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Trustpage lets your entire team collaborate and communicate trust with customers, because building a strong security program is hard but demonstrating it and communicating it shouldn't be. With Trustpage, you can easily remove bottlenecks in the sales process, increase customer confidence, and give your team back time. By building a foundation of trust early and often, companies can engage and interact around what matters most through trust-led growth.

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Entrepreneurs should keep an eye on Michigan, as it's a bit of a bullet in terms of venture capital growth. In fact, Area Development named it No. 14 in their 2022 list of Top States for Doing Business. VC firms in the state are eager to capitalize on ...

18 Top Michigan Venture Capital Firms

Meet the Winners of Startups in North and Central America

Welcome to part two of the Dreams of Crypto Spring series. Part one covered the cyberpunk nightmare of Libra and its sudden rise to power.  In part two I cover Telegram, a new hope to strike a blow against the Libra empire.  This is an expanded version of the story I did for Cointelegraph , with increased coverage of the privacy debates over Telegram and WhatsApp. ###################################################### Last month, Facebook rocked the world with . Even a year ago, the idea that an iconic United States company would launch a digital currency or that a sitting president would about it seemed insane. its blockbuster Libra announcement tweet Welcome to the new normal. The Libra announcement sent , hit the like an atom bomb, and left many crypto influencers wondering if the social network giant just turned 90% of altcoins into shitcoins. What tiny crypto project with a few measly programmers and a few million bucks can stand against the combined might of not just Facebook but also the titans of the like Uber, Lyft, Paypal, Visa and Mastercard? politicians scrambling mainstream media tech and payment processing world But there’s a new hope on the horizon. One company on the planet has the power to take on the social media monster and win: Telegram. If Libra is the Empire Strikes Back, Telegram is A New Hope While Facebook has 1.8 billion users, Telegram . raised $1.7 billion While Facebook has the unwashed masses who’ve never held a Bitcoin, Telegram has the entire crypto community that lives and breathes altcoins for breakfast. While Mark Zuckerberg is the poster child for the internet as a surveillance economy, Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, is a , with privacy woven into his DNA. fight-the-power renegade While Zuckerburg looks like someone doing a , Durov looks like . bad impression of Data from Star Trek he just stepped off the stage of Magic Mike If you’re a pioneering member of the crypto community, you might have looked with scorn on the Telegram fundraiser, which beat the initial coin offering by raising all of its money from private , rather than crowdsourcing it from the people. Maybe you only read the that looks and reads more like a marketing slick than a detailed deep dive? regulatory backlash accredited investors short Telegram white paper You should take a look closer. The Dark Knight Rises The more you look, the more you realize there’s a lot to root for if you’re longing for a legitimate top contender to take on . the cyberpunk nightmare of Libra Start with Pavel Durov. The man built two successful companies, including VKontakte ), the Russian equivalent of Facebook, and he followed that up with Telegram. That means he knows how to build real, working, scalable platforms when most crypto projects can’t even get their testnets off the ground. He’s also an and iconoclast with a philosophy of radical individualism and self-sovereignty that matches that launched Bitcoin and a thousand other crypto ships. (aka VK anti-hero the cypherpunk ethos Even better, he backs that philosophy up with action. While Facebook faces a for protecting users’ data the way . Durov when the Russian Supreme Court demanded it and even as and yanked Telegram from the app store.  While Zuckerberg built his company on surveillance as a business model, Durov built . $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission the mob “protects” small businesses refused to create a backdoor to Telegram American companies like Apple, who normally stand tough on privacy, caved his company on privacy If you only skimmed , you might have missed that Durov isn’t alone. He's backed by a bevy of math geniuses and hardcore programmers who started coding in diapers and won strings of gold medals at the while you were watching Saturday morning cartoons. One of those folks is Pavel's brother , chief technology officer of Telegram, who solved cubic equations at the age of eight, started coding at nine, and wrote his first operating system at 13: the short white paper International Math Olympiad Nikolai Durov In . assembly language Nikolai Durov also wrote the much longer and more comprehensive that weighs in at a whopping 132 pages. It’s a dense, complex and ambitious outline for the new Telegram Open Network (TON) platform. Some folks in for promising a sci-fi utopia that solves every single problem in crypto. technical white paper the Miasma bashed it as a fantasy and nothing but “fun fiction” But let's look deeper and see if they're right. Crypto Wars Redux It’s not the first time Telegram faced criticism for their architecture choices, with Gizmodo’s William Turton once writing “ ." The article hits them hard for choosing client-server encryption instead of end-to-end encryption by default. Why You Should Stop Using Telegram Right Now There's a lot of debate in the security community about whether we can or should trust Telegram versus WhatsApp or or . Signal Wire The Electronic Frontier Foundation did for their and they found it wasn't all that simple and clear cut because "secure messaging is hard to get right—and it’s even harder to tell if someone else has gotten it right." a series of studies and surveys of secure messaging apps Surveillance Self Defense Guide The WhatsApp faithful generally just forward the Gizmodo article and call it a mic drop but a little critical thinking about the article reveals some fundamental flaws. It fires the first shot by saying Telegram "doesn’t encrypt chats by default." That's just not correct.  The chats are encrypted client to server and stored on the company's virtual machines which are distributed all over the world.  Saying they don't encrypt chats is straight up wrong. But that doesn't mean the article doesn't have a point. It means we have to trust Telegram's servers and trust is tricky. A woman and her business partner might have ten years of trust between them but if one partner steals from the company bank account then all that trust burns up over night.  Trust is not fixed. Trust is a moving concept. If Telegram's servers are compromised, so are your chats. We also have to trust that they really make only of those servers, which they claim to do in their security FAQ.  Client-server encryption also uses symmetric keys instead of asymmetric public/private keys, which means if the key gets compromised it's compromised for both the client and server, whereas with asymmetric encryption your privacy remains secure as long as you protect your private keys. encrypted backups Telegram as giving people the best of both worlds with , which do offer end-to-end encryption and don't store chats on their servers.  They also offer a way to delete messages and chats immediately.  Either party can kill the entire chat with a few clicks, erasing it from their servers for good. defends the architecture choice the choice of secret chats All of this is a trade off.  Telegram wanted a way to restore chats and sync them to different devices.  End-to-end encryption makes this a lot harder.  If you switch your phone number on WhatsApp your chats go bye-bye (or you have to unencrypted to Google Drive) because the phone number acts as your personal ID. go through a procedure that backs those chats up Security versus usability is an age old dilemma.  They're inverse properties. The more secure you make something the more hoops you have to jump through to use it.  Make it easier to use and you just compromised the app's safety exponentially.  Programming teams always have to pick between security and making it easier for users.  Make it too secure and people won't adopt it, which is why Signal and other super privacy conscious apps never reach critical mass and remain niche. Most regular people, aka non-privacy conscious, the vast majority of the world, won't use Signal. It's got a clunky interface and and restore your old profiles. That makes it more secure but a lot harder to deal with on a day to day basis. it's complicated to setup a new phone number WhatsApp is based on Signal but it makes compromises to make it easier for users which . WhatsApp offers .  Even if you turn it off, you can't be sure that your friend on the other side did the same.  That means most of your secure end-to-end chats are probably compromised. the EFF flagged as major concerns unencrypted backups to the cloud Paul Manafort .  Even next-gen quantum encryption won't save you if you back your chats up to the cloud. learned this the hard way There's another problem with WhatsApp too.  Facebook has shown a willingness to with ease when authorities comes knocking.  That means they turn over who you talked to and when. From there it's not hard to look for the weak links in your security chain. hand over metadata If you really want to take a stand on hardcore encryption then you probably shouldn't use either WhatsApp or Telegram and you should switch to something like Wire or Signal and just deal with the lack of a pretty interface and the fact that 99% of your friends won't join you there. Telegram's architecture is a compromise between usability and security.  That criticism dogs them to this very day and colors people's perception of the new TON platform before it even gets off the ground. even as nothing but a bunch of buzzwords and hand waving. Redditors and other voices in the Din panned the technical white paper But read through it closely and you’ll realize that if Telegram pulls off even a quarter of what they propose it's revolutionary. For one, they solve the whole debate about whether you need to trust Telegram's servers or not because instead of servers setup by the company and their IT staff, you get a distributed messaging and smart contract layer that serves the entire TON platform instead of a cloud platform. And it doesn't stop there.  If half of what Telegram wants to do works, they’ll solve the scaling, storage, and protect the platform against constant assault from hostile powers. decentralized identity Sure, the paper is a grab bag of ideas, some of them unique and some taking inspiration from a wide spectrum of sources, which they openly acknowledge in the white paper as they directly address everything from Polkadot to Ethereum - but building on other people’s good ideas isn’t a problem, it’s a virtue. It’s only a problem for people suffering from , a debilitating mental disease that makes people think they have all the answers and that nobody else has any idea worth doing. not-invented-here syndrome Libra and the Compromises of a Compromised Company While Libra’s white paper can’t even figure out if its a “blockchain” or a non-blockchain “cryptographically authenticated ," the TON team knows the difference between a blockchain and a hole in the wall. database Telegram is looking to deliver a massively that sends and receives not only money, but encrypted messages and a kickass sticker collection that makes the emojis from WhatsApp’s messenger look like ASCII art. It wants to do all that while enabling robust peer-to-peer encrypted storage for your important documents and . sharded and scalable "fifth generation" blockchain and app ecosystem even allowing for decentralized virtual private networks And yes stickers matter. Remember that UI/UX drives adoption. Regular folks don't care about what makes an app go in the background.  They'll pick usability over security every time if they have a choice. A beautiful interface is the answer. Pretty stickers can gift the world privacy as a trojan horse. And while Facebook soaks up the punishment and pressure from hysterical governments and politicians who with a straight face that they’re worried that Libra’s wallet, which is compliant with Know-Your-Customer and Anti-Money Laundering laws, can be used for “terrorism," Telegram’s team wisely stays out of the spotlight, just like Satoshi Nakamoto did with Bitcoin. say If you want to build a platform in peace, it is better to do your work in private and not draw the attention of publicity-seeking politicians trying to get reelected in battleground states. Governments love . If you don’t give them a head to cut off, then they don’t know where to strike. cutting off the head of the snake But even with all that going for them, does Telegram have the power to build a true platform for e-commerce and the decentralized applications of tomorrow? Can it stand against the titanic forces behind Facebook's nascent digital currency and the masters of the e-commerce universe backing it? That's the trillion dollar question, as the platforms that win the day will control a massive chunk of the world economy and will make or break nations, companies and people. With so much at stake, it’s going to be a war. The Man in the Arena To win, it will take a hero. The might of is nearly absolute. Nation states print money, and printing money is the power of God. the old world guard To break the stranglehold, you need to build a perfect platform: one that’s easy to use, scales massively and is impossible to bring down — a Hydra with a thousand regenerating heads. It must have all the features of the old financial system and new ones nobody can resist. It’s got to bring in people and businesses with ease so it grows too big to fail. At the dawn of the Internet age, technologist and utopians imagined a global network of free services and information, a golden age of openness and democracy.  But all those free services needed bandwidth and servers and people to run them and that cost money. To fund it they pioneered a new business model: Surveillance. Now, the age of is upon us, and it’s growing stronger every day, a dragon that’s eaten the world. surveillance capitalism Facebook is the dragon’s head. There isn't much hope to turn back the tide of Big Brother as a Business (BBaaB) because both big business and governments want to watch us 24x7.  The rise of AI and blockchain will only make scaling surveillance easier and it will prove too tempting for governments and companies alike to resist. But if there’s a knight left among us that can bring that dragon crashing from the skies, the early odds go to Telegram. While Libra can and will leverage Facebook’s 1.7 billion users to rapidly accelerate adoption, Telegram’s user base of over is a growing force in its own right. 200 million people And even with less users, Telegram has one major advantage: Most Facebook users wouldn’t know a Bitcoin from an while Telegram has a vibrant, technically savvy community, including most of the world’s crypto-faithful who host their user groups and do their day-to-day business there. Alf Pog That means when TON drops a bunch of coins in its Telegram attached wallet, a bigger percentage of those users will know how to spend, save and send that money, while Facebook’s users will start ringing the support lines wondering how to reset the password on their private key. That’s not to say Telegram’s team is perfect by any means. They’ve faced intense criticism for a hand-waving white paper that promises much without telling people exactly how it will work. Beyond that, we’ve gotten since their mega ICO. There’s but it’s closed to the wider public for now. In the end, the project might prove too ambitious even for a talented team with a lot of capital on hand. mostly radio silence from the team a private beta They’re also running out of time to deliver. If their team is going to succeed they need to step up now.  The stakes have never been higher. People willingly sacrifice privacy for convenience without a second thought because they've got "nothing to hide." The original crypto dream of self-sovereignty is slowing warping into a terrifying Black Mirror episode, where blockchains don’t enable privacy, they enable ubiquitous surveillance on an unprecedented scale. Chain analysis tools peer deeply into transactions and dedicated to chain analysis. Facebook will happily give them that convenience and a two-way mirror into all of our lives. the SEC is looking for teams and tools Telegram might not be the hero we expected or even the one we wanted, but they might be the very best hope we’ve got for a future that doesn’t look like a dystopian nightmare of panopticoins. They’ve got the programming chops, the money, and a founder with the will to take on the kings of the world. The crypto revolution started idealistically with a twinkle in Satoshi’s eye, hoping beyond hope that technology could save us all from ourselves.  There’s always a certain naivety in revolutions.  You have to be crazy to take on entrenched powers. The kings of the world have the money and guns and the legal hammers and they’re willing to use them at all costs to keep a firm grip on the royal scepter. But some revolutions find a way. And in the coming crypto revolution, Telegram just might be the guerrilla warriors who leads us out of darkness and up into the light. ###################################################### "Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light." - Milton, Paradise Lost #################################################### If you love my work please because that’s where I share special insights with all my fans. visit my Patreon page Top Patrons get EXCLUSIVE ACCESS to so many things: You read it and hear first before anyone else! Ask me anything and I’ll answer. I also share everything I’m working on and give you a behind the scenes look at my process. Early links to every article, podcast and private talk. A monthly virtual meet up and Q&A with me. Access to the legendary Coin Sheets Discord where you’ll find: from me and other pro technical analysis masters. Market calls The only . Coin’bassaders private chat The . private Turtle Beach channel, where coders share various versions of the Crypto Turtle Trader strategy and other signals and trading software look at how I and other pros interpret the market. Behind the scenes #################################################### I’ve got a new podcast, , covering crypto, AI, tech, the future, history, society and more! Check it out for expanded coverage of my most famous articles and ideas. Get on the RSS feed and never miss an episode and stay tuned for some very special guests in the next few months! The Daily PostHuman #################################################### A bit about me: I’m an author, engineer, pro-blogger, podcaster and public speaker. You can check out my latest novel, an epic Chinese sci-fi civil war saga where China throws off the chains of communism and becomes the world’s first direct democracy, running a highly advanced, artificially intelligent decentralized app platform with no leaders. when you join my Readers Group. Readers have called it “the first serious competition to Neuromancer” and “Detective noir meets Johnny Mnemonic.” You can get a FREE copy of my first novel, The Scorpion Game, ################################################# Lastly, you can , where we discuss all things tech, sci-fi, fantasy and more. (And yes we are trying to move it off of Facebook so don't even ask. Security versus usability.  See above debate.) join my private Facebook group, the Nanopunk Posthuman Assassins

