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mariaiscrafting · 4 years

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no, you know what, I’m going to stop vague’ing on the dash. my anger is about to get extremely direct and enraged, so fair warning, but I don’t care about anyone’s comfort right now. I’m going to get fucking mad, and you all will fucking deal.

not a single one of us has the right, or should even have the option, to guess about ccs’ sexualities. I’ve kept my mouth shut when it comes to people analyzing george/dream and guessing they’re some kind of queer, but I’m fucking done. I’m going to go into every single reason “truthing” about ccs’ sexualities is just so beyond fucked.

first of all, this is in response specifically to ranboo and tubbo truthing. being a kid and getting thrown into such a massive spotlight, where you will undoubtedly be subject to some fuck shit eventually because the internet is full of thousands upon thousands of people, is already terrifying and anxiety-inducing and damaging enough. but for their own audiencemembers - their own supposed fucking “fans” - to take it one step further and speculate about their sexualities? oh, for the love of god. I can barely believe I even have to explain how fucked that is. it is one thing to be friends with or close to someone in real life and recognize your own queer struggle in them, to approach them with sympathy and support in case they are questioning. it is another thing entirely to speculate about the sexuality of someone you don’t even know, and to then take it a step further and “truth” about your fucking theories. you are not an expert, you are not their friend, and you are not a fucking oracle. you can guess all you want about a cc’s sexuality, you can comment on how their actions or behaviors or words resonate with you when you were questioning or closeted, but to go ahead and take your own speculation as truth is arrogant, presumptous, and damaging as all hell.

I can just imagine what it would’ve been like if I’d grown an online platform that ripped me of my privacy when I was a teenager and trying to figure out my own sexuality. if I had a section of my audience analyzing my every social media post, the inflection in my voice and the nature of my laughs, my every interaction with my best friend, you know what I would’ve done? retreated so far into the closet that I would probably have tricked myself into thinking I was heterosexual. I would’ve been so fucking terrified and felt so stripped of any privacy or control I had over my own goddamn thoughts; do you understand how fucking vile that is? have none of you ever been terrified of giving away your own sexuality through your mannerisms and facial expressions and words, while you were closeted? have none of you ever experienced that utter fucking terror when you notice someone start to question your sexuality, the immediate urge to retreat and back up and act and believe the complete opposite just to prove them wrong and go back to the safety and security of them believing you were straight? for fuck’s sake, now imagine that feeling amplified a hundred fold, applied not just to one instance or one person in your life, but to thousands. do y’all not understand just how a) morally fucked it is to inflict this same kind of practice onto someone you supposedly care about and support, and b) potentially psychologically damaging this could be to ccs who are closeted, especially the fucking minors? oh my fucking god.

that isn’t even to point out why people do this shit - which is to project and find solace and derive some kind of enjoyment out of cc’s. that’s what cc’s are there for; they are entertainers, first and foremost, which continues outside of streams and bleeds into fandom culture and the kind of enjoyment fans can make out of interacting with other fans and creating their own fan content. the problem with this fact is that fans take it too far, like 85% of the time. cc’s aren’t just there for our own enjoyment. they are fucking people, oh my lord. they are real people that we will never know, and while we may have our fun with our little theories and talking to other fans and making and watching cute compilations and writing fanfiction and making fanart, we are just deriving entertainment from the parts of themselves they choose to show us. that persona they put on for the stream, that is not 100% them. they are real, rounded, 3-d, full people who we only ever get the privilege of witnessing a small sliver of. and we need to fucking remember that, because we can’t just keep running with the ideas of ccs that we have in our heads and treating them like they’re malleable characters for our own entertainment.

anyways, specifically about truthing (and mind you, this is the point in the rant where a little of my anger starts to seep out because I’m tired and it’s 1:40 AM and I have class tomorrow): there’s so many things that can be said about gaydar. I’m not here to argue whether or not it exists, or the details of the morality of straight versus non-straight people engaging in the practice of truthing. I’m just here to say that, even if you believe gaydar exists and can be accurate when employed by non-straight people, that still only applies to people you fucking know. what you see of a cc is not “getting to know” them. what you are seeing is one face of a multi-faceted jewel, cut in far more ways that you can ever hope to one day perceive. your theories are just those - theories. whatever you might think of the giggles you heard or the pickup lines you saw uttered or the softness you imagine between x and y, human interaction is far too complex and laced with meaning for some rando on the internet who watches youtube videos and twitch streams to fully grasp from two entertainers working from behind a screen. your gaydar is not going to fucking work through a screen, fuck off with that shit.

another thing that’s fucking bothering me so much is this assumption that comes with being at all open about queerness when you yourself are not queer. ik this is just one of the many factors “truthers” use to justify the findings of their totally infallible, prophetic gaydar, but it’s a factor nonetheless, and it bothers the fuck outta me. someone being willing to express support for lgbt people or donate to lgbt chairities or open to conversations with other lgbt people about lgbt endeavors is not evidence of queerness. to say that it is contributes to the harmful belief that cishets still have that they cannot be any of those things - that is, exceedingly open about and to queerness - without being perceived as queer themselves.

anyways, and now we are at the bottom line, which is that, this entire conversation wouldn’t even have to be had if people just fucking listened to cc boundaries. ranboo and tubbo do not like being shipped. it is that fucking simple. i know that it is tempting to ship two people you think are cute together. i know it is tempting to indulge in a dynamic you find comforting. but idgaf. temptation is not an excuse. find some fictional characters to ship, and kindly fuck off.

#ranboo #mcyt #dream smp #tubbo #look. when it comes to this subject #i am not pulling any punches. i am sorry and ik i was criticized last time for being too harsh w the dream thing #but yk what? im going to be fucking harsh. there are some things i will have civil conversations about no matter how much i disagree #but this is not one of them. this infuriates me beyond belief and im not fucking going to shut up about it #lgbt #lgbtq #/neg #discourse #.txt #100+#500+

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lupinepariah · 4 years

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Why I’m Otherkin

This is going to be very trigger-y so... to be forewarned is to have four arms, yeah? Wonderful. So, let’s rap.

My mother died last week.

Amongst most of my family I’m the “know-it-all ass-burgers r-word.” I object to this as I really don’t know a lot and I don’t know how I’d weigh my intelligence. If pressed, I’d likely say that I’m not very smart as admitting to intellect makes me feel guilty. I don’t know why. Why do they do it, then? It’s because I have a strong propensity for being right.

