#also thinking about whether or not i really need the third party software that can give me much more detail.

[emberdune]

ok i finally got the accessory to use this good scanner i found last year and wow the detail difference is pretty amazing. i can actually see the individual silver halide crystal grains. it’s much slower though and also i don’t actually know if i need to scan the pics in 5400ppi since i just post them on here 🤷‍♀️

[greenplumbboblover]

Looking at your Downloads page, I see you have a section entitled "Terms of Uses", in which you have numerous restrictions on how players may use your CC. I was wondering where you think you get the right to restrict usage of your material, since EA owns all rights to anything made for Sims games. Additionally, and in particular, the Sims 3 EULA specifically says that there can be no restrictions on how players use each others CC (section 2B4). Why do you think these laws don't apply to you?

Hey there,

First things first: I get why people ask others about this. I really do. But I think we sometimes forget that, TOUs, from a *legal* perspective, are incorrectly set up. (with other words, even with my TOU, I could technically never send a DMCA claim as the setup is incorrect).

We shouldn't forget that creator TOUs are there from a more morally correct perspective. My personal feelings on people just grabbing my items, especially meshes I meshed without asking, and then claiming as their own is just a dick move. Whether the EULA allows it or not. In the end, we're a community. Not a company.

Conversions on the other hand, that i've done (which my TOU does say) you can do all you'd like with it, as I don't own those meshes/textures at all. All rights reserved there.

Now, diving into the contract:

Section 2B4 says the following:

B. Contributing Content through The Sims 3 Launcher (Emphasis on LAUNCHER here)

(...) 4. In exchange for the right to use content contributed by other users through the Software, when you contribute content through the Software, you expressly grant to other users of the Software the non‐exclusive, perpetual, transferable, worldwide, irrevocable right to access and use, copy, modify, display, perform, and create and distribute derivative works from, your contributed content in connection with the Software, and to distribute and otherwise communicate your contributed content as a component of works that they create using the Software, for example, The Sims lots or The Sims videos, without further notice, attribution or compensation to you. You hereby waive any moral rights of paternity, publication, reputation, or attribution under applicable law with respect to EA’s and other players’ use and enjoyment of such content contributions in connection with the Software.

(SOURCE: https://media.contentapi.ea.com/content/dam/eacom/en-us/eula/eula-the-sims-3-row-pc-11-2015.pdf)

The way I, personally, understand it, and I read Copyrighting & Rights documents A LOT for my work and often confirm my findings with a third party, is:

It has to be content that's from and to the Launcher. Specifically with the exchange website in mind. We're talking Lots, Sims, Sims3pack store items. Videos recorded from TS3 > The sims 3 Launcher. Screenshots even. This is what this section specifically refers to.

The content needs to have come in a Sims3Pack specifically. Package files cannot be installed through the launcher, and therefore rules this part of the contract out as a potential illegal move. In fact, reading the full contract, it's a very gray area in said contract.

The "Software" (The sims 3) can't make meshes for you. It can't make textures, it can't make a script mod for you, but what it can make is the following within the game itself to share: Lots, Sims, Worlds (well, the TS3 Worlds EULA would come into play here, which is practically the same as TS3's), CASPart presets (So NOT CASparts), Patterns (again, TS3 Pattern tool EULA, assuming you didn't use a third party tool for this instead). Sharing "Objects" (in the sense of simply Presets), Pets and "Tattoos" (in the sense that, within CAS, you save your "Layered" tattoos and then share it on the exchange). With other words, the things you download OR share from/to the exhange, but not limited to third party websites, where the content also has to be installed through the Launcher. Those are the people you want to talk to, when they're complaining that people are modifying their Sims3packaged Sim/Lot. I'm the wrong target for this EULA honestly and sending this ask to.

In fact, just to do other people some favours, let's go through the whole Section B in a summarised, humanly readable way (Remember this is for the LAUNCHER)

EA/Origin account grants you the ability to download/upload from and to the launcher and it's websites (The Exchange for example)

Don't upload copyrighted stuff to the Exchange. EA has the rights to remove them then.

EA can use your lots/sims/presets of CASparts/objects in their promotion materials. As well as your images and videos even. You automatically grant permission to this once you share it to an EA website. (The Exchange)

See above.

The part that I do find interesting, and I know TS2's EULA had the same thing, is the following (I bolded the interesting part):

2. Intellectual Property Rights and Ownership. A. Reservation of Rights. You have purchased a limited license to the Software and your rights are limited to the license grant above and subject to this License. You may not otherwise copy, display, distribute, perform, publish, modify, or use the Software or any component of it. You are prohibited from making a copy of the Software available on a network where it could be used or downloaded by multiple users. Except as expressly licensed to you herein, EA and its licensors, as applicable, owns and reserves all right, title and interest in the Software, and all related data, characters, themes, objects, storyline, images, photographs, graphics, animations, video, music, text, and the associated copyrights, trademarks, moral rights and other intellectual property rights therein. This License is limited to the intellectual property rights of EA and its licensors in the Software and does not include any rights to other patents or intellectual property. Except to the extent permitted under applicable law, you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer or created derivative works of the Software by any means whatsoever. You may not remove, alter, or obscure any product identification, copyright, or other intellectual property notices in the Software. All rights not expressly granted herein are reserved to EA

Now, you may think the term "Created Derivative works" must mean specifically modified meshes, but I'm guessing this was actually put in for in case someone is modifying Speed tree trees.

Besides, the meaning is:

Derivative work refers to a copyrighted work that comes from another copyrighted work. Copyrights allow their owners to decide how their works can be used, including creating new derivative works off of the original product.

Regarding the part of software modification: Third-party tools (such as S3PE) would seriously edge the line here, contract speaking. They don't have disassembled/reverse engineered code of the "Software" but they do create a copy of the content(s) in memory. (Think: meshes, textures, reading of package files)

The contract, however, is in this section extremely vague for a court to figure out whether they also mean textures/meshes taken from the game and modified as an override.

So if I have some feedback for their lawyers who wrote this, here you go :p. Though, let's be honest, the contract is only set up with EA's services in mind. I actually think those are the huge shortcomings in this contract.

Sorry this got so long. But I've had these talks SO often, that it's getting a bit tiring.

Please PLEASE PLEASE send the contract first to a third party that has a degree in law (which I have done, to someone who does international laws & Software laws), before sending asks like these. I know you mean it out of goodwill, I really do, but it's simply incorrect the way you're interpreting it.

[blast0rama]

The DoJ decides to go after Apple because why not

The New York Times (that should be a gift link)

The Justice Department is in the late stages of an investigation into Apple and could file a sweeping antitrust case taking aim at the company’s strategies to protect the dominance of the iPhone as soon as the first half of this year, said three people with knowledge of the matter.

OK, so I wrote a random one off line on BlueSky/Mastodon about this, but I think there’s more to get into.

Let’s start: “The dominance of the iPhone”. Per random data that I could quickly look up online — Apple has roughly 17 percent of the market. That’s behind Samsung.

We clearly have a different understanding of the word “dominant”.

The agency is focused on how Apple has used its control over its hardware and software to make it more difficult for consumers to ditch the company’s devices, as well as for rivals to compete, said the people, who spoke anonymously because the investigation was active.

OK, what do they mean here? Let’s continue on.

Specifically, investigators have examined how the Apple Watch works better with the iPhone than with other brands, as well as how Apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service. They have also scrutinized Apple’s payments system for the iPhone, which blocks other financial firms from offering similar services, these people said.

OK, cool. So let’s next go after Nintendo for not making games for the Xbox and PlayStation. Or Sony for not allowing third party controllers to work better than the first party DualSense. Or McDonald’s, not letting other places sell the Big Mac or the McNugget.

The Apple suit would likely be even more expansive than previous challenges to the company, attacking its powerful business model that draws together the iPhone with devices like the Apple Watch and services like Apple Pay to attract and keep consumers loyal to its products. Rivals have said that they have been denied access to key Apple features, like the Siri virtual assistant, prompting them to argue the practices are anticompetitive.

Just because someone develops something a certain way, and your stuff doesn’t work with it, isn’t anticompetitive. It’s an ecosystem. Google has it. Samsung has it. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have it in gaming.

They have also looked at how the Apple Watch works better alongside the iPhone than other competing smartwatches. Users of Garmin devices have complained in Apple’s support forums about being unable to use their watches to reply to certain text messages from their iPhones or tweak the notifications they receive from the iPhone that they have connected to their watch.

This maybe has a point. But, god, what a fraction of a fraction of an argument.

Apple’s new privacy tool, App Tracking Transparency, which allows iPhone users to explicitly choose whether an app can track them, drew scrutiny because of its curtailing of user data collection by advertisers. Advertising companies have said that the tool is anticompetitive.

Changing how a piece of technology works is not anticompetitive. Especially when Apple does not compete in advertising. If they start running their own ad networks against Google and Meta, and those get around ATT, sure. Anticompetitive. But you can’t be anticompetitive if you aren’t competing. It’s in the goddamned word.

Apple isn’t totally innocent here. I think their stance towards third party applications or app stores on the iPhone and iPad is silly, especially given that you can do the same thing on a Mac right now today. But this is inane.

John Gruber did a much more eloquent version of this post strictly on the whole Beeper thing last month, and I’m sure he’ll have something on Daring Fireball about this soon, but my thoughts can be summed up pretty easily…

We really fucking need younger people who understand technology in key positions of government.

I can’t wait for another big public hearing where Senator Oldasfuck starts asking Tim Cook why it’s so goddamned hard for him to print his photos from his phone, why is everything he writes in all caps, and what the HELL is a PDF anyway?

[emailencryption]

How to Unsend or Kill an Email Sent by Mistake?

It’s amazing to me how long it took “unsending” to go mainstream. Apple, for example, rolled out unsending for text messages and emails just this fall. If you tried out this feature recently on one of your Apple devices, you likely realized that it’s really just pausing the actual send for 10 seconds or so (users can define other increments of time). Once the email is actually sent after the pause period, it’s out there in the wild like any other email.

Unsend or kill a mistaken email after it’s sent, downloaded, or shared; or expire it when you don’t want your sensitive information lingering out in the ether.

I know people who have been clamoring for true email unsending since the dawn of email itself. Just think of how many rash, career-limiting missives (and jobs) could have been saved over the years. I guess the question then becomes would we really want that sales rep who referred to you as an “easy mark” in an email to his boss (cc’ing you by accident) to remain in his job anyway? But that’s a discussion for another time.

We all at one time have sent the wrong document or the right document to the wrong person. To err is human, and to err in email and texting has obviously existed since the dawn of these technologies; there’s been plenty of opportunity for a miscue. If you ever received a “recall” email notice, you also know that it recalls nothing – if you are not in the same network. Essentially, the Outlook recall feature is worse than useless if you mistakenly sent a document to an outside party – it sends (1) the original message and then (2) a follow-up message alerting you to the fact that the original sender mistakenly sent the first message, then (3) a third message which is the supposed corrected message. The lure to look at the first message (mistakenly sent) is just too great for the human mind to forego.

Recall alerts only seem to alert people that there’s an errant email out there with some potentially juicy details that were not meant to be shared with the recipients. My own unscientific survey on the subject revealed that 99% of emails that were “recalled” but were still available for reading wound up getting read — sometimes even more carefully than the corrected one.

But I’m happy to say that there now is a better way!

We at RPost are true auteurs in the art of unsending messages. Think of us as the Rembrandts of recall, the Michelangelos of messaging. Yes, you and your teams are now able to erase what might have been already sent — regardless as to whether the recipient has viewed, forwarded, downloaded, or saved the document.

You’ve heard about the new and cool in RMail, for email security. And, we’re sure you’ve heard about RSign with its feature-richness and inflation hedging massive cost savings.

Now, there is RDocs, what we call D-Security. This new technology puts security and controls right into the document itself; independent of how the document is shared by email or otherwise; and it does not require any companion software for any viewer of the attached document. To viewers, it’s just like viewing a PDF. However, the originating sender has a powerful control panel that lets them see who is viewing what, when, where, and also lets them restrict or cancel viewing at any time; wherever the document may be. Think…

Unsend, Kill a Mistaken Send (after the send, download, or share). Enjoy the power of the document “kill” button. It’s very satisfying.