Telegram and the Cypherpunk Rebellion Against the Libra Empire

Cryptoeconomics: Paving the Future of Blockchain Technology

In this era, we’re exploring cyberspace almost as much as the physical world, so we need to pay attention to our security online as well. A lot of potential threats, including malware and exploits, are hiding around our favorite digital spaces and applications. Luckily, there are also a lot of cybersecurity tools available, and we can use some of them for free. Numerous open-source developers have taken the time (and often their own funds) to build these tools for everyone, so, they’d surely appreciate a contribution —in the form of time if you’re another developer or writer, or in the form of donations for everybody else. , an Obyte-based cascading-donation platform, can make your crypto gifts flow across several repositories and reduce any kind of censorship or high fees. Kivach This application only asks for the GitHub profile to send some cryptocurrencies, even if the recipient doesn’t have a wallet yet. Therefore, if you want to donate to an open-source project available on GitHub, you can use Kivach as a decentralized, globally available, unstoppable, as well as faster and cheaper option. In this new episode of our Kivach series, we’ll discover some handy cybersecurity tools available on GitHub to download and use for free. Let’s start! OWASP ModSecurity ModSecurity, born out of Trustwave's SpiderLabs in 2002, is a powerful application firewall (WAF) engine that provides robust protection against a spectrum of web-based attacks. Initially developed as an Apache HTTP Server module, it has since expanded to offer filtering capabilities across diverse platforms like Microsoft IIS and Nginx. Its event-based programming language facilitates HTTP traffic monitoring, logging, and real-time analysis, ensuring heightened security for web applications. Website owners can use it to keep their online spaces safe and secure at every moment, since the app is always on the lookout, analyzing all the traffic. If it spots anything fishy, it jumps into action, blocking those harmful attacks in real time and keeping a record of everything that happens. In other words, is like a digital guardian for websites, protecting them from harmful attacks that could otherwise wreak havoc. this software In February 2024, Trustwave the custodianship of the software to the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) —an NGO dedicated to improving cybersecurity through open-source development. This way, ModSecurity is now fully in the hands of its community. It’s possible to contribute to its development via GitHub or donate through its website with fiat currencies. To send them some crypto coins, you can use Kivach, where they appear as . entrusted spiderlabs/owasp-modsecurity-crs Qubes OS Have you ever thought that your commercial operating system (OS), like Windows or MacOS, couldn’t be entirely secure or private by itself? The team of Qubes certainly did it, and that’s why they launched this security-focused OS in 2012, led by Marek Marczykowski-Górecki. Over the years, the project has garnered support from a wide range of users, including journalists, activists, whistleblowers, researchers, and renowned security experts like Edward Snowden and Micah Lee. Unlike traditional operating systems, relies on a concept called compartmentalization, where different parts of the system are isolated from each other like rooms in a building. Qubes OS This isolation helps prevent cyberattacks by limiting the damage that can be caused if one part of the system is compromised. Other key features of Qubes OS include its support for multiple operating systems simultaneously, disposable virtual machines that self-destruct when shut down, a specialized proxy, device isolation for secure handling of network cards and USB controllers, and integration with Whonix for anonymous browsing using Tor. Funding for Qubes OS primarily comes from community support and donations. This ensures that the software remains free, secure, and open-source. Besides credit cards or PayPal, they accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero. You can also donate to them . via Kivach Nikto Launched in 2001 by Chris Sullo, Nikto is a popular open-source web server scanner. among other tasks. Its comprehensive testing extends to scrutinizing server configurations, detecting the presence of multiple index files, and endeavoring to identify installed web servers and software. It works to conduct thorough examinations of web servers, scrutinizing over 6,700 potentially perilous files/programs and identifying outdated versions of over 1,250 servers, In simpler terms, is to carefully examine every nook and cranny of these web servers to uncover any potential risks or vulnerabilities. It's like scanning the entire house to make sure there are no unlocked doors or windows that hackers could exploit. However, it's worth noting that not every finding uncovered by Nikto is cause for alarm. Some checks serve to provide informative insights, alerting users to elements that might not necessarily pose a security threat but could still benefit from attention. Nikto's job The project is currently maintained by Sullo and David Lodge, besides a community of volunteers on GitHub. Sullo accepts donations via Patreon, which could be kind of expensive and non-private for contributors —not to mention the fees taken from Sullo by the platform. You can donate some coins via Kivach instead, where the project appears as . sullo/nikto Sanesecurity (& ClamAV) Sanesecurity is an organization that has been actively involved in enhancing the effectiveness of ClamAV, a free and open-source antivirus toolkit (owned by Cisco). Since its inception in 2006, particularly concerning macro malware, JavaScript malware, phishing attempts, spam, and other forms of emailed ransomware. Sanesecurity has been providing with hourly updated malware signatures aimed at improving its detection capabilities, ClamAV These signatures are unique identifiers or characteristics that help the antivirus software recognize and detect specific instances of malware. They’re meticulously crafted by the dedicated team at , are of professional quality, and undergo regular updates throughout the day to ensure their relevance and efficacy. This way, Sanesecurity plays a pivotal role in enriching ClamAV's native capabilities. Sanesecurity Unlike commercial entities, Sanesecurity operates as a community-driven initiative, with the sole objective of enhancing ClamAV's functionality (often criticized without this kind of add-on) and bolstering web community security. The team behind Sanesecurity is comprised of volunteers who contribute their time and expertise to produce and maintain these signatures in their spare time. To sustain their efforts, Sanesecurity relies on donations from users who benefit from their signatures. Donations can be made in fiat money through PayPal or credit card, with options for one-time contributions or monthly/yearly subscriptions. On the other hand, Kivach is a decentralized and inexpensive option to send them funds. They appear there as . Sanesecurity/bad3cx x64dbg This one is aimed at programmers and researchers, but it’s equally useful and free in the realm of cybersecurity. In case you don’t know, a debugger is a software tool used by developers and analysts to examine and manipulate the behavior of computer programs during execution. It allows users to step through the code line by line, inspect variables and memory contents, set breakpoints to pause execution at specific points and analyze program state to identify bugs or understand how the program operates. is an open-source binary debugger specifically designed for Windows operating systems. It’s tailored for malware analysis and reverse engineering tasks, particularly for analyzing executable files for which the source code isn’t available. With an intuitive and user-friendly interface, x64dbg offers a comprehensive set of features, including full-featured debugging of both DLL and EXE files, a plugin system, disassembly of code, memory mapping, symbol and thread views, and a graph view to visualize program flow. x64dbg As an open-source project under active development, x64dbg encourages community contributions and donations through GitHub Sponsors. Of course, it’s also available on Kivach as . x64dbg/x64dbg Tell them you donated! Likely, the recipients of your donations via Kivach don’t know about it until you tell them, so don’t forget to communicate with them. with a simple attestation in the same app. Then, they should be able to receive and transfer any cryptocurrency sent in the name of that profile. To claim a donation on this platform, they’ll need to download the and verify their GitHub profile Obyte wallet If you want to discover other interesting projects to use for free and optionally donate to, please check our previous chapters in this series. Kivach Donations: 5 GitHub projects it has helped so far How You Can Support Key Open-Source Initiatives With Kivach 5 Open-source Projects You Can Support With Kivach — and Cryptocurrencies 5 Open-source Projects You Can Support with Kivach and Cryptos, Episode III 5 Open-Source Projects You Can Donate to via Kivach, Episode IV: Privacy Tools 5 Open-source Blogging and Writing Tools to Donate to via Kivach (Ep V) 5 Open-Source Tools You Can Donate to via Kivach, Episode VI: Decentralized Services 5 Open-Source Projects to Donate via Kivach, Episode VII: Games to Play for Free! Featured Vector Image by Freepik