You see, I have a strong propensity for doing something they never do. Thinking.

My mother is the only one in my family I’ve ever cared about. I admit, we’re a little distant but I did love her and I cared for her, I never wanted her to suffer. A friend of the family had a mother die not long before my mother died and they wouldn’t listen to me for the aforementioned reason, I wanted to tell their mother about an experimental treatment that was at least worth trying. No no, I’m just talking out of my arse.

That’s how it often is. I don’t think it’s especially difficult to not be stupid? You just have to think first. Is there really so much difficulty in that? I mean... I recall not so long ago when I was screaming at “medical professionals” to stop faecal transplant tests. There’s so much stuff we can’t screen for well and all you’d need is the combination of a superbug and a compromised immune system for people to start dying. It had to happen for them to stop, of course. They did it until people died for exactly that reason.

No one wants to listen to an r-word with ass-burgers.

What frustrates me with my mother though is that the solution to keeping her alive was so simple.

She started new medication recently. It turns out everyone in my family was told about this except for myself, which is dandy. The first thing I advise anyone to do is to check the side effects to make sure that there aren’t any co-morbid effects with any other drugs they might be on, or any instigators of underlying health problems they might have. Fat chance. My family got my mother popping meds without even bothering to read the documentation that came with them.

The first thing I do with anyone is tell them to check the side effects. Always check the side effects. Always check the side effects.

The truth is? I have loads of life experiences like this. I’ve been abused in every way you can imagine. I’ve been through the ringer. Physical, mental, sexual, emotional, and everything else. No matter what could happen to me these days, I’ve felt worse. That’s why the situation with my mother just leaves me feeling cold and angry, and little else.

The truth is is that my experiences with human beings that actually want to be human beings is that they can be monsters. I admit that this isn’t all of them, I’m sure it can’t be, but it is true for the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast... you get the point, the vast majority. They’re monsters.

I was raised by dogs due to parents that were either neglectful or abusive. The dogs died because of abuse, missed vaccines, or other reasons... they were replaced with other dogs because it was the only thing that kept me sane. After all, you have to keep up appearances and make it look like it’s the problmeatic child’s fault rather than the alcoholic, violent, dysfunctional parents. Isn’t that always the way of it? Very relateable, yes?

The truth is is that I’ve had so many bad experiences that I... I don’t feel like I’m a good fit with this species. I’m too kind. I’m too considerate. I think before I act. I actually care. I help people even if they’ve hurt me so, so badly that all I feel for them is hatred. All I want for anyone is to not have to suffer as I do. So while most humans look like monsters to me, I don’t want them to suffer.

This gives one a... unique outlook on life.

As a coping mechanism I started thinking of myself as, well, not human. It helped. It helped so much. And over time I became mentally healthy, even well-adjusted, I’m certainly a lot less angry these days. I even have a partner! They’re non-binary and they’re absolutely lovely, I couldn’t ask for a better partner, so very supportive, creative, and clever. And then my mother died.

It’s hard not to feel set back by it. I feel like I’m teetering on a razor’s edge. I feel that the only way I can cling to my sanity is by more deeply embracing these very strong feelings I have of not being human. The human species—so overly obsessed with itself—brings me great shame. I feel shame and pain that I’m to share this species until the day I die, in body if not in heart and mind.

There’s an autistic community called Wrong Planet because it’s not unusual for autistic people to feel this way. It’s just that for some of us the alienation is so much more profound and extreme than it is for others. We feel it so deeply that we could never be “human,” not in the sense that most would understand that word. I mean, we could certainly never be normal and we’d never want to. It’s a horrible word, isn’t it? Normal. It suggests a binary state where one is the innate default and correct, whereas the other isn’t. How could that be anything other than pathological by design?

Being Otherkin is my coping mechanism.

It isn’t spiritual. I’m not an animal. I don’t have an animal living inside of me. I don’t have an animal spirit. I just really want to be something other than human, thanks.

So I think of myself as a lycanthrope. I’ve an imaginary support dragon who’s there when I’m alone and I have to handle things myself. It’s only by the merit of these two factors that I stay sane. If I had to think of myself as human, if I lost my support dragon, I’d be bouncing off the walls and chewing the furniture to pieces because I’d have no means to handle all of the unimaginably awful things that had been done to me, all of the suffering I’d endured.

No matter how bad something makes me feel, I’ve felt worse. I could only really go up and Otherkin was my way up. It’s a comfort, a small one in a world so bent on destroying itself as this one is. I mean, depletion of the rainforests and a huge hole in the ozone layer and people are still breeding like bunny rabbits. This is what scientists refer to as The Great Filter. Frankly, if not for SARS-CoV-2, humanity likely would’ve gone extinct within the next century.

I feel that SARS-CoV-2 has given the human species a chance to pull back from the brink.

It’s funny because I’ll never know anything other than hatred. I know that. It’s almost impossible for an Otherkin like myself to find any allies other than fellow Otherkin. I mean, I tried to reach out to trans people and they thought I was a meme created to hurt them because that’s what the Alt-Right very successfully brainwashed them into believing. So much for that, right?

I don’t hate trans people for this. That’d be stupid. They’re suffering too. No, I get that they were hacked and it’s not their fault. If you aren’t acting with full agency then you can’t really be blamed.

Every time something happens though that keys into my personal support mechanism I can’t help but latch onto it. I feel included, for once. It’s actually really nice to feel included. This is why I’ve been fixated upon Guild Wars 2 and why it’s been so important to me. I’ve been getting very clingy with it since my mother died because I love being charr and there may just be a good therapy dragon in the latest content. I’d love that.

If ArenaNet wants to do something for one person who’s suffered way too much? Don’t make Jormag evil. I’d really appreciate that. It’s going to hurt like hell if they are. I hate it when dragons always have to be evil because I’m Otherkin. I love dragons.

It’s a perspective thing, yeah?

I don’t really know how to explain it. I don’t think you’d really be able to understand without having gone through decades of torture and abuse. It just shifts your perspective. If I were to show you a picture of five scantily clad humans facing off against a dragon, you’d know for certain that it’s a depiction of heroes versus an evil draconic beast. What I see, however, is a bunch of thieves, burglars, and freebooters looking to slaughter an innocent dragon so they can steal the poor thing’s belongings. The dragon? They’re a mother protecting a clutch of newborn children.