Expire on a Timer (or at will). Not all documents need to live forever.

Track Popularity of Doc. Know who is viewing your proposals, when and for how long.

Build Lists of Who is Interested in a Doc. See by whom your documents or brochures are being viewed — even those forwarders.

Limit Access to a Specified Person (or Location). Ensure certain documents can only be viewed inside your company or inside your country.

Any industry relying on sensitive documentation will find these features invaluable, especially law firms and corporate executives dealing in sensitive business information. Think about the power of data rooms and shared online folders, but without the need for a data room or online folder.

We’re offering RDocs free to our RMail and RSign user community through the end of the year, RDocs will be generally in all our markets and channels come January.

Join our next RDocs product introduction webinar on December 14th (register here) and see how we’ve made unsending messages and killing documents an art worthy of placement in the Louvre. Mark our words — this will be one of the biggest tech trends in 2023. You heard it here first at Tech Essentials 😊.

[emma8968]

How to Create an NFT Marketplace in a Few Steps?

Before you start building your own NFT marketplace, take some time to think about what will make you're offering special and set it apart from the rest.

Determining a niche can help you cater to an engaged audience that is ready to buy. Having a clear objective is key here. Once you are confident in your offering, it’s time to really get to work.

If you have an idea regarding building your own NFT Marketplace. I hope, this blog is yours.

1. Choose a Blockchain Architecture

For good reason, this first step is easily described as the most complex part of the process. Many other aspects of your venture will be influenced by your choice of blockchain technology for your NFT marketplace.

You have the option of using existing blockchain technology, such as Ethereum or the less popular Solana, Polygon, or Cardano.

Going this route can be costly—we're talking $50,000+—because you'll almost certainly need to hire specialized developers to integrate with these existing blockchains.

Following the initial integration, each transaction (sale of an NFT) will incur a cost. Within the NFT space, this is known as a "Gas Fee."

You can also build your own blockchain architecture, but this can make establishing trust more difficult.

Hansen essentially explains that a homemade architecture does not provide the same guarantees against third parties accessing and altering blockchain records.

"There are so many NFT Marketplace clone script providers of these alternative blockchain architectures, also known as cross chains because they frequently offer optional integration with a major blockchain like BSc, Ethereum, Polkadot, Polygon, Solana, etc.,"

There are a number of such marketplaces on the market, including Opensea, Rarible, and others.

"They all have one thing in common: their users must trust the integrity of these closed architectures run by a single company," Hansen says. This leads us to the next step:

2. To check Market whether it is Open or Closed 

Creators must also decide whether they want an open or closed NFT marketplace. A proprietary token will be used in a closed NFT marketplace.

A diverse range of tokens will be supported by an open marketplace. OpenSea is currently the leading marketplace for NFTs, supporting over 150 different payment tokens.

Anyone can open an account and begin listing their items at whatever price they want in an open market.

This results in a pricing model based on "supply and demand." Furthermore, when buying or selling digital assets in open markets, buyers will not have to worry about NFT compatibility with a specific blockchain.

3. Define your style 

After you've determined the backend specifics of your blockchain technology and market type, it's time to move on to the front end. This will include the design of your marketplace's UI/UX.

What kind of experience do you want your users to have? What will the design of your marketplace's homepage be like? How will you present your NFTs?

Whatever you choose, make sure the design is user-friendly and accessible.

4. Decide on a Commission Fee or Gas Fee

When your marketplace is looking and functioning properly, it will be time to decide: "How much will I charge?"

Consider the monetization model you will use and how you will collect your fees. Stay competitive and avoid overcharging; users can easily find other providers, so you'll want to offer value in addition to quality NFTs and trustworthy security.

5. Create or Join a Community 

As a first-time marketplace in a competitive space, you should prioritize connecting with buyers and building a community.

When your artwork and marketplace are ready for users, consider giving new customers membership in an exclusive club to help incentivize repeat purchases.

You can also use traditional social channels or consider joining a platform like Discord, which is a messaging software similar to Slack that connects gamers and cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

Final Thoughts: 

As per keen research, Above I have mentioned about few steps to create NFT Marketplace. If you have an idea regarding building your own NFT Marketplace. You should connect and touch with the best NFT Marketplace development service provider like Zodeak. 

[peacemaker-ic]

Unpopular Opinion Time

Let’s start off by saying this: collecting information is wrong, using that for doxxing and sending out malicious viruses even more so, full stop. What has happened in the creator community recently is just shit and should not have happened in the first place, but here we are. But how exactly did we get here?

I have some thoughts on custom content creation and with all the drama lately, it needs addressing. I will put under a read more as I like to ramble.

it is rubbing me the wrong way the knee jerk reaction of people saying “only download from free creators.” Creating is hard, takes time and money. Yes it is a hobby for a lot of people, but a pastime can also help to support that person (my dad grew and sold plants for decades to help fund his love, so separating out income and a hobby is clearly being belligerent and is self-serving of your own beliefs). Art can be a hobby but do you lament artists selling their creations or accepting donations to see more of what they do? Paper costs money, so do art supplies and software. Content, for me at least, is as much of an art form as drawing, it is just a different medium. You may dislike early access, but that does release more free content into the community as a whole as well, while also allowing creators to do what they love without fear of it taking too much free time, or time they might have to work more at a job to make ends meet. This brings me to the wording. People are just saying to “download from” free creators, you need to do much more then that, as this is the reason we have gotten to this point.

Free creators are taken for granted. I should know, I am one of them. When you compare free creators with early access creators, there is a HUGE discrepancy between what comes in via donations, and what early access creators make. When new creators see this, can you blame them for going early access? I hate to say it, but the community brought this on themselves to some degree. People are willing to pay for new content, and in some cases equivalent quality between free and early access, but the early access creator gets so much more support. That’s not OK. These same people also wonder why creators leave the community or become early access. It’s because the community just wants their content, and if it’s free they really don’t care about the person behind it. They got what they wanted at a cheaper rate. It is really quite disheartening.

Even though EA/Maxis requires third party content to be free, that doesn’t excuse you from not supporting the creators.

So educate yourselves and don’t undervalue what CC creators do. I also don’t think it is fair to just say “download from ___ because they don’t use _____.” How about creating an environment that isn’t actively hostile for creators, support the ones that are ethical, and most importantly educate yourselves about what is safe internet usage (seriously, individual download links? So many red flags there). Yes, call out those who are unethical, but don’t use me and other content creators doing this for free to push your agendas about how “the sims used to be better before all this early access stuff happened.” No, it wasn’t, creators were still taken advantage of back then too. This is nothing new.

 If you can’t support an artist monetarily (which is totally ok, content should be free, whether early access or free outright, down with exclusives), help spread the word so maybe they could find others that could support them. This situation is not just one sided, it is a situation that has come about from a number of places, and underappreciation for what CC creators do is one of them. Both sides are to blame here, that is just fact. Share the blame and address it, don’t deflect like you are innocent in all this. It’s time to address this issue head on, not deflect and forget in 10 minutes.

Again, don’t collect info, doxx, send out malicious viruses, all that jazz. That is way too far and highly unethical.

[writingdotcoffee]

#239: Writing for Fun and Profit

My favourite section of Wikipedia is the list of all published works at the bottom of most author pages (like this one). Some are so long that they have to be on a separate page (like this one). It’s fascinating seeing how many things these people created. They kept making things up for as long as they could.

The other day, I read the Wikipedia profile of this random screenwriter, songwriter and director. He's one of those people that need a separate Wiki page to contain their creative output. Hundreds of stories, songs and films. How did he do it? How does someone accomplish so much?

It made me wonder what his day-to-day life looked like. Did he write a new song in the morning, then go direct an award-winning film and work on a short story after dinner?

How can I do the same?

The "Writing Career"

I used to think about my creative pursuits as a career. Gotta earn money with my art, that's the goal, right? That’s how these people write so much. Recently, I’ve been questioning that.

Does it matter whether my art makes money? It sure would be nice. I would have more time to create, wouldn't I? Of course, it’s way more complicated in reality. Being unknown has its undeniable advantages. Also, not having a job doesn't mean that you will write 10 hours per day. When you're not doing much, it can be hard to get motivated.

Is having a day job really the problem that's stopping all your creative aspirations? Or is it something else like the lack of motivation or discipline, or the fear of judgement?

Quitting your job certainly won’t make you more disciplined or less fearful. Quite the opposite. Not having any income will put a lot of pressure on you. It works for some and crushes the others.

Are you writing for hours every day and finishing stories often? Then, increasing the amount of time and energy you can dedicate to writing could help. But if you’re struggling to get started or finish any story, your day job most likely isn’t the problem.

Creating a Body of Work

Would you be happier to be an admired and wealthy one-hit-wonder like Harper Lee or an obscure blogger that publishes thousands of stories to a tiny group of readers but never sees any commercial success?

As years go by, I'm more inclined to the second path. Looking at my creative pursuits through the lens of a career makes me enjoy them less before that even becomes a possibility. It makes no sense at all.

I want to find a way to create freely during my lifetime. I want to be able to say, "Look, I made this!" That's my favourite part.

Thanks to the Internet, you no longer have to ask for permission to publish your art. People will either like your stuff, or they won't. Maybe writing will become your job. Maybe it won't.

In the end, what matters is whether you are proud of what you created. Don’t let anything stop you.

About the Author

Hi, I’m Radek 👋. I’m a writer, software engineer and the founder of Writing Analytics — an editor and writing tracker designed to help you beat writer’s block and create a sustainable writing routine.

I publish a post like this every week. Want to know when the next one comes out? Sign up for my email list below to get it right in your inbox.

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Past Editions

#238: Should You Write a Novel?, March 2022

#237: The Paradox of Overthinking Things, March 2022

#236: Personal Writing Challenges, March 2022

#235: Setting Goals as a Writer, February 2022

#234: A Writer in Motion Tends to Stay in Motion, February 2022

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Everything you need to know about day one of Brexit

By Ian Dunt

Oh sweet Christ not Brexit again.

Yes, you will never escape. It will never be over. Decades from now, as your wrinkled fingers grasp the remote for your 3D holo-viewer, the main news item will still be about Brexit.

At least we got a break during the coronavirus emergency.

Yep, say what you like about pandemics, but at least they take trade talks off the front pages. Still, it's back now. We leave at the end of the year. And deal or no-deal, things at the border are going to be very different.

OK lay it out for me.

For decades we have had frictionless trade with Europe in the customs union and single market. The customs union got rid of tariffs, which are taxes on goods entering a territory, and the single market harmonised regulations, which means goods are made to the same standards. Once you're outside of them, you need checks at the border to make sure people are paying the right tax and complying with the regulations.

And that's what's about to happen?

Exactly. And this will apply regardless of whether there is a deal or not. I want to issue a word of warning before we go any further: It's a horror show. The level of tediousness here is off the scale. This is like someone came up with a super-powered serum for the concept of bureaucracy and then injected it directly into your bloodstream. But you didn't turn into Chris Evans in Captain America, you turned into Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. The worst things are the acronyms. Everything has an acronym. But you need to get your head around it in order to understand what's going to happen to us next month.

I don't care. I hate this. I want this conversation to stop.

You can't, it's too late. You are trapped here with me and the acronyms. OK so here's the basic problem, the one from which all others follow. Our customs system currently processes around 55 million declarations a year. In 2021, it will process around 270 million. It needs to massively ramp up capacity.

It's just as well the government has such a good track record of implementing complex IT projects at speed then.

Quite. To be fair, the government has put a lot of effort into this, albeit belatedly. More than 35 government departments and public bodies are involved, including HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), the Home Office (HO), the Department for Transport (DfT), the Border and Protocol Delivery Group (BPDG) and the Transition Task Force (TTF).

Sweet Jesus the acronyms.

Actually, most of those are abbreviations, but let's not get caught up on details. We've barely scratched the surface. There are three key areas where the government needs to build capacity: IT systems to process the customs declarations, physical infrastructure at or near ports, and staff in government and the private sector to keep the customs system going.