5 Cybersecurity Tools to Use for Free and Donate to Via Kivach

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5 Cybersicherheitstools, die Sie kostenlos nutzen und an Via Kivach spenden können

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Everybody says “attribution is the holy grail of marketing” but how many growth teams actually go the extra mile to build a robust and accurate attribution model? With an explosion of channels and devices, prospects are interacting with brands from varied sources, and customer acquisition channels do not talk to each other (unless you make them do so). Therefore, teams have two options – rely on their guts and assumptions of customer journeys or collect and model the touchpoints that a customer has with their brand. Either way, as GTM becomes more and more revenue-centric, the answer to what channels are working should be precisely defined, and should reflect the truth. GTM What is attribution and why is it important? For the uninitiated (founders and non-marketing folks) – attribution in refers to the process of identifying and assigning credit to the marketing channels or touchpoints that contributed to a desired customer action, such as making a purchase or completing a lead form. The goal of attribution is to understand which marketing efforts are most effective in driving conversions and to optimise marketing spend accordingly. marketing There are several different attribution models that marketers can use, including . First-touch attribution gives credit to the first touchpoint a customer has with a brand, while last-touch attribution gives credit to the final touchpoint before a conversion. Multi-touch attribution assigns credit to all touchpoints along the customer journey. first-touch attribution, last-touch attribution, and multi-touch attribution Effective attribution requires the use of data analytics and marketing automation tools to track customer interactions across channels and measure the impact of each touchpoint on the customer journey. The role CDPs can play in attribution modelling – A customer data platform (CDP) is a centralized system that collects, integrates, and manages customer data from various sources to create a unified customer profile. CDPs can integrate with various data sources, including website, apps, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, marketing automation platforms, and other third-party data sources. Additionally, they offer a marketer-friendly interface, allowing marketers to easily access and utilize customer data without relying on IT or technical resources. Given that CDPs are continuously extracting, transferring and loading customer data to customer data warehouses, the destination warehouse becomes the source of truth of customer journeys. The more channels CDP integrates, the better the view of customer journey that we will discover. Hence, CDPs are central to attribution modelling. All modelling logics can be built in CDPs and can be visualized with a business intelligence tool of choice. What is RudderStack and how does it work? is one of the up and coming CDPs, built with a warehouse first architecture. Its freemium offering is allowing organisations to set it up quickly, and experience the utility of CDPs without any purchase. RudderStack CDPs, including RudderStack, have 3 major elements – – these are ways to extract/capture data from different platforms (third party cloud apps, your web and app properties, server integrations etc.). Sources – these are data storage management systems or cloud apps that receive data from sources. Destinations – these are methods to transform and clean data before sending data to the destination. Transformations Newer CDPs like RudderStack also have a feature called Reverse ETL that extracts data from destinations and sends it to other cloud applications/destinations. This is usually done to activate and utilize the collected data. How do you use RudderStack for first touch attribution modelling? One of the most interesting use-case of RudderStack that I have discovered is to use its Javascript SDK as a source of collecting page views and other interactions on the website properties, and building a customer journey out of it. Here’s a step-by-step guide to visualizing the customer journey and identifying the first touch of any lead – – Sign up for RudderStack here. Step 1 Visit ‘Sources’ inside the RudderStack console, and click on ‘New Source’. Step 2 – – Select ‘Javascript’ from the grid of all the sources. Step 3 – Name the source as ‘website_prod_test’ and then, copy the snippet that’s generated. Step 4 – Install the javascript on your website using google tag manager or your native CMS custom script addition capability. Step 5 – Visit your website and you’ll start to see events in the event flow within the source. Everytime a new website visitor arrives, RudderStack will provide an anonymous ID to it, and start tracking all page views on the website. The anonymous ID is stored in the cookieStore of the visitor’s browser, and even if the visitor visits the website across different sessions, it will still track page views against the same visitor. Step 6 – Setup the Google BigQuery destination following the official instructions provided by RudderStack . Step 7 here – Go to the sources tab, select your Javascript source, go to overview and connect your BigQuery destination. Once the destination is connected, the event stream from your JS source will start to flow into your Google BigQuery data warehouse destination. Step 8 – Next, you need to identify your website visitors when they have filled a form on your website using Let’s say, if a visitor fills a form on your website, they land on a thank you page, and the email address of the visitor is added to the localStorage as an item. You need to execute the following code to identify a visitor and map the email address against the anonymous ID. Step 9 rudderanalytics.identify(
    rudderanalytics.getAnonymousId(), {
        email: localStorage.getItem(“email”),
    }
    },
    () => {
        console.log("identify call");
    }
); – Finally, when you have made the identify call as shown in the last step, the identity event will get passed to the Google BigQuery data warehouse, and you need to execute a SQL query as following, and you’ll get the first page visited by each identified visitor (i.e. leads who filled the form): Step 10 WITH
  added_row_number AS (
  SELECT
    p.anonymous_id AS `anonymous_id`,
    p.context_page_url AS `context_page_url`,
    p.referrer AS `referrer`,
    p.original_timestamp AS `timestamp`,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY p.anonymous_id ORDER BY p.original_timestamp ASC) AS row_number
  FROM
    `website_prod_test.pages_view` p),
  journey AS (
  SELECT
    u.email,
    added_row_number.`anonymous_id` AS `id`,
    added_row_number.`context_page_url` AS `first_page_seen`,
    added_row_number.`referrer`,
    added_row_number.`timestamp`,
    added_row_number.row_number,
    CASE 
    WHEN CONTAINS_SUBSTR(added_row_number.`context_page_url`, "utm_medium=cpc") THEN added_row_number.`context_page_url`
    WHEN CONTAINS_SUBSTR(added_row_number.`referrer`, "utm_medium=cpc") THEN added_row_number.`referrer`
    WHEN CONTAINS_SUBSTR(added_row_number.`context_page_url`, "utm_medium=email") THEN added_row_number.`context_page_url`
    WHEN CONTAINS_SUBSTR(added_row_number.`referrer`, "utm_medium=email") THEN added_row_number.`referrer`
    ELSE added_row_number.`context_page_url`
    END
    AS `attribution_url`,
  FROM
    `wesbite_prod_test.users_view` u
  LEFT JOIN
    added_row_number
  ON
    u.id = added_row_number.anonymous_id)
SELECT
  *,
  REGEXP_EXTRACT(attribution_url, r".*[&?]utm_source=([^&]+).*") AS `utm_source`,
  REGEXP_EXTRACT(attribution_url, r".*[&?]utm_medium=([^&]+).*") AS `utm_medium`,
  REGEXP_EXTRACT(attribution_url, r".*[&?]utm_campaign=([^&]+).*") AS `utm_campaign`,
  REGEXP_EXTRACT(attribution_url, r".*[&?]utm_content=([^&]+).*") AS `utm_content`,
  REPLACE(REGEXP_EXTRACT(attribution_url, r".*[&?]utm_term=([^&]+).*"), "%20", " ") AS `utm_term`
FROM
  journey
WHERE
  journey.row_number = 1
  ORDER BY journey.timestamp DESC – Once you run this query, Google interface will give you an option to visualize the result using Looker studio. You can follow our guide to or refer to Looker studio documentation to quickly generate a dashboard as shown below. It will show you the journey taken by an individual along with the timestamp and the referrer. Step 11 BigQuery Looker Studio for marketers This was a quick, super-specific method of building a low cost first touch attribution model using RudderStack. There’s so much more to RudderStack, CDPs and attribution modelling. If you’re interested in implementing a CDP for your SaaS product, reach out to me. This article was originally posted . here