Dragons don’t look like monsters to me. Humans do, though.

That’s unlikely to ever change. I hurt too much for it to.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I hate humans or anything. I don’t really have it in me to hate anyone as that would mean I’d have to want someone to suffer and enjoy it, which I couldn’t. I’d vomit. I’m as diametrically opposed to suffering as anyone could be. I’m really sick of how forced to suffer so many of us are already. It’s just that I can’t look at a human now and not at first see a monster because I have so much trauma to deal with and work through.

So, yeah. I’m Otherkin. It helps. It helps a lot. I love werewolves, dragons, robots, aliens, sapient fungi, and lots of other non-human stuff. It’s great. Sadly, humans being innately narcissistic tend to demonise anything unfamiliar to them, the human species has been doing that since the dawn of time with factors as trivial as skin colour or the shape of one’s nose. It’s tiresome. That’s why whenever something is special enough to have truly non-human entities as forces of genuine kindness opposed to suffering? It wins my heart.

I feel in love with Aurene in Guild Wars 2 for that reason. I feel that that game has been part of my ongoing therapy. I... do worry about being hurt by how they handle Jormag but I do hope. I really do.

So, yeah. That’s why I’m Otherkin. That’s the long and short of it. if you aren’t? I don’t hate you. It’s just that if we met, you’d probably want to hurt me. That tends to be how it goes. I don’t find comfort in the presence of humans. I do find much comfort though in the dreams of being a werewolf protected within a dragon’s shadow. That’s about the only way I can be healthy.

#otherkin #feelings #trigger warning

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years

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The Kim Kardashian Deepfake Shows Copyright Claims Are Not the Answer

A week after a deepfake video of Mark Zuckerberg went viral and forced Facebook to fact check art, YouTube has removed a satirical deepfake of Kim Kardashian by the same creator from its platform.

But unlike the Zuckerberg video, which sparked a conversation around how platforms define misinformation versus satire, the Kardashian video was taken down using one of the internet’s bluntest weapons: a copyright claim, in this case from Condé Nast, which created the original video the deepfake used.

The news shows that copyright claims can be an effective way to quickly remove deepfakes from internet platforms, but raises an important question: Should copyright holders have the right to remove a deepfake that was created to make a political statement?

The Kardashian deepfake was created by the same group of artists who brought the world the viral deepfake of Zuckerberg bragging about controlling Facebook users’ data. Like the Zuckerberg deepfake, the Kardashian deepfake was commenting on the power social media companies have over their users.

“When there’s so many haters, I really don’t care because their data has made me rich beyond my wildest dreams,” Kardashian says in the manipulated video.

The Zuckerberg deepfake was flagged by two of Facebook’s fact-checking partners and its distribution was limited on Facebook and Instagram, but the social media giant decided not to remove it, opting to flag it as false and let users decide for themselves.

The Kardashian deepfake is also still up on Instagram, but not on YouTube because Condé Nast, the media company that published the source video, filed a Content ID claim with YouTube. Content ID is a system on YouTube that allows copyright holders to block, monetize, or track a video that infringes on their copyrights. In the case of the Kardashian video, Condé Nast chose to block the video.

The Kardashian deepfake was created by manipulating a video interview titled “73 Questions With Kim Kardashian West” published by Vogue in April. The original video is 11 minutes long, but the portion used to train the deepfake is taken from a one-minute scene within that interview:

Bill Posters, one of the artists who created the Zuckerberg and Kardashian deepfakes, told Motherboard that he received an email notification from YouTube alerting him that Condé Nast had requested the video be blocked on June 12, the day after Motherboard published its article on the Zuckerberg deepfake.

“We would have thought that our artworks are covered under artistic and satire use protection under UK copyright law, however the video has been blocked in all territories,” Posters said.

Condé Nast declined to comment on this removal before publication.

The problem with using a copyright claim against the Kardashian deepfake was that its creators didn’t just reupload Vogue’s original video. They deliberately manipulated the video to make a statement. In copyright law, if a work is transformative in nature—such as parody—it’s likely toF be considered fair use, and not a copyright infringement. Fair use includes content such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use also applies if only a small part of a whole copyrighted work is used in the new creation; in this case, only around one-tenth of the original video was used to make the deepfake.

Electronic Frontier Foundation policy analyst Joe Mullin told Motherboard that the video’s creators probably have a good case to argue that their work is fair use.

“The deepfake video uses a small part of the original, and transforms it substantially. It’s not a replacement for the original video and it’s hard to imagine that it would hurt the market value of the original,” Mullin said. “Unfortunately, copyright owners don’t always consider possible fair use cases before sending DMCA takedowns that censor speech—even though the 9th Circuit’s Lenz decision makes it clear that they must do so.”

“For transformative work, there are a variety of factors to consider,” Suzie Dunn, faculty of law at the University of Ottawa, told Motherboard. “You can’t just call it art or call it parody to make it transformative. It has to have some sort of new and meaningful expression to it. You can’t just mock to mock, you need to have a message or meaning behind it.”

Artists sometimes need to issue takedowns to stop bootlegged versions of their work from spreading—as must porn performers whose work is ripped and reposted to tube sites like Pornhub, and revenge porn victims who want to scrub the internet of harmful, damaging content. Individuals can’t always spend hours or days tracking down videos and issuing notices, but a company like Condé Nast has more resources.

“I do think, whether we call it privilege or just the loud and the visible, platforms are highly unresponsive to most people,” Sam Gregory, program director at international human rights organization WITNESS told Motherboard. “And they’re incredibly un-transparent…[users] feel like they’re talking into a black hole when they talk to a platform, because what’s happened to their content is not considered important.”

Dunn said that in the case of the Kardashian deepfake, she also thinks there could be a strong argument for fair use—with a caveat.

“I think the issue with using copyright to address deepfakes, is that it doesn’t get to the core of the issue,” she said. “Deepakes aren’t really about copyright to a particular image [i.e. the original Vogue video] but what right people should have to control their representations online. We should be looking to how this impacts a person’s autonomy and integrity, rather than looking to copyright for solutions to deepfakes. Copyright is more likely to protect celebrity content like this, but will be more challenging for the everyday target of deepfake to make a claim.”

