (including people who do not enjoy reading) will use tl;dr content and screens to ‘sample’ content. I am pivoting my reading hobby with bookbhook.com - a product designed for the tl;dr world.This post was first published on anureviews.com

tl;dr is 100 years old

Update (March 2016): I wrote this a many months — maybe in December — way before I launched the Snack app . I never published this story but rereading it, it still resonates and hints at key tenant that describes what I enjoy building. We have since pivoted Snack in order to experiment on chat platforms. I’m fascinated about what the next social network might look like, starting by asking the simple question: What if there was a way to connect with people every day, for 10–15 minutes, around a topic? What would this experience feel like? Would this make me a more knowledgeable person — a decent person, like I described about reading? I don’t know. But if you want to get involved or follow the journey, you can sign up at http://snackapp.co Me reading stories in Snack, waiting for coffee. It . I’m sitting at the dining table waiting for the water to boil. I could be any kitchen, waiting for water to boil: Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Capitol Hill, Seattle; or Big Sky, Montana. But on this morning, I am in the city where the fog is a celebrity — it has 191K Instagram followers, 97K on Twitter, and a name. Karl comes in horizontal through the kitchen window. is 5:45am It feels crisp. It’s nice. In three minutes, the water will be at a full boil, ready to pour over ground coffee. Coffee is how I start my day. Followed by a shower. Then a bike ride through the city. Then work. But peppered between these activities (and sometimes during) I am on my phone accomplishing the most important task that will get me ready for the day. I am reading. Reading notifications. Reading messages from family and friends. Reading emails from co-workers and publishers. It is said that . But regular people (like you and me) still make thousands of less planned decisions throughout the day. Work. Family. Friends. What technology to use? Which design is better? What to eat for lunch? Where to travel with the family next? All of these decisions will be based on what you have learned and what you know — usually as a result of some form of media, notification, or word of mouth. This is where keeping up on emails, even those seemingly lesser important ones, stuffed away in your promotions tab, come in. truly successful people have morning routines When you think about it — truly think about the importance of reading each morning — it can be distilled by a few ideas: to stay connected with friends; to catch-up on news; to be entertain by something; to learn. The latter, I believe, is important for me to kick start my day. The kettle is whistling. I love making coffee. The original Philz’s 1 cup at a time ;) Today I learned [blank, blah, something]. Does it affect or hugely impact my day? No. But does it feel good to be a little bit more informed? Yes. For me, I read each morning, between the coffee, the shower, and bike ride because everyday I awake wanting (or at least trying) to be a more knowledgeable person — a decent person. It doesn’t take much time. — — — Some of my favorite publishers: StrictlyVC If you’re in the tech startup world and want to be “in the know”, yet dislike the overwhelming fire hose of real-time information, then I recommend reading this publisher for your morning catch-up. Food52 I have to eat every day, and luckily I love cooking. I’m a visual cook and sometimes I need a to cook something new for dinner. bit of inspiration Longform When I have a little more time, I love to sink into a long essay or article. Longform does a great job of finding the internet’s best. It can be anything from an or an old . extreme athletic’s tragic love affair murder at a lake town theSkimm This popular daily publisher summarizes interesting articles about news, tech, and current events. It helps me stay on top of the things I didn’t even know I should be on top of. Priceonomics Data-driven stories about curious things, like the or the reason’s behind , are captured by this publisher. economy of bike thefts San Francisco’s rent explosion Love newsletters but hate how they get lost in your inbox? Snack (iOS) helps your overwhelmed inbox by organizing your newsletters & daily deals for you. Download Snack (it’s free) : https://bnc.lt/snack-medium Many thanks to and for editing the original story. Jessie Beck Kyla Ernst-Apler Update (March 2016): I wrote this a many months — maybe in December — way before I launched the Snack app . I never published this story but rereading it, it still resonates and hints at key tenant that describes what I enjoy building. We have since pivoted Snack in order to experiment on chat platforms. I’m fascinated about what the next social network might look like, starting by asking the simple question: What if there was a way to connect with people every day, for 10–15 minutes, around a topic? What would this experience feel like? Would this make me a more knowledgeable person — a decent person, like I described about reading? I don’t know. But if you want to get involved or follow the journey, you can sign up at http://snackapp.co

