#customer service software examples

[softwarereviewforall]

CAPTERRA AWARDS ENGAGEBAY AS TOP CUSTOMER SERVICE SOFTWARE

EngageBay is a customer service software that has received high ratings from users in terms of value for money and functionality. It has been recognized as an outstanding product with a value for money rating of 4.7 out of 5 and a functionality rating of 4.6 out of 5. In this article, we will discuss EngageBay reviews, EngageBay vs HubSpot, EngageBay pricing, and whether EngageBay is good according to Capterra.

EngageBay Reviews

EngageBay has received positive reviews from users on Capterra. It has an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5, and users have praised its simplicity, ease of use, and range of features. Here are some examples of EngageBay reviews from Capterra users:

“The tool is very simple to use. It integrated with our own platform easily. We have really utilized all the features such as the email marketing, CRM, automation, and social media engagement. For me, the best in nurturing and closing leads!” ~ Kentall S.

“Needed a cost prohibitive plan form that has everything to market my fitness business along with the automation. I was using multiple pieces of software well over 300+ a month and Engagebay has replaced all of them at a fraction of the price.” ~ Stephen G.

“What I like the most about EngageBay is that it’s an inclusive platform where Sales, Marketing, and Support can be able to work together on the same platform and helps these different but intertwined departments to be always in sync.” ~ Brendan C.

EngageBay vs HubSpot

EngageBay and HubSpot are both customer service software options that offer a range of features to help businesses manage their customer relationships. However, there are some differences between the two. EngageBay is a more affordable option, with a starting price of $13.80 per month, billed annually, while HubSpot offers a free version and paid plans that start at $50 per month. EngageBay is also a more user-friendly option, with a simpler interface that is easier to navigate. HubSpot, on the other hand, offers more advanced features and tools, making it a better option for larger businesses with more complex needs.

EngageBay Pricing

EngageBay offers a range of pricing plans to suit different business needs. The basic plan starts at $13.80 per month, billed annually, and includes up to 500 contacts. The advanced plan starts at $29.99 per month, billed annually, and includes unlimited contacts. EngageBay also offers a free trial of its software, allowing users to test out its features before committing to a paid plan.

Is EngageBay Good According to Capterra?

EngageBay has received positive reviews from users on Capterra, with an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5. It has been recognized as an outstanding product with a value for money rating of 4.7 out of 5 and a functionality rating of 4.6 out of 5. Capterra is a safe platform that helps businesses find and evaluate top software and business services. It does not pay for reviews, and it has review guidelines in place to ensure that reviews are honest and unbiased.

In conclusion, EngageBay is a customer service software that offers a range of features to help businesses manage their customer relationships. It has received positive reviews from users on Capterra, and it is a more affordable and user-friendly option compared to HubSpot. EngageBay offers a range of pricing plans to suit different business needs, and it is a safe and reliable option according to Capterra.

Citations: [1] https://www.capterra.com [2] https://www.capterra.com/categories/ [3] https://www.capterra.com/p/185973/HelpDesk/reviews/ [4] https://www.linkedin.com/company/capterra [5] https://www.capterra.com/customer-service-software/ [6] https://www.capterra.com/customer-service-software/s/free/

[likeawolfatthemoon]

yesterday i had a panic attack at work and sobbed for over an hour at my desk in front of all of my coworkers bc i was frozen to the spot and couldn't like...move myself to a different area at the very least. and i embarrassed the fuck out of myself and now i'm afraid of the new job that i loved 🙃

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How lock-in hurts design

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

If you've ever read about design, you've probably encountered the idea of "paving the desire path." A "desire path" is an erosion path created by people departing from the official walkway and taking their own route. The story goes that smart campus planners don't fight the desire paths laid down by students; they pave them, formalizing the route that their constituents have voted for with their feet.

Desire paths aren't always great (Wikipedia notes that "desire paths sometimes cut through sensitive habitats and exclusion zones, threatening wildlife and park security"), but in the context of design, a desire path is a way that users communicate with designers, creating a feedback loop between those two groups. The designers make a product, the users use it in ways that surprise the designer, and the designer integrates all that into a new revision of the product.

This method is widely heralded as a means of "co-innovating" between users and companies. Designers who practice the method are lauded for their humility, their willingness to learn from their users. Tech history is strewn with examples of successful paved desire-paths.

Take John Deere. While today the company is notorious for its war on its customers (via its opposition to right to repair), Deere was once a leader in co-innovation, dispatching roving field engineers to visit farms and learn how farmers had modified their tractors. The best of these modifications would then be worked into the next round of tractor designs, in a virtuous cycle:

https://securityledger.com/2019/03/opinion-my-grandfathers-john-deere-would-support-our-right-to-repair/

But this pattern is even more pronounced in the digital world, because it's much easier to update a digital service than it is to update all the tractors in the field, especially if that service is cloud-based, meaning you can modify the back-end everyone is instantly updated. The most celebrated example of this co-creation is Twitter, whose users created a host of its core features.

Retweets, for example, were a user creation. Users who saw something they liked on the service would type "RT" and paste the text and the link into a new tweet composition window. Same for quote-tweets: users copied the URL for a tweet and pasted it in below their own commentary. Twitter designers observed this user innovation and formalized it, turning it into part of Twitter's core feature-set.

Companies are obsessed with discovering digital desire paths. They pay fortunes for analytics software to produce maps of how their users interact with their services, run focus groups, even embed sneaky screen-recording software into their web-pages:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dark-side-of-replay-sessions-that-record-your-every-move-online/

This relentless surveillance of users is pursued in the name of making things better for them: let us spy on you and we'll figure out where your pain-points and friction are coming from, and remove those. We all win!

But this impulse is a world apart from the humility and respect implied by co-innovation. The constant, nonconsensual observation of users has more to do with controlling users than learning from them.

That is, after all, the ethos of modern technology: the more control a company can exert over its users ,the more value it can transfer from those users to its shareholders. That's the key to enshittification, the ubiquitous platform decay that has degraded virtually all the technology we use, making it worse every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

When you are seeking to control users, the desire paths they create are all too frequently a means to wrestling control back from you. Take advertising: every time a service makes its ads more obnoxious and invasive, it creates an incentive for its users to search for "how do I install an ad-blocker":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

More than half of all web-users have installed ad-blockers. It's the largest consumer boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But zero app users have installed ad-blockers, because reverse-engineering an app requires that you bypass its encryption, triggering liability under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law provides for a $500,000 fine and a 5-year prison sentence for "circumvention" of access controls:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Beyond that, modifying an app creates liability under copyright, trademark, patent, trade secrets, noncompete, nondisclosure and so on. It's what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

This is why services are so horny to drive you to install their app rather using their websites: they are trying to get you to do something that, given your druthers, you would prefer not to do. They want to force you to exit through the gift shop, you want to carve a desire path straight to the parking lot. Apps let them mobilize the law to literally criminalize those desire paths.

An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to block ads in it (or do anything else that wrestles value back from a company). Apps are web-pages where everything not forbidden is mandatory.

Seen in this light, an app is a way to wage war on desire paths, to abandon the cooperative model for co-innovation in favor of the adversarial model of user control and extraction.

Corporate apologists like to claim that the proliferation of apps proves that users like them. Neoliberal economists love the idea that business as usual represents a "revealed preference." This is an intellectually unserious tautology: "you do this, so you must like it":

https://boingboing.net/2024/01/22/hp-ceo-says-customers-are-a-bad-investment-unless-they-can-be-made-to-buy-companys-drm-ink-cartridges.html

Calling an action where no alternatives are permissible a "preference" or a "choice" is a cheap trick – especially when considered against the "preferences" that reveal themselves when a real choice is possible. Take commercial surveillance: when Apple gave Ios users a choice about being spied on – a one-click opt of of app-based surveillance – 96% of users choice no spying:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

But then Apple started spying on those very same users that had opted out of spying by Facebook and other Apple competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Neoclassical economists aren't just obsessed with revealed preferences – they also love to bandy about the idea of "moral hazard": economic arrangements that tempt people to be dishonest. This is typically applied to the public ("consumers" in the contemptuous parlance of econospeak). But apps are pure moral hazard – for corporations. The ability to prohibit desire paths – and literally imprison rivals who help your users thwart those prohibitions – is too tempting for companies to resist.