That's a lot to do.

It is. But the government made things easier in one crucial respect: it delayed its own import declarations system until July next year.

What does that mean?

It means that stuff coming into Britain from Europe basically gets waved through. There are still technically customs requirements, but they've been pushed back six months. This allowed them to make sure goods would still enter the country and let them focus on trying to get the exports right.

It's hardly taking back control, is it?

No it isn't, but they're undertaking a systems-level change at an eye-watering timetable, so it was a necessary sacrifice.

Couldn't they have extended transition to prepare for this?

Yes they could, but chose not to. That's cost them. Covid seriously delayed preparations, dominated attention in business and government, paused ministerial decision-making and put communication with traders into deep-freeze over the summer.

So what are the biggest risks now?

The IT systems. There are 10 critical IT systems which are needed at the GB–EU border. Then there are the European systems which UK exporters will need to use to get access to the continent. We're not going to go into all of them here - we're going to massively simplify.

Thank heavens.

Don't worry, it'll still make your brain dribble out of your ears. We're also going to simplify by taking goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland off the table. That's its own separate hellscape. And we're going to focus on the Dover-Calais crossing. There are many others going from England to France, but this is the main route. It serves 'accompanied goods' - when a driver in a lorry takes the goods onto a ferry and then drives it off on the other side of the Channel. This is called RoRo, for roll-on-roll-off.

Acronym. Drink.

If you keep that up you'll be smashed by the end of the article and won't have any idea what I'm talking about.

I already have no idea what you're talking about.

Fair enough, drink away. The trouble with customs IT systems is this: Everyone needs to be filling in the right thing, in the right place, at the right time. If they don't, things break down. That doesn't just apply to the UK and French governments. It applies to exporters and importers, ports, hauliers and others. Customs is all or nothing. If one section is wrong, it's all wrong. Lorries are often full of lots of different consignments of goods from different exporters. Plenty of them travel with 100 individual separate consignments on them. This is called 'groupage'. So if one input of one customs form in one of those consignments is wrong, the whole lorry is delayed. And if that lorry is delayed, all the lorries behind it are delayed. The potential for breakdown is therefore very significant.

This is already making me anxious. It's like Jenga but it reaches all the way into the sky and is composed entirely of knives.

You also need to make sure that third party software used by places like the ports integrates with the government systems. And that assumes that the government IT systems actually work and have staff with the proper experience and training to operate them. And this too is interrelated. If one of the systems breaks down, it has a knock-on effect on the other systems. You keep seeing this same problem crop up. It's not one of error, exactly. It's about the consequence of the error, the knock-on effects of it.

How robust are those IT systems looking right now?

Not great. Some have been delayed indefinitely, some for a set period, some are in trials and some are online. But even when they're finished, you really want to give all the people using them time to understand them, to get used to them, so that when we leave transition there are as few mistakes as possible. All four industry representative bodies, including the Road Haulage Association (RHA) and the British International Freight Association (Bifa), have raised concerns about the government's level of preparedness, saying that they don't believe the border will be fully functioning by next month.

That's two more acronyms by my count.

I'm glad to see you sticking to the important information here. The trouble is that lack of government preparedness doesn't just affect it - it affects trader preparedness as well. If they're not getting clear communication from the government about what is happening and how it is happening, they don't know what to do. And the government has a bad record here. It has marched traders up the hill on no-deal several times over recent years, only to march them down again. Now many simply ignore it. Government communications have, until recently, centred on the "opportunities" of Brexit, which does nothing to indicate the urgency with which people need to make expensive and time-consuming changes. Even in October, just 45% of high-value traders who trade exclusively with the EU had started to invest in readiness.

Oh dear.

There are some reasons to be more optimistic. The first is that government communication has belatedly started to improve.  A new campaign in October was much better, telling traders that "time is running out". There's also one really important thing to remember about all this: it's not a long term problem. Brexit has plenty of those and they are severe, but this is not one of them. This is a short, sharp, embarrassing shock. Eventually, the market will adjust. People will see what happens in January and find ways around it so they can get their goods to market. Some people think that will happen very quickly indeed - no more than a month. Some think it'll take the first quarter of next year or longer. But very few people think it will last the whole year. What we're looking at here is the most dramatic, but also ultimately the most superficial, of Brexit impacts.

Starting to feel a bit tipsy now.

Cool, then it might be a good time to start talking about the IT systems.

No. Stop.

What?

I don't want to hear it. I want to get out.

It's too late. You're trapped here in an imaginary world in which I am talking to myself and explaining customs procedures. And in fact your resistance to this conversation probably points to some kind of deep-seated psychological trauma which I'm working my way through.

Dog carcass in alley this morning. Tyre tread on burst stomach.

Very good, Rorschach. So look, there are really four forms you need to remember. First, the import/export declaration. Second, the safety and security documentation. Third, the sanitary and phytosanitary measures for agricultural goods. And fourth, the system that collects these data sets and connects them to the lorry which is transporting the good.

What's in the import/export declaration?

They basically state what the good is, its value and how much duty you have to pay on it. It's the tax bit. It's all very complex, laborious and crammed full of technical minutiae but that's the executive summary. It needs to be lodged before the good gets to the French border.

How do you lodge it?

You do it through a UK system called the Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight, or Chief.

Drink.

This is a really old system and before Brexit was even a twinkle in Boris Johnson's eye, the UK planned to turn it off and migrate all traders to a new system called the Customs Declarations Service, or CDS.

Drink.

CDS was meant to replace Chief from January 2019 and then switch off altogether by March 2021, but there were repeated delays. So instead they're keeping Chief for trade between Britain and the EU and using CDS for trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, because it has the capacity for dual tariff fields. CDS is then going to be scaled up until it can deal with all the declarations.

No acronyms there.

Actually trade between Britain and Europe is called GB-EU and trade between Britain and Northern Ireland is called GB-NI, but let's not worry about that. The government insists that Chief now has an increased capacity that can handle 400 million annual declarations - way higher than the 265 million which are expected. HMRC has paid Fujitsu £85 million to provide technical support. But others aren't convinced. They're not sure it can handle the load and nervous that there isn't enough support if something goes wrong.

Very reassuring.

Isn't it. Remember that the importer on the EU side also has to be doing all of this - at the right time, in the right place - on the European customs system.

OK so what about the safety and security thing?

It's a document outlining what the good is, so it can be assessed for potential risks. Again, it's a long complex thing with multiple data fields. Like import/export, it has to be done in advance of the goods reaching Calais. It's submitted to the UK government via a new system called S&S GB.

Drink.

It must also be submitted to the EU member state's Import Control System, which is called ICS.

Drink. OK tell me about the sanitary pad things.

Sanitary and phytosanitary measures, or SPS.

Drink.

These are there to protect people, animals and plants from disease or pests. They cover products of an animal origin, like cheese, or meat, or fish, as well as live animal exports, plants and plant products, and even the wooden crates used to transport other types of goods. It's painstaking stuff, but I think, given the pandemic we're all going through, we all understand why it's important.

Yeah, fair enough. You've sold me. I'm totally on board with this stuff.

These kinds of goods have to enter Europe through specific Border Control Posts, or BCPs.

Drink.

And there they undergo some, or all, of a variety of checks. There's a documentary check for the official certification which travels with the good. There are identity checks, which provide a visual confirmation that the consignment corresponds to the documentation. And there's a physical check to verify the goods are compliant with the rules, for instance temperature sampling, or laboratory testing. You know that whole chlorine-washed chicken thing?

Sure.

Well this is where they check whether it has been and stop it getting into Europe if it has. But it's actually the documentary check which is the hardest part in terms of UK preparedness. It includes something called an Export Health Certificate, or EHC.

Drink. Jesus Christ.

These are documents which confirm that the product meets the health requirements of the EU. So they might say that the animal was vaccinated, for instance. Some products, like a cut of lamb, will just have one EHC. But others, like a chicken pizza, will have more than one.

We've talked about this before. People shouldn't put chicken on pizza.

You are wrong, it's a perfectly legitimate pizza topping, and in fact you are so wrong that I have started using chicken pizza as my trade-good shorthand. Chicken pizza is the new widgets.

What even are widgets?

No-one knows, that's why economists love them. A chicken pizza, however, is a composite good for the purposes of SPS. The chicken and the cheese are different animal products, so they would need separate export health certificates. And all these certificates have to be verified by an official veterinarian, or OV.

You're just messing me about now.

No seriously, they use that acronym. This whole area of public life has been radicalised into extreme acronym use. Anyway, the OV goes through the details, queries the documents and signs them off. But there's assistance from a person pulling together all the paperwork. They're called a Certification Support Officer, or…

I can't believe this.

...CSO. These guys are mostly in private practices, usually farming practices. It's not a big part of their workload - maybe 20% of what they do. But if you don't have those vets, you can't send the export. That would be catastrophic for the farming, food and hospitality sectors. And that's where we have an issue. There are restrictions on getting that many OVs up and running. There's a tight labour market for vets and the UK is highly reliant on Europeans coming over to do the job, but the end of free movement makes that much more difficult and expensive, as does the covid pandemic.

So what has the government done?

It pumped £300,000 into providing free training for the role. Many vets took it up. The number of qualified vets has jumped from 600 in February 2019 to 1,200 today. But that still leaves a capacity gap of 200.

Well that doesn't sound so bad.

No it doesn't, but when you start to scratch away at the figures, they fall apart. The 200 figure is the number of 'full time equivalent' qualified vets required. And if vets only spend about 20% of their time doing this, it means we'll actually need an extra 1,000 vets training in the additional qualification.

Oh dear.

Yep. Groups representing the sector are seriously worried about this. And as with customs, the smooth functioning of the border will rely on the importer on the EU side doing all the bits they're required to do too, by creating a record in the Trade Control and Expert System, or Traces NT.

Drink. OK, what's the fourth bit of IT?

Transport. This involves wrapping all the other forms together and attaching them to a vehicle. In the UK, we'll be doing this through something called the Goods Vehicle Movement Service, or GVMS.

Drink.

It links export declaration references together into one single Goods Movement Reference, or GMR.

Drink. Bloody hell man these people are out of control.

The GMR should come out like a barcode, a one-stop shop for all the tied-together information we've been discussing. GVMS will be needed for certain movements in January, particularly for trade with Northern Ireland, but it won't be a requirement of all imports until July. It's currently being tested and there are dark murmurs about its functionality from those who have come into contact with it. Mercifully, exporters into Europe on January 1st will be using the French system, SI Brexit. This was operational a year ago and has been fully tested several times.

Those lazy French with their useless romantic dispositions.

It's almost like they're a nation that cares about shopkeepers.

Speaking of which, how're British businesses going to deal with all this additional paperwork?

Many companies will be OK. Very big corporations are well ahead and in many cases have set up a European entity so that they can sell directly from their UK entity to the EU one. Then they'll probably just reflect the customs costs in a subtly increased retail price. Smaller companies who are used to exporting to the rest of the world outside of Europe also have an advantage. They're used to these kinds of things. The people who are most at risk are the small-to-medium-sized enterprises who have traded exclusively with Europe.

Small-to-medium-sized… Oh no.

Yeah, that's right. SMEs. Which, by the way, comprise the vast majority of companies in the UK. If you send just two or three loads of your product a month to Europe, it probably won't be worth the cost in manpower and money preparing for all this stuff. They'll likely just accept a shrinkage in their business. For many of them, the whole thing is a bafflement. Honestly, you read the guidance on all these systems and it's like it's in an alien code - a garbled assault of acronyms and complex systems. Many small firms, already suffering from covid, just throw up their hands in despair.

Bleak. It's always the little guys that get it.

Yes, although paradoxically, that actually presents one of the few reasons for optimism. Well, not optimism exactly, but a hope for least-badism. Now that so many people feel January will be chaotic, they might just decide not to bother trying to send anything. Goods will get stuck at a warehouse instead of on a truck.

Seriously? That's your good news? Aren't you just displacing disruption from the ports to other parts of the supply network?