Why I Built Snack (iOS app) … and a Update About Why I’ve Pivoted into Chat

Let's learn about via these 50 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Libra /Learn Repo 1. Is this the best time to buy Bitcoin or not? The recent rally has affected many market participants; at such moments, many people are influenced by the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) effect. But an understanding crypto investor, clearly aware that it's just only beginning. 2. Libra Investment Token: Crazy ROI The main focus on Libra so far was the stablecoin - a digital currency pegged to a basket of underlying assets. If the pegging mechanism works as intended, Libra coin won't undergo any crazy crypto pumps & dumps. Holders of Libra coin probably won't face any bigger risk than holding cash. This of course also means they won't make any money on the coin. 3. Facebook's Libra Means the Death of Privacy Picture a dystopian society. What do you see? Are you imagining a world with the aesthetic of Blade Runner 2077 or a similarly Cyberpunk-esque environment? 4. Libra (or the Announced Failure of a Pseudo-cryptocurrency) With Paypal withdrawn and Visa and Mastercard soon to follow suit, the death knell has sounded for Facebook’s cryptocurrency, Libra. Here’s an analysis of what happened in just 4 months. 5. Is Facebook Putting Digital Identity At Risk With Libra? Here’s Why It Raises Privacy Concerns Last month, Facebook finally disclosed details of its much-hyped cryptocurrency, Libra. After generating an immense amount of chatter, the company announced that the digital currency, set to launch in 2020, will enable people to buy things or send money to others with almost zero fees. 6. Some Insights into Facebook's Libra Consensus Method and How it Compares to other BFTs While there has been plenty of talk about the regulatory and privacy implications, there has been little public dialogue about the technology behind Facebook’s new digital currency. Can regulators concerns about privacy be alleviated upon closer inspection of Facebook’s new digital currency? 7. How Facebook Stablecoin Libra Could Replace all Current Stablecoins Facebook recently announced their new Libra cryptocurrency, a stablecoin set to launch in 2020 which will initially let users transfer money between Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp applications. However, the larger goal of Libra is to transform the global economy. In conjunction with other companies and partners that make up the Libra Association, including payments companies, technology companies, marketplaces, and venture capitalist firms, Libra has the potential to do just that. Having been involved in the cryptocurrency industry for the last couple of years there is definitely a reason to doubt how decentralized Libra truly is and if it can even be considered a cryptocurrency. However, one thing is certain, given the proposed makeup of Libra it could ultimately replace all current stablecoins, and quickly. 8. What Makes Facebook’s Libra More Centralized? 9. The Facebook Fake-Waves of Libra Scams. There’s a new wave of dozen fake accounts, groups and pages which are spread across Facebook and Instagram. — Claiming and trying to sell Facebook’s latest cryptocurrency Libra everywhere across the social platforms. 10. Did Libra announcement impact the price of BTC? Last week, the price of BTC rose extensively, jumping to almost 13k. It was perfect timing for the organizers of the BTC2019 conference in San Francisco. 11. Finally Congress grasps crypto Occasionally an investigation turns up a piece of evidence that is unexpected, and is in fact more valuable that the information that is actually being sought. It could be said that last week’s Congressional hearings into Facebook’s Libra did just that. 12. How The Hotstuff Protocol is NOT Secure? Each participant stores a tree of pending commands locally, in addition to the state variables viewNumber (starting at 1, stores the highest QC it voted to pre-commit), and prepareQC (starts at nil), lockedQC (starts at nil, stores the highest QC it voted to commit). When a “new-view” or round starts, a public function determines the leader from the current participants. 