The fact that the majority of web users block ads reveals a strong preference for not being spied on ("users just want relevant ads" is such an obvious lie that doesn't merit any serious discussion):

https://www.iccl.ie/news/82-of-the-irish-public-wants-big-techs-toxic-algorithms-switched-off/

Giant companies attained their scale by learning from their users, not by thwarting them. The person using technology always knows something about what they need to do and how they want to do it that the designers can never anticipate. This is especially true of people who are unlike those designers – people who live on the other side of the world, or the other side of the economic divide, or whose bodies don't work the way that the designers' bodies do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

Apps – and other technologies that are locked down so their users can be locked in – are the height of technological arrogance. They embody a belief that users are to be told, not heard. If a user wants to do something that the designer didn't anticipate, that's the user's fault:

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

Corporate enthusiasm for prohibiting you from reconfiguring the tools you use to suit your needs is a declaration of the end of history. "Sure," John Deere execs say, "we once learned from farmers by observing how they modified their tractors. But today's farmers are so much stupider and we are so much smarter that we have nothing to learn from them anymore."

Spying on your users to control them is a poor substitute asking your users their permission to learn from them. Without technological self-determination, preferences can't be revealed. Without the right to seize the means of computation, the desire paths never emerge, leaving designers in the dark about what users really want.

Our policymakers swear loyalty to "innovation" but when corporations ask for the right to decide who can innovate and how, they fall all over themselves to create laws that let companies punish users for the crime of contempt of business-model.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/24/everything-not-mandatory/#is-prohibited

Image: Belem (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Desire_path_%2819811581366%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[tinystepsforward]

autocrattic (more matt shenanigans, not tumblr this time)

I am almost definitely not the right person for this writeup, but I'm closer than most people on here, so here goes! This is all open-source tech drama, and I take my time laying out the context, but the short version is: Matt tried to extort another company, who immediately posted receipts, and now he's refusing to log off again. The long version is... long.

If you don't need software context, scroll down/find the "ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening" heading, or just go read the pink sections. Or look at this PDF.

the background

So. Matt's original Good Idea was starting WordPress with fellow developer Mike Little in 2003, which is free and open-source software (FOSS) that was originally just for blogging, but now powers lots of websites that do other things. In particular, Automattic acquired WooCommerce a long time ago, which is free online store software you can run on WordPress.

FOSS is... interesting. It's a world that ultimately is powered by people who believe deeply that information and resources should be free, but often have massive blind spots (for example, Wikipedia's consistently had issues with bias, since no amount of "anyone can edit" will overcome systemic bias in terms of who has time to edit or is not going to be driven away by the existing contributor culture). As with anything else that people spend thousands of hours doing online, there's drama. As with anything else that's technically free but can be monetized, there are:

Heaps of companies and solo developers who profit off WordPress themes, plugins, hosting, and other services;

Conflicts between volunteer contributors and for-profit contributors;

Annoying founders who get way too much credit for everything the project has become.

the WordPress ecosystem

A project as heavily used as WordPress (some double-digit percentage of the Internet uses WP. I refuse to believe it's the 43% that Matt claims it is, but it's a pretty large chunk) can't survive just on the spare hours of volunteers, especially in an increasingly monetised world where its users demand functional software, are less and less tech or FOSS literate, and its contributors have no fucking time to build things for that userbase.

Matt runs Automattic, which is a privately-traded, for-profit company. The free software is run by the WordPress Foundation, which is technically completely separate (wordpress.org). The main products Automattic offers are WordPress-related: WordPress.com, a host which was designed to be beginner-friendly; Jetpack, a suite of plugins which extend WordPress in a whole bunch of ways that may or may not make sense as one big product; WooCommerce, which I've already mentioned. There's also WordPress VIP, which is the fancy bespoke five-digit-plus option for enterprise customers. And there's Tumblr, if Matt ever succeeds in putting it on WordPress. (Every Tumblr or WordPress dev I know thinks that's fucking ridiculous and impossible. Automattic's hiring for it anyway.)

Automattic devotes a chunk of its employees toward developing Core, which is what people in the WordPress space call WordPress.org, the free software. This is part of an initiative called Five for the Future — 5% of your company's profits off WordPress should go back into making the project better. Many other companies don't do this.

There are lots of other companies in the space. GoDaddy, for example, barely gives back in any way (and also sucks). WP Engine is the company this drama is about. They don't really contribute to Core. They offer relatively expensive WordPress hosting, as well as providing a series of other WordPress-related products like LocalWP (local site development software), Advanced Custom Fields (the easiest way to set up advanced taxonomies and other fields when making new types of posts. If you don't know what this means don't worry about it), etc.

Anyway. Lots of strong personalities. Lots of for-profit companies. Lots of them getting invested in, or bought by, private equity firms.

Matt being Matt, tech being tech

As was said repeatedly when Matt was flipping out about Tumblr, all of the stuff happening at Automattic is pretty normal tech company behaviour. Shit gets worse. People get less for their money. WordPress.com used to be a really good place for people starting out with a website who didn't need "real" WordPress — for $48 a year on the Personal plan, you had really limited features (no plugins or other customisable extensions), but you had a simple website with good SEO that was pretty secure, relatively easy to use, and 24-hour access to Happiness Engineers (HEs for short. Bad job title. This was my job) who could walk you through everything no matter how bad at tech you were. Then Personal plan users got moved from chat to emails only. Emails started being responded to by contractors who didn't know as much as HEs did and certainly didn't get paid half as well. Then came AI, and the mandate for HEs to try to upsell everyone things they didn't necessarily need. (This is the point at which I quit.)

But as was said then as well, most tech CEOs don't publicly get into this kind of shitfight with their users. They're horrid tyrants, but they don't do it this publicly.

ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening

WordCamp US, one of the biggest WordPress industry events of the year, is the backdrop for all this. It just finished.

There are.... a lot of posts by Matt across multiple platforms because, as always, he can't log off. But here's the broad strokes.

Sep 17

Matt publishes a wanky blog post about companies that profit off open source without giving back. It targets a specific company, WP Engine.

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital. So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?

(It's worth noting here that Automattic is funded in part by BlackRock, who Wikipedia calls "the world's largest asset manager".)

Sep 20 (WCUS final day)

WP Engine puts out a blog post detailing their contributions to WordPress.

Matt devotes his keynote/closing speech to slamming WP Engine.

He also implies people inside WP Engine are sending him information.

For the people sending me stuff from inside companies, please do not do it on your work device. Use a personal phone, Signal with disappearing messages, etc. I have a bunch of journalists happy to connect you with as well. #wcus — Twitter I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and that you get support. — Tumblr

Matt also puts out an offer live at WordCamp US:

“If anyone of you gets in trouble for speaking up in favor of WordPress and/or open source, reach out to me. I’ll do my best to help you find a new job.” — source tweet, RTed by Matt

He also puts up a poll asking the community if WP Engine should be allowed back at WordCamps.

Sep 21

Matt writes a blog post on the WordPress.org blog (the official project blog!): WP Engine is not WordPress.

He opens this blog post by claiming his mom was confused and thought WP Engine was official.

The blog post goes on about how WP Engine disabled post revisions (which is a pretty normal thing to do when you need to free up some resources), therefore being not "real" WordPress. (As I said earlier, WordPress.com disables most features for Personal and Premium plans. Or whatever those plans are called, they've been renamed like 12 times in the last few years. But that's a different complaint.)

Sep 22: More bullshit on Twitter. Matt makes a Reddit post on r/Wordpress about WP Engine that promptly gets deleted. Writeups start to come out:

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg Sparks Backlash

TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers

Sep 23 onward

Okay, time zones mean I can't effectively sequence the rest of this.

Matt defends himself on Reddit, casually mentioning that WP Engine is now suing him.

Also here's a decent writeup from someone involved with the community that may be of interest.

WP Engine drops the full PDF of their cease and desist, which includes screenshots of Matt apparently threatening them via text.

Twitter link | Direct PDF link

This PDF includes some truly fucked texts where Matt appears to be trying to get WP Engine to pay him money unless they want him to tell his audience at WCUS that they're evil.