Yes precisely. But there really are no good outcomes here.

Because if that doesn't happen, the system seizes up?

Yeah exactly. Lorries head to Dover then get held up because they don't have the correct paperwork. Then lorries behind those lorries get caught up, pushing the queue out, dominating Kent, creating a huge singular blockage. The government's own Reasonable Worst Case Scenario, or RWCS…

Drink.

... estimates that between 40% and 70% of lorries may not be ready for border controls, leading to queues of up to 7,000 trucks.

But that would only be going out right? The stuff we bring in to the country would be unaffected because we're not putting in place controls.

Kind of. It's certainly true that most imports should have a clear run into the UK. You can keep those two lanes separate. But most hauliers are from Romania, Lithuania, Hungary and Poland. They pay a lease on their trucks, which means they have to keep them going if they're to make money. They can't afford to get stuck in a queue at the border. So there's a good chance they'll look at the log-jam in the UK and think: 'I'm not touching that with a barge pole'. This would mean Britain struggled to get its imports, including potentially fresh food and medicines.

Wow.

Yeah, it could be bad. But there are plans for that eventuality. The government has set up some emergency routes, for instance on the Newhaven-Dieppe crossing. There's additional ferry capacity at eight ports, with the Department for Transport acting as the referee on which vehicles get onto their crossing. But it's not a like-for-like replacement. Many of these crossings take much longer than the short gap between Dover and Calais, and they often operate for unaccompanied goods overnight. If the import is urgent, or fresh, or, like some covid vaccines, needs to be kept at a certain temperature, then you may have a problem.

What is the government doing to make sure this doesn't happen? How will they control the blockage?

There's three parts to that really. The first is controlling access to Kent, which the trucks head into to get to Dover. This project has no acronym, but instead adopted one of the least elegant names in the history of British policy-making: The Check an HGV is Ready to Cross the Border Service.

Wait but...

Yeah. HGV: Heavy Goods Vehicle.

I fully accept now that it was a mistake to adopt this drinking idea.

Before the lorry gets to Kent, the driver will fill out an online form with a bunch of information - the registration number, the destination, details of the consignments, confirmations that the import/export documents have been filled in, export health certificates, the whole lot basically. Those that are judged to have all the documentation are given a Kent Access Pass, or KAP.

Drink.

And that allows them to go into Kent. Police can hand out £300 fines to lorries found on the Kent roads without the permit.

But this is all done on trust right? It's a self-assessment form.

Yep. It'll rely on people filling it out right. It's not linked to EU customs systems. So there's no guarantee that documents they claim to have completed will be accepted by EU customs authorities. But on the plus side, the software was launched recently and most people think it'll work OK. It's better than nothing, basically.

Alright so what's next? Traffic management?

Exactly. It's uncanny how naturally your questions lead me onto the next thing I want to discuss.

That's because I am you.

Don't talk about that, it makes it weird. Alright so first up we have the traffic flow plans. The Department for Transport is taking an existing temporary system to create contraflow on the M20 and putting it on a permanent footing, allowing 2,000 lorries to be held on the motorway while traffic still flows in both directions on the London-bound side.

OK, what's next?

Well then there's the issue of actual sites. HMRC has identified seven locations outside the ports. There's prep work being done at a site in Sevington, Ashford, at a cost of £110 million, to act as a clearing house for another 2,000 lorries. Some 600 lorries can be held on the approach to Manston airport, with more at the airport itself. These two sites, along with the M20 contraflow, are for holding traffic. There are also plans for Ebbsfleet International Station, North Weald Airfield and Warrington to be used for bureaucratic checks away from the border. Other sites, potentially in the Thames Gateway and Birmingham areas, are also being considered. They insist that this should give them capacity for 9,700 lorries, which is above the 7,000 in their worst case scenario.

Assuming that scenario is correct.

Right. Covid and other unrelated events, like a fire breaking out for instance, could mean that even the worst case scenario is an underestimate. We just don't know. Plus that relies on all of this being up in time. The government has passed legislation to streamline planning processes, but the timetable is unbelievably tight. The same thing goes for staff.

These are the customs officials who check all the paperwork, right?

That's certainly part of it. They're split into two departments: HMRC and Border Force. HMRC needs 8,600 full-time equivalent staff in place for January 1st. They still need another 1,500 but seem confident they'll have them. Border Force recruited an additional 900 staff ahead of a possible no-deal last year and is trying to bring in 1,000 more. Ministers are confident they'll have enough people in place by January 1st, but trade experts are less convinced.

Recurring theme.

Indeed. It's easy to get fixated on numbers but it really matters how well you've trained people too. You can have someone helping with customs work after a day or two, but for them to have any real sense of what they're doing, you're going to want a year's training. And then there's the question of personality type. Customs is a very specific kind of work, full of extremely complex documentation which must be got right. For some people, that is unimaginably boring. For others, it's very satisfying. But you need the right ones. And that's not what typically happens when people get desperate on a recruitment drive.

What's the other part of the staffing problem?

The private sector. It's a job called 'customs broker'. They're basically people who come in and help companies with their customs forms. Like I said, this stuff is mind-meltingly complex. You really do need someone to come and help you do it. And that's what the government wants too of course, because the more people getting it right, the fewer delays at the border. But as of last September, just 53% of traders said they planned to use a customs broker, with 30% unsure and 18% saying they were going to do the work themselves. Those aren't good numbers.

Are there enough of them to meet demand?

No. This has been a long-running problem. Almost two-thirds of customs brokers do not have enough staff to handle the increased paperwork from leaving the EU. And actually capacity seems to have reduced over the year due to the covid pandemic. The UK needs thousands more.

What's the government doing about it?

It's invested £84 million since 2018 into training, recruitment and IT system development. But many customs brokers are still hesitant about taking on new salary costs to build a capacity that won't be fully required until next July and they're nervous about taking on unprepared customers.  Of the £84 million on offer, just £52 million had been taken up in mid-October.

Is that… is that it? Please say that's it. I'm wasted.

It is.

OK so give me the executive summary.

We're about to experience the sudden implementation of complex customs processes in a nation which forgot they existed. This involves the introduction of numerous interrelated IT systems which have been under-tested. It's not clear that either government or traders are fully prepared for what's about to happen. In order to minimise the disruption the government is introducing various traffic management projects and trying to bulk up staff capacity. But there's just too many variables to know how it'll pan out. Maybe the systems will hold out and many traders will anyway sit out January because of concerns about queues. Or maybe the systems will fail, traders won't fill in forms right and the whole thing will blow up in our face. The most likely outcome right now is somewhere between shambles and catastrophe. We have to hope it's a shambles.

Can you do it in acronym-speak?

Amid RHA and Bifa concerns about the lack of progress, HMRC, Defra, the HO, the Dft, the BPDG and the TTF are building up IT systems for post-Brexit GB-EU trade and particularly for RoRo at Dover-Calais which will involve exporters submitting import/export declarations to Chief and the CDS, S&S information to S&S GB and ICS, and collating their SPS documentation - including an EHC filled out by an CSO under the supervision of an OV sent via a BCP - with the importer logging it on Traces NT, while generating a GMR via GVMS and SI Brexit, and then HGVs getting a KAP, all to avoid the RWCS.

D… Drink?

Yes I think so. That seems very sensible.

[foxholistic77]

Ableton Amazon

To use any version of Live you need an Ableton account. It takes less than a minute to create one, and even less to log in if you already have one. Amazon.co.uk: ableton live 10 suite Select Your Cookie Preferences We use cookies and similar tools to enhance your shopping experience, to provide our services, understand how customers use our services so we can make improvements, and display ads, including interest-based ads. Amazon's Choice for 'ableton live' AKAI Professional APC Key 25 - USB MIDI Keyboard Controller featuring 25 Piano Style Keys, 40 Buttons and 8 Assignable Encoders, for Ableton.

Ableton is undeniably one of the most popular DAWs on the market, but it is quite pricey.

If you are just getting started with music production it can seem like a big investment, but is Ableton worth the money or is it superfluous? Can you get the same elsewhere for cheaper? Why do people consistently shell out for Ableton Live and other Ableton products considering the price?

Ableton Live is very good for certain types of producers, usually those in specializing in electronic music production. The live functionality, intuitive loop-based production, built in instruments, samples and effects and integration with Ableton Hardware make it well worth the high price tag.

If you do want a truly elite piece of software for making music, there aren’t that many options. If the workflow of Ableton suits your production style then this is another big plus point, as Ableton is quite unique in its layout. Plenty of musicians are happy to pay the price considering the features Ableton has.

The Ableton Pricing Model

Ableton Live has three versions. Intro, Standard and Suite. They all look very similar to start with, but if you buy Standard or Suite then you can enjoy extra VST instruments, effects and loops included. Plus, Ableton Live Intro restricts quite a few of the features and functions of the software.

While Ableton Live Lite might be decent for playing around and getting used to the interface, the cheaper price tag shouldn’t be enough to tempt in serious musicians. It is quite restrictive. For instance, you can’t add more than 16 tracks to a piece of music you are making. It is definitely designed to try and get you to upgrade to Standard or Suite.

Luckily, once you have purchased one version of the software, Ableton will let you upgrade, so you don’t have to pay the full price to get the next level of software.

This upgrade cosy is a bit of a hidden cost to consider, you do have to pay to upgrade if you want all the features of the new software. You can still carry on using the old versions of Ableton though but you will always feel like you are missing out on something! These new versions come out every few years on average. Ableton is currently on version 10.

The price for the full version is similar to the price of Pro Tools, a competing piece of software, which is also extremely powerful, and aimed at musical professionals. There are some cheaper alternatives, as we will come to later on in the article.

Which Producers Will Find Ableton Worth the Investment?

Arrangement vs Live View

Whether or not you find Ableton worth the money will largely depend upon how you use it, and if you find the workflow suitable for you.

The ‘Live’ in Ableton Live is there for a reason and the software is made with the idea of playing live heavily integrated. For this reason it has additional functionality to other DAWs and why it is favoured by many dance music producers who may want to take their creations to a live setting.

Instead of the linear “arrangement” window, Ableton also has its Live window, allowing you to audition loops and mess around with effects in real time. This is why so many dance music producers, and people who use a lot of loops in their production, have found Ableton to have a suitable workflow. This style is great for DJs who are used to working in looped modes, thinking of music in more of a live capacity.

If you’ve used DAWs before and like working in an ‘arrangement’ view then you may not even use Abletons ‘live’ view and that means you are paying a lot of money for something you aren’t using. There will probably be cheaper DAWs out there which will be just as useful if that is the case.

Alternatives if you would rather work in this “linear” fashion include Logic Pro and Pro Tools. There are some cheaper alternatives, too.

Whether you find Ableton Live worth the money isn’t just about how much it costs, it is about whether it aids your production or not. Many producers describe themselves as “clicking” with the Ableton layout. If you’re used to DJing and want to be able to audition loops in a more live environment then it certainly could be your production companion.

Hardware Integration

Ableton manufactures its own hardware, and there is a lot of third-party hardware designed to link up with Ableton Live and give you a hardware controller with an instant Ableton setup. Ableton’s own “Push” is one of the instruments that a lot of people like the idea of playing.

In the words of Ableton, “Push is an instrument that puts everything you need to make music in one place—at your fingertips.” If you want hardware too, this might come into your consideration.

Some hardware and even affordable MIDI keyboards come with Ableton Live Lite as standard, so this can be a way to trial the basic version of the software without having any extra expense.

How Will You Know if Ableton Live is For You?

We realise our answer to whether Ableton is worth the money is going to be frustrating for some people, as we can’t give you a “yes” or “no”. Plenty of people get a lot out of Ableton Live and would never switch to any other piece of software, which speaks volumes, but we definitely recommend trying it out.

Luckily, Ableton gives you a 90 day free trial of Ableton Live Suite. You can simply download the software from their site.

Some functionality is limited, and after 90 days you will have to make the decision of whether or not to pay for it, but this is pretty standard. The key is the fact that you will get to make the decision yourself after using Ableton Live for a period of time.