13. Accounting & regulations for businesses that integrate Libra The lack of transparency has been a growing problem for crypto-based companies. For most of them, it is a nightmare just to meet basic regulatory needs like finding an accountant, opening a bank account, getting audited and certified compliant. The main challenge lies in the fact that most accounting practices and financial reporting guidelines are formulated for traditional FIAT currency based businesses. There is a lack of clearly defined standards and practices for businesses dealing in tokens and cryptocurrencies. 14. Chain reaction: What will the next decade of blockchain look like? For a mechanical entity that nobody was aware of just three years ago, blockchain has certainly come a long way. Bitcoin’s rise in popularity turned the blockchain technology that drives it firmly into the limelight, but what does the future hold for this brave new world? 15. Is Facebook's Libra Even a Cryptocurrency? When Facebook first publicised its plans to launch a new 'decentralised' digital currency in 2019, Libra, many people were surprised at the news. Few months after Libra's announcement, Facebook released its official whitepaper to the general populace, and eyebrows were raised. 16. Business Model Innovation And The Future Of Crypto In his essay, Fred Wilson wrote in AVC blog about technical innovation, business model innovation, and the last two big waves we had in the tech industry: 17. Digital Euro (CBDCs): Closer To Reality Than You Think The ECB (European Central Bank) has published a report stating
the digital euro is getting closer to be launched. It gives an overview of a
possible roadmap for implementing the digital euro as well as the advantages and disadvantages of a digital currency in the euro zone. 18. Facebook’s Libra Currency ‘Big Tech’ are coming for our banks, but should we be worried? 19. Olaf Scholz vs. Facebook's Libra Vice-chancellor and Germany's finance minister, Olaf Scholz, says ‘No’ to Facebook, ‘Yes!” to digital currency. 20. Why The Death of Libra May be a Good Thing For The Crypto Landscape Facebook’s Libra project had promised to spark a global financial revolution that would bring unprecedented inclusivity and borderless banking. Within months, Mark Zuckerberg’s stablecoin dream was in tatters. But the death of Libra may turn out to be a positive thing for the crypto landscape. 21. This Decade, The Masses Will Not Be Able to Avoid Digital Currencies Over the past decade, cryptocurrency has become a term that everyone recognizes. Whether it registers as some far-out concept that has something to do with invisible money, or whether you are a crypto geek who belongs to exchange platforms and follows various currencies religiously. 22. Cryptocurrencies as Money: Evolution of Stablecoins and What's Next Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are backed by other assets to achieve a stable value, which creates untold opportunity for the way humans interact with money as they have the benefits of cryptocurrency (borderless, secure, low cost) while protecting the users from volatile price action. They often represent real money (GBP, USD etc) and for this reason are more easily understood by a global audience. 23. How to Build a Stablecoin To Compete with Libra In my Libra project analysis report ( A Business Analysis of the Libra Project), I pointed out that there is still a very good opportunity to develop a new stablecoin that competes with Libra. The Libra project is definitely not the end of the stablecoin project, but a milestone in this process. More stablecoin projects will appear to provide more stablecoin products for the market. In terms of the mechanism for generating stablecoins, other stablecoin products can be substantially different from Libra. In terms of application scenarios of stablecoin, a more suitable application scenario can also be adopted. In view of the fact that stablecoin is still at a very early stage and all the risks of the Libra project, other stablecoin products still have a very high probability of success. As long as the correct strategy is adopted in the design of stablecoin, promotion organization and adoption scenario, it is very likely that the new stablecoin can be better accepted by the market. This article discusses some of the factors related to the new stablecoin. [24. Making Good Money: The Coming Synthetic Hegemonic Currency](https://hackernoon.com/making-good-money-the-coming-synthetic-hegemonic-currency-yff4v32xw) Caption: James Gillray, The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, 22 May 1797, public domain, courtesy of the Bank of England 25. LIBRA- Decoding Facebook Cryptocurrency In 7 Questions The American giant must present Tuesday its cryptocurrency project. While waiting for its launch scheduled for 2020, the future “libra”, conceived in partnership with 27 groups, raises many questions: how can we buy them? How will it work? Who to regulate it? 26. Wake Up and Smell These #TopTechStories 🍏 27. How Libra Changed the Design and Expectations for Other Digital Currencies What should digital currency operators consider before creating one ? 