How to Implement First Touch Attribution with RudderStack

IDO launchpads have a pivotal place in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. In the era of decentralized finance, everyone has an equal chance to create a token-based startup that can take them to new heights. Most importantly for the average user and retail investor, they have the opportunity to participate in something that otherwise would not be available to them. DeFi and crypto remove the barriers of entry and let all investors participate. It's not always easy to find a great launchpad however as there are many to choose from. As IDO launchpads grow in number, finding the one with the right features and reasonable barrier to entry can be highly lucrative. The following list is composed of some of the most quality launchpads in the market. 1. TrustPad The launchpad is designed around bringing IDO availability in an overall safe and positive way. Focusing primarily on the Binance Smart Chain but also stating that they offer other chain support, TrustPad has many different features for investors like staking, pool participation, and farming. The launchpad has four large communities from all over the globe as well, showing that they have a comprehensive presence for startups. TrustPad 2. Gamestarter Considered more of an “IGO” instead of an IDO launchpad, is a central hub for gaming and NFT focused startups to begin their journey on both the Binance Smart Chain and Polygon. While many launchpads have a more generic outlook on the projects they pick, Gamestarter is focused on giving gaming startups an exclusive presence and provides a good way for retail investors to find projects in the crypto gaming network. The IGO launchpad also has a game-based mindset with the implementation of their launchpad with future goals such as an app on mobile devices. Gamestarter 3. ScaleSwap Among all the IDO launchpads available, is a launchpad that gives optimal fairness for retail investors and companies alike, while also having the benefit of multi-chain support. ScaleSwap is focused on being fair and transparent while also giving the highest sustainability possible. Retail investors can be guaranteed pool participation based on their proprietary 6-dimensional scoring system. A and incentivizes the most dedicated investors as well for the long-term journey of a startup. ScaleSwap feature called ScaleSCORE keeps the barrier to entry low ScaleSwap also has dedicated support on hosting startups of many different chains. Many IDO launchpads only host projects from one chain, such as Ethereum. ScaleSwap hosts multiple chains including all EMV-compatible chains, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Fantom, and Harmony. 4. PAID Network Many launchpads try to distinguish themselves in many different ways and has taken a very different approach than the rest by claiming to offer the most exclusive set of startups in the crypto space. PAID Network is one of the longer-running launchpads on the list and offers projects from both the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain ecosystems. In addition, PAID Network gives out extra benefits that are directly related to the retail investors that hold and stake their native token on their network. PAID Network 5. Poolz Launchpads can also be competitive and that is what can bring to the table by offering more of a peer-based IDO launchpad with some gamification features. Offering a large selection of tokens, Poolz gives attention to the retail investor by offering leaderboards and showing how others are stacking up against each other. Similar to PAID Network, Poolz allows users to lock up tokens to gain the benefits of participating in IDOs and taking advantage of early offerings. Poolz 6. Metalaunch Another launchpad that focuses on gaming-based startups, is a gaming and NFT launchpad that focuses on IDOs for metaverse style projects like VR. Hosting multiple chains like Solana, Metalaunch is focused on bringing the more niche parts of gaming to the center stage and available to retail investors. This focus on metaverse startups also allows these projects to get more recognition so they can be invested in with those that want to see them succeed. Metalaunch 7. Solanium Focusing exclusively on one chain, is an IDO launchpad that is designed to give exposure to startups on the Solana blockchain. With Solanium, retail investors have access to one of the biggest Solana launchpads and can stay on one solid platform if they want to focus on just one chain. Solanium is home to over 23,000 unique stakers on the platform which benefits from a tier system and gives options for governance over the platform as well. Solanium 8. Red Kite Claiming to be one of the most “cutting edge” launchpads, is a comprehensive IDO launchpad that was made by the creators of PolkaFoundry. RedKite has an extreme vetting process that only allows the most high-quality projects that were hand-picked by the team. Retail investors can choose between three different blockchains - Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon, and lets them easily toggle between the three of them. Users can also buy tokens from the platform and stake them to receive exclusive benefits. Red Kite 9. DAO Maker Composed of many different chains including Solana and HecoChain, is an IDO launchpad that focuses on growing startups. in relation to the retail investors that are interested in their projects. Users can find a whole selection of startups on the list along with the ability to stake via the DAO Maker ecosystem while also including a yield simulator that lets you estimate how much someone might benefit from the system. DAO Maker 10. Polkastarter Using a set of successful and time-tested models, is a an IDO launchpad that focuses on a basic array of features that are more polished for an overall experience. At first glance, Polkastarter shares many of the exact same features as every other launchpad, offering a no-frills appearance, but this is also accented with some gamified aspects to make the IDO experience more involved. Features like leaderboards and quests help make the platform more interactive and give a solid clean discovery of IDO startups. Polkastarter 11. Mantra DAO With IDO launchpads having the general concept of being decentralized, puts its focus on being as much of a community-oriented launchpad as possible to provide the most optimal experience for retail investors. Mantra DAO is popular for many benefits for users including staking, lending, governance, and more. What Mantra DAO wants to accomplish is to give wisdom to its retail users so they are not left in the dark with who they are investing in. The platform supports three chains - Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon - giving a good amount of diversity for the average investor. Multi-chain support plus exclusive benefits like lending Mantra DAO a good advantage in the IDO space. Manta DAO 12. BSC Pad Focusing only on the Binance Smart Chain, is an IDO platform that hosts many different BSC startups that cater to those wanting to invest in one particular platform. BSC Pad has investment rounds that let you participate with different benefits depending on how much you stake in the launchpad. BSC Pad is a fan favorite among retail investors but they lend themselves to a lack of transparency in their conditions. In addition, some of the terms and conditions of tokenomics have not been as decentralized as they could be. BSC Pad Conclusion There are many launchpads to choose from and with the cryptocurrency space getting bigger, it's difficult to find the right one. In finding an IDO launchpad, you want to work with one that has your best interest as a retail investor or a startup. Launchpads like and focus on user fairness and features that create this healthy environment. Other launchpads like Polkastarter give a clean user experience. No matter which you decide is best for you, it's just important that you explore the valuable opportunities that a launchpad can provide. ScaleSwap Mantra DAO

12 Best IDO Launchpads in 2022

I've been using Riverpod with StateNotifier to store my app's configurations / settings. It's easy and convenient as I can use methods to update the state's values. I can always use StateProvider but then I have updated the state directly, which is not convenient (for me) especially when I have a lot of setting parameters. Using StateNotifier also works perfectly. Well, until recently.. then I found out that updating a setting value not only updates the UI that listens to that value, but also updates other parts of the UI that don't listen to it, but listen to other setting values in the same state. I hope you get what I mean from the last sentence. To make it clear, let me show you a very simple demonstration. We'll make 2 switches: Switch A and Switch B. Switch A will build Box A, and build Box B. should not Switch B will build Box B, and build Box A. should not Let's code! You can put all the code below into 1 single dart file. ; ; { settingA; settingB;

  Settings({ .settingA = , .settingB = ,
  });

  Settings copy({ settingA, settingB,
  }) =>
      Settings(
        settingA: settingA ?? .settingA,
        settingB: settingB ?? .settingB,
      );
} import 'package:flutter/material.dart' import 'package:flutter_riverpod/flutter_riverpod.dart' class Settings final bool final bool this false this false bool bool this this First, create the Settings class. The copy method will be used to update the State later. allSettingsProvider =
    StateNotifierProvider<SettingsNotifier>((ref) => SettingsNotifier()); {
  SettingsNotifier() : (Settings()); updateSettingA( settingA) { newState = state.copy(settingA: settingA);
    state = newState;
  } updateSettingB( settingB) { newState = state.copy(settingB: settingB);
    state = newState;
  }
} final < > class SettingsNotifier extends StateNotifier Settings super void bool final void bool final Next, create the StateNotifier with 2 methods to update each Settings' values. You see here we use the copy method we created in the Settings class. { Widget build(BuildContext context) { MaterialApp(
      home: Scaffold(
        body: Row(
          mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
          children: [
            Center(child: BuildBoxA()),
            Center(child: BuildBoxB()),
          ],
        ),
      ),
    );
  }
} { Widget build(BuildContext context, ScopedReader watch) { ( ); settingA = watch(allSettingsProvider.state).settingA; Column(
      mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
      children: [
        Switch.adaptive(
          value: settingA,
          onChanged: (value) {
            context.read(allSettingsProvider).updateSettingA(value);
          },
        ),
      ],
    );
  }
} { Widget build(BuildContext context, ScopedReader watch) { ( ); settingB = watch(allSettingsProvider.state).settingB; Column(
      mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
      children: [
        Switch.adaptive(
          value: settingB,
          onChanged: (value) {
            context.read(allSettingsProvider).updateSettingB(value);
          },
        ),
      ],
    );
  }
} class TestPage extends StatelessWidget @override return class BuildBoxA extends ConsumerWidget @override print 'Building Box A' final bool return class BuildBoxB extends ConsumerWidget @override print 'Building Box B' final bool return Next is the UI. Like I said, it's a very simple demo. No need to think about refactoring here. The result: Not good, right? Turning on and off Switch A should only build Box A, but it also builds Box B. Why? It's because we replace the whole state with a new one. Every value in Settings gets updated. Is there any way to update just a single value in the state? I couldn't find one. So I headed to Github and the nice people there pointed out that I don't need to worry about how I write to the state, but rather how I read it. There's an example in the official documentation . here So, let's make a few changes to the code. Add 2 Providers and change BuildBoxA and BuildBoxB like this: settingAProvider =
    Provider< >((ref) => ref.watch(allSettingsProvider.state).settingA); settingBProvider =
    Provider< >((ref) => ref.watch(allSettingsProvider.state).settingB); { Widget build(BuildContext context, ScopedReader watch) { ( ); settingA = watch(settingAProvider); Column(
      mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
      children: [
        Switch.adaptive(
          value: settingA,
          onChanged: (value) {
            context.read(allSettingsProvider).updateSettingA(value);
          },
        ),
      ],
    );
  }
} { Widget build(BuildContext context, ScopedReader watch) { ( ); settingB = watch(settingBProvider); Column(
      mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
      children: [
        Switch.adaptive(
          value: settingB,
          onChanged: (value) {
            context.read(allSettingsProvider).updateSettingB(value);
          },
        ),
      ],
    );
  }
} final bool final bool class BuildBoxA extends ConsumerWidget @override print 'Building Box A' final bool return class BuildBoxB extends ConsumerWidget @override print 'Building Box B' final bool return The result: Exactly what I (we) wanted!