When deepfakes first began, this challenge was very clear: The law wasn’t, and still isn’t, prepared to handle content like revenge porn and misuse of non-famous people’s images. Celebrities and public figures like Kim Kardashian can force a takedown through rights of publicity, which protect their likeness from misuse, but often the most the average person can do is sue for defamation, under civil laws that apply, such as intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation.

“When people want to get material taken down from social media, because they disagree with its message, copyright claims are almost never the way to do it,” Mullin said.

Copyright claims are just a Band-Aid for issues of consent and ownership of our own likenesses online, and our personal data, and they’re too prone to misuse by powerful entities. These are issues the art group that created the Zuckerberg and Kardashian deepfakes attempted to critique with its work, in the first place.

The creators can file an appeal, but Posters said that the group is still deciding whether it’s even worth appealing the takedown.

“The important point is not whether YouTube or Facebook think these AI generated videos are art or not, the question is: what happens to contemporary art that is critical of their practices when it is inserted into the corporate spaces of social media giants like Facebook, Instagram or Youtube?” he said. “[These are] spaces that pretend to be public spaces, that profess to safeguard free expression, when the reality is evidently something quite different.”

The Kim Kardashian Deepfake Shows Copyright Claims Are Not the Answer syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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clarenceomoore · 6 years

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Voices in AI – Episode 81: A Conversation with Siraj Raval

Today's leading minds talk AI with host Byron Reese

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About this Episode

Episode 81 of Voices in AI features host Byron Reese and Siraj Raval discussing how teaching AI to the world can help improve the quality of life for everyone, and what the footfalls along the way are.

Listen to this one-hour episode or read the full transcript at www.VoicesinAI.com

Transcript Excerpt

Byron Reese: This is voices in AI brought to you by GigaOm, I’m Byron Reese. Today my guest is Siraj Raval. He is the director of the School of AI. He holds a degree in computer science from Columbia University. Welcome to the show, Siraj.

Siraj Raval: Thank you so much for having me, Byron.

I always like to start off with just definitions. What is artificial intelligence and specifically what’s artificial about it?

That’s a great question. So, AI, Artificial Intelligence is actually… I like to think of it as a giant circle. I’m a very visual person so just imagine a giant circle and we’ll label that circle AI, okay? Inside of the circle, there is a smaller circle, and this would be the subfield of the eye. One of them would be heuristics. These are statistical techniques to try to play games a little better.

When Garry Kasparov was defeated by big blue — that was using heuristics. There’s another bubble inside of this bigger AI bubble called machine learning and that’s really the hottest area of AI right now and that’s all about learning from data. So there’s heuristics, there’s learning from data — which is machine learning — and there is deep learning as well, which is a smaller bubble inside of machine learning. So AI is a very broad term. And people in computer science are always arguing about what is AI, what isn’t AI? But for me, I like to keep it simple. I think of AI as any kind of machine that mimics human intelligence in some way.

Well hold on a minute though, you can’t say artificial intelligence is a machine that mimics human intelligence because you’re just defining the word with what we’re trying to get at. So what’s intelligence?

That’s a great question. Intelligence is the ability to learn and apply knowledge. And we have a lot of it. Well, some of us anyway (just kidding)

That’s interesting because of AlphaGo — the emphasis on it being able to learn is a pretty high bar. Something like my cat food dish that refills itself when the cat eats all the food, that isn’t intelligent in your book, right? It’s not learning anything new. Is that true?

Yeah. So it’s not learning. So there has to be some kind of feedback, some kind of response to stimulus, so whether that’s from data or whether that’s a statistical technique based on the number of wins versus losses, did this work, did this not work? It’s got to have this feedback loop of something outside of it being external to it is affecting it. In the way that we perceive the world, something external to our heads and that affects how we act in the world.

So [take] the smartest program in the world. Once it’s instantiated as a single program, is no longer intelligent. Is that true? Because it stopped learning at that point. It can be as sophisticated as can be, but in your mind, if it’s not learning something new it’s not intelligent.

That’s a good question. Well, I mean, the point at which it would not need to learn or there would be nothing for it to learn would be the point in which, to get ‘out there,’ it saturates the entire universe.

Well, no. I mean like, let’s take AlphaGo. Let’s say they decide, let’s put out an iPhone version of Go and let’s just take the latest and greatest version of this. Let’s make a great program that plays Go. At that point it is no longer AI, if we rigidly follow your definition because it stopped learning, it’s now frozen in capability. Yeah, I can play it a thousand times in a game 1001 it’s not doing any better.

Sure. Okay, but to stick to my rigid definition, I’ve said that intelligence is the ability to learn and apply knowledge.

Right.

That we will be doing in the latter part.

Do you think that it’s artificial in that it isn’t really intelligence, it just looks like it? Is what a computer does actually intelligent or is it mimicking intelligence? Or is there a difference between those two things?

There are different kinds of intelligences in the world. I mean, think of it like a symphony of intelligences like, our intelligence is really good at doing a huge range of tasks, but a dog has a certain type of intelligence that keeps it more aware of things than we would be, right? Dogs have superhuman hearing capability. So in that way a dog is more intelligent than us for that specific task. So when we say ‘artificial intelligence,’ you know, talking about the AlphaGo example, that algorithm is better than any human on the planet for that specific task. It’s a different kind of intelligence. ‘Foreign,’ ‘alien,’ ‘artificial’ — you know, all of those words would kind of describe its capability.

You’re the Director of School of AI. What is that? Tell me the mission and what you’re doing.

Sure. So I’ve been making educational videos about AI on YouTube for the past couple of years and I had the idea about nine months ago, to have this call to action for people who watch my videos. And I had this idea of saying, ‘Let’s start an initiative where I’m not the only one teaching but there are other people, and we’ll call ourselves The School of AI and we have one mission which is to teach people how to use AI technology for the betterment of humanity for free.’

And so we’re a non-profit initiative. And since then, we have, what are called ‘deans.’ It’s 800 of them spread out across the world, across 400 cities globally. And they’re teaching people in their local communities from Harare, Zimbabwe to Zurich to parts of South America. It’s a global community. They’re building their local schools, Schools of AI, you know, School of AI Barcelona, what have you, and it’s been an amazing, amazing couple of months. It feels like every day I wake up, I look in our side channel, I see a picture of a bunch of students in, say, Mexico City and our school there, our logo there and it’s like, “Is this real?” But it is real. Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun so far.