28. Interview With Cosmas Wong: Don’t Fear Skynet, Libra Catapulted Crypto Awareness in Masses Cosmas Wong is a tech entrepreneur and investor who created companies for more than 20 years. He is the founder of Grey Jean Technologies; the genesis of the GNY platform, and also of other strong technology companies. I had the opportunity to make that interview with him, and we discussed the problems of AI, blockchain, and crypto adoption as well as his business ideas. 29. 10 Data-Driven Predictions for Bitcoin, Stocks, and Commodities in 2020 It's a brand-new year, and oh man, 2020 has a lot on its plate. Last year, we witnessed the benchmark S&P 500 surge almost 29%, crude oil rallied 35% and the bitcoin price nearly doubled since the beginning of the year. [30. Facebook & the Libra Effect: The New Importance of Privacy in Online Marketplaces](https://hackernoon.com/facebook-and-the-libra-effect-the-new-importance-of-privacy-in-online-marketplaces-esfj3y5p) Members of the Libra Association, a group of 28 companies and not-for-profit groups including and brought together by Facebook may soon have the power to forever change the history of the online marketplace worldwide. The Senate and House hearings in Washington July 18th and 19th - as theatrical as they were - may still only be a subtle indication of the grand ramifications of a marketplace where privacy does not exist for buyers and sellers. 31. Libra is The Offshore Oil Rig of Data Collection. Drill Baby Drill. Libra Is Not A Gateway Cryptocurrency 32. Libra untangled: what lies behind facebook's digital currency project - PART I Libra - Facebook´s digital currency project - has been a very populartalk lately. Even US President Trump tweeted about it. But few have looked at what may be the hidden implicationsof Facebook´s project. 33. Libra Starts the End of Public Chains In my previous article (So Many Public Chains, So Few Dapps), I pointed it out that too many public chains was one of the reasons that there were so few Dapps. App developers really do not want to develop their apps for so many blockchains. 34. What I learned from Ethereum Devcon5 The Ethereum Foundation Devcon is the most important annual gathering of developers, designers, and researchers in the Ethereum ecosystem. This year’s Devcon5 in Osaka, Japan is the 5th Devcon, and as in past years, it is a bellwether of what to come in Ethereum. 35. Is Libra a Paper Tiger? Of course, Libra is not a paper tiger. Otherwise it won’t cause theimmediate concern of global financial regulatory bodies and central banks, as well as the hearings by United States congress. But, this project indeed has inherent risks which make it very vulnerable. There is a good chance that it may get seriously delayed or may be forced to shut down if it cannot deal with these risks appropriately. If, unfortunately, it is forced to stop, then its short period of existence is then really a paper tiger. 36. Libra: The Ideavirus The lid on the fabled "Facebook coin" project has been finally lifted in the middle of June. Libra, a name evoking an ancient unit of weight, scales of justice and a somewhat clever jab at Winklevoss' Gemini, has already been written about extensively. 37. Learning from the Past to Create a Modern Financial System for the Digital Age The global financial system is comprised of a framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic actors that together facilitate international flows of financial capital for purposes of investment and trade financing. Our current global financial systems are based on a series of historical events and innovations that brought us to where we are today. Historical markers such as the first minted coin, the use of paper money, the adoption of the US dollar as the international reserve currency, abandonment of the gold standard, and the ubiquity of mobile payments have all greatly influenced the way we exchange and store value on a micro and macro scale. 38. Comparing Algorand and Libra: The Road to Decentralization August 12, 2019 39. Resources: Programming Ownership on The Blockchain Smart contracts are a unique class of software explicitly designed to manage ownership of valuable digital assets. While existing programming environments can be used to keep track of the ownership of assets, they are most typically used in scenarios where they are reflecting ownership rather than defining it directly. Smart contracts are unique in that the value they represent is often embodied directly in the state they maintain. 