Flutter Riverpod: Use StateNotifier for Configuration and Update UI 

Polkadot has been a legendary project from inception, bringing interoperability among various chains. Since October 2017, after successfully closing three rounds of public fundraising that spanned over three years, it was able to raise a sum of $250 million USD. As the king of interoperability with an overall valuation of 1.5 billion US dollars, Polkadot officially launched its mainnet in September 2020. Since then, the Polkadot ecosystem has continued to expand and flourish. Currently, with a market cap of over $40 billion, Polkadot ranks as the seventh biggest crypto on the list of cryptocurrency market value. And bolstered by solid fundamentals and various infrastructure projects in the pipeline, the Polkadot ecosystem keeps thriving. Prominent among such projects is the fast-rising decentralized infrastructure platform, Apron Network. Solid Foundation - Polkadot Just as he was in Ethereum, "Gavin Wood", the co-founder of Ethereum, brought a strong personal imprint to Polkadot. In the early days of Ethereum, Gavin wrote the Beige Book and almost single-handedly wrote the technical architecture of Ethereum - a legend that made Gavin naturally attract a loyal following. In terms of technical architecture, Gavin surprised many developers with its one-click launch of blockchain in 15 minutes. With the Substrate framework, anyone can write blockchain logic in any language (Rust, C/C++, C#, Go, etc.) - multi-language support lays the groundwork for a vast audience of Polkadot developers (unlike Ethereum, which is confined to Solidity language) to develop their applications. Polkadot has made an outstanding contribution to educating developers, including several introductory development courses and frequent online and offline developer conferences. On this basis, Polkadot's Web3 Foundation has been very supportive of other projects, and has completed 6 batches of funding for 129 Polkadot Eco projects between 2019 and 2020 to the tune of more than $6 million USD. The percentage change in developers building on each protocol over the past year As a result, the explosion of the Polkadot ecosystem was a natural progression, with several great projects gaining prominence on the "super carrier" -- of which Apron Network is emerging as a new star. The Polkadot Ecosystem Explosion Expectedly, once a good blockchain infrastructure is in place, all kinds of infrastructures will emerge. Consequently, the explosion of the Polkadot ecosystem was a natural progression, with several great projects leveraging the "super carrier" to gain prominence, of which Apron Network is emerging as a new shining star. Currently, Polkadot is home to an increasing population of excellent projects including the cross-chain solution "ChainX", Darwinia Network - the Substrate-based based heterogeneous cross-chain bridge protocol, "CrustNetwork" - decentralized storage service for web3 web3 ecosystem, "Acala Network" - DeFi hub for Polkadot ecosystem as well as the recently hot "Phala Network", and "OptionRoom" - oracle and prediction protocol. These crops of top-tier projects with the mission to solve different problems constitute the entire Polkadot ecosystem. However, we found that there was a critical lack of middleware in this infrastructure, which is where Apron Network was built. According to its website, Apron Network is a decentralized platform that provides decentralized infrastructure services for DApp developers, DApp users, and DApp operators. It builds a cross-chain platform on Polkadot based on the Substrate framework and is committed to providing more complete infrastructure services for the entire blockchain ecosystem. In terms of specific products, Apron Network provides integrated APIs for infrastructure providers, mid-tier services for DApps, DeFi developers, and various infrastructure services such as node services, on-chain data indexing, and pricing for the Kusama, Polkadot, and Heco ecosystems. In the future, Apron Network will also provide services similar to traditional infrastructure platforms such as AWS and Alibaba Cloud, albeit, in a decentralized manner. Apron, a middleware platform based on Polkadot At present, due to the lack of standardization of the underlying blockchain data storage, it is very difficult to query and read the data, which brings friction for the project side or the DApp to read the blockchain data. So the API and other services provided by the middleware have become an indispensable link; this is also the reason why middleware is popular this year. Quite a few other ecosystem projects are trying or already have such solutions, some centralized, some decentralized, focusing on on-chain data queries or connecting on-chain data off the chain. Some of the representative projects include: a platform that provides developers access to Ethereum and IPF node data through API services by building their own Ethereum and IPF nodes. ‌- Infura: It operates in a manner similar to Infura, but more blockchain-like, and is believed to currently offer 45 API on-chain services. - NowNodes: It develops a public blockchain that provides the Prophet, provides the Prophet data to the service provider, and provides the cross-blockchain aggregation data for the DApp. - API3: API3 data feeds, dAPIs, aggregate data from first-party oracles, operated by some of the world’s premier API providers. By aggregating blockchain data, BitQuery provides users with a data API on the blockchain, as well as simple data analysis capabilities and the GraphQl API. - BitQuery: An on-chain service indexing protocol which supports Ethereum and IPFS, through a specific SubGraph, retrieving and building indexing information in smart contracts, providing users with GraphQl API to obtain data information corresponding to dApps. - The Graph: However, these existing projects focus on a specific domain and do not provide a general technical solution. Specifically, Infura and NowNodes use a centralized approach, which is inherently vulnerable to the risk of a single point of failure. API3 provides off-chain data aggregation services to data sources via oracles. Both BitQuery and The Graph use The GraphQl API, which focuses on aggregation and indexing of on-chain data. The above infrastructure services, which have three key components: service discovery, service calling, and service billing, are well established in a centralized IT infrastructure, but have the disadvantage of being controlled by the operator. In November 2020, the Infura API, an ethereum node service, crashed several services that relied on Infura, including Metamask, Coinbase, Cryptokitties and the lending platform, Compound, as well as a host of other dApps, dealing a big blow to the "decentralized" world. It is also a reminder that the current Web 3.0 world is incomplete and that we still have a long way to go. Fortunately, we now have Apron Network, a decentralized, secure blockchain API service. Apron focuses on enabling developers to provide and use any infrastructure services thus reaching out to both the real world and the Web 3.0 world. Apron Network in the spotlight As an essential infrastructure with clear vision and positioning, Apron Network's value was discovered by the public and welcomed by the market at the very beginning of its inception. Apron Network, a project supported by the Web3 Foundation, received early grants from the Web3 Foundation. In January 2021, Apron Network successfully completed a seed round of funding from Vega Ventures, PAKA, NGC Ventures, Digital Renaissance Foundation, DFG, and CandaQ, among others. In February 2021, Apron Network completed a private funding round with investments from CMS Holdings, Spark Digital Capital, Monday Capital, Republic, AU21 Capital, BlockArk, Symbol CapitalVentures, R8 Capital, OneMax Capital, Substrate Capital, and others. NGC Ventures, DFG, and Vega Ventures continue to invest. With the support of well-known organizations in the industry, Apron has strong support for its continued development and market expansion. In terms of community building, Apron Network has almost a combined 50,000 followers on both official Twitter and Medium channels, and more than 40,000 followers on Telegram and Discord combined, which are indicators of solid fundamentals. According to the new weekly report, the Apron community has grown to more than 100,000 people worldwide. At the same time, Apron has been engaged in a flurry of campaigns to increase awareness about the project. As an infrastructure, Apron is actively integrating or partnering with many of the industry's leading ecosystem partners, such as Phala Network, Bifrost, Darwinia, OneBlock, Rebase, Bandot, Trustbase, and others, to provide them with better node services to help blockchain developers develop and integrate features flexibly and efficiently to keep their projects safe and stable. As a result, Apron Network has grown at a steady pace and so far wields the right combination of funding, technology, and community to deliver a blockbuster project to the middleware market. Apron Network Looking Beyond the Horizon Built on Polkadot, Apron will support multiple public chains such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polkadot, Tron, BSC, Filecoin, and Layer 2, thanks to its cross-chain capability. As a result, Apron will extend beyond Polkadot ecosystem to serve the entire blockchain industry. While The Graph only recently announced future expansion to other Layer 1 blockchains, Apron Network has already charted plans for cross-chain functionality on its roadmap which it has begun to pursue and achieve. Polkadot's cross-chain nature also makes it easier for Apron to support multiple chains, so in this respect Apron is much more forward-looking and forward-thinking than The Graph. About Apron Network Apron Network, is a decentralized, secure, token-incentived infrastructure service that developers can use easily and securely. It is a middleware that you can leverage to safely access the Web 3.0 world. 🛎 Learn more about Apron Network here: | | | | | | Telegram Twitter Medium ANN Channel Whitepaper Website GitHub

Introducing Apron Network: A Gateway to Decentralized Infrastructure Services

In a world where most companies rely on electronic gadgets to keep a record of the sensitive information, files, and data they own, losing this data to cybercriminals is probably the worst scenario that any organization can think of. As a matter of fact, recovering information that is lost or stolen is much more difficult than simply taking measures to protect it beforehand. As they say “Better safe than sorry.” According to John Chambers, former Cisco CEO “There are two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those who don’t yet know they have been hacked.” According to stats, Cybercrime is likely to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually in the next 4 years. The reason why cyberattacks are performed is because the data that your company collects is valuable for cybercriminals; these attacks are mostly deliberate and motivated by financial gain. According to statistical reports of , only 5% of companies’ folders are properly protected. On the other hand, according to there have been 11,762 recorded breaches from the year 2005 till 2020. Varonis IRTC Read down below to find out more about the importance of cybersecurity in business. What Is Cybersecurity? Cybersecurity is the process of protecting the devices, data, and networks of your company against any malicious attacks, theft, damage, or unauthorized attacks. Systems can be protected with the help of different cybersecurity software, practices, and technologies that are aimed to ensure that the sensitive information of the organization does not leak, and can’t be accessed by third parties. Cyberattacks fall under two main categories; first, there are the attacks that are/can be performed from within your company if your organization's assets are accessible by employees. Then, there are ones that pose a threat from the outside, such as hackers and criminals. Your Company Needs to Implement Cybersecurity Let’s look at some of the essential reasons your company needs to implement cybersecurity measures as soon as possible. 1. The majority of businesses are shifting to cyberspace The majority of businesses are shifting online. Cyberspace is filled with businesses and organizations that rely on the internet and electronic gadgets to carry out their everyday operations. According to , more than 40% of the total population has access to the internet these days. An increase in Internet accessibility also means an increase in the chances of cybersecurity attacks. Internet Live Stats The threat is growing consistently across every country. It has been reported that small businesses are as vulnerable to cyberattacks as the bigger ones. According to stats, more than 43% of cyberattacks target small businesses and it takes less than 6 months for the targeted small businesses to sink into bankruptcy. No matter how small or big your organization is, it can always fall victim to this illegal practice. Therefore, it is essential that you stay vigilant and plan a cybersecurity strategy for data protection as soon as possible. 2. The data that has been moved to Cloud needs to be protected Cloud storage offers immense benefits for businesses. It is a cost-effective solution that allows you to store a huge amount of data and information online, eliminating the need to invest in additional hardware. According to the , 90% of companies are on the cloud and 94% of workloads will be processed by cloud data centers in 2021. This implies that in the upcoming years, the traditional methods of storing data are expected to become obsolete. hosting tribunal As reported by Trustwave Global Security Report, the number of attacks on cloud services more than doubled in 2019. So, even though cloud storage is quickly becoming the foundation of every business, it can still backfire for you if you are not investing in a proper cybersecurity strategy. 3. Cyberattacks can ruin the reputation of your company Customer trust is undoubtedly the most valuable asset of a business. If your customers don’t trust you, or if you don’t have a good brand reputation, then chances are you’re not going to last long in the market. A successful cyberattack can cause data breaches of the personal information of the firm’s customers, which can wreak havoc. Once the customer trust has been lost, it becomes severely difficult for organizations to recover. Chances are that your client will shift to one of your competitors in the hope of better service. Slowly the loss of sales will lead to a reduction of profits, forcing the owner to shut down his/her business. Luckily, this can be prevented with the help of encryption algorithms. Along with this, there are several other cybersecurity layers that can further help protect your company’s sensitive data from getting into the wrong hands. 4. Cyberattacks can cause your business big money Last but not the least, another big reason your business should invest in cybersecurity services is that security breaches can leave organizations bankrupt. In 2020, 130 Twitter accounts were targeted in a Twitter breach, compromising the accounts of Elon Musk and former Presidents, bilking $121,000 in Bitcoin, receiving 400 transactions. It has been reported that the average cost of a data breach in 2020 is nearly $3.86M. When it comes to protecting your business, time is money. It’s best that you don’t wait for such a mishap to happen and take precautionary measures beforehand. Takeaway With each passing year, cybersecurity attacks are increasing and becoming more sophisticated. With businesses becoming more vulnerable, it’s high time that companies start to realize the importance of cybersecurity in businesses.