Matt, after saying he's been sued and can't talk about it, hosts a Twitter Space and talks about it for a couple hours.

He also continues to post on Reddit, Twitter, and on the Core contributor Slack.

Here's a comment where he says WP Engine could have avoided this by paying Automattic 8% of their revenue.

Another, 20 hours ago, where he says he's being downvoted by "trolls, probably WPE employees"

At some point, Matt updates the WordPress Foundation trademark policy. I am 90% sure this was him — it's not legalese and makes no fucking sense to single out WP Engine.

Old text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. New text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

Sep 25: Automattic puts up their own legal response.

anyway this fucking sucks

This is bigger than anything Matt's done before. I'm so worried about my friends who're still there. The internal ramifications have... been not great so far, including that Matt's naturally being extra gung-ho about "you're either for me or against me and if you're against me then don't bother working your two weeks".

Despite everything, I like WordPress. (If you dig into this, you'll see plenty of people commenting about blocks or Gutenberg or React other things they hate. Unlike many of the old FOSSheads, I actually also think Gutenberg/the block editor was a good idea, even if it was poorly implemented.)

I think that the original mission — to make it so anyone can spin up a website that's easy enough to use and blog with — is a good thing. I think, despite all the ways being part of FOSS communities since my early teens has led to all kinds of racist, homophobic and sexual harm for me and for many other people, that free and open-source software is important.

So many people were already burning out of the project. Matt has been doing this for so long that those with long memories can recite all the ways he's wrecked shit back a decade or more. Most of us are exhausted and need to make money to live. The world is worse than it ever was.

Social media sucks worse and worse, and this was a world in which people missed old webrings, old blogs, RSS readers, the world where you curated your own whimsical, unpaid corner of the Internet. I started actually actively using my own WordPress blog this year, and I've really enjoyed it.

And people don't want to deal with any of this.

The thing is, Matt's right about one thing: capital is ruining free open-source software. What he's wrong about is everything else: the idea that WordPress.com isn't enshittifying (or confusing) at a much higher rate than WP Engine, the idea that WP Engine or Silver Lake are the only big players in the field, the notion that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But he's started a battle where there are no winners but the lawyers who get paid to duke it out, and all the volunteers who've survived this long in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by big money are giving up and leaving.

Anyway if you got this far, consider donating to someone on gazafunds.com. It'll take much less time than reading this did.

[ms-demeanor]

One thing that I keep seeing whenever I make posts that are critical of macs is folks in the notes going "they make great computers for the money if you just buy used/refurbs - everyone knows not to buy new" and A) no they don't know that, most people go looking for a new computer unless they have already exhausted the new options in their budget and B) no they don't make great computers for the money, and being used doesn't do anything to make them easier to work on or repair or upgrade.

Here's a breakdown of the anti-consumer, anti-repair features recently introduced in macbooks. If you don't want to watch the video, here's how it's summed up:

In the end the Macbook Pro is a laptop with a soldered-on SSD and RAM, a battery secured with glue, not screws, a keyboard held in with rivets, a display and lid angle sensor no third party can replace without apple. But it has modular ports so I guess that’s something. But I don’t think it’s worthy of IFixIt’s four out of ten reparability score because if it breaks you have to face apple’s repair cost; with no repair competition they can charge whatever they like. You either front the cost, or toss the laptop, leaving me wondering “who really owns this computer?”

Apple doesn't make great computers for the money because they are doing everything possible to make sure that you don't actually own your computer, you just lease the hardware from apple and they determine how long it is allowed to function.

The lid angle sensor discussed in this video replaces a much simpler sensor that has been used in laptops for twenty years AND calibrating the sensor after a repair requires access to proprietary apple software that isn't accessible to either users or third party repair shops. There's no reason for this software not to be included as a diagnostic tool on your computer except that Apple doesn't want users working on apple computers. If your screen breaks, or if the fragile cable that is part of the sensor wears down, your only option to fix this computer is to pay apple.

How long does apple plan to support this hardware? What if you pay $3k for a computer today and it breaks in 7 years - will they still calibrate the replacement screen for you or will they tell you it's time for new hardware EVEN THOUGH YOU COULD HAVE ATTAINED FUNCTIONAL HARDWARE THAT WILL WORK IF APPLE'S SOFTWARE TELLS IT TO?

Look at this article talking about "how long" apple supports various types of hardware. It coos over the fact that a 2013 MacBook Air could be getting updates to this day. That's the longest example in this article, and that's *hardware* support, not the life cycle of the operating system. That is dogshit. That is straight-up dogshit.

Apple computers are DRM locked in a way that windows machines only wish they could pull off, and the apple-only chips are a part of that. They want an entirely walled garden so they can entirely control your interactions with the computer that they own and you're just renting.

Even if they made the best hardware in the world that would last a thousand years and gave you flowers on your birthday it wouldn't matter because modern apple computers don't ever actually belong to apple customers, at the end of the day they belong to apple, and that's on purpose.

This is hardware as a service. This is John Deere. This is subscription access to the things you buy, and if it isn't exactly that right at this moment, that is where things have been heading ever since they realized it was possible to exert a control that granular over their users.

With all sympathy to people who are forced to use them, Fuck Apple I Hope That They Fall Into The Ocean And Are Hidden Away From The Honest Light Of The Sun For Their Crimes.

[sexymemecoin]

The Metaverse: A New Frontier in Digital Interaction

The concept of the metaverse has captivated the imagination of technologists, futurists, and businesses alike. Envisioned as a collective virtual shared space, the metaverse merges physical and digital realities, offering immersive experiences and unprecedented opportunities for interaction, commerce, and creativity. This article delves into the metaverse, its potential impact on various sectors, the technologies driving its development, and notable projects shaping this emerging landscape.

What is the Metaverse?

The metaverse is a digital universe that encompasses virtual and augmented reality, providing a persistent, shared, and interactive online environment. In the metaverse, users can create avatars, interact with others, attend virtual events, own virtual property, and engage in economic activities. Unlike traditional online experiences, the metaverse aims to replicate and enhance the real world, offering seamless integration of the physical and digital realms.

Key Components of the Metaverse

Virtual Worlds: Virtual worlds are digital environments where users can explore, interact, and create. Platforms like Decentraland, Sandbox, and VRChat offer expansive virtual spaces where users can build, socialize, and participate in various activities.

Augmented Reality (AR): AR overlays digital information onto the real world, enhancing user experiences through devices like smartphones and AR glasses. Examples include Pokémon GO and AR navigation apps that blend digital content with physical surroundings.

Virtual Reality (VR): VR provides immersive experiences through headsets that transport users to fully digital environments. Companies like Oculus, HTC Vive, and Sony PlayStation VR are leading the way in developing advanced VR hardware and software.

Blockchain Technology: Blockchain plays a crucial role in the metaverse by enabling decentralized ownership, digital scarcity, and secure transactions. NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and cryptocurrencies are integral to the metaverse economy, allowing users to buy, sell, and trade virtual assets.

Digital Economy: The metaverse features a robust digital economy where users can earn, spend, and invest in virtual goods and services. Virtual real estate, digital art, and in-game items are examples of assets that hold real-world value within the metaverse.

Potential Impact of the Metaverse

Social Interaction: The metaverse offers new ways for people to connect and interact, transcending geographical boundaries. Virtual events, social spaces, and collaborative environments provide opportunities for meaningful engagement and community building.

Entertainment and Gaming: The entertainment and gaming industries are poised to benefit significantly from the metaverse. Immersive games, virtual concerts, and interactive storytelling experiences offer new dimensions of engagement and creativity.

Education and Training: The metaverse has the potential to revolutionize education and training by providing immersive, interactive learning environments. Virtual classrooms, simulations, and collaborative projects can enhance educational outcomes and accessibility.

Commerce and Retail: Virtual shopping experiences and digital marketplaces enable businesses to reach global audiences in innovative ways. Brands can create virtual storefronts, offer unique digital products, and engage customers through immersive experiences.

Work and Collaboration: The metaverse can transform the future of work by providing virtual offices, meeting spaces, and collaborative tools. Remote work and global collaboration become more seamless and engaging in a fully digital environment.