40. How to Mint Stablecoins Based on Bitcoin? The Libra project raised market’s attention to stablecoin to an unprecedented level. It not only forces global financial regulatory bodies and central banks to take necessary measures, but also stimulates market’s enthusiasm in developing more stablecoins. Since Libra’s project scope is too large, it assumes a lot of risks. There is a big uncertainty in its future. But, Libra’s design and its experience can certainly be learned by other stablecoin projects. Better designed and more feasible stablecoins can be brought to the market. 41. Will Facebook and Telegram Kill Bitcoin and Ethereum? 2019 has marked itself not only with the end of the crypto winter but also with time when established technology companies entered the blockchain field. Telegram is going to release its own blockchain with the goal of processing millions of transactions per second. Facebook plans to introduce Libra coin to facilitate payments for 1.7 billion unbanked but connected people. 42. What lies ahead for crypto-exchanges in 2020? Experts' opinion on the trade war, halving, and Libra The mid-term results for the cryptographic industry in 2019 still remain uncertain. On one hand, market capitalization increased by 125 per cent in the second quarter alone. On the other, users have already lost more than $4 billion this year due to the actions of hackers and scammers, which is more than the entire year of 2018. It is unlikely that 2019 will meet the original expectations. Yet, experts predict a lot of interesting happenings for crypto exchanges in 2020. 43. Facebook's Libra And China: The Real Scenario Photo Credit: Christoph Scholz Flickr via Compfight ccThe people and government of China should be mostly concerned about Facebook’s intended launch of the Libra. The story didn’t just end there because Facebook said that in addition to Libra, the project will also issue a “Libra investment token.” 44. Facebook Libra: on the 4 steps road for World Presidency... Something changed on the 18th of June 2019. The day that Libra went public. Facebook’s long rumoured cryptocurrency project, which has rallied 28 world-leading partners, came out of the closet, and with it this new asset class seems to have landed its first concrete, large scale application. With over 2.7 billion users spread across all of its platforms1(Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram), and in response to recent strides into the payment sector and digital wallets by the likes of Samsung, Apple and Tencent, it was time for the group led by Mark Zuckerberg to finally wade into the great cryptocurrency arms race unfolding before us. 45. To Libra or not To Libra An interesting fact about Libra Facebook’s native currency which was announced June 18th, it’s inspired from three distinct elements: the Roman weight measurement system, the astrological sign for justice, and the French term  for freedom. 46. Everything wrong with Ethereum in 2019 The purpose of this state of the union is the criticize aspects of the Ethereum project and bring awareness to fixable issues while combating general ignorance of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. 47. Facebook’s Libra Coin and PayPal's “Commitment Issues” MasterCard and PayPal Backing out of the Promised $10M Investments and more... 48. Libra, Frax, The Battle of the Centuries and The Rise of The Meta-Dollar Alfred Owen Crozier 1912, on the "Aldrich Plan," 49. The Complete Guide to Stablecoins in 2019 50. Everything Wrong with Bitcoin in 2019 This editorial was first published in Coinmonks, now re-syndicated with permission and discretion of the original author to reach wider audiences. Thank you for checking out the 50 most read stories about Libra on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

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In this post, we study the Survivorship bias — the danger to concentrate your data analysis solely on existing power users — explain the potentially harmful consequences and present actions to overcome it. This article is part of a series about defeating bias as a Product Manager. When focusing exclusively on current users' data, you harm your prioritization process. Product Management is complex. You have to decide on the product’s fate while listening to various stakeholders with each different set of requirements. The prioritization of your roadmap is made even more difficult by conflicting sources of information. You might want to purely focus on your current user data usage to make “objective” decisions, but sometimes cognitive bias prevents you from thinking clearly. Definition of Cognitive Biases: “By cognitive bias, we mean cases in which human cognition reliably produces representations that are ” ( ) [1] systematically distorted compared to some aspect of objective reality Haselton et al., 2015 Cognitive Bias — Why what your brain thinks is not true — Photo by TheImmeasurable Being aware of how your brain can trick you will help you make a better decision. In this post, we look into the survivorship bias: 1) Survivorship bias intro 2) Survivorship bias in the Product