Cybersecurity Is No Longer "Optional" 

During the stressful COVID-19 pandemic, governments are urging people to stay home. So, many people have adopted new ways to run their day-to-day lives and make sure they are fulfilling. Zoom keeps millions of people connected. TikTok provides a creative outlet to escape shelter-in-place boredom. And Amazon is selling everything from N95 masks to those special items. I-need-this-in-my-life Practicing retail therapy to escape the COVID blues appears to be a major trend in 2020. In October, Amazon’s Prime Day shopping event kicked off the retail holiday shopping season early, more than one month in advance of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Prime Day resulted in a near 60% year-over-year increase in revenue for the online retail giant’s third-party small and medium sellers alone. Although Amazon did not release Prime Day sales totals, the company did announce that marketplace sellers earned more than during the Prime Day event. $3.5 billion With record sales like this in play, and people needing some cheer more than ever, online retailers could have an unprecedented 2020 holiday shopping season. The National Retail Federation’s “2020 Consumer Holiday Survey” found that 60% of consumers say they plan to purchase holiday items online this year. Nearly (91%) plan to take advantage of free shipping, perhaps to avoid breaking quarantine. And consumers expect to spend on items such as gifts, food, decorations, and other holiday-related purchases for themselves and their families. all online shoppers surveyed $998 on average Online Retail Sales Are Increasing, But So Are Cyberthreats Cybercriminals have also noted the uptick in online shopping and are targeting retailers and online shopping sites. According to the , the retail industry was the most-targeted sector for cyberattacks for the third year in a row, with nearly one-quarter of all attacks in retail. Apart from the vast jackpot of money generated within the online retail space, the sensitive personally-identifying information (PII) required for most transactions is also attractive to cyber attackers. Names, addresses, birthdates, and credit card numbers can fetch high prices on the Dark Web or — even better for ransomware groups — might result in desperate retailers paying huge ransoms to mitigate data breaches. 2020 Trustwave Global Security Report In October, bookseller Barnes & Noble that it had been the victim of “unauthorized and unlawful access to certain Barnes & Noble corporate systems.” Later details revealed that customer PII—such as emails, phone numbers, and billing and shipping addresses—may have been exposed during the breach. The attack interrupted Nook-specific online functions and brick-and-mortar store transactions when some point-of-sale (POS) cash registers were temporarily not functioning. reported 3 Steps Retailers Should Take to Prevent Data Breaches Online shoppers store a lot of sensitive personal information on their favorite retail sites, so online retailers need to protect their customers’ private data and other PII. Here’s what online retailers can do to secure critical assets and become cyber resilient from Black Friday to Cyber Monday and all year-round. 1. Gain Visibility into All Network Traffic Traditional security solutions don’t provide visibility into East-West server traffic. This makes it almost impossible to detect the presence of hackers once they’ve gained access to your network. An effective visibility solution will give you granular visibility and control over your network communications, including server traffic. When you have complete cross-segment traffic visibility, any deviation in behavior can be detected and flagged by your security team. This information can be used to check and remediate systems or applications that have been attacked. Another advantage of complete network visibility is that it simplifies PCI compliance. You can audit traffic in the cardholder data environment (CDE) to continuously validate your PCI-DSS posture. 2. Isolate Your Critical Segments with Micro-Segmentation Cybercriminals are increasingly using phishing campaigns to bypass perimeter defense solutions. Your employees might click on a malicious email link, thinking it’s from a trusted source. This would allow the hacker to install malware, spread laterally, and access your servers, databases, and applications. With software-defined micro-segmentation, you can create logical segments coupled with intent-based resource access policies. These can span the hybrid infrastructure without requiring VLAN/ACLs or complex rules and configurations. Security policies can be driven down to application environments, users, and individual workloads, ensuring that access to applications is denied unless explicitly allowed (in other words, zero trust). In the event of an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) or insider threat attack, you can isolate your CDE and critical database servers. The hackers can be blocked and isolated, drastically reducing the attack surface. 3. Educate (and Vet) Your Employees A company’s cybersecurity posture is only as strong as its weakest link, which is often an employee who hasn’t been educated on cyber hygiene best practices. You should train employees, vendors, and affiliates about security best practices. An informed workforce will guard against phishing attacks and similar social engineering tactics used by hackers to exploit human psychology. More rare — but not unheard of — are inside attackers. In September, e-commerce company Shopify that two rogue employees planned an inside job to steal transactional data. Tesla, the largest seller of electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide, avoided an this summer when an employee was offered $500,000 to deploy malware on the Tesla network that would allow a cybercriminal group to demand a ransom. Fortunately, the worker reported the bribe to Tesla. reported inside threat With the holiday shopping season already in progress, online retailers need to ensure that their security solutions can defend their business against increasing malware threats and other cyberattacks. Adopting a proactive approach can reduce the attack surface and keep highly damaging data breaches at bay. Zero Trust Security can help you implement policies to ensure that access to data, applications, and workloads is limited to authorized users. Also published here .

3 Steps Retailers Should Take to Prevent Holiday Data Breaches 

"Tyranny without the tyrant" - Hannah Arendt Our world is in a clerical mess. Growing technological debt is leading us into a future. The one for up until recently we had no solution, namely the delegation of trust. kafkaesque Word has entered our dictionaries describing the complicated and frustrating experience of being forced to navigate the labyrinth of bureaucracy. Dealing with these mundane and absurd aspects of modern administration can sidetrack one's quest for truth in our society. kafkaesque In another small piece written by Franz Kafka in 1920 called , the sea god is presented as a disgruntled manager of the waters, who became overwhelmed with paperwork and lost its will to rule. "Poseidon" Tragicomic mythology of the digital age Good protocols make sure the information is transformed in a transparent way while not hindering the user's ability to interface with his freedom. Now, this is easy to say. The cost of running a highly redundant and uncoherent system makes truth expensive to achieve in any society. In our society truth is mostly achieved by consensus. And technology isn't really helping it's just adding to the growing list of dependencies the social machine needs to function. We rely on these convoluted systems with real consequences in all aspects of our lives. Administrative and legal systems are expensive and often time-consuming - sometimes it takes years to prove a case that should be done in days. The bureaucracy apparatus is so big and inefficient that it has become a meme, an ever dragging legacy. There are wormholes, gray areas and non-transparent processes working out behind the curtain and the momentum of the legal system is hard to stop - even by those who made them. Often the verdicts end up contextualized by arbitrary interpretations in a process where we don't even know the middleman that claims to represent us. After a while, like a well-oiled machine, instead of serving justice parasitic bureaucracy has only one goal - to perpetuate itself. Trustware, not software Execution of social transactions on our behalf is performed by other humans that we delegate trust to. Humans are not perfect, and most often are the least strong link in the chain. We naively believe other people are just like us and that they operate in the same context and uphold the same moral values. Can we produce an incorruptible, transparent way of determining the truth in everyday transactions, while not relying on the legacy bureaucratic system? Joseph K. in the world of blockchain The only way technology can survive the test of time is if it addresses a core problem in our society. Technology by itself doesn't solve the trust problem if governed directly by people. If there is one key argument to advocate why technology like blockchain should exist it is this - to enable humans to make trustless transactions without needing a middleman. Authority of immutable, append-only database driven by smart contracts looks like a promising solution. Decentralization is giving us the power to change for the better, many yet need to wake up to the possibility of a different reality than the one most of us living right now - which is paperwork hell! *image header credits to Mariano Mantel