Technologies Driving the Metaverse

5G Connectivity: High-speed, low-latency 5G networks are essential for delivering seamless and responsive metaverse experiences. Enhanced connectivity enables real-time interactions and high-quality streaming of immersive content.

Advanced Graphics and Computing: Powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) and cloud computing resources are crucial for rendering detailed virtual environments and supporting large-scale metaverse platforms.

Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI enhances the metaverse by enabling realistic avatars, intelligent virtual assistants, and dynamic content generation. AI-driven algorithms can personalize experiences and optimize virtual interactions.

Wearable Technology: Wearable devices, such as VR headsets, AR glasses, and haptic feedback suits, provide users with immersive and interactive experiences. Advancements in wearable technology are critical for enhancing the metaverse experience.

Notable Metaverse Projects

Decentraland: Decentraland is a decentralized virtual world where users can buy, sell, and develop virtual real estate as NFTs. The platform offers a wide range of experiences, from gaming and socializing to virtual commerce and education.

Sandbox: Sandbox is a virtual world that allows users to create, own, and monetize their gaming experiences using blockchain technology. The platform's user-generated content and virtual real estate model have attracted a vibrant community of creators and players.

Facebook's Meta: Facebook's rebranding to Meta underscores its commitment to building the metaverse. Meta aims to create interconnected virtual spaces for social interaction, work, and entertainment, leveraging its existing social media infrastructure.

Roblox: Roblox is an online platform that enables users to create and play games developed by other users. With its extensive user-generated content and virtual economy, Roblox exemplifies the potential of the metaverse in gaming and social interaction.

Sexy Meme Coin (SEXXXY): Sexy Meme Coin integrates metaverse elements by offering a decentralized marketplace for buying, selling, and trading memes as NFTs. This unique approach combines humor, creativity, and digital ownership, adding a distinct flavor to the metaverse landscape. Learn more about Sexy Meme Coin at Sexy Meme Coin.

The Future of the Metaverse

The metaverse is still in its early stages, but its potential to reshape digital interaction is immense. As technology advances and more industries explore its possibilities, the metaverse is likely to become an integral part of our daily lives. Collaboration between technology providers, content creators, and businesses will drive the development of the metaverse, creating new opportunities for innovation and growth.

Conclusion

The metaverse represents a new frontier in digital interaction, offering immersive and interconnected experiences that bridge the physical and digital worlds. With its potential to transform social interaction, entertainment, education, commerce, and work, the metaverse is poised to revolutionize various aspects of our lives. Notable projects like Decentraland, Sandbox, Meta, Roblox, and Sexy Meme Coin are at the forefront of this transformation, showcasing the diverse possibilities within this emerging digital universe.

For those interested in the playful and innovative side of the metaverse, Sexy Meme Coin offers a unique and entertaining platform. Visit Sexy Meme Coin to explore this exciting project and join the community.

[autolenaphilia]

The main reason to use Firefox and Linux and other free and open source software is that otherwise the big tech monopolies will fuck you as the customer over in search of profits. They will seek to control how you use their products and sell your data. When a company dominates the market, things can only get worse for ordinary people.

Like take Google Chrome for example, which together with its chromium reskins dominate the web browser market. Google makes a lot of money from ads, and consequently the company hates adblockers. They already are planning to move to manifest V3, which will nerf adblockers significantly. The manifest V3 compatible chrome version of Ublock Orgin is a "Lite" version for a reason. Ublock's Github page has an entire page explaining why the addon works best in Firefox.

And Google as we speak are trying to block adblockers from working on Youtube, If you want to continue blocking Youtube ads, and since Youtube ads make the site unuseable you ought to want that, it makes the most sense to not use a browser controlled by Google.

And there is no reason to think things won't get worse. There is for example nothing stopping Google from kicking adblockers off their add-on stores completely. They do regard it as basically piracy if the youtube pop-ups tell us anything, so updating the Chrome extensions terms of service to ban adblocking is a natural step. And so many people seem to think Chrome is the only browser that exists, so they are not going to switch to alternatives, or if they do, they will switch to another chrominum-based browser.

And again, they are fucking chromium itself for adblockers with Manifest V3, so only Firefox remains as a viable alternative. It's the only alternative to letting Google control the internet.

And Microsoft is the same thing. I posted before about their plans to move Windows increasingly into the cloud. This already exists for corporate customers, as Windows 365. And a version for ordinary users is probably not far off. It might not be the only version of Windows for awhile, the lack of solid internet access for a good part of the Earth's population will prevent it. But you'll probably see cheap very low-spec chromebookesque laptops running Windows for sale soon, that gets around Windows 11's obscene system requirements by their Windows being a cloud-based version.

And more and more of Windows will require Internet access or validation for DRM reasons if nothing else. Subscription fees instead of a one-time license are also likely. It will just be Windows moving in the direction Microsoft Office has already gone.

There is nothing preventing this, because again on the desktop/laptop market Windows is effectively a monopoly, or a duopoly with Apple. So there is no competition preventing Microsoft from exercising control over Windows users in the vein of Apple.

For example, Microsoft making Windows a walled garden by only permitting programs to be installed from the Microsoft Store probably isn't far off. This already exists for Win10 and 11, it's called S-mode. There seem to be more and more laptops being sold with Windows S-mode as the default.

Now it's not the only option, and you can turn it off with some tinkering, but there is really nothing stopping Microsoft from making it the only way of using Windows. And customers will probably accept it, because again the main competition is Apple where the walled garden has been the default for decades.

Customers have already accepted all sorts of bad things from Microsoft, because again Windows is a near-monopoly, and Apple and Google are even worse. That’s why there has been no major negative reaction to how Windows has increasingly spies on its users.

Another thing is how the system requirements for Windows seem to grow almost exponentially with each edition, making still perfectly useable computers unable to run the new edition. And Windows 11 is the worst yet. Like it's hard to get the numbers of how many computers running Win10 can't upgrade to Win11, but it's probably the majority of them, at least 55% or maybe even 75%. This has the effect of Windows users abandoning still perfectly useable hardware and buying new computers, creating more e-waste.

For Windows users, the alternative Windows gives them is to buy a new computer or get another operating system, and inertia pushes them towards buying another computer to keep using Windows. This is good for Windows and the hardware manufacturers selling computers with Windows 11 pre-installed, they get to profit off people buying Windows 11 keys and new computers, while the end-users have to pay, as does the environment. It’s planned obsolescence.

And it doesn’t have to be like that. Linux distros prove that you can have a modern operating system that has far lower hardware requirements. Even the most resource taxing Linux distros, like for example Ubuntu running the Gnome desktop, have far more modest system requirements than modern Windows. And you can always install lightweight Linux Distros that often have very low system requirements. One I have used is Antix. The ballooning Windows system requirements comes across as pure bloat on Microsoft’s part.

Now neither Linux or Firefox are perfect. Free and open source software don’t have a lot of the polish that comes with the proprietary products of major corporations. And being in competition with technology monopolies does have its drawbacks. The lacking website compatibility with Firefox and game compatibility with Linux are two obvious examples.

Yet Firefox and Linux have the capacity to grow, to become better. Being open source helps. Even if Firefox falls, developers can create a fork of it. If a Linux distro is not to your taste, there is usually another one. Whereas Windows and Chrome will only get worse as they will continue to abuse their monopolistic powers over the tech market.

[jackied0minguez]

Remote Work Redefined: TopDevz CEO Ashkan Rajaee on the Future of Flexible Business

In a world where remote work has rapidly shifted from a temporary solution to a long-term strategy, TopDevz CEO Ashkan Rajaee is leading by example. Speaking ahead of the Ft. Lauderdale International Boat Show, Rajaee shared insights on how his company has seamlessly integrated remote operations into its DNA—and why he believes this model isn’t just a passing trend.