Management field 3) Two real-life examples of Survivorship bias 1) The Survivorship Bias 1.1) World War II (WW2) bombers analysis To introduce survivorship bias, we will present its most prominent examples. During WW2, engineers examined the planes that were dropping bombs coming back from the battlefield. Analyzing the bombers, engineers realized the aircraft had bullet holes everywhere except the cockpit and the engines. Bullet holes pattern from the WW2 bombers analysis — Photo by SteveMurch Based on this pattern, they decided to reinforce the aircrafts in the areas where they had the most bullet holes to make them bulletproof. From this analysis, they strengthened everything but the cockpit and the turbine. The problem was actually when a bomber was shot in those two sections it never made it back to its base as it crashed on the battlefield. Therefore, the analysis focused on survivors without considering the bombers buried in the sea. What they had to do is armouring the planes where the bullet holes were not. WWII is a dramatic example of survivorship biases, but you will find more frequently than not real-life examples in your day-to-day as a product manager. It can often happen in your workplace and can have terrible consequences on your ability to make good decisions. 1.2) Survivorship bias definition: The concentration on the people who “survived” a process and inadvertently overlooking those who did not survive because of their lack of visibility. ( ) appliedframeworks.com For Product Managers with this bias, this implies an over-confidence in prevailing clients’ demands and preferences rather than examining the total addressable market requirements. 2) Survivorship bias in the Product Management field Survivorship bias happens in Product Management when you concentrate your user research, testing, and analytics on users who are the most active (power users). The power users tend to be more positive about your products, they are easier to reach, and they are more visible. In the end, power users can over-represent their data. Survivorship bias is a shortcoming for both Consumer and Enterprise companies: , a 20-year veteran in the consumer internet industry previously VP of Product at Lynda.com, surveyed consumer app and consumer application companies. He shared his during the conference. Ken Sandy findings INDUSTRY The Product Conference 2019 2.1) Survivorship bias within Consumer apps: Behaviour analytics of current users is the number one source to prioritize product features in consumer companies. There is a wealth of data that allows you to understand how your active user interaction with your products deeply. But be careful it’s not sufficient. 57% of PMs agreed that they rarely or never participated in an interview with a dissatisfied customer 1/3 ranked disengaged users or elapsed customers data as a top 3 way to prioritize product features. Survivorship bias within 2.2) Enterprise app: In the enterprise product, the findings are very similar: PMs are only looking at power users. The features prioritization is driven by users and the one that is more vocals and highly motivated. existing ⅔ ranked users' behaviour (user onboarding and users adopting and using the enterprise product) as within the bottom 3-way to prioritize the product feature. Only 12% of enterprise software PMs use disengaged customers’ data, churned customers or people who said no to your Product to prioritize. An organization that purely look at active and happy customers miss out on an infinity of opportunities: An opportunity to understand how we can improve our Product A possibility to expand the use of our Product to those who currently don’t see value in it PMs must take into consideration disengaged customers when Prioritizing their Backlog — Photo by visual-paradigm . An organization that purely looks at active and happy customers misses out on an infinity of possibilities. 3) Two real-life examples of how to overcome Survivorship bias 3.1) The eBay case study: searching for a dress “The dress” — when words are not enough to describe and search for a specific dress — Photo from Wired , Director of Product Management at eBay, described an obvious example of overcoming this bias. Clémence Tiradon During a conference, she asks the audience to raise their hands if they ever bought clothing on eBay. The problem, she explains, is that PMs tend to focus on the people who raise their hands and are proud of themselves for having so many people within the audience who are eBay clients. Instead, what PMs should do is focus on people who didn’t raise their hands and ask them why. There could be a million reasons for not using eBay: not relating buying clothing with eBay, or trying to buy apparel on eBay but failing in the process. But you never know the real reasons until you start having a difficult conversation