Technical Debt and the Obfuscation of Truth

Time to first byte, first contentful paint, DNS response time, round-trip time, and the list goes on and on. With all of these , how are you supposed to know which are the most important ones that you should monitor? metrics To understand what those numbers are supposed to look like, you’ll have to get a reference point. Something that’s supposed to give you a starting point. A number that you’ll be able to compare to future results to understand if your performance improved or degraded over time. This process is called . website performance benchmarking Why Benchmark Your Website? You’ll want to run benchmarks on your website because having insights on how it performs will allow you to make decisions that will ensure a competitive edge. It will paint a clearer picture of where you stand compared to your competition and what areas can be improved or need your immediate attention. What Metrics To Benchmark Indeed, each metric can provide insights into performance and where you stand in relation to other similar-sized sites in the same industry. However, there are dozens of metrics to look at, which can make users lose focus on those that are important. To help you get started, I selected the I recommend you should monitor for benchmarking purposes: main metrics – time to first byte, a that tells you how fast your server responds with the first package. TTFB website performance metric – the total size of all your CSS, javascript, images, HTML. Page size – each time you load a file, image, or script, you’ll create a request. The more you have, the more time the server will take serving them. Number of requests – the moment your hero section is visible and fully loaded First Contentful Paint – time to interactive, the metric that tells you the moment the site can respond to user input. TTI – this is the point where every single resource is fully loaded and can respond to user input. Page speed and load time I could go on for a while, but I think these are the ones you should start with. They give you a solid baseline for benchmarking and provide intel as far as any performance issues you might be having and give data to compare with your competitors. I’d suggest making a note of the first benchmark and the values you are seeing. You’ll want to come back periodically and check against them to understand where you stand as time passes. How To Benchmark a Website: Benchmarking Example This process first involves finding a benchmark website to gather results against. As a starting point, offers some interesting statistics about the average website’s size by content, individual response time, HTML document transfer size, and so on. However, this information is quite generic and not specific to a particular industry which may be known for fast loading sites. HTTP Archive This is where benchmarking tools come into play. Tools like , our software, can help you run a wide range of tests on your website like load times, third party APIs stability, web performance across multiple devices, and much more. Sematext Synthetics synthetic monitoring Getting Sematext Synthetic set up is quite easy. After you’ve for a free account, you can start adding the properties you want to monitor. signed up You either create a project or use one that’s already there. For this example, you’ll go with . Select the regions you want your website the request to come from and hit next. Browser Monitors On this step, you’ll describe precisely the type of action you want to request. It can be basic such as “open the site and take a snapshot,” or go as deep as “sign in and add to cart.” Sematext offers many pieces of code as examples, so there’s not going to be a lot of fidgeting around trying to figure out the right code. For my example I went with: <script> { page.goto( ); page.screenshot({ : });
} .exports = testPage; // This script loads the webpage and takes a screenshot of the loaded page. async ( ) function testPage page // Replace <YOUR-WEBPAGE-URL> with URL of the webpage to be monitored await "<YOUR-WEBPAGE-URL>" await path 'screenshot.png' module </ > script The last step before going Live with the monitor is . These are thresholds that will trigger notifications whenever certain conditions are met. setting up the alerts You can have multiple conditions here and, as you might have figured it out, you have to set a threshold value for each one and hit “Create.” And with that, you’ve got yourself all set up and ready to start benchmarking your website at a preset interval. The alerts you have set up based on the criteria selected above will send you a message the second your website starts “Acting up.” This will ensure you’ll get to have an early warning system that will let you tackle issues before they impact your users and their . satisfaction level The dashboard will give you a bird’s-eye view of all the and details on their current status, latest failures, average response time, and other valuable information. websites you monitor But it’s only when you start digging a little deeper that you get into the more impressive parts of Sematext Synthetics. You can look at individual tests and see how the website performed and if they meet the criteria you’ve previously established. You’ll get to see the loaded resources, the logs that were sent back and forth, details on page size, response time, number of requests, and many more. Website Benchmarking Best practices: The Do’s and Don’ts Just like pretty much everything else, there are certain benchmarking pet peeves that you should be aware of, little details that you should keep in mind when performing a benchmark analysis. 1. Compare with similar web pages When picking pages, you want to benchmark against, make sure you pick similar ones. Testing a product page vs. a category page of an ecommerce website will get you some really skewed results and might not provide the valuable information you were looking for. 2. Test multiple locations and devices Your users will use your website from different locations around the world and your website needs to be able to serve people in India just as fast as people in the US. Some may use mobile devices while others will use laptops, so keeping this in mind will provide a better understanding of how affects their . latency user experience 3. Benchmark against competitors instead of averages Averages can be misleading when you compare sites from different industries. If you take the average page speed of google.com and compare it against your e-commerce store that has 100K+ products, it will make you think your site is way off in terms of performance even though this might not necessarily be the case. Instead of just looking at averages, you should compare your performance with that of your competitors. This provides a real industry average that what you are probably used to. 4. Dig deeper Load time is a good general indicator of website performance, but it might not be the right thing to look at. You’ll want to dig a little deeper to understand how your users are experiencing your website, and the first metrics to look at are time to first byte and time to interactive. After you’ve’ established these two, you can move on to others like round trip time, request numbers, etc. 5. Understand what your site “does” when you are not looking You can’t run manual tests on your website all the time. Instead, you want to schedule these tests to make sure your performance remains consistent throughout the day. Scheduling tests at specific times and from different locations will give you a better idea of how your website performs. 6. Monitor third-party APIs Actually, they can be trusted but as the Russian proverb goes, “Trust but verify.” So, make sure you because they can heavily impact . monitor your APIs how users experience your website Conclusion As I’ve already mentioned, website benchmarking, while sounding complicated, is a rather simple process that will help you establish a starting point for your performance. It will let you know the baseline you’ll have to work with and help evaluate your website with that of your competitors. A thorough benchmark analysis gives you all the information you need to optimize your site by pinpointing exactly where the problem areas are. Sematext Synthetics is an awesome benchmarking tool that will help you figure out where you stand compared to your competition, figure out performance vulnerabilities, and prevent bad user experience. All this starting at just $2/month and a 30 days trial period for you to test it out! Read this blog post to learn more about how Synthetics works and why you should use it. Furthermore, we’ve created a few articles that will shed more light on how to speed up and improve your site’s overall performance: Top 10 best website performance monitoring tools Top 15 website speed testing tools Guide to API monitoring: Basic metrics and choosing the right tools Previously published at https://sematext.com/blog/website-benchmarking/

How-to: Website Benchmarks

Before moving on, I would once again like to thank each and every one of my readers and followers for the exceptional support and solidifying me as a in , and . Medium Top Writer Finance Investing Bitcoin I am pleased to announce that after the highly successful series, I will be complementing it with the launch of a new series titled where I will be reviewing upcoming ICOs. “Real World Applications of Cryptocurrencies” “Hot or Not — An ICO Review” For the first post of my new series, I will be reviewing — a blockchain-based marketplace for digital content. Wemark Value Proposition Wemark is developing a blockchain-based distribution system for digital content, implementing our concept of the “distributed marketplace”. Distributed marketplaces allow creators to license their content directly to customers, keeping them in full control of the rights to their content. In other words, is building a platform that will — without the need of middle-men. Their first use-case will be creating a marketplace for stock photography; an industry that will . Wemark empower content creators exceed by 2020 $4B There are a couple of problems with the current centralized solutions (Shutterstock, Getty Images, etc.). First and foremost, most content creators work with agencies and have to on their content in order to monetize it. Secondly, these agencies (and centralized platforms) take a from content creators (up to 85%), leaving them with very little. Unfortunately, as there isn’t enough competition, players in the space are monopolizing it and have free reign to do as they like. give up rights huge cut aims to solve this issue by with addition to (the proposed fee currently stands at 15%). Wemark giving creators back their rights and control over their content minimizing fees Customers will be able to license curated, commercial photos directly from leading photographers. Innovative discovery, collaboration, and curation tools also improve the ability for customers to ﬁnd and manage the content that they need. As a matter of fact, has their stock photography platform a few weeks ago, featuring and , including some of the industry’s leading content providers. Wemark already launched over 3,000 contributors 40,000 photos This is a space that certainly requires an overhaul. I believe that Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies will be able to revolutionize this industry, so is off to a good start. Wemark Wemark Token & ICO Overview Before moving on, I would like to get a few terminologies out of the way, in order for everyone to be able to follow my posts. —Taking an extract from Wikipedia: Initial Coin Offering (ICO) An ICO is a means of crowdfunding centered around cryptocurrency, which can be a source of capital for startup companies. In an ICO, a quantity of the crowdfunded cryptocurrency is sold to investors in the form of “tokens”, in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies. — Provides the utility and functionality to create ecentralized lications (dApps) running on top of it. is an example of such dApp. Platform D App Wemark — A unique identifier of a token. Usually this is consistent across exchanges, charting sites, etc. Symbol — The total amount of tokens/coins that will ever exist. Total Supply — The minimum amount that an ICO needs to raise. Typically, if the soft cap is not reached, the ICO is cancelled and funds are refunded. Soft Cap — The maximum amount that an ICO will be raising. The ICO ends immediately once the hard cap reached and will stop raising further funds. Hard Cap — The cost of 1 token during the ICO. Rate Below you can find a graphic providing details about the ICO and some information about the . In order to participate, follow the link . Wemark Token here Token Use is introducing a dedicated token to power a direct economy for digital content. ( ), are intended to serve as a native payment system for the network, and reward all the relevant parties for creating, distributing and promoting digital content. Wemark Wemark Tokens WMK The ( ) has a very straight forward and easy to understand use-case; it will purely act as a currency on the . Wemark Token WMK Wemark platform In addition, since creators are getting paid in , they could become vested in the platform, as their earnings could increase as the gets adopted further; a much better relationship than what content creators currently have with agencies. WMK Wemark Platform Team & Advisors was established in 2015, has its headquarters in and esearch evelopment (R&D) office in . The founders consist of: Wemark San Francisco, USA R & D Tel Aviv, Israel Wemark **(CEO)—**Has been in the digital marketing space for over a decade. Founder and former CEO of Underline; a digital marketing agency specialized in start-ups, Israeli brands and online businesses (notable clients include Leumi Bank, Discount Bank, Weizmann Institute, TrustWare and the Trump Foundation). Besides his full-time occupation, Tai guest lectures and mentors, marketing and entrepreneurship, at the IDC Herzliya international school. Tai Kaish **(CTO) —**Over a decade of software engineering and management experience. Former R&D Director of Linkury; leading ~20 employees in various teams. Additionally, Pavel was a guild member of the NFX Guild; a seed and series A venture firm based in San Francisco. Prior to that, he was an R&D Manager in Unit 8200 of Israeli Intelligence Corps. Pavel Elkind **(VP Business Development) —**Serial entrepreneur that has been involved in a number of different roles and industries, ranging from being a founder, a director, an international delegations coordinator and much more. Roy Meirom has an excellent board of advisors, consisting of industry experts in a number of relevant areas. Some notable advisors are: (Former CEO & Founder at Picasa, Director at Google), ( Marketplace Director at Canva), (Former General Counsel / VP at Shutterstock), (Former Director of Content Development at Shutterstock). You can find all of them . Wemark Lars Perkins Lee Torrens Michael C. Lesser Keren Sachs here Despite the fact that the founders in the space, they have a of setting up and launching successful businesses in a variety of industries. Additionally, the board of advisors behind will help offset this, as they are huge names in the space. do not have any experience proven track record Wemark Partnerships & Investors has already secured enture apital ( ) backing from , and . This indicates that has considerable potential for rapid and profitable growth as VCs wouldn’t have backed them otherwise; a major positive point. Wemark V C VC Sarona Ventures NFX Elevator Wemark They also have partnerships with names like , , , and more, but details about these partnerships are unknown. GuruShots Solume.io Deloitte Verdict — Hot or Not? Taking into consideration all points above, in my opinion, has done a good job in identifying an issue with the current centralized approach for digital content contribution. Moving the digital content marketplace to the decentralized world benefits both, the creator and consumer. The creator gets a bigger slice of the pie, and due to this, can price more aggressively, which in turn, benefits the consumer. The Wemark team and advisors look more than capable of pulling this through and having already secured backing from VCs, this gives further confidence of success to potential ICO investors. Wemark I would classify : Wemark Hot ICO goes live on the 7th of May — For more information and participation details, follow the link . Wemark’s here Drop me a comment or message with ICOs you want to see in next! “Hot or Not” Make sure you give the post a 👏 👏 and my blog a if you enjoyed this post and want to see more. clap follow You can also show your support by donating to the following address: : 0x4c7195E074cf0Ab6F77Bdb7C97Fd2567066Bb712 ETH . Disclaimer : All information and data on this blog post is for informational purposes only. My opinions are my own. I do not provide personal investment advice and I am not a qualified licensed investment advisor I make no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity, of any information. I will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or any losses, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided as is with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Hot or Cold: Wemark ICO