Put some flesh on those bones. What does it mean to learn… what are people learning to do?

Right. So the guideline that we’re following — we’re talking about the betterment of humanity — are the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) outlined by the United Nations. One of them would be no poverty, no extreme poverty, sustainable action on the climate, things like that. Basically trying to fulfill the basic needs for humans both in developed and developing countries so that eventually we can all reach that stage of self-actualization and be able to contribute and create and discover, which is what I think we humans are best at. Not doing trivial laborious repetitive tasks. That’s what machines are good for. So if we can teach our students, we call them ‘wizards,’ if we can teach our wizards how to use a technology to automate all of that away, then we can get to a world where all of us are contributing to the betterment and the progress of our species whether it’s in science or art, etcetera.

But specifically, what are people learning to do like on a day to day basis?

One example would be classifying images, and that’s a very generic example, but we can use that example to say, help farmers in parts of South Africa to detect plants that are diseased, or that are not diseased. Another example would be anomaly detection. So kind of finding the needle in the haystack. What here doesn’t fit in with the rest? And that can be applied to fraud detection, right? If you’ve got thousands and thousands of transactions, and one of them is a fraud, and AI can learn ‘what fraud is’ better than any human could because it’s just so much data. That’s just two, I can get some more. There’s quite a lot but I think that…

No, but I mean, what’s the clue… so it’s the idea that there just aren’t enough people that have the basic skills to “do AI” and you’re trying to fill that gap?

That is what it is. And yeah, in that the concepts behind this technology, the mathematical concepts I don’t believe are accessible yet to a wide enough audience. So we at School of AI are trying to broaden that audience and trying to make it accessible not just to developers but eventually to everybody. You know, moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, people who — just they’re not like the most technical people — we’re trying to reach them and make this something that everybody does, because we sincerely believe that this is going to be a part of our lives and eventually everybody is going to be implementing AI in some way or another.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be code. It can be through some application or some kind of ‘drag and drop’ interface, but it’s definitely in the future of work. So yes, that’s what it is. And also it’s the fact that we are facing so many huge problems, daunting problems as a species — existential threats. And we think we might not be good enough alone to solve these problems. Climate change, for example: a lot of people think that it’s too late to solve climate change, but we think that we have a huge amount of data available and we think that the answers to some of the hardest problems related to CO2 emission and how we can allocate resources for that goal lie hidden in that data, and using AI we can find them.

Listen to this one-hour episode or read the full transcript at www.VoicesinAI.com

Voices in AI

Visit VoicesInAI.com to access the podcast, or subscribe now:

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Play

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Byron explores issues around artificial intelligence and conscious computers in his new book The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity.

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babbleuk · 6 years

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Voices in AI – Episode 81: A Conversation with Siraj Raval

Today's leading minds talk AI with host Byron Reese

About this Episode

Listen to this one-hour episode or read the full transcript at www.VoicesinAI.com

Transcript Excerpt

Siraj Raval: Thank you so much for having me, Byron.

I always like to start off with just definitions. What is artificial intelligence and specifically what’s artificial about it?

That’s a great question. Intelligence is the ability to learn and apply knowledge. And we have a lot of it. Well, some of us anyway (just kidding)

Sure. Okay, but to stick to my rigid definition, I’ve said that intelligence is the ability to learn and apply knowledge.

Right.

That we will be doing in the latter part.

You’re the Director of School of AI. What is that? Tell me the mission and what you’re doing.

Put some flesh on those bones. What does it mean to learn… what are people learning to do?

But specifically, what are people learning to do like on a day to day basis?

No, but I mean, what’s the clue… so it’s the idea that there just aren’t enough people that have the basic skills to “do AI” and you’re trying to fill that gap?

Listen to this one-hour episode or read the full transcript at www.VoicesinAI.com

Voices in AI

Visit VoicesInAI.com to access the podcast, or subscribe now:

iTunes

Play

Stitcher

RSS

Byron explores issues around artificial intelligence and conscious computers in his new book The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity.

from Gigaom https://gigaom.com/2019/03/07/voices-in-ai-episode-81-a-conversation-with-siraj-raval/

#Gigaom

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digitalmark18-blog · 6 years

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SSL vs. Website Security

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/ssl-vs-website-security/

SSL vs. Website Security

Having a website today is way easier than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Tools like content management systems (CMS), website builders, static site generators and alike remove a lot of the friction around building and maintaining sites. But, is there a price for such convenience?

I would dare to say that one of the downsides to bringing such facilities to the masses is the creation of misconceptions. The biggest misconception is about what makes a website secure versus not secure. For example, with the introduction of Google Chrome version 68, websites that do not use SSL certificates are marked “Not Secure” in the address bar.

However, a website with an SSL certificate is not necessarily a “secure” website. SSL encrypts the data sent between the visitor and web server but does not actually protect the website itself from hackers. There is more to it website owners need to understand if they want a truly secure website.

SSL Certificates

SSL is the acronym for Secure Sockets Layer. It is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. SSL certificates have become a best practice in website security for good reason.

We have recently written an article to showcase why websites should switch to SSL. In short, Google, Mozilla, and other web authorities are pushing for website owners to adopt HTTPS. One of the ways Google can enforce SSL is by flagging sites displaying a warning that the site is “Not secure“ on Chrome, starting with Chrome 68.

Chrome 68 not secure warning for HTTP websites

SSL certificates help protect the integrity of the data in transit between the host (web server or firewall) and the client (web browser). They make sure no one is able to see or modify the data, what is known as a man-in-the-middle attack.

All types of SSL certificates verify the domain name of the website.

Let’s see the types of SSL certificates:

Domain Validated SSL Certificate (DV SSL)

DV SSL Certificates are the most popular SSL certificates on the Internet, even though they only validate the domain name.

DV SSL Certificate

Let’s Encrypt offers these kinds of certificates for free. We also have a guide explaining how to install an SSL certificate.

Organization Validation SSL Certificate (OV SSL)

OV SSL Certificates require more documentation for a Certificate Authority to certify the organization making the request is registered and legitimate.

These certificates will display the name of the organization if you click on the padlock that appears on the top left corner of a browser.