A New Kind of Software Solutions

TopDevz isn’t your typical tech firm. Comprising an elite team of software developers, designers, project managers, and quality assurance specialists based in the United States and Canada, the company tackles the unique challenges that conventional off-the-shelf software can’t resolve. Rajaee explains that while standard solutions can cover 80–90% of business needs, the remaining nuances often cause significant inefficiencies. TopDevz fills this gap by offering custom solutions designed to address those critical details, ensuring that their clients achieve peak operational efficiency. With an impressive 96% workforce retention rate and 63% of their business coming through referrals, the company’s model speaks volumes about its effectiveness and employee satisfaction.

Mastering Remote Operations

Long before the global pivot to remote work, TopDevz was already thriving in a fully virtual environment. Rajaee emphasizes that the success of remote operations lies in having the right infrastructure and clear communication channels. “Working remotely isn’t as simple as logging in from home,” he notes. “It demands disciplined processes and a commitment to best practices—elements we’ve honed over the years.” His team’s seamless transition during the pandemic only reinforced the idea that a well-organized remote workforce can outperform traditional office setups.

The Indefinite Future of Remote Work

For TopDevz, remote work isn’t a temporary workaround—it’s the future. Rajaee envisions a business landscape where companies can lower overhead costs while empowering employees to work from anywhere. This flexible model not only drives client satisfaction by reducing expenses but also enriches employees’ lives by allowing them to choose environments that inspire creativity and well-being.

Rajaee even shares a personal touch: his passion for working from a yacht. Equipped with reliable Wi-Fi and satellite services, his unconventional workspace symbolizes the freedom that remote work offers. “If your current job doesn’t support the lifestyle you aspire to, it’s time to consider other opportunities,” he advises. His own journey from renting a yacht to eventually making it part of his regular work life underscores the importance of aligning one’s career with personal values and ambitions.

Empowering the Next Generation of Remote Entrepreneurs

Beyond leading TopDevz, Rajaee is passionate about sharing his remote work philosophy. Through his “RemotePreneur” initiative, he provides aspiring entrepreneurs and professionals with a playbook for building successful remote companies. This resource addresses the nuanced challenges of remote business management—from overcoming financial stagnation in traditional roles to confronting the inevitable criticisms that come with venturing off the beaten path. Rajaee’s message is clear: true freedom in work comes from rethinking established norms and embracing the possibilities that remote operations can offer.

Embracing a New Era

As businesses around the globe continue to navigate the evolving work landscape, Ashkan Rajaee’s vision serves as a powerful reminder that remote work, when executed with precision and passion, can unlock unprecedented opportunities. His leadership at TopDevz demonstrates that with the right approach, remote operations can not only sustain but also drive innovation, employee satisfaction, and overall business growth.

In a time when flexibility and adaptability are more important than ever, Rajaee’s insights offer a compelling roadmap for companies eager to thrive in a remote-first world.

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency announced this week that it discovered large batches of unused software licenses as it continues to hunt for examples of waste in Washington. On Monday, DOGE alleged that the General Services Administration has 37,000 licenses for the file compression and encryption tool WinZip, even though the agency has only about 13,000 employees. “Fixes are actively in work,” the team wrote on Musk’s social media site X. It later alleged similar overspending at the Department of Labor.

But the purported discrepancies between licenses and employees may not be as problematic as Musk’s government wrecking crew has made them out to be.

Liz Lezius, a spokesperson for the Canadian tech company Alludo, which develops WinZip and was once known as Corel, says licensing for the program is based on the number of devices on which it is installed, not the number of employees with access to the software, though she declined to comment on specific customers. “It is typical that there are more devices than employees in an organization,” Lezius tells WIRED.

In other cases, suppliers may require agencies to buy a bundle of tools to get access to one they really need, according to Ryan Triplette, executive director of the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing, an advocacy group of software developers and private sector purchasers fighting what they view as restrictive terms.

Agencies may also have more licenses than employees to account for budgeting quirks and outside contractors, says a former federal official who worked on tech licensing across multiple presidential administrations. “What you’re seeing with the DOGE stuff is they are doing cursory work with limited knowledge,” says the ex-official, who is barred by their employer from speaking to the media. It “has some salience but is done in a bombastic way to make it seem like they are having more impact.”

GSA acting press secretary Will Powell tells WIRED that in support of the Trump administration’s priorities, the agency is reviewing contracts and resources “to ensure our staff can perform their mission in support of American taxpayers.”

On Thursday, the DOGE account on X posted that the GSA had taken action this week “by deleting 114,163 unused software licenses & 15 underutilized / redundant software products — for a total annual savings of $9.6M.”

Earlier this week, Musk reposted allegations of overspending at the Labor Department and wrote, “Most of these items are mundane and may not seem like much individually, but there are millions of minor savings that add up to billions of dollars cumulatively. Ultimately, there will be a trillion+ dollars of waste and fraud eliminated.”

The Labor Department and White House, where DOGE is located, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Federal agencies sometimes sign long-term contracts with software vendors, which allows them to lock in discount rates and avoid the need to renegotiate contracts every year. As a result, the number of licenses they budget for may include projected staff increases. “It’s cheaper to buy them all at once than go back and add on 500 at a time,” the former federal official says.

Because agencies sometimes get bulk or government-specific discounts, it can also be more affordable to buy software licenses on behalf of their private contractors. “It’s a very clear way for agencies to manage costs,” the ex-official says.

Every government agency has its own unique structure, including many subagencies or units, each with their own software needs. That could help explain other alleged licensing issues DOGE called out this week, including that GSA has “3 different ticketing systems running in parallel” and multiple tools for running unspecified trainings.

In a separate post this week, DOGE called out the Department of Labor for allegedly licensing five cybersecurity programs, each for more than 20,000 users, despite having only about 15,000 employees. The post also cited the department holding 380 Microsoft 365 productivity software licenses with zero users, installing only 30 out of the 128 Microsoft Teams conference rooms it licensed, and using only 22 out of 129 Photoshop licenses. The post also referenced unused licenses for “VSCode,” the shorthand name for an entirely free Microsoft tool for writing code; the company does sell a paid alternative known as Visual Studio.

Microsoft declined to comment. Adobe, which develops Photoshop, did not respond to a request to comment.

While DOGE may have failed to present a full picture of wasteful spending, it’s true that the federal government has at times struggled to effectively manage its use of software licenses. Numerous watchdog groups inside the government have found instances of wasteful spending on software in the past.

Members of Congress have been trying for years to get agencies to address the issue, the former federal official says. The Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets Act, or SAMOSA Act, which passed the House last year with bipartisan support but stalled in the Senate, would have required agencies to do what DOGE is doing now: Assess existing software contracts, consolidate licenses where possible, and get better deals to keep costs down. The legislation aimed to give agencies more bargaining power over the handful of big tech firms that dominate government software contracting, according to the former official.

“If Elon [Musk] wanted to do this the right way, they would work with Congress to pass the SAMOSA Act,” the official says. “So people who will be there even when DOGE leaves can enter into smarter, less expensive contracts. They should be setting a repeatable process whereby agencies will constantly reevaluate their software needs and get better performance for lower costs.”

Triplette, of the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing, credited DOGE for examining licensing issues. “I know there is a lot of concern about what DOGE is doing, but this is one area that there is hope and possibility,” she says.

Other federal contracting experts and congressional offices have told WIRED that DOGE should not lose sight of bigger targets while scrounging for savings. There were 11 federal contracting programs for information technology that each accounted for over $1 billion in spending during the government’s last fiscal year, which ran from October 2023 through September 2024, according to an analysis for WIRED by Deltek, whose GovWin IQ tool tracks procurement. Contracts are often broken up into smaller pieces, and among those task orders, over $1 billion has been spent on six individual task orders related to IT over the past few years. They are led by a Dell deal with the Department of Veterans Affairs and a Booz Allen Hamilton agreement with the Pentagon.

Booz Allen Hamilton declined to comment. Its CEO, Horacio Rozanski, told Wall Street last month that the company expected the savings created by DOGE to be reinvested in technology. Dell didn’t respond to a request for comment. Earlier this month, CEO Michael Dell reshared a post by Musk on X. “We need DOGE! 🇺🇸” he wrote.