By , 20+ years as an ink and html-stained wretch for national publications. also: an excellent speller. on . Dan Tynan Originally published Quora Bleak? Interestingly, journalism itself is experiencing quite a resurgence, at least in the US. You can thank the Orangutan-in-Chief for that. The Fourth Estate has totally upped its game since the election, reminding us all of the vital importance of a free press/media when staring fascism in the face. It might yet save us from Trumpageddon. Unfortunately, the business models have not changed. So regardless of the fact that (and probably also across the board for the major pubs, I assume), revenue models are not sustainable. News is too quickly commoditized; once a NY Times exclusive becomes public it’s turned into a third-rate rehash in (don’t try clicking it, I just made that up), and the Times sees not one dollar of ad revenue or any significant referral traffic from that. subscriptions to the digital NY Times are up GoodEnoughNews.com As far as I can tell, nobody has come up with a solution that truly works for turning digital news into profits. Paywalls, freemium/premium models, a la carte micropayments systems like — all are being tried, but I’ve yet to hear of one that solves this problem. Which leaves us all at the mercy of deep-pocketed benefactors (like Jeff Bezos, new owner of the Washington Post) and/or malefactors (Rupert Murdoch and whatever evil Cthulhu wannabees who run Breitbart, InfoWars, World News Daily, and their ilk). Blendle So newspapers/sites are continuing to slash their staffs. Recently, a good friend of mine who has covered tech for one of the biggest US national newspapers just got cut after 17 years on the job. It’s just business, Fredo. Fortunately for him, he got another journalism job at a well-known business magazine. But he’s one of the lucky ones. The , most of whom have far less experience, may find it a bit harder to land another journalism job and will likely end up doing something else (probably marketing or PR). staffers who just got laid off at Mashable Then there are the robots. Companies like Narrative Science and Audience Insights are already using bots to for outlets like AP and the LA Times. Welcome to our new robotic overlords. churn out sports and financial stories But you can’t do journalism without journalists, no matter how smart your AI is. At least, I hope you can’t. Now I need a drink. Who’s buying? By , 20+ years as an ink and html-stained wretch for national publications. also: an excellent speller. on . Dan Tynan Originally published Quora For more trending tech answers from , visit . Quora HackerNoon.com/quora

What’s the Future of Journalism in the Digital World?

tl;dr: Encrypt all your online (IM) communication, there is no good reason anymore to not do it. Use a XMPP+Omemo client (Conversations on Android, ChatSecure on iOS and Gajim for Windows/Mac/Linux). Don’t be fooled by companies who use security as a marketing buzzword (especially don’t use WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram). In this post I focus on a small subset of security: Encrypted Instant Messaging. I’ll talk about other important issues in other posts. It’s important to me because I see a huge gap between what people do, what they care about and what they are not aware of. It’s just the biggest potential I see for people, where they can have the easiest the most impact. Why should you care? Why should you care about protecting your communication and generally your data? “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” — Edward Snowden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument The right to is the right to self. You “own” you. You decide when you want to share you and when you don’t. privacy Here’s a long list of arguments, unfortuantely in German, if you have a similar list in English, please let me know in the comments: https://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Ich_habe_nichts_zu_verbergen! Or to make it less abstract: Would you mind giving me your email password? No? Why not? I thought you have nothing to hide? Why is it more important to you that I can’t read all your emails than Merkel, Trump and Zuckerberg? Why do you trust Trump more than me? And yes, this is real, computers are actually reading your unencrypted communication (email and chat). And then when there are “investigations” many humans, police, politicians, agencies can drill down and read every single of your email just because you wrote an email with someone 10 years ago who was potentially involved in a crime now. That is exactly what a lot of the fuzz with Snowden was about. security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) I hope until now you are conviced that you want to encrypt your communication. Don’t fear, the great thing is, that since 2016 it is significantly easier than it was before. It is actually now so easy that anybody can do it. Yes, my mom is sending me encrypted messages. The great news is that this does not mean any overhead in your communication, you only need to install a new app. I will compare different possibilities and will rank them by justified reasons for the ranking. What you should be aware of is that you make two choices at the same time, when you pick an IM client: One the one hand the client itself, on the other hand the protocol which this client uses. That means you will only be able to communicate with people that use a client that speaks the same protocol as your client. I thought how to present that decision the best and decided that often protocols and applications are still coupled and that for now the best is to have one list and not split it up into two lists. So next I will give you a list of important characteristics of protocols and applications, by which you can determine if a protocol/application is good or not a list of protocol recommendations and the characteristics you could (and maybe should ;)) care about when deciding for a protocol. Decision Criteria (clients and protocol): You can’t trust any closed source encryption, yes it’s that simple. Reason: How can you tell the difference that they just show you a lock in the UI instead of really doing encryption? Yes, you can’t. Nobody can. You don’t believe me that companies would never be so dishonest to do that? Have a look here: (summary: They advertise security and then there is no security in it) — you are saying big companies would never do that? Most of them are forced to: — so open source is the main criterion, everything which is not open source can’t be recommended. Of course, just having a protocol and clients open source is not sufficient, also there are ideally several security audits. I will include apps which require a closed source server, because theoretically it is sufficient that the clients are open source if the end-to-end encryption is proovable sufficient. Nevertheless it’s “nicer” also it does not comply with the next criterion. Open source https://hannover.ccc.de/~nexus/bubcon/bubcon.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter : Think about email. If you are using gmail, you can send emails to people how use hotmail or yahoo. It would be crazy if you couldn’t send them emails, right? Why do you accept that with instant messaging? If you are using Whatsapp you can only talk to Whatsapp users, stupid, isn’t it? A consequence of having everything (clients and protocol) open source and federation is that users have the choice of clients and thus can swith from (email example) yahoo to gmail, if they notice they get a better experience at gmail. Federation/Decentralization : You want to be able to chat with a group of friends, right? Group chat : You want to be able to chat from your two phones and three computers and switch seemless between them, right? Multi-device : Yes, there have been protocols in the past which did not support that you can send messages when the other person is currently offline, stupid heh? Offline messages : Open source is nice, but when nobody actually does a proper security audit nobody knows if the crypto is actually worth anything. Recently security audited EFF gives a green flag on that if the last code audit has been in the last 12 months. (of the protocol): See federation, you want that there exist usable clients for all major operating systems and browsers (Linux, Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows, Firefox, Chrome). I will use the following rating scheme: An app starts with 5* and for each completely missing OS (iOS, Android, Linux, MacOS, Windows) it loses 2 stars (while supporting any browser counts), supporting only browser or only desktop is one star off, and if the client with the highest usability <4 in an OS it’s also 1 star off. Systems support : For a fair amount of people it is important that they can stay anonymous, that means that their IM account is not couple to a phone number or email. Anonymity : You want your user experience to be great. This also includes that sending files and images is nice and easy. I’ll give a 5 star rating from my own experience, feel free to apply your own judgement and run the calculation of the ranking. Usability : This is the only majorly important thing about encryption which has not been properly solved so far. This would require it’s own article, but let me try in a few sentences anyways: You somehow need to find out that you are actually talking to the person you think you are talking to. Otherwise an attacker can just claim they are the person you actually want to talk to, and gone is your encryption. So how to you find out if you are talking to the right person? You need to manually verify that the key or fingerprint of the contact shown in the app matches with their actual fingerprint/key. In order to verify that you need to use an existing trustworthy communication channel. For example meeting in person, calling via phone, web of trust, or social media (in the hope an attacker doesn’t have access there). There are huge differences in usability on how to achieve this and require this fingerprint verfication from users. I will give a personal rating of 5 stars on how I judge the usability and process to encourage users doing that. Fingerprint/Key verification : If your key gets compromised, the attacker is not able to decrypt past communication. Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) Protocol rating follows this rating scheme: Supports federation/decentralization, group chat, multi-device, offline messages, forward secrecy, anonymity and is audited. The rating is 5 minus number of missing attributes, this rating gets double the weight. Yes, technically not all attributes are really protocol attributes, but it’s part of the package you get, so that’s why I include it in this rating and not to overcomplicate things. Ranking, as of January 2017 Encrypted/Secure IM Ranking, as of January 2017 Recommendations : My recommendation (as of January 2017). XMPP has a long success history and is extremely well standardized and supported, unfortuantely so far not that many clients picked up on Omemo ( ). And the only desktop client (Gajim) only has a very mediocre usability. Also Gajim is difficult to set-up, and while Conversations is amazing it costs either 3€ in the Android store or one has to install it via F-Droid, which is then also a hassle to set-up. So even my current recommendation is by far not perfect. But it’s the best you currently get and it is by far better than what was available in 2015. : Until November 2016 this has been my recommendation because Riot didn’t support Olm e2e encryption until then and there was no XMPP+Omemo client for iOS until January 2017. As of January 2017 I don’t recommend Signal anymore, because XMPP+Omemo and Riot are better alternatives. Also it has a bunch of glitches/bugs with notifications and duplicate messages. XMPP+Omemo ( Conversations , ChatSecure , Gajim ) status page Signal Not recommended because they are :Whatsapp, Facebook, Skype, Google Hangouts, Google Allo, Facetime, QQ Mobile, WeChat, Viber, LINE, Blackberry Messenger, Threema, TrustCase, whistle.im closed source because there is :Wire, RetroShare, Tox, Surespot because the (doesn’t support either group chat, multi-device or offline messages):OTR, Telegram*, Silent Phone, Tox, Ricochet, Surespot no security audit protocol is crap * yes, believe it or not, Telegram does not provide encrypted group chat and multi-device. They are actually one of the apps/companies for which the warning “don’t be fooled” holds very much true: Yes, they provide e2e encryption, but only if you explicitely start it and then only between exactly two mobile devices (no, desktop and browser not supported). Also they are a good example why it’s generally a bad idea to invent your own cryptography: http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-cryptanalysis-contest _Last night, BuzzFeed published an unconfirmed intelligence report on President-elect Donald Trump's ties with Russia…_www.theverge.com Trump leak raises new questions about Telegram security Appendix I invested a considerable amount of time collecting the information presented in this article from various resources. This reflects my current state of knowledge. I open up everything I wrote here to debate, and I am more than happy to update my knowledge, believes and this article when presented with new, reasonable information. This being said I provide the following SLA: I will read every comment until May 2017 and will update the article if necessary. References I used a lot of information from (and also updated): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_clients#Messengers_with_client-to-client_encryption _Diese Liste enthält Instant Messenger, die das Netzwerkprotokoll XMPP unterstützten._de.wikipedia.org Liste von XMPP-Clients - Wikipedia _Tracking the progress of OMEMO integration in various XMPP clients._www.omemo.top Are we OMEMO yet? by bascht _This is version 1.0 of our scorecard; it is out of date, and is preserved here for purely historical reasons. Please…_www.eff.org Secure Messaging Scorecard Security Audits Omemo (used by Conversations, ChatSecure, Gaijm): https://conversations.im/omemo/audit.pdf Olm (used by Riot): https://matrix.org/blog/2016/11/21/matrixs-olm-end-to-end-encryption-security-assessment-released-and-implemented-cross-platform-on-riot-at-last/ Signal: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf Cryptocat: https://leastauthority.com/static/publications/LeastAuthority-Cryptocat-audit-report.pdf Ricochet: https://ricochet.im/files/ricochet-ncc-audit-2016-01.pdf According to there has been a recent audit for: Signal, Silent Phone, Telegram, OTR (Pidgin) and ChatSecure. https://www.eff.org/de/node/82654 is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. 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