OV SSL Certificate

Premium Extended Validation SSL Certificates (EV SSL)

EV SSL Certificates require even more documentation for a Certificate Authority to validate the organization making the request. These certificates will be more visible because besides displaying the padlock in the address bar, they will also display the name of the organization.

EV SSL Certificate

The only feasible difference among these three certificates is their verification process. The technical security is the same for all. While the DV certificates only test ownership of the domain (by technical mediums), the OV and EV certificates will require actual paperwork in order to be issued.

SSL Certificates and Malware Infections

SSL certificates cannot protect a website from a malware infection, nor can they stop a website from spreading malware.

Ironically, infected websites served over HTTPS will ensure the integrity of the malware until it reaches its potential victims, aka the website’s visitors.

A website’s padlock in the address bar does not mean the website is secured. It only means that the information between the website’s server and the browser is secured.

That is something both webmasters and Internet users need to be really mindful of.

It is important to make sure to force HTTPS after you install an SSL certificate on your website. If attackers compromise your site and link to malware assets over HTTP, browsers will display mixed content warnings.

What is Website Security?

Defining website security is not simple, but here’s a good definition we like to use:

There are no turnkey solutions to security; instead it’s a combination of people, processes, and technology that help create a manageable and scalable approach to security for any organization.

Defining website security is hard because it depends on the necessities of each organization. For example, a personal blog does not have the same concerns as an e-commerce store or the site of a web development agency.

Believing that a website is secure because it has implemented an SSL certificate can become a real problem. A website with SSL is not secure if it does not have other layers of protection, such as a Website Application Firewall (WAF), or access controls. An HTTPS website could still be hacked and dangerous to visitors.

No matter if it is HTTP or HTTPS, if a website is infected with malware, some internet security companies can put warnings on it and in search results, letting everyone know that the site contains malicious code.

These are the top 10 blacklists:

Google Safe Browsing

Norton Safe Web

Phish Tank

Opera

SiteAdvisor McAfee

Sucuri Malware Labs

SpamHaus DBL

Bitdefender

Yandex (via Sophos)

ESET

What is the Difference between SSL and Website Security?

Website security is more comprehensive than HTTPS/SSL alone and should be treated as such. HTTPS/SSL is one of many security controls to consider when thinking about your website’s security. Deploying HTTPS/SSL on your website does little to ensuring your visitors are safe if you do not take other actions to ensure a secure environment.

We can imagine that the reason why some people get SSL confused with website security is because HTTPS/SSL provides:

“non-repudiation” of the party – answering the question is that really you?

integrity check (unchanged)

privacy (unseen) of the data in transit.

To sum it up, in an HTTPS website, data in transit is protected, but the website itself can still be vulnerable.

Here at Sucuri, we see website security as a conjunction of protection, detection, response, and backups. SSL certificates are only a part of the puzzle. Data encryption is vital to having a good security posture, but it is not everything.

We have discussed more about how SSL differs from website security in a recent webinar:

youtube

Conclusion

Security is not a constant. You need to invest time and resources to create a plan that fits your needs. HTTPS is great for the Internet as a whole because it helps keep communication secret between users and the websites they visit. SSL is what secures that data in transit only, not the website.

SSL certificates only account for a small piece of the website security puzzle.

We encourage website owners to think about website security holistically and consider leveraging a Website Security Platform that offers a complete suite of security controls: protection, detection, monitoring, and incident response.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Sucuri Blog authored by Gerson Ruiz. Read the original post at: https://blog.sucuri.net/2018/09/ssl-vs-website-security.html

Source: https://securityboulevard.com/2018/09/ssl-vs-website-security/

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bestutahattorneys1 · 6 years

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Trust Is Crucial in Attorney-Client Relationships

There is no substitute for building trust with clients. It establishes open lines of communication, increases cooperation and ultimately drives the profitability of a law practice. Clients who trust their lawyer are eager to meet their lawyer’s needs, making the working relationship enjoyable for the lawyer and supporting staff. Yet, increasingly, I hear lawyers voice their frustration with the practice of law and specifically with clients who demand too much of their time, or clients who are not eager enough to support the lawyer in meeting the client’s objectives. A lack of trust or a breach of trust is often at the root of these problems.

Trust is Determined by the Client

Trustworthiness of the lawyer is a subjective determination made by the client. If this feels like a burden to lawyers, well, welcome to the practice of law. Another way to look at the subjectivity of this determination is that it’s an opportunity. A lawyer who believes that every interaction with a client will result in either building or diminishing trust looks for—and creates—opportunities to strengthen the relationship at every turn. Bankruptcy lawyers are no exception.

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Bankruptcy clients are admittedly anxious and fearful. They don’t know who to trust. They’ve often been lied to and they’ve been told numerous stories. They feel like they are failing, which leads to embarrassment and often anger. To boot, they typically enter the lawyer-client relationship with a perception of lawyers that has the potential to be an ongoing barrier for both the lawyer and the client.

What’s a lawyer to do?

Rather than resent a client who is reluctant to give information or calls too often, try a different approach. Imagine what their experience must be like. Put yourself in their shoes. Actually connect with the anxiety that comes from a phone that won’t stop ringing; every caller a constant reminder of your failure to meet your obligations. You may not have gone through a bankruptcy, but surely you’ve been anxious, angry.

The next time you interact with a client, listen for cues to their emotional state. Does their tone of voice change when discussing a particular creditor or an upcoming financial hurdle? If so, use that as an opportunity to openly reflect that you have been thinking about them and their situation. Ask them how they are feeling. Guess at how they might feel. And then let them talk. You’ll be surprised by the results.

youtube

Trust can be built in the moment. These small pieces of a conversation take a minute, sometimes two minutes. As a result, the lawyer-client relationship is strengthened, and both parties benefit from it for the duration of the representation. A human connection is made. That connection inspires you to understand the client’s full range of needs, and inspires the client to do whatever it takes to assist you in getting the job done. It also happens to be an enjoyable way to practice law.

What Property Can I keep In A Bankruptcy?

People considering bankruptcy often have the misperception that they will lose all of their property if they decide to file. Fact is, only non-exempt property will be eligible for sale in a chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Filing bankruptcy doesn’t have to mean losing all of your property

As a matter of public policy legislatures at both the state and federal levels have enacted exemption laws to ensure that those who seek bankruptcy protection are able to retain property through the process. Exemption laws vary by state and designate certain property that is exempt or protected from creditors.