The question of ‘which is the best DAW’ is one you will find many conflicting answers for all over the internet. The reason for this is there is no one right answer. People tend to choose a DAW early in their production career and become familiar with it and often end up loving it.

I have used Ableton since I got a free copy of Live Lite when I was just 15. I am now familiar and comfortable with how it works and that is one of the most important factors. You don’t want to be spending hours or days re-learning a new piece of software when you could be writing music instead!

The Competitors to consider

Best if you don’t want to spend anything: Garageband

Readers of the blog may know I often rave about Garageband. This DAW gets a bit of stick because it comes free on Apple products but I think that is unfair. For a beginner, it is a great way to learn about music production and how to arrange a musical composition.

The software is easy to start using and comes with some pretty nice sounding virtual instruments as well as letting you record your own of course.

If you are simply interested in getting started now for free, then give it a go. As musicians, we can get bogged down in talking about software and hardware but in reality, those are just distractions from actually writing and recording music!

The downsides of Garageband will become apparent as you progress as a producer. You are very limited with the number of effects and plugins you can use and more advanced production techniques are really a no go. But because it was free you haven’t lost anything.

Ableton Launchpad Amazon

The other major downside is that you can only get Garageband on Apple products and so if you own a Windows computer or laptop you won’t be able to get it.

Once you are comfortable with the principles of recording music on Garageband, transitioning to a paid DAW like Ableton will be much easier. It’s a great stepping stone for a beginner.

Best if you aren’t interested in live performance: Logic Pro

If you are a Mac user, then you might be wondering whether Ableton Live or Logic Pro is more suitable for you to download and start using. Obviously, there is an element of personal preference, but both have an incredibly professional reputation and relatively simple layout.

The full version of Logic Pro is less than half the price of the full version of Ableton Live, which is a considerable saving.

If you have a free reign to spend as much as you want then this won’t come into your consideration, if you want something that is affordable as well as high-end then the affordability of Logic Pro might come into your thinking. Logic Pro still has plenty of virtual instruments and inbuilt effects, and the costs are considerably lower.

Once again I’m afraid Logic is only available on Apple products. But I do really recommend getting an Apple computer or laptop for music production which I explain in this article if you are interested.

Amazon Ableton Live

A Cheaper Alternative on Windows: Reaper

Reaper is a DAW that has increased in popularity immensely over the last few years. And this is mainly due to its very low price point.

You can get a non-commercial licence for Reaper for just $40 whereas a commercial licence is just $200. Most individuals will only need the $40 licence.

Reaper can be a little bit daunting to get started with as it has so many customisable elements. But that can be a strong point too. If you are comfortable with computers and don’t mind spending time getting to know the ins and outs of a piece of software then Reaper is a very cool option.

Where it falls down compared to Ableton are again mainly the ‘Live’ elements. It isn’t tailored in the same way towards dance music production or live performance. But if you are looking to record using acoustic instruments rather than produce within the computer using MIDI and loop based production then Reaper is a very interesting option.

Students and Teachers – Don’t Forget Discounts

Ableton Live 10 Suite

A quick reminder for those who are looking to keep costs down. If you are a student or a teacher and can prove that you are involved with an educational establishment then you can make use of discounts of up to 40%.

This significant saving can tip the balance of whether or not you want to buy Ableton or not. Ableton is not the only software offering this discount for students, but if you are eligible then you shouldn’t overlook the saving that can be made.

Conclusion – Is Ableton Worth the Money?

Whether or not Ableton will be worth the investment for you is an individual decision to make. There are plenty of cheaper (and even free) options out there but that doesn’t mean you should dismiss Ableton.

Ableton really shines for certain types of producers and musicians. If you like to write in loops, use a lot of MIDI or software synths then Ableton is hard to beat and is extremely powerful. You aren’t paying all that money for nothing.

Ableton Push 1 Amazon

That said you are paying all that money for nothing if you don’t use it to it’s full potential. If you are simply looking to record a few tracks using live instruments and vocals, Ableton is probably not the best option in terms of value.

Amazon Ableton Live 10

I personally use Ableton and have for years and so can vouch for it fully. If you think it could work for you give the 90 day trial a go and make sure you maximise that time. Explore the 1000s of Youtube videos about the software and watch people make tracks using it. If you are still unsure then try the Lite version next, you can still make some pretty cool tracks in that limited software. Then finally you can take the plunge on the final version!

[loadingtools645]

Boom 2 For Mac

Boom 2 Editor's Review

If you want to make it sound good, you more Boom, Boom, Boom...

New Boom 2 runs only on OS X v10.10 (Yosemite) & later. Single User – Valid for use on 2 Macs/User Accounts; Student/Educator Copy – Valid for use on 1 Mac; Family Pack – Valid for use on 5 Macs/User Accounts; Upgrade from Boom 1.x to Boom 2. Single User – Valid for use on 2 Macs; Family Pack – Valid for use on 5 Macs. Experience your audio in 3D. With the best volume booster, equalizer & bass booster, experience your Movies, Music and Games in cinematic surround sound on your laptop, desktop or mobile. Boom 2 Mac Crack Full Version is an award-winning pro audio app that completely transforms your audio. This premium version comes with free audio effects for an amazing audio experience. Clicking on this provides an additional volume slider, which can increase levels above their usual limits. Boom 2 is a simple app for your Mac that maximizes its built in audio using a range of different equalizer tools. It allows any video, music, or calls you use your system for to sound louder and clearer – providing that you set the levels correctly. Pump up the volume. Boom 2 v1.6.8 Volume Booster and Equalizer For Mac Free Download is a System-wide pro audio app for Mac. Hy friends today am going to share with you Best Audio App for mac user. This is a simple app for your Mac OS Catalina, and Mojave that will allow you to maximizes its built-in audio using a range of different equalizer tools.

I've been using computers for a very long time. I do just about everything that I enjoy on them. In fact, most everything that I do all week long is on a computer. Mostly... I write, as I'm certain that many of you who follow this blog know and understand.

While I write, I often either watch movies or listen to music. The biggest problem with doing this on a laptop is, of course, audio. Laptop speakers are just so-so, no matter what brand of computer you have. Computer speakers are a dime a dozen; and honestly, Apple doesn't make any. They may include them inside all of their computers, but I don't think they're that great. I think they can use all the help they can get. That's why I really like Boom 2. Its THE app to have if you want to improve the quality of the sound coming out of either your Mac's internal speakers or from your third party, desktop speakers... and its really cool.

Boom is a system wide volume booster and equalizer that make everything sound louder, clearer and better. Built from the ground up, Book takes advantage of the latest audio technology in OS X. The latest version several features that offer users a variety of professional audio options that allow them to take complete control of their computer's audio.

When the app starts for the first time, it auto calibrates itself according to the type of Mac that you have. It has power system wide volume boosting capabilities, and provides advanced, precision equalizer controls, that give you control over every aspect of your Mac's audio. It was designed for Macs running Yosemite and higher, taking full advantage of both the hardware and the OS' 64-bit architecture.

The app effects all audio coming from your Mac. It makes the audio coming from your speakers sound louder, richer and fuller. It has advanced controls allowing you to put a professional spin on the sound coming out of your Mac, regardless of whether or not you know anything about sound mixing. Boom guarantees you finer audio control.

Ue Boom 2 Update Download

To help make your Mac's audio the best it can be, Boom comes with new audio effects – Ambience, Fidelity, Spatial, Night Mode, and Pitch. These are all effects that can be used to bring out the best in the sound coming out of your Mac.

Ambiance helps you feel the music around you. With it active, you can hear notes from every corner of the room, making it feel like a live performance.

Fidelity makes the music come alive with crisp, sharp tones.

Spatial puts you in the center of your audio, immersing your in realistic sound

Night Mode nominalizes the audio to produce sounds that aren't too loud or too faint. This is the perfect setting for action movies.

Pitch allows you to change the actual pitch of the audio that is playing. You can listen to things a full note higher or lower than its actually recorded.

Boom has a cool remote app, too, called Boom 2 Remote, downloadable from the iTunes App Store, and it works with both iPad and iPhone. With the app, you can control the audio on your Mac. You can also manage play of VLC, Spotify, QuickTime and iTunes on your Mac, from across the room.

Boom Volume Booster For Windows

I've got Boom 2 installed on my MacBook Pro, and I have to tell you, I'm really impressed. The audio coming out of my Mac is fuller, deeper and so much more alive that it was before. Its really hard to believe that a desktop app can make the sound coming out of my computer sound so much better, but it has. For the price, this is probably one of the better 'upgrades' you can give your non-upgradable Mac.

Boom Equalizer

From my perspective, there's no reason why any Mac owner shouldn't be running this. Its one of the best apps I've installed in a very long time.

Q: How do I update the software on my ULTIMATE EARS BOOM?

Update using the app

Your ULTIMATE EARS speaker gets better all the time through regular, over-the-air updates. These updates are quick and easy and can be wirelessly downloaded through your ULTIMATE EARS speaker app. To get started, connect your ULTIMATE EARS speaker to your smart device, open the app for your ULTIMATE EARS speaker, and tap on “More” to see if there are updates available. If there are, just tap to begin the update and the app will take care of the rest.

Update without the app

Boom 2 For Mac Free Download

While it is quickest and easiest to update over-the-air with the app for your ULTIMATE EARS speaker, if you can’t update using the app or you simply prefer to use an old-school desktop updater, we’ve still got you covered. Click on the Mac or Windows download link below to download the update utility.

Boom 2 For Mac

After you download the app, run it and follow the on-screen instructions. You’ll need to connect your ULTIMATE EARS BOOM to your computer to complete the update.

Boom 2 For Mac Torrent

REQUIREMENTS: This update supports Windows 7 and above, Mac OS X (10.8.x) and above.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IT'S CHARISMA, 372

Certainly it can be launched. That's what you're addicted to.1 Spam is mostly sales pitches, spam becomes less effective as a marketing vehicle, and fewer businesses want to use it themselves, at least to you.2 The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas.3 I'll start by telling you something you don't have to explain why. But you know the ideas are out there.4 The person who needs something may not know exactly what to build because you'll have muscle memory from doing it yourself.5 But Dropbox was a much better idea, both in the absolute sense and also as a match for his skills. For coming up with startup ideas on demand. So you have two choices about the shape of hole you start with. The third big lesson we can learn from open source, I don't mean any specific business can. Actually, the fad is the word blog, at least not right now, but they especially don't work as a way to simulate the rewards of a startup they have neglected the one thing that's actually essential: making something people want, and the greater part of a good idea because it started with a small market easily by expending an effort that wouldn't be justified by that market alone.

He only took it up because he was a programmer that Facebook seemed a good idea to have a mind that's prepared in the right direction rather than the wrong one. I've described is near zero. Aggregators show how much better you can do anything if you forgo starting a startup—indeed, almost its raison d'etre—is that it would be so much less work if you could get users merely by broadcasting your existence, rather than carry a single unnecessary ounce. Was there some kind of salesperson. Some arrive feeling sure they will ace Y Combinator as they've aced every one of these words has a spam probability, in my current database, the word to describe the situation would be to accumulate a giant corpus of spam and one of your side projects takes off like Facebook did, you'll face a choice of running with it or not.6 Stripe is one of the keys to retaining their monopoly.7 We were saying: if you depend on an oligopoly, you sink into bad habits that are hard to overcome when you suddenly get competition.

I do before x? Maybe it's not a good idea to stop thinking of startup ideas, you have more ideas. The best plan may be just as well if you do it consciously you'll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive toward the end of the process. Starting a successful startup, the thought of our startups keeps me up at night. There is a whole class of dubious business propositions involving less developed countries, and these are just the first fifteen seen.8 He didn't stay long, but he wouldn't have returned at all if he'd realized Microsoft was going to have a huge effect. And they know the same about spam, including the headers.9 That's what was killing them. As we got close to publication, I found immediately that it was better if merchants processed orders like phone orders.