The extent of DOGE’s software purge is difficult to quantify. In searching for the word “license” across the descriptions of 13,800 federal contracts in the government’s central tracking database that have been updated to reflect terminations since Trump’s inauguration, WIRED found that roughly 60 of the canceled agreements appear to be explicitly for software. A couple of those cancellations—data visualization tool Tableau and Microsoft’s LinkedIn Recruiter—generated savings of about $4 million, according to DOGE’s official Wall of Receipts, a “transparent account” of findings and actions. The website has contained some errors, according to several media reports, and WIRED found earlier this week that Tableau and LinkedIn savings were listed as $0.

WinZip standard licenses run about $35 annually per user, though large organizations are offered "special pricing," according to the product's official website. Lezius, the spokesperson for WinZip developer Alludo, declined to address whether the company has heard from DOGE representatives, but she says the company is “always happy to work with DOGE, GSA, and any customer” to meet their needs. And, she adds, WinZip, is “a trusted and highly affordable way for agencies to adhere to data security requirements.”

[oliviamaitlandauthor]

Comprehensive List of Tips for Self-Publishing Authors

Cover Design

"Never judge a book by its cover" is a philosophy very rarely followed by most readers, so it's important to make sure your cover is as eye-catching, aesthetically pleasing, and true to your story as possible. The cover should encompass what your story is about and it should give the reader a glimpse into the world you've spent years creating.

For most of us who are not artistically inclined, trying to create a cover design on our own is incredibly challenging. When you find yourself unable to generate an exemplary product, you may need to turn to a freelance designer or a company that specializes in poster/book cover graphics. Here are some options for you to explore:

Fiverr - budget-friendly, ample reviews from previous customers, and examples of work are provided by the designer, but make sure to be aware of AI use so your product is made authentically.

BespokeBookCovers - this company asks that you give a short synopsis of your book, along with some basic details, then you will be contacted to discuss more about what you are looking for. They do require a 50% deposit prior to beginning the design, but you do receive the product within 12 business days. They also ensure you are completely satisfied with the product before the transaction is complete. This company may not be the best for fantasy authors as most of their covers have more of a Colleen Hoover-esque aesthetic.

Miblart - This is a wonderful cover design company for fantasy writers, as evident in the examples provided on their website's home page. They do not require prepayment and offer payment installations in case the total cost at once puts a financial strain on you.

Editing and Formatting

Similarly to traditional publishing, you need to thoroughly self-edit your work before submitting it for professional editing. Suppose you feel as though you are proficient enough in editing that you do not require professional services or you cannot accommodate the cost. In that case, I suggest using workbooks or software to make sure your grammar and syntax are as high quality as possible. Here is a list of editing tools that can help you review your work:

Grammarly - a good resource for spelling, but it often flags intentional word-choice and sentence structure to make it more simple, which may be incompatible with your writing style. Also be aware of incorrect suggestions.

The Copyeditors Handbook - offers a guide to book publishing and addresses common writing errors. Does come with a workbook to help you exercise your skills.

It's also important that you understand the risks of self-editing. Sometimes it's hard to see flaws in your own story/writing because you already know all of the details. The reader does not have this knowledge, so certain plot points, wording, or details may be lost on them. Having a second set of eyes is incredibly beneficial to help you solve this problem. Here are some outside editing tools:

UpWork - allows you to list a job and review applicants. Each applicant is verified to be real, and you can sample some of their work and their credentials by viewing their profile.

Reedsy - employs Big Five editors to find a proper match for your writing

Raab & Co. - a self-publishing company that helps match you to a professional editor

ISBN

An ISBN number can help readers identify and find your book across multiple platforms, given that an ISBN is a unique number. You can buy an ISBN through Bowker or ISBN.org. An ISBN number on this website costs about $150 USD. This is not a necessary step, so no worries if you don't get one. It simply helps your book be more recognizable and appear more professional.

Pricing

The best way to figure out how to price your book is to look at similar publications on the platform you intend to publish on. Amazon is the most common, so look at your options. Generally, you can publish the book for a fixed price, or you can use Kindle Unlimited. Here's a list of pros and cons for Kindle Unlimited:

Pros:

Paid per page read, which is amazing for longer works or series

Saves a lot of time and effort as most of the work is done by Amazon, and it can generate more income than other platforms

Gain popularity because each time someone checks out your book or adds it to their library, it counts as a sale in your sales rank, which can boost your profile

Cons:

Unable to publish more than 10% of your book on any other platform while it is available on Kindle Unlimited, which limits your ability to reach a greater audience

Sometimes the length of the book affects income more so than the quality of the writing itself, so your book may be incredible well-written but have a lower sales rank.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Patrick Beuth, Jörg Diehl, Roman Höfner, Roman Lehberger, Friederike Röhreke, and Fidelius Schmid at Der Spiegel:

Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials. To do so, the reporters used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web. Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use, with some of them linked to profiles on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. They were used to create Dropbox accounts and profiles in apps that track running data. There are also WhatsApp profiles for the respective phone numbers and even Signal accounts in some cases. As such, the reporting has revealed an additional grave, previously unknown security breach at the highest levels in Washington. Hostile intelligence services could use this publicly available data to hack the communications of those affected by installing spyware on their devices. It is thus conceivable that foreign agents were privy to the Signal chat group in which Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike.

Numbers Linked to Signal Accounts

It remains unclear, however, whether this extremely problematic chat was conducted using Signal accounts linked to the private telephone numbers of the officials involved. Tulsi Gabbard has declined to comment. DER SPIEGEL reporting has demonstrated, though, that privately used and publicly accessible telephone numbers belonging to her and Waltz are, in fact, linked to Signal accounts. [...] The White House confirmed the scandal after the fact. Trump insisted that it did not include classified content, a question that is of particular relevance since members of the U.S. government are not permitted to share such information over Signal. The U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was even in Russia while participating in the chat group.

DER SPIEGEL was able to find some of the contact information for Gabbard, Hegseth and Waltz in commercial databases, while other information was in so-called password leaks, which are hardly a rarity on the internet. One example is the 2019 discovery by Troy Hunt, who found 773 million email addresses and more than 21 million passwords in a hacker forum. Since then, there have been numerous additional leaks. Criminals are constantly compiling new collections from hacks, usually to sell them on forums. [...] The mobile number provided, meanwhile, led to a WhatsApp account that Hegseth apparently only recently deleted. The profile photo showed a shirtless Hegseth in a baseball cap and necklace. Comparisons with other photos of the U.S. secretary of defense using facial recognition software were able to confirm that the photo on the WhatsApp profile was indeed Hegseth.

Several Passwords in Leaked Database

Waltz’s mobile number and email address could be found using the same service provider. The mobile phone number could even be found using a people search engine popular in the U.S. DER SPIEGEL reporters were also able to find several passwords for Waltz’s email address in leaked databases. The information also led to Waltz’s profiles for Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Signal. National Intelligence Director Gabbard was seemingly more careful with her data than her two male colleagues. She apparently had her own data blocked in the commercial contact search engines that contained the data of Hegseth and Waltz. But her email address was to be found on WikiLeaks and Reddit. Gabbard’s email address is available in more than 10 leaks. One of those also contains a partial telephone number, which, when completed, leads to an active WhatsApp account and a Signal profile.

German publication Der Spiegel writes that several of the National Security Advisers for the Trump Administration, including Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Michael Waltz, had their private data breached and the passwords found online.

[allaboutkeyingo]

SQL Server 2022 Edition and License instructions

SQL Server 2022 Editions:

• Enterprise Edition is ideal for applications requiring mission critical in-memory performance, security, and high availability

• Standard Edition delivers fully featured database capabilities for mid-tier applications and data marts

SQL Server 2022 is also available in free Developer and Express editions. Web Edition is offered in the Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) program only.

And the Online Store Keyingo Provides the SQL Server 2017/2019/2022 Standard Edition.

SQL Server 2022 licensing models 

SQL Server 2022 offers customers a variety of licensing options aligned with how customers typically purchase specific workloads. There are two main licensing models that apply to SQL Server:  PER CORE: Gives customers a more precise measure of computing power and a more consistent licensing metric, regardless of whether solutions are deployed on physical servers on-premises, or in virtual or cloud environments. 

• Core based licensing is appropriate when customers are unable to count users/devices, have Internet/Extranet workloads or systems that integrate with external facing workloads.