An example using real estate

For example, let’s say a state’s homestead exemption allows a married couple filing a joint bankruptcy case to protect $37,500 of equity in their home. Therefore, assuming they could afford the mortgage payments after bankruptcy, this theoretical couple could keep a $500,000 home through the bankruptcy process as long as home equity does not exceed $37,500 (as long as the mortgages encumbering the home added up to about $460,000). Equity is calculated by subtracting debt on the property from its value. The entire value of property is not the determining factor for exemption purposes.

youtube

The same principle applies for cars

The same principle applies for cars. If you currently owe $10,000 on a car that is worth $12,000, most exemption statutes will allow the $2,000 of equity in the car to be protected from your creditors. You will be able to file bankruptcy to shed burdensome debt while retaining your car.

When you think about it, the application of the laws make sense. We no longer have debtor’s prisons. People in financial peril need relief, and often the Bankruptcy Code is the means to receiving this relief. Could a consumer truly obtain a fresh start financially if they were left with no home and car? Of course not. Therein lies the policy justification for exemption laws. Consumers who find themselves in financial trouble must be left with some property so they can get back on their feet.

Even is stuff is sold, you’ll receive a check for the amount of the exemption

It should be noted that even if you have non-exempt equity in property, you may have the option of paying the value of the non-exempt portion of the property to the bankruptcy trustee in order to keep it. If the property is sold by the trustee, you will still be entitled to a check for the value of the exemption. To harken back to our homestead example, if you had $60,000 of equity and the trustee sold your real estate, you’d get a check for $37,500 after the sale. A sale does not defeat the exemption.

Then there’s always chapter 13 bankruptcy

Alternatively, chapter 13 bankruptcy can provide a nice solution for consumers who want to get their debt under control but have significant non-exempt assets. Chapter 13 bankruptcy allows debtors the option of paying out the value of non-exempt property to their creditors over time while slashing credit card debt and other unsecured debt. It is important to consult with a knowledgeable bankruptcy attorney in order to determine the effect that your state’s exemption laws will have on you and your property.

Free Initial Consultation with a Utah Lawyer

It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. Legal problems come to everyone. Whether it’s your son who gets in a car wreck, your uncle who loses his job and needs to file for bankruptcy, your sister’s brother who’s getting divorced, or a grandparent that passes away without a will -all of us have legal issues and questions that arise. So when you have a law question, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

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from Michael Anderson http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/trust-is-crucial-in-attorney-client-relationships/

from Best Utah Attorneys https://bestutahattorneys.wordpress.com/2018/04/15/trust-is-crucial-in-attorney-client-relationships/

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psychotherapyconsultants · 7 years

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Smartphone Use in America: Is It Contributing to Cognitive Decline?

I may not be a genius, yet I do believe I possess critical thinking ability. While my refusal to allow myself to be hijacked by the siren song lure and promise of smartphone dependence and over-reliance, I recognize that I’m likely in the minority. Still, a growing body of scientific evidence points to the possibility that smartphones, despite their usefulness, may be culprits in the dumbing down of America. In short, smartphones may be making us dumber.

Already, I can hear the cries of outrage and imagine the flurry of protests. After all, smartphones have made our lives simpler, brought technology to our fingertips (literally), erased geographic boundaries, connected us in ways never possible, and so much more.

Granted, the technology behind smartphones has done all this. Yet, there’s a dark side to such seeming benevolence. It manifests itself in insidious ways, resulting in an unhealthy dependence on that beckoning device we must carry with us always, so much so that we literally forget how to think for ourselves.

Factors researchers have uncovered to bolster the findings that Americans’ use of smartphones is responsible, at least in part, for a decline in cognition include:

Smartphone use results in decreased attention span.

Flicking from one message to another, furiously texting a reply or posting to social networks via smartphone causes more than a problem with aching and overused fingers and thumbs. Being unable to resist an incoming text, call or post notification and feeling the urge to instantly view and/or respond creates the perfect storm for disrupting attention. Indeed, heavy smartphone users touch their devices an average of 5,427 times daily, compared with 2,617 for average users. The top 10 percent of heavy users averaged 132 separate phone sessions daily, versus 76 for average users. No wonder so many obsessive smartphone users can’t sit quietly without reaching for their mobile device, or find actual real-life conversations boring and too slow. They’re used to instant gratification, the thrill of receiving a non-stop influx of must-see material. A 2015 study exploring Internet addiction, problematic mobile phone usage and cognitive failures in daily life found that among those with lower working memory and poorer attention control are less resistant to the distractions of digital media and technology and present higher problems with cognition as self-reported.

Users demonstrate an over-reliance on a digital information source.

It’s just too easy to rely on digitally-available information. The results are also so much quicker. Yet the costs to cognitive cognition from such over-reliance on information readily available on the Internet is high. One 2015 study found that smartphone users forego analytical thinking in favor of the easy and fast response they get when they allow their devices to do their thinking for them. In addition, concluded the researchers, those smartphone users who are “relatively less willing and/or able to engage effortlessly reasonable processes may compensate by relying on the Internet through their smartphones.”

Smartphone users are increasingly unable to think for themselves.

Smartphones offer a tantalizing and ever-increasing variety of functions, all designed to captivate and hook users into using the devices for all manner of reasons – even some they’re not consciously aware of. To wit, smartphones are the portable pocket communicator, a convenient venue for mapping, shopping, attractions, gaming, research, and all manner of requests. The lure is so persuasive and convincing that users flock toward the latest smartphone technology in a desire to get the latest, fastest, smartphone technology that offers the most and best apps. One of the negative consequences of such pervasive and obsessive smartphone use is that users are increasingly unable to think for themselves.

Constant smartphone use contributes to a lazy mind.

Why bother to use your brain when you can just Google whatever you want to know? Stumped about geography or state capitols or past Presidents or who won the Super Bowl a certain year? You know this stuff, but you tell yourself it’s so much quicker just to tap into the always available information repository through your smartphone. Researchers studying smartphone use found that the “checking habit” — “brief, repetitive inspection of dynamic content quickly accessible on the device” supports the conjecture that the devices are habit-forming and provide opportunity to make the devices both more personal and pervasive. A 2016 study found that mobile phone dependency negatively predicted attention and positively predicted depression among users.