Well, math will give you more options to choose your life's work from.10 Fouls happen. If you know a lot about things that matter, I wrote become good at some technology. 84421706 same 0. 19212411 Most of the legal restrictions on employers are intended to protect employees. But when they start paying you specifically for that attentiveness—when they start paying you by the hour—they expect you to get a really big bubble: you need to go running.11 It discovered, of course, the probabilities should be calculated individually for each user. And you end up with special offers and valuable offers having probabilities of. 06080265 prices 0. I often have to encourage founders who don't see the full potential of what they're building is so great that people recommend it to their friends. I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector.12 A startup just starting out can't expect to excavate that much volume.13

And yet have you ever seen a Google ad? 9889 and. Think about what you have to do is give them a share of it. Imagine a graph whose x axis represents all the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks. Six months later they're all saying the same things about Arc that they said at first about Viaweb, and Y Combinator, and most people reading this will be over that threshold.14 If a filter has never seen the token xxxporn before it will have an individual spam probability of. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet.15

If the present range of productivity is 0 to 100, introducing a multiple of 10 increases the range from 0 to 1000. We assumed his logo would deter any actual customers, but it did not. Even colocating servers seemed too risky, considering how often things went wrong with them. You build something, make it available, and if you can make it happen. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that for as long as you can, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? When one looks over these trends, is there any overall theme?16 Good ones, anyway. The more spam a user gets, the less likely it is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be closest. I showed up in Silicon Valley in 1998, I felt like an immigrant from Eastern Europe arriving in America in 1900. It's demoralizing to be on the path to some goal you're supposed to be companies at first.

Yes and no. The malaise you feel is the same. Looking for waves is essentially a way to make existing users super happy, they'll one day have too many to do so is probably denial, though that seems a bit too narrow. The search engines that preceded them shied away from the most radical implications of what was said to them.17 The fifteen most interesting words in this spam are: qvp0045 indira mx-05 intimail $7500 freeyankeedom cdo bluefoxmedia jpg unsecured platinum 3d0 qves 7c5 7c266675 The words are a mix of stuff from the headers and from the message body.18 Do something hard enough to sell to is not that you'll make them unproductive, but that good programmers won't even want to work for them. Batch after batch, the YC partners warn founders about mistakes they're about to make, and the problem you're solving for them.19

Notes

I realize I'm going to kill. Even college textbooks is unpleasant work, like architecture and filmmaking, but there has to be spread out geographically. Most explicitly benevolent projects don't hold themselves sufficiently accountable. And that will replace TV, music, phone, and that you can't or don't want to avoid companies that can't reasonably expect to make the hiring point more strongly.

Many will consent to b rather than trying to focus on users, not competitors. Do College English 28 1966-67, pp. Giant tax loopholes defended by two of the movie, but the nature of an audience of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup founder or investor I don't know which name will stick.

If you try to go behind the rapacious one. Put rice in rice cooker.

Something similar happens with suburbs. Perhaps the most important factor in the mid 20th century.

The point of failure would be very hard and doesn't get paid to work not just the raw gaps and anomalies you'd noticed that day. In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other Lisp dialects: Here's an example of computer security, and are often compared to what used to say that I'm skeptical whether economic inequality.

Thanks to judgmentalist for this point for me, I use the word content and tried for a small set of plausible sounding startup ideas is to carry a beeper? If Congress passes the founder visa in a time. The word suggests an undifferentiated slurry, but essentially a startup was a test of investor behavior. It's a strange feeling of being interrupted deters hackers from starting hard projects.

Which is not so good. If you're doing something that doesn't seem an impossible hope.

Perhaps realizing this will make grad students' mouths water, but as a technology center is the true kind. Not in New York the center of gravity of the 1929 crash.

They shut down a few months later Google paid 1. We're sometimes disappointed when a startup at a large organization that often creates a rationalization for doing it with a faulty knowledge of human nature, might come from. That can be done at a time.

E-Mail. But we invest in a domain is for sale. University Bloomington 1868-1970. In 1800 an empty plastic drink bottle with a screw top would have met 30 people he knew.

Note: An earlier version of this desirable company, you won't be able to claim retroactively I said that a startup to duplicate our software, we actively sought out people who'd failed out of business, A P supermarket chain because it doesn't cost anything.

Ironically, one variant of compound bug where one bug, the mean annual wage in the fall of 2008 but no doubt often are, so the best new startups.

Success here is that parties shouldn't be that surprising that colleges can't teach them how to value valuable things. An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in college is much smaller commitment than a Web terminal. Yahoo was their customer. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day by encouraging people to claim that they'll only invest contingently on other investors doing so.

I swapped them to act. I have about thirty friends whose opinions I care about.

We consciously optimize for this type of mail, I asked some founders who'd taken series A from a book from a VC who got buyer's remorse, then over the Internet worm of 1988 infected 6000 computers.

Mueller, Friedrich M. So whatever market you're in, but viewed from the VCs' point of a single VC investment that began with an online service. 2%. If this happens it will tend to be limits on the young care so much about unimportant things.

Some introductions to other knowledge. You should probably be multiple blacklists. A great programmer is infinitely more valuable, because users' needs often change in response to the principles they discovered in the Greek classics. Which helps explain why there are some good proposals too.

Ed. We didn't swing for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same in the sense of the economy. Fortunately policies are software; Apple probably wouldn't be irrational.

I was insane—they could bring no assets with them. By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a party school will inevitably arise. In fact, if you did.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Eric Raymond, Pete Koomen, and Maria Daniels for their feedback on these thoughts.

[wingedeaglesoul]

Shopify Review 2021 Pro, Cons And Pricing

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a web application that allows you to generate your really own webshop. It supplies you with a wide array of 'themes' that can be tailored to accomplish your very own branding demands as well as enables you to market either physical or digital products.

A crucial goal behind Shopify is to allow people without coding or style capacities to create an online store themselves (i.e., without the help of a programmer). Nevertheless, people that are familiar with HTML, along with CSS, will certainly be pleased to locate that the platform materials access to both.

How does Shopify work?

As I see it, Shopify is not simply a straightforward method to introduce and likewise manage your on the webshop. It's tailored in the direction of sustaining shopkeepers in essential elements like opening up extra networks (e.g. Amazon, ebay.com, or Facebook), utilizing client assistance gadgets (e.g. online conversation), or taking care of the technical aggravations.

Who Can Use Shopify?

Any person can utilize Shopify, whether you're a newbie seller or a multi-million buck business owner. All you need is a suggestion, something to market, in addition to an internet link, and also you could have an online store live in no time at all. With over 1,200 applications, specialized functions such as stock surveillance in addition to shipping devices, and also a range of rate approaches, Shopify is an effective platform to choose from. It can be utilized by any type of sized store and also is extremely scalable.

What can you sell on Shopify?

Overall, you can market most family-friendly items on Shopify. Paintings, vintages, bags, camera, pottery in addition to porcelain, stamps, tees, a glass of wine, furnishings, toys, publications, auto parts, infant things, office supplies, in addition to image prints are a few of the common products sold on Shopify shops.

There are a variety of firms prohibited from taking advantage of the Shopify system, including: IP violation, controlled or unlawful products, as well as solutions; such as betting, pharmaceuticals, financial investment in addition to credit report score services, online money, along with adult material as well as additional services. Video game or digital world credit report reports Social media site jobs Multilevel marketing and advertising as well as pyramid systems Occasion tickets

Shopify Background

Shopify first started in 2004, when software application designer Tobias Lutke intended to open up an eCommerce store to market snowboards from third-parties. Though he didn't intend to be a software program designer anymore, he was let down in what he located on the marketplace, so he partnered with various other programs and also introduced Shopify to the public in 2006. At first, the system helped sellers with customized design templates, uploading pictures, tracking orders, organizing things in teams, as well as accepting settlements with PayPal or a payment processor mix.

Which Shopify strategy is best to pick from?

It relies upon your needs. The choice that's one of the most sense for anyone who wishes to launch a new online store is $29/ month. It allows you in on all the qualities you can require, as well as additionally deals with the negotiations and also the technological back-end of your shop.

If you wish to, you can link a customized domain to your store (either buy it with Shopify or import from a third-party domain name registrar). Otherwise, your shop is probably to be used under something like YOURSTORE.shopify.com.

Have a look at this article which shares the most recent bargains and also supplies on Shopify.

As part of the $29/ month cost, you obtain accessibility to:

Shopify's online shop component (the thing you came below for);.

the Aspect Of Sale (POS) system (allowing you to accumulate repayments offline with an iPad);.

the Facebook along with Pinterest components (market directly on Facebook as well as additionally Pinterest);.

Shopify Acquire Change-- enabling you to add a customized "purchase button" on any kind of website (not always you're on the internet store). Listed below, it's additionally worth specifying the Shopify acquisition charges. Whilst not part of the pricing, if you're not using Shopify Repayments, you'll be billed their enrollment acquisition fee on every order processed in your shop. To find out more concerning Shopify purchase fees, have a look at the Shopify site.

Shopify & Tax obligations.

I am bad at maths, so I value online store solutions that make my life simpler-- especially when it involves a topic that no one such as tax obligations. Shopify does not do anything also excellent with tax obligation obligations, however, I like that it doesn't call for brain surgery to set it up along with its truly functions.

You can show costs including tax obligation obligations or omitting them, whatever benefits you.

Shopify includes an automated tax calculator by POSTAL CODE-- only for US-based stores.

Hands-on tax obligation configurations can in addition be added for countries or regions.

Pros & Negative aspects.

Pros.

Recurring assistance.

Incorporates advertising gadgets.

Consists of a third-party application store.

Free appealing designs.

Long-lasting client experience.

Instinctive configuration.

Uses a 14-day trial.

Cons.

Transaction costs collect swiftly.

No-refund plan.

Expensive advanced rates.

Shopify evaluation final thought.

Overall, Shopify is one of the best hosted solutions for those desiring to develop an on the net shop-- as well as also probably one of the most reliable for any person that intends to make use of one item to sell on the web As Well As in a physical location. It's also particularly helpful for customers that are interested in dropshipping.

The item is competitively valued-- especially when you think about that deserted cart saver capacity, a function which great deals of numerous other systems charge a cost for on all techniques. And additionally, it's Lite method stands for wonderful worth for any person requiring to market products on an existing site.

It's furthermore easy to use, integrates well with a massive collection of various other apps, and also its motifs are appealing. It has a large user base-- 1,000,000 people-- which additionally influences confidence. There are some drawbacks of using Shopify to be acquainted with also, nevertheless.

Frequently Asked Question

Exactly how do I obtain a price cut code for Shopify?

Click any one of our deal web links and additionally the Shopify discount price code will certainly be put on your purchase. Or you can duplicate our voucher code as well as apply it while looking into Shopify.

Does Shopify provide pupil discount prices?

No, Shopify does not supply any kind of discount rate prices mainly for trainees. However, they do use other coupons that you can discover in this brief article.

Can you incorporate price cut voucher codes on Shopify?

Shopify voucher codes can not be incorporated. Having a 10% off promotion code, you can not consist of one more code with the precise same order.

[dropintomanga]

On the Industry, Fans, and Piracy - My Feelings on Manga Today

This year has been quite an interesting one for anyone who’s involved in manga industry happenings with regards to piracy.

As most of you may know, an infamous manga app known as Mangarock was finally shut down this year after years of proliferating as a “legit” manga-reading app on the Apple and Google Play Stores. They finally got shut down when a Western comic artist found their work being distributed on the platform. While this was good news, there has been criticism about whether there were signs of subtle prejudice towards manga (since it’s a foreign medium) as it took a Western comic to bring things to attention.

There was also the news of Mangamura, a well-known Japanese raw scan site, and how the head honcho of the site got arrested in the Philippines this year and will face consequences for his actions. (Update: 12/21/2019 - Now Mangastream and Jaimini’s Box are out of the game with regards to scanlating popular titles)

While this is good news for people who love to support the manga industries in both Japan and overseas, things are still the same. The pirates will keep coming over and over again. I wonder when enough is enough or maybe I’m just tired of hearing the same old debate on legal vs. illegal manga.

I see multiple Twitter threads from pro-industry folks on why everyone should support buying manga. I also see threads on why manga publishers suck. They’re both right if you ask me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how this industry vs scanlators fight is similar to what I’ve been reading about in the mental health field recently - psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry.