with your . non-customers Your target population is not people wanting to buy a dress on eBay; your target population is anyone who wants to buy a dress online. Prioritizing features based exclusively on current users' analysis might prevent you to capture new users — Photo by Go-oodles . Clémence Tiradon, describes 3 ways to overcome the survivorship biais. A) Using multiple data source: You need to try to get another perspective by looking around. That means to use various data sources, this is critical. You cannot rely only on your quantitative data — your metrics from your Mixpanel or Firebase dashboard. You cannot either solely focus on quantitative data from your user testing and research. You don’t want to make a decision entirely based on a significantly reduced set of customers. As PMs, you make the best decisions when you overlap quantitative and qualitative insights to understand your customers’ main drivers and understand their experience and how they are experiencing your Product. B) Understanding the context of where the data is taken from: A common misconception is that data is an unbiased fact, instantly available to use. Data is not neutral; it has been collected and inherits views from people who intentionally or not collected it. Without context, data is worthless as well as any conclusion you drive from this data. In real life, statisticians don’t question “What is in the numbers?” but “What does the data represent in the world; and how does this relate to other data?”. ( ). BigThink You need to understand the context: when was it? What is the mood of the interviewees? Understanding how the data has been gathered, and the customer state in mind when it was gathering will help expand your field of vision. C) Ask “What If” scenarios “What if” scenarios are critical to start to expand that field of vision. If we come back to the dress example, what if the customer looking for a dress is not an English native speaker and can’t find the exact word to describe the dress (or can’t agree if it’s a blue or gold dress)? What if they find the dress looking at someone passing from the street? What if they can take a picture? What if instead of describing the dress by a word, they could use that image to search? By expanding your field of vision, you allow yourself to bring more insights into the decision making for your Product, and you will come with more innovative solutions that fit closely with your users’ needs. 3.2) Example of a Sales-driven organization Survivorship bias is particularly prevalent in Enterprise Software and Sales Driven organizations. Those organizations have common characteristics : culture: they focus on what would be the next deal. Sales-driven : they came in; they understood the different customer needs; they make sure they addressed those needs regularly with the product releases. Customer responsive Urgent fixing the customer problems always outweigh the long term strategy of where the company needed to go. Trying to serve everyone and successfully serving no one. ’ Changing how you deal with clients requests to overcome the survivorship bias: : focus on one prominent segment that is attractive. The sales team might have to encourage out smaller, more demanding customers. This prevents you from trying to please every single existing customer (profitable or not). Focus on a few segments only : from merely looking at customer requests to dividing into various streams of works one being customer requests (only a small part of the organization would work on that). Separating customer requests from other streams allows to create a more robust prioritization against resource capping for these customer requests and free up a lot the organization to start thinking strategically on how to serve more extensive segments. Structure how you bring work into the organization : The new prioritization process allows creating a Product Roadmap that is closer to your company's long-term vision instead of a clients’ Wishlists. Create a Roadmap according to your long-term Product vision Summary — Actions to avoid survivorship bias: Use multiple data sources Understand the context of the data Create alternative scenarios Focus on vision and where you want to go instead of who your current users are Assign clients request within a particular section of the backlog to track time dedicated to this section Create a Roadmap that reflects your Product vision instead of clients’ wishlists. Congratulations if you made it this far! I hope this article helped you in understanding better what a cognitive bias is and how to overcome it. I would love to hear about your real-life experience with Survivorship bias. And don’t forget to check my other posts about Product Management. I wrote a series about cognitive bias. Lead Photo by MaisonDigital

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