• Under the Per Core model, customers license either by physical server (based on the full physical core count) or by virtual machine (based on virtual cores allocated), as further explained below.

SERVER + CAL: Provides the option to license users and/or devices, with low-cost access to incremental SQL Server deployments.   

• Each server running SQL Server software requires a server license.

• Each user and/or device accessing a licensed SQL Server requires a SQL Server CAL that is the same version or newer – for example, to access a SQL Server 2019 Standard Edition server, a user would need a SQL Server 2019 or 2022 CAL.

Each SQL Server CAL allows access to multiple licensed SQL Servers, including Standard Edition and legacy Business Intelligence and Enterprise Edition Servers.SQL Server 2022 Editions availability by licensing model:  

Physical core licensing – Enterprise Edition 

• Customers can deploy an unlimited number of VMs or containers on the server and utilize the full capacity of the licensed hardware, by fully licensing the server (or server farm) with Enterprise Edition core subscription licenses or licenses with SA coverage based on the total number of physical cores on the servers.

• Subscription licenses or SA provide(s) the option to run an unlimited number of virtual machines or containers to handle dynamic workloads and fully utilize the hardware’s computing power.

Virtual core licensing – Standard/Enterprise Edition 

When licensing by virtual core on a virtual OSE with subscription licenses or SA coverage on all virtual cores (including hyperthreaded cores) on the virtual OSE, customers may run any number of containers in that virtual OSE. This benefit applies both to Standard and Enterprise Edition.

Licensing for non-production use 

SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition provides a fully featured version of SQL Server software—including all the features and capabilities of Enterprise Edition—licensed for  development, test and demonstration purposes only.  Customers may install and run the SQL Server Developer Edition software on any number of devices. This is  significant because it allows customers to run the software  on multiple devices (for testing purposes, for example)  without having to license each non-production server  system for SQL Server.  

A production environment is defined as an environment  that is accessed by end-users of an application (such as an  Internet website) and that is used for more than gathering  feedback or acceptance testing of that application.   

SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition is a free product !

[varyathevillain]

did not want to negatively interact with the OP from whom I got this image, but this threw me into a fit of such incandescent fury that I had to talk about it, and I do not want to make others feel like they're at fault about something AJN said, about the implication (or outright possibility) of them being used for clout, or my own reaction to this. and I also will say, this is not an objective opinion. this is me, tired of this bullshit that keeps appearing in my life despite me repeatedly trying to move on.

what a fucking horrifying quote. this does not read as someone awkwardly relating to their audience to me. this is a rehearsed, researched 'funny guy' moment, scripted specifically to pander to people who would quote and reshare this moment, and it doesn't have the care or emotional attachment to the audience that many would ascribe it. this is a marketing strategy.

Alexander James Newall and his podcasting company have repeatedly in the past worked with companies like, for example, BetterHelp. in their case, Rusty Quill have been keeping the partnership and advertising it even after the FTC officially forced said company into paying settlement for breaking privacy agreements and selling customer data to third party services (such as pharmaceutical companies and other interest groups like Facebook/Meta), then the reveal of overcharging patients for subpar service, and repeated ethical violations within the company. you cannot say that this is an uninformed choice, since as a creative interacting with their fanbase via internet, especially as a multimedia practice (podcasting, youtube video creating, streaming etc), you simply cannot not learn about the scumminess and the actual legal issues of such a company. and it's not even 'oh, they did it only once' - people repeatedly complained about getting ads from AI training software companies, other 'mental health' help companies that turned out to also have AI training software, and on some notable occasions, a Noom app ad read, which is a weight loss app that 1) had also been in court reaching a settlement for tricking its customers, but for 'free trial' payments instead of selling their data, 2) had repeatedly been in hot water with health professionals about their diet practices.

and this is the company the face of which AJN presents. he is not a quirky fellow creative struggling for podcast space; he's a businessman running a company that is manipulating its audience with relatability, and it is working. he is not with you against the rich; he is the rich. and from what I am hearing and seeing, currently producing the main running show, the successor of The Magnus Archives, of a show that got critical acclaim and over 700 thousand pounds in kickstarter money to produce the 'sequel', only for that show to barely ever appear on anyone's radar outside of former TMA fans, to be quietly discussed as not being quite as coherent as its predecessor, and even outright criticised for the voice acting and issues with audio, where even interesting conversations turn into mumbled, inconsistent messes people can't really listen to without transcripts.

We Care What We Put Name To, in-fuckin-deed.

[phoenixyfriend]

Ko-fi prompt from @thisarenotarealblog:

There's a street near me that has eight car dealerships all on the same lot- i counted. it mystifies me that even one gets enough sales to keep going- but 8?? is there something you can tell me that demystifies this aspect of capitalism for me?

I had a few theories going in, but had to do some research. Here is my primary hypothesis, and then I'll run through what they mean and whether research agrees with me:

Sales make up only part of a dealership's income, so whether or not the dealership sells much is secondary to other factors.

Dealerships are put near each other for similar reasons to grouping clothing stores in a mall or restaurants on a single street.

Zoning laws impact where a car dealership can exist.

Let's start with how revenue works for a car dealership, as you mentioned 'that even one gets enough sales to keep going' is confusing. For this, I'm going to be using the Sharpsheets finance example, this NYU spreadsheet, and this Motor1 article.

This example notes that the profit margin (i.e. the percentage of revenue that comes out after paying all salaries, rent, supply, etc) for a car dealership is comparatively low, which is confirmed by the NYC sheet. The gross profit margin (that is to say, profits on the car sale before salaries, rent, taxes) is under 15% in both sources, which is significantly lower than, say, the 50% or so that one sees in apparel or cable tv.

Cars are expensive to purchase, and can't be sold for much more than you did purchase them. However, a low gross profit margin on an item that costs tens of thousands of dollars is still a hefty chunk of cash. 15% gross profit of a $20,000 car is still $3,000 profit. On top of that, the dealership will charge fees, sell warranties, and offer upgrades. They may also have paid deals to advertise or push certain brands of tire, maintenance fluids, and of course, banks that offer auto loans. So if a dealership sells one car a day, well, that's still several thousand dollars coming in, which is enough to pay the salaries of most of the employees. According to the Motor1 article, "the average gross profit per new vehicle sits at $6,244" in early 2022.

There is also a much less volatile, if also much smaller, source of revenue in attaching a repairs and checkup service to a dealership. If the location offers repairs (either under warranty or at a 'discounted' rate compared to a local, non-dealership mechanic), state inspections, and software updates, that's a recurring source of revenue from customers that aren't interested in purchasing a car more than once a decade.

This also all varies based on whether it's a brand location, used vs new, luxury vs standards, and so on.

I was mistaken as to how large a part of the revenue is the repairs and services section, but the income for a single dealership, on average, does work out math-wise. Hypothesis disproven, but we've learned something, and confirmed that income across the field does seem to be holding steady.

I'm going to handle the zoning and consolidation together, since they overlap:

Consolidation is a pretty easy one: this is a tactic called clustering. The expectation is that if you're going to, say, a Honda dealership to look at a midsize sedan, and there's a Nissan right next door, and a Ford across the street, and a Honda right around the corner, you might as well hit up the others to see if they have better deals. This tactic works for some businesses but not others. In the case of auto dealerships, the marketing advantage of clustering mixes with the restrictions of zoning laws.

Zoning laws vary by state, county, and township. Auto dealerships can generally only be opened on commercially zoned property.

I am going to use an area I have been to as an example/case study.

This pdf is a set of zoning regulations for Suffolk County, New York, published 2018, reviewing land use in the county during 2016. I'm going to paste in the map of the Town of Huntington, page 62, a region I worked in sporadically a few years ago, and know mostly for its mall and cutesy town center.

Those red sections are Commercially Zoned areas, and they largely follow some large stroads, most notably Jericho Turnpike (the horizontal line halfway down) and Walt Whitman Road (the vertical line on the left). The bulge where they intersect is Walt Whitman Mall, and the big red chunk in the bottom left is... mostly parking. That central strip, Jericho Turnpike, and its intersection with Walt Whitman... looks like this:

All those red spots are auto dealerships, one after another.