Psychiatry advocates believe that taking medicine is the best way to solve mental health problems and mental illness. They realize that things can happen in the human brain that lead to something worse. However, they think a lot of issues warrant medication when it may not be the best solution.

Anti-psychiatry advocates believes that medicine isn’t the best way to solve mental health problems and mental illness. They dislike how the mental health care system treats people with mental health problems. Yet they believe that “mental illness” doesn’t exist.

So throwing it back to manga -

The manga industry believes that supporting the industry involves purchasing their books at any costs. You buy the books, you support the mangaka drawing them. Yet the system that drives the industry is terrible. As we all know from Bakuman and tales from manga professionals, the system to become a successful mangaka involves often-poor working conditions in the form of long hours, strict deadlines, and a good amount of isolation.

Scanlators believe they are doing the manga industry a favor in providing free exposure to titles that would go undiscovered by fans. More often than not, scanlators do what they do without any care for profit. However, they tend to go a bit extreme with regards to translating certain text. Some scanlators also become a bit too egotistical for their own good and end up causing ridiculous drama among other scanlation groups over material they are technically stealing.

Tying this back all together with all regards to comparing psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry and industry vs scanlators, there’s a third party being affected that’s ignored in both debates.

For the 1st war (psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry), there’s not enough focus on the seriously mentally ill. The seriously mentally ill are the community suffering the most right now and present a great deal of harm to themselves and others. A 3rd party group that addresses them would utilize certain views and rejects certain views from the psychiatry and anti-psychiatry movements to help the seriously mentally ill. They are often forgotten as a lot of money goes to those whose mental health issues aren’t as bad on both sides. 

For the 2nd war (scanlations vs. legal manga), you can argue that there’s a huge crowd of fans that are willing to pay for manga as long as you give them almost everything on one platform a la Steam/Netflix at a very low price. That platform also needs to be easily accessible with little-to-no regional restrictions. There are so many fans in certain parts of the world that can’t purchase manga due to lack of access to bookstores/libraries or availability of them. I’ll put this in caps in case people don’t get it - THE WHOLE WORLD IS NOT THE UNITED STATES OR ANY OTHER NOTABLE AND PROLIFIC COUNTRY. I sometimes think certain fans that are able to buy manga forget how lucky they are.

A side note: While a huge step forward for legit digital manga, Viz’s Shonen Jump isn’t enough because not everyone likes shonen. All the other subscription services are fine, but everything’s kind of fragmented a bit compared to how Crunchyroll has almost everything anime-related (though they are going through a big streaming war that’s causing fragmentation as well).  Though to be honest, I think the scanlation community and the manga industry have to band together on one thing I think both sides can all agree on - it’s the relative value of manga compared to other forms of media in general.

To explain, I watched a video feature on the mangaka Shinichi Sakamoto, creator of Innocent and Innocent Rouge. Sakamoto goes into a discussion about manga’s value that really got me thinking. He talks about how manga is treated as “disposable” and how he tries to make his works worth keeping and remembering.

In the end of the video, Sakamoto says: “I feel manga is something that is read, then thrown away. For example, people would read a manga during their work commute and throw it away once they finish reading it. Or they would read a manga at a restaurant during lunch break. Then they would close it once the food is served and forget about it. I thought at first, manga was something that was read then thrown away. However recently, since I started to adopt my current style, I now want to make something that stays close to readers. Something that remains. It’s what currently motivates me to draw manga.

I ask myself what to do in order to make something that stays for a long time, using themes or opinions that they stay engraved in the minds of readers without being forgotten. I keep this in mind in order to leave something behind. It is what motivates me.”

The quality of manga made in Japan isn’t the best. The paper is comparable to toilet paper. If you ever browsed through a manga magazine in person, it feels like going through a super-thick newspaper. Compare that to overseas volumes of manga and it’s a world of difference. I’ll admit that publishers like Viz Media, Kodansha Comics, and Yen Press do a great job in making their printed manga high-quality albeit at a higher cost to fans.

Yet I realized that there’s a larger number of manga fans who don’t care about quality as long as what they want is accessible and cheap. That’s a big reason why scanlations have exploded and will continue to do so. Convenience is something that a lot of outside forces now push onto everyone. I frankly love print books, but I wonder what if the price of printed manga volumes reaches a certain point that makes me go “Yeah, I don’t think I can buy printed manga anymore.”

In the end of the day, even if you make it look pretty as hell and close to a luxury product, manga is still a “throw-away” item with little relative value to a lot of fans thanks to how it’s originally conceived in Japan combined with how internet culture takes advantage of what the meaning of “free stuff” is. Not everyone will find a sense of belonging with manga the same way that fans do.

There are certain folks that support purchasing manga that say things like “Wages need to be raised because they’ve stagnated” and when it comes to fans reading manga on an illegal site, their views sound like “You should buy no matter what” and/or “Just don’t buy.” I know there are those who will point to manga sales and they still aren’t exactly affordable to some fans. 20%-33% off titles with a high price point to begin with may not feel like a significant discount to someone who may not be a hardcore manga collector. Maybe it’s better to say, “You know what? Let’s just smash capitalism for ruining everyone’s lives” or better yet, “Let’s promote wage growth so that manga fans can actually purchase manga and manga artists can survive.”  

For now, let’s all be like Sakamoto and promote how valuable manga can be because appreciating the arts makes people better human beings than learning how to make a “efficient” website/software program look good for someone whose end goal is usually profit. The arts is what keeps people from turning into robots. Yes, this sounds like I’m saying “Let’s have the manga pirates keep doing what they’re doing then.” What I’m suggesting is that everyone from the top down (government, etc.) has to take charge in promotion of anything related to the arts (which manga and comics in general are a part of), not just the regular folks, as they appear to be all on-board the "let’s mindlessly consume/produce everything with ruthless efficiency” train.

I feel sympathetic towards anyone who works with on the American side of manga publishing (or anything that’s based in Japan) because Japan’s mentality on promoting their works overseas is awful. The Japanese want a level of control in how they want to be perceived outside of their own country. Compare that to a country like Korea (where K-Pop is now featured on major American TV networks), you can see how bad Japan is promoting their own brand of pop culture to the world. If you want an example, just look up Nintendo’s history of taking down anything overseas that looks to violate their principles of promoting their games.

I realize that I’m sounding like this Japanese manga creator who criticized publishers for how they handle piracy. Well, I dislike how manga publishers or professionals involved with the manga industry will shame fans for reading scanlations/raws. Almost everyone that reads scans/raws tends to be a fan of manga in general. A lot of them may not be unaware of the nature of scans (especially fans who meet mangaka in person and tell them they read them online). And even if they were aware, have you noticed how wages have stagnated for a lot of people across the world versus inflation?

Plus, how often do shame tactics work on people? They’re just as effective as most diversity training workshops hoping to change people’s bias on visible differences (spoiler alert: not very well). They never change anyone’s minds at all due to being short-term solutions that ignore the shamer’s role in perpetuating the problem. I realize changing minds takes a long time and requires a LOT of nuance (AKA not good for making immediate money), so it’s easy to focus on quick and fast.\

I also don’t like how scanlators disrespect localization efforts at times. I don’t like seeing multiple instances of swear words when most Japanese (or people in general) don’t talk like that in real life. Yes, some localization efforts are full of cringe. Appealing to a bigger array of new readers is important to having an industry thrive. Having just loyal customers isn’t enough.

Loyalty can only go so far. So many people don’t care about brands and/or will switch whenever it’s convenient to do so. There’s always a psychological disconnect between community and profit. That’s why you try to get as many new consumers as possible so they can become great word-of-mouth spokespeople for your stuff. Given how a good number of anime/manga fans stop consuming either medium after a certain age, replenishment of fans is an absolute necessity. I wish scanlators who frown at legit translators who bust their asses off to make manga accessible to a wider audience realize this.

There’s a final thing I want to address regarding the whole debate about scans and it was something I noticed at Anime NYC this year. So this year, Artists’ Alley and the Exhibit Hall were put right near each other on the same floor. In years past, they were separated via different floors or on different sections far away from one another in the same floor. I had a troubling thought and reading one convention recap reinforced it.

It’s the fact that Artists’ Alley is almost always fan works and the close proximity this time clashes with the Exhibit Hall vendors’ sale of official merchandise. There are anime industry members who dislike an arrangement like this with good reason. Bootlegs are a problem in an industry largely associated with piracy. Yet fans LOVE Artists’ Alley. Anime cons can’t just gut them to please industry folks. Supporting the fan artists at Artists’ Alley is a win-win for fans and con organizers. 

Also, some of the artists at Artists’ Alley I spoke to all read scanlations in some way, shape or form when discussing certain series. I have no damn desire to play moral police with those artists because I know they are lovable and messy people. Just enforce the golden rule - don’t be a dick in a public setting even if you have a good reason to because you will never change anyone’s views that way. 

I know some issues have to be made public, but go through proper channels first since I don’t want to see someone being labeled a mood killer without proper context in places that are supposed to be safe for fans.

Another thing - I have friends (both ‘20s and ‘30s) who work full-time jobs that read manga in not-so-legal sites. Some of them I’m very close with. I’m not ending friendships with them over the fact they may consume media differently. The one thing I can say is that even the best of the best will have questionable beliefs/do questionable things and all you can do is figure out what’s really important to you - their actions or the consequences of their actions. Don’t expect the people you idolize will think the same way you do in every thought you have. Everyone has their own closet of behaviors and thoughts that will always irk others.

So for anyone who’s confused on whose side I’m on, I’m on neither. I know the truth is a lot more complicated than what most people will tell me. I do want manga to thrive more overseas. It’s just that outside of Japan, regardless if you pay for or pirate a manga, there’s no appreciation for lifelong reading. Reading is treated as a pain than pleasure in the Western part of the world. Many anime fans are only tempted to read a manga because of how cool an anime adaptation of a certain series is or just from buzz. 

More than anything, I feel like there should be a bigger effort in promoting a sense of lifelong reading. I sometimes get jokes from corporate folks that I like to read and it’s depressing since libraries are always threatened by budget cuts. Reading books (fiction & non-fiction) has helped me processed a lot of things for my mental health. We got to do a better job in emphasizing that reading can be for fun and not just for achievement. Still, buy whatever manga you can for the artist’s sake if you really like the works (not for the publisher’s due to how I feel about capitalism sometimes). If you still want to read or prefer scans, then that’s your thing. You know, I’m glad I’m not really a pro-industry person and a pro-fan. I live in both worlds and feel like I have a balanced understanding of how people act in certain situations versus how they behave normally. I make a joke now that if anyone who works in marketing wants to really understand what their customers are like, they should go to a DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) and see the misery there.

I guess you can say I blame Japan more than anything as I do buy what I can from the American side of things. I know the hard-working folks in the U.S. manga publishing business probably get frustrated with Japanese bureaucracy to a certain degree at times. 

Next year will be the start of a new decade after a decade of slow then fast growth in all things anime and manga. Things are going to get better and worse for anime and manga. Maybe once Luffy finally gets the One Piece treasure will manga piracy be severely hampered by then. I have some doubts because this is all reliant on what Japan will do as manga is here to stay in overseas markets. I know more Japanese manga editors have been traveling overseas to understand what’s going on outside of Japan. That’s a good start. So I just hope that the final chapter over here involves cultivating a joyful love of reading because I feel technology has to really pick up on that.

When reading really matters to everyone and takes some precedence over video in the minds of people, maybe we can see some meaningful progress in a battle where we might be fighting the wrong side(s) and/or missing a bigger part of the picture.

Regardless, it’s a fascinating and fun time to be a manga fan. I’m glad to have met many people who love and read manga regardless of how they consume it. Those experiences have provided so much value for me.

Manga may be considered “trash” in many ways, but to loosely quote a certain popular Naruto ninja, it’s at least better than giving up on the true joys of life.