So zoning laws indicate that a dealership (and many other types of commercial properties) can only exist in that little red strip on the land use map, and dealerships take up a lot of space. Not only do they need places to put all of the cars they are selling, but they also need places to park all their customers and employees.

This is where we get into the issue of parking minimums. There is a recent video from Climate Town, with a guest spot by NotJustBikes. If you want to know more about this aspect of zoning law, I'd recommend watching this video and the one linked in the description.

Suffolk county does not have parking minimums. Those are decided on a town or village level. In this case, this means we are looking at the code set for the town of Huntington. (I was originally looking on the county level, and then cut the knot by just asking my real estate agent mom if she knew where I could find minimum parking regulations. She said to look up e360 by town, and lo and behold! There they are.)

(There is also this arcgis map, which shows that they are all within the C6 subset of commercial districting, the General Business District.)

Furniture or appliance store, machinery or new auto sales - 1 per 500 square feet of gross floor area

Used auto sales, boat sales, commercial nurseries selling at retail - 5 spaces for each use (to be specifically designated for customer parking) - Plus 1 for each 5,000 square feet of lot area

This is a bit odd, at first glance, as the requirements are actually much lower than that of other businesses, like drive-in restaurants (1 per 35 sqft) or department stores (1 per 200 sqft). I could not find confirmation on whether the 'gross floor area' of the dealership included only indoor spaces or also the parking lot space allotted to the objects for sale, but I think we can assume that any parking spaces used by merchandise do not qualify as part of the minimum. Some dealerships can have up to 20,000 gross sqft, so those would require 40 parking spaces reserved solely for customers and employees. Smaller dealerships would naturally need less. One dealership in this area is currently offering 65 cars of varying makes and models; some may be held inside the building, but most will be on the lot, and the number may go higher in other seasons. If we assume they need 30 parking spaces for customers and employees, and can have up to 70 cars in the lot itself, they are likely to have 100 parking spaces total.

That's a lot of parking.

Other businesses that require that kind of parking requirement are generally seeing much higher visitation. Consider this wider section of the map:

The other buildings with comparative parking are a grocery store (Lidl) and a post office (can get some pretty high visitation in the holiday season, but also just at random).

Compare them, then, to the "old town" section of the same town.

There are a handful of public parking areas nearby (lined in blue), whereas the bulk of the businesses are put together along this set of streets. While there is a lot of foot traffic and vehicle passage, which is appealing for almost any business, opening a car dealership in this area would require not only buying a building, but also the buildings surrounding it. You would need to bulldoze them for the necessary parking, which would be prohibitively expensive due to the cost of local real estate... and would probably get shot down in the application process by city planners and town councils and so on. Much easier to just buy land over in the strip where everyone's got giant parking lots and you can just add a few extra cramped lanes for the merchandise.

Car dealerships also tend to be very brightly lit, which hits a lot of NIMBY sore spots. It's much easier to go to sleep if you aren't right next to a glaring floodlight at a car dealership, so it's best if we just shove them all away from expensive residential, which means towards the loud stroads, which means... all along these two major roads/highways.

And if they're all limited to a narrow type of zoning already, they might as well take advantage of cluster marketing and just all set up shop near each other in hopes of stealing one of the other's customers.

As consumers, it's also better for us, because if we want to try out a few different cars from a few different brands, it's pretty easy to just go one building down to try out the Hyundai and see if it's better than a Chevy in the same price group.

(Prompt me on ko-fi!)

[healthcaremailingapi]

Traditional Vs Automated Direct Mail Services

Direct mail has long been a trusted marketing channel. In 2025, businesses face a choice between traditional direct mail services and automated solutions. Understanding the difference can drastically impact your campaign’s efficiency, ROI, and customer experience.

What Is Traditional Direct Mail?

Traditional direct mail involves manual processes such as:

Designing postcards or letters by hand or through desktop software

Printing at local shops or internal print facilities

Manually stuffing, stamping, and mailing

Tracking via physical receipts or third-party couriers

Pros:

Full control over the process

Hands-on personalization

Local vendor relationships

Cons:

Time-consuming

Prone to human error

Hard to scale

Costlier for small volumes

What Is Automated Direct Mail?

Automated direct mail refers to using software or APIs to trigger, personalize, print, and send mail pieces based on digital actions or CRM data.

Examples:

A new customer signs up, and a welcome postcard is triggered automatically

Abandoned cart triggers a mailed coupon

Real-time API sends birthday cards based on database date

Pros:

Scalable for millions of mailings

Real-time integration with CRMs and marketing platforms

Consistent branding and quality

Analytics and tracking included

Cons:

Higher setup cost initially

Requires data hygiene and tech alignment

Key Differences Between Traditional and Automated Direct Mail

FeatureTraditionalAutomatedSpeedSlow (days to weeks)Instant or scheduledScalabilityLimitedHighly scalablePersonalizationManualDynamic via variable dataTrackingManual or nonexistentDigital trackingIntegrationNoneAPI and CRM support

When Should You Choose Traditional?

For small, one-time mailings

When personal touch matters (e.g., handwritten letters)

In areas with no access to digital tools

When to Use Automated Direct Mail?

For ongoing marketing campaigns

When speed, consistency, and tracking are priorities

For eCommerce, SaaS, healthcare, insurance, and real estate

Use Case Comparisons

Traditional Use Case: Local Real Estate Agent

Manually prints and mails just listed postcards to a zip code every month.

Automated Use Case: National Insurance Company

Triggers annual policy renewal letters for 500,000+ customers via API.

Benefits of Automation in 2025

Real-Time Triggers from websites, CRMs, or payment systems

Enhanced Reporting for ROI measurement

Reduced Costs with bulk printing partnerships

Faster Delivery using localized printing partners globally

Eco-Friendly Workflows (less waste, digital proofing)

How to Switch from Traditional to Automated Direct Mail

Audit your current workflow

Choose a provider with API integration (e.g., PostGrid, Lob, Inkit)

Migrate your address data and test campaigns

Train your team and build trigger-based workflows

Conclusion: Choosing the Right Direct Mail Method

Ultimately, the right choice depends on your goals. While traditional direct mail has its place, automated direct mail offers speed, flexibility, and scale. For modern businesses aiming for growth and efficiency, automation is the clear winner.

SEO Keywords: traditional vs automated direct mail, automated mailing services, direct mail automation, API for direct mail, manual vs automated marketing.

SITES WE SUPPORT

Healthcare Mailing API – ​​​Wix

[cesiaaaaaaaa]

How ICT Helps Businesses Grow?

In today’s digital world, businesses are not just using paper, pens, and calculators—they’re using ICT to succeed. But what exactly is ICT? And how does it help businesses?

Let’s explore!

🔍 What is ICT? ICT stands for Information and Communication Technology. It includes tools like:

Computers

Internet

Mobile phones

Software and apps

Printers and scanners

Businesses use ICT to communicate, organize, and make smart decisions.

💼 How Businesses Use ICT: 1️⃣ Communication Businesses use email, messaging apps, and video calls to talk to employees and customers.

💬 Example: A bakery uses Facebook Messenger to take cake orders.

2️⃣ Marketing and Selling They use websites and social media to advertise and sell products online.

💬 Example: An online clothing shop uses Instagram to show new arrivals.

3️⃣ Record Keeping Spreadsheets and databases help track sales, expenses, and customer info.

📊 Example: A computer shop uses Excel to record how many laptops were sold.

4️⃣ Online Payments ICT helps businesses accept payments through apps like GCash, PayMaya, or online banking.

💸 Example: A food delivery business uses QR codes for fast cashless payments.

5️⃣ Improving Customer Service Chatbots, FAQs, and emails help businesses answer questions 24/7.

🤖 Example: A tech store uses a chatbot to help customers with their gadget problems.

🌟 Why is ICT Important for Business? ✅ Saves time ✅ Reaches more customers ✅ Makes work faster and easier ✅ Helps businesses grow

Let’s Reflect: Think about this: 📌 “Have you seen a business that uses computers, websites, or phones to help customers? How did it help them?”

✨ Final Thought: ICT is like a superhero tool for business. It connects people, organizes work, and helps dreams grow into success stories. Whether it’s a small store or a big company, ICT is making a big difference.