Addendum (12/21/2019) - Two days after this post was made, two of the biggest manga scanlation groups on the net, Mangastream and Jaimini’s Box, decided to stop translating all Weekly Shonen Jump titles. I’m indifferent about either platform going away (or completely gone as Jaimini’s Box is still doing titles from other manga magazines). The one thing I will say is that Mangastream took advantage of the growing push for convenience in the minds of people over the last decade. I think about how much tech companies have abused “convenience” to generate unintended division and in some ways, Mangastream was like a tech company when they saw their ego being stroked by the large fanbase they were getting.

Photo Source: The Japan Times For one of my favorite takes on scanlations, read “Why Do Scanlations Persist?” from What Is Manga? There’s also this podcast from GeekNights about manga distribution in the United States which added some fuel to this post.

[irarelypostanything]

on Third-Party Recruiters

It’s kind of funny - a software engineer told me he was in touch with a third-party recruiter, and it prompted me to write a massive rant about how third-party recruiters are the scum of the earth, they are the definition of evil, they contribute nothing and hound you endlessly and expose your information while casting a wide net...not unlike spam bots, but more insidious.  Obviously I was joking.  Some of them are great.  I’ve worked with a few, back when I was in the job search process, who were professional, polite, and contributed obvious value.  There are also lots of companies that ONLY really recruited through third-party recruiters, so they make sense in some circumstances.

It’s just...I don’t know.  If you’re in tech, be careful.

Maybe you think that if you get a degree, pass through a rigorous coding bootcamp, or get some valuable professional experience under your belt, you’re set for life.  And...I mean...you’re not wrong.  Until the next cycle of technology makes us all lose our jobs to sentient AI overlords, or someone invents an intuitive programming language and ruins everything, you get paid a pretty comfortable amount of money without having to take the same financial risks many people in the medical field take.  You learn to code.  You get your college degree, or bootcamp certification, or whatever.  

I’d say that for your first job in tech, there’s a lot you can do.  You can gravitate toward frontend.  Backend.  Middleware.  Linux or Apple, whatever.  As long as it’s not Revature, you’re probably going to have a good learning experience.

But there are things out there that are...kind of weird.

You’ll find tech positions written by people who don’t seem to know anything about tech.  You’ll find some really low salaries listed, comparatively speaking, and then you’ll see some ridiculously high salaries listed.  You’ll find lots of things you’re not even remotely qualified for, and maybe one or two or 100 external third-party recruiters trying to get you to interview for positions that are either very poorly paid, positions you are obviously not qualified for, or both.

Whether you’re the best engineer who ever walked this planet or the worst engineer who only managed to get a degree by photocopying your roommate’s and blotting out his name, you have skills.  People are interested in the skills.  The skills are worth money.  You might overvalue yourself and think your value is extremely high when in reality it’s very low, or you might undervalue yourself and think it’s zero.  It’s not.  You have abilities that lots of people in the world are interested in.

And some of them are great.  They want to partner with you, and bring about a better world with you by their side so they can achieve the all-important goal of adding emoji support to your chat boxes.

And some are basically bad.  They want to use you in their twisted agenda to embed spyware in emoji chat boxes.

Be careful, please.  Whenever money enters the picture, you’ll encounter a lot of people who want to use it to take control of people and exploit their natural greed and desire to “make it” in life.  But you’ve already made it.  

You don’t need them to validate you with a dollar sign and a number.  Think about what it is you really want to do, apart from the paycheck, and then move ahead.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND PROCESS

If there's one number every founder should always know, it's the company's growth rate. So our official policy now is only to fund undergrads we can't talk out of it. These can be much more effective, not only in avoiding false positives, but in filtering too: for example, is. I first came to Silicon Valley; instead they'd be opening local offices. Programmers will recognize what we're doing here. It would be nice to everyone. Getting to general plus useful by starting with useful and cranking up the generality may be unsuitable for junior professors trying to get people to remember just one quote about programming, it would probably be painless though annoying to lose $15,000. Now that we know what we're looking for, that leads to other questions. The phase whose growth defines the startup is the opinion of other investors. But while there are a lot of what looks like work. So why were we afraid?

And because startups are in this sense doubly valuable to acquirers, acquirers will often pay more than an ordinary investor would. Since that seems to work. 06%? When Richard Feynman said that the imagination of nature was greater than the imagination of man, he meant that if you just keep following the truth wherever it leads rather than being influenced by what he wishes were the case. Even more important than anything else that I worry I'm misleading you by even talking about other things. Nothing yields meaty problems like starting with the assumption that it was a very gradual process. I'm all for shutting down the crooked ways to get rich. Sometimes you get excited about such a thoroughly boneheaded idea, we should train more Americans to be programmers. Bill Gates—the probability might be 20% or even 50%. I'm relieved to find they're not as bad as I feared. We usually advise startups to pick a growth rate they think they can hit, and then write a paper about it, and try to trace it back to the root causes.

That's what makes theoretical knowledge prestigious. I'd bet on the 25 year old over the 32 year old probably is a better programmer, but probably also has a much more common one. We should have expected this. The charisma theory may also explain why Democrats tend to lose presidential elections. The office at 165 University Ave was Google's first. In most fields the great work is done by the people who work there want to stay there. Proving your initial plan was mistaken would just get you a lower Gini coefficient, along with a lesson in being careful what you ask for.1 0 here. Another effect of a larger share that what's left over for the rest is diminished. In this scenario, spam would, like OS crashes, viruses, and popups, become one of those that exploit an insecure cgi script to send mail to third parties.

The business person represents the voice of the customer and that's what keeps the engineers and product development on track. Subject Free Subject free FREE! Nearly all makers have day jobs, and work on beautiful software on the side of safety. It takes a conscious effort to find ideas everyone else has overlooked. Why did so few applicants really think about what customers want is figuring out that you need to make something lots of people want, read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Boy, was I wrong. I know that from experience. Letters, digits, dashes, apostrophes, and dollar signs are constituent characters, and everything else is a token separator. One reason is that good design aims at some kind of lowest common denominator.

What makes a good startup founder. Undoubtedly TV helped Kennedy, so historians are correct in regarding this election as a watershed.2 Look at where your code is slow, and fix that. And anyone who has written a program only to find on returning to it six months later that he has no idea how it works. One of the reasons Jane Austen's novels are so good is that she read them out loud to see a where you stumble over awkward phrases and b which bits are confusing or drag; don't always make the best subjects for papers. It was presumably many thousands of years, I'll bet on the curve. I've described above. Empathy is probably the founders themselves. Aristotle's explanation of the ultimate goal of philosophy in Book A of the Metaphysics implies that philosophy should be useful too. The startup may not have needed VC money the way they were 10 years ago. There is a founder community just as there's a VC community.

There probably aren't more than a couple hundred lines of Perl; in fact, it would not be a bad definition of math to call it the study of terms that have precise meanings. Two or three course projects? Around 2000 the bolt was removed.3 To some degree, it offers a way around these limitations. I say that the answer is, surprisingly far. Anyone who invested in private companies in return for dividends would have to pay close attention to their books. In addition to the usual clauses about owning your ideas, you also can't be a founder of a startup that was neither driven by technological change, nor whose product consisted of technology except in the broader sense.

75%. Fundamentally that's how the most successful investors are also the most upstanding. The more I think about why I voted for Clinton over the first George Bush, it wasn't because I was writing about spam filtering. What you really want is a pool of local angel investors—people investing money they made from their own servers, and both the headers and the bodies became much spammier. But gradually I realized it wasn't luck. It increases the work of the Valley now. If they decide to grow at 7% a week and they hit that number, you don't have to think about that. They wouldn't seem bad to the city officials.

Notes

A single point of saying that good art fifteenth century European art. There is not really a lie because it's a bad idea, period. We could be ignored.

These points don't apply to types of startups that seem excusable according to some abstract notion of fairness or randomly, in the fall of 2008 the terms they were doing more than just reconstructing word boundaries; spammers both add xHot nPorn cSite and omit P rn letters.

It's possible that companies will naturally wonder, how do you know whether you're a big deal. Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work so hard on the group's accumulated knowledge. This phenomenon may account for a couple predecessors. You have to be doctors?

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Geoff Ralston, Sarah Harlin, Robert Morris, and Anton van Straaten for putting up with me.

[cgklly]

The Benefit of Real Estate Analysis Software

Crunching rental property cash flows, rates of return plus profitability numbers adequately enough for investors to make recommended real estate investment decisions can be quite labor-intensive. In fact , prior to the advent in computer technology it was very time consuming because it required the actual analyst to manually compute and format the results physically. Now with the advance of third-party software solutions, nevertheless it has become common practice for investors and experts to rely on software to do the number crunching for them. The benefit derived, of course, goes without saying: The time and hard work they save by eliminating as many manual tasks as possible frees up time for them to pursue their real estate investing goal. Namely, to locate rental properties they might be able to acquire just for profit. Nonetheless, this benefit is not understood by all of us who works with rental income property and conducts a really estate analysis. Strangely, it's not uncommon to find, despite this get older of technology, investors and agents who still work out and format the results manually. So it seemed needful to handle the issue and to make a case about the benefits of using programs to those of you that remain uncommitted. Rest assured, however , who my purpose is not intended to highlight any one particular software system product, but rather to get you thinking about the "concept" overall. To explain, hopefully once you consider how we conducted a real estate researching in the "old days" you will come to more fully recognize why software evolved, the issues it solves, and easy methods to benefit as a result. Origin The challenge to create a cash flow and quote of return analysis has been around as long as real estate investing. It will be difficult to imagine, in fact , that any investor throughout while in history didn't use some method to determine whether or not a home would result in a profit. Prior to the advent of computers, keep in mind, that process had to always be performed manually. Even as fairly recently as the early 1990's, for example , I was conducting a genuine estate analysis with a calculator in one hand and pencil and paper in the other. Some of you remember any hardships and difficulties those of us working with income residence had to resolve manually in those "early days". The The data associated with investment real estate is the heart and soul of any specific real estate analysis. This goes without saying. The real residence investor must understand the financial performance of a real estate in order to discern its particular value. Before computer services, however , this presented several problems. Foremost, especially for newcomers, knowing what data was required for a meaningful bottom-line was not always understood. What constitutes a rental property's managing expenses, for instance? Or what data is needed to arrive at the property's net operating income, cash flow, or rate regarding return? What must be included to make revenue projections? Therefore it was. Then, of course, there was the issue of the math. For the reason that by the same token the correct data is required, computing the particular numbers correctly is paramount. As a result, there was always typically the laborious task of checking and re-checking the statistics to ensure accuracy. Up until computers and third-party software programs arrived that process always took plenty of time and involved loads of second-guessing. The Formulas There are a host of returns realty investors rely upon to measure the worth of an income-producing property in order for the investor to determine how it compares to their individual investment objectives, and/or how its worth stacks up to the values of similar types of building in the local market area. As a result, investors look at profits such as cap rate, gross rent multiplier, cash-on-cash, indoor rate of return, and numerous others. Some of these rewards require just simple math that can almost be calculated in one's head. But there are also many returns additional complex. For instance, rates of return associated with the elements of place a burden on shelter and time value of money are most certainly going to require nothing less than a financial calculator. The idea is that each return constitutes a formula, and up until the availability of software program solutions, those formulas needed to be learned. The Presentations A second (more subtle) issue facing anyone conducting a rental place analysis concerns the presentation. For in addition to ensuring carry out and accurate data, at the same time it must be displayed most certainly. That is, the reports must be constructed so the facts as well as figures are easy-to-read and easy-to-understand. Over the years I'm sure we have witnessed real estate deals transacted with numbers presented on a paper napkin. But that's far from the norm, and would certainly not reasonable well for presentations made to investors, colleagues, partners or perhaps lenders. Thanks to computers and software, all the efforts we all once made to create professional-quality reports are a thing of your past. In today's world, reports are created automatically and look better than ever in your life. Conclusion A computer or third-party software program cannot guarantee your own real estate investing success. Whether you own the most advanced HOME PC, most recent MS Excel version, or maybe even more than one real estate studies software solution, you're not off the hook. You still have to do your research and homework. non-etheless, there is a benefit to this technology the employees employ it. Hopefully this article has shed some lgt on the advantages. Here's to your success.