Research finds that smartphone use highjacks concentration.

Even if users don’t immediately pick up their smartphones, the ringing and buzzing of the devices serves to break concentration and focus. Authors of a 2015 Florida State University study said that “although these notifications are generally short in duration, they can prompt task-irrelevant thoughts, or mind wandering, which has been shown to damage task performance.”

The mere presence of smartphones nearby reduces cognitive capacity.

Frightening in its implications, 2017 research by Adrian Ward and colleagues in two experiments explored the “brain drain” hypothesis that just having a smartphone nearby “may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources, thereby leaving fewer available resources for other tasks, while also “undercutting cognitive performance.” The researchers found that even when smartphone users are successful in abstaining from attending to their smartphones, the presence of the devices alone was enough to diminish available cognitive capacity. Furthermore, these cognitive costs, they said, are highest for those with the highest dependence on smartphones. Specific cognitive capacity measures the researchers used were associated with capabilities that supported “fundamental processes such as learning, logical reasoning, abstract thought, problem solving, and creativity.”

Studies and surveys have proven that smartphones are highly distracting.

Whether driving and simultaneously trying to surreptitiously use a smartphone or being distracted by a mobile device while walking down the street oblivious to traffic and other dangers, there’s no discounting the fact that the mind simply cannot fully attend to two cognitive functions at the same time. Ditto the effect of smartphones on productivity at work – or performing any task that requires sustained and uninterrupted concentration and focus.

Anxiety and sleep problems are other common consequences of obsessive smartphone use.

One study found that depression, anxiety and problems with sleep may be consequences of or associated with excessive smartphone use. Specifically, researchers said that overuse of smartphones may lead to anxiety and/or depression, which in turn may lead to sleep problems. Other researchers found that adolescents’ nighttime excessive use of smartphones is a risk factor both for the development of sleep disturbance and depression. Women are particularly prone to smartphone addiction, leading to potential problems with depression, social anxiety, and low self-esteem.

Work engagement suffers with excessive smartphone use.

In addition to contributing to and aggravating sleep problems, excessive use of smartphones for work at night results in diminished work engagement the next morning, although researchers pointed out the lowered morning work engagement only seemed to apply to employees with low job control. There’s also evidence that work-home interference and burnout result from employees’ intensive use of smartphones.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/10/24/smartphone-use-in-america-is-it-contributing-to-cognitive-decline/

#World of Psychology

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allineednow · 7 years

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<p>The Way to Compete With Amazon: The Amazon Survival Guide</p>

Amazon's dominance over the eCommerce marketplace is almost scary.

Not just that, but their most loyal customers are also incredibly brand loyal. Prime customers routinely spend twice as much as non-Prime ones. It doesn't matter stories or which stats you read. They're all the same in the long run. Amazon dominates just. It's often the final and first destination.

But that doesn't mean they should be your only online marketplace option. You should avoid listing products on Amazon in many cases.

Here's what you can do instead to live in the age of Amazon and why.

Why Moving Your Products to Amazon Is Not The (Only) Solution.

Amazon has ALL of your clients' data. It All.

They understand profit your pricing, and sales volume. They understand where your customers buy from, who they are personally, and what else they buy.

And they're beginning to use that extensive knowledge for their own private gain.

"Amazon has the ability to track both what people are buying as well as what they hunt for and can not find, providing the e-retailer a huge advantage on smaller sellers."

Amazon is currently climbing their own label, AmazonBasics, which appears similar to a number of the bestselling products on their own platform.

By way of instance, Rain Design's laptop stand has been one of the most successful products to date. It has been a bestseller on Amazon for a decade.

A bestseller that is, until AmazonBasics introduced a laptop that is similar cut and stand into Rain Designs' sales.

Harvey Tai, the general manager for Rain Design, told Fortune,

"There's nothing we can do about it as they did not violate the patent."

Rather, collecting data is sitting back. They're spotting trends and predicting what customers will buy.

What do you think will happen when your product(s) begin gaining some traction? Amazon knows just how much money you are making on their stage.

They make their own version, just like the laptop stand above. They'll slash at the price in half. They'll add in their vaunted shipping to begin eroding your market share.

And you'll be left in the dust. You can not compete with Amazon. Think this is just an isolated incident? Think again.

You can pick just about any product category off the top of your head. Do a quick search and you'll see an AmazonBasics alternative to the Best Seller.

By way of instance, they dominating patio furniture. And they're price.

In a race to the bottom, where everyone is competing on price, guess who wins?

Volume sales has been pursued by Amazon . There's no one better at exploiting economies of scale - and picking up a couple of pennies on each product sold - since they can move millions of units per day.

Let's do another search. Check out printer paper for your personal computer and here's what you'll see:

This one is interesting for a couple of reasons.

Once again, AmazonBasics is coming in lower priced.

But they're also going to ship it in half the time of HP's version.

Guess which one you are likely to buy? There's no question.

It's not if, but when Amazon will enter your space. Just ask Walmart. What is the first thing Amazon is doing with the Whole Foods that are newly acquired? Slashing prices.

Not recklessly, but intelligently. By way of instance, Amazon has been one of the leaders in pricing for ages. They test and iterate pricing faster than anybody else.

(picture source)

See who is on the very bottom of the graph in green? Toys R Us. The same retailer who now, a couple of years on, just declared bankruptcy.

These things do not happen overnight. They have been happening for years. AmazonBasics dates back to 2009.

But now they're finally expanding. And, unfortunately, you have limited control unless you are an established global brand, in handling their discounting strategy.

You don't have to give up on Amazon. However, you do not need to put all your eggs in their basket, either. (Unless you are ok with those eggs being sold for a lower price with a faster shipping time.)

The only way to go toe-to-toe together is to go beyond simply list products. Treat it like a real-time auction where every little optimization counts. That means you'll want to bring for ads/creatives with A/B testing from your SEM individuals.

PRO TIP: Coredna provides many of these attributes for you. You'd need entrepreneurs working on a project which may take weeks, developers, and designers.

Now, even non-technical users can create sophisticated tests within only a couple clicks.

Best of all, they already incorporate with Google Analytics reporting, too.

Beyond that, you can diversify your plan. While they may be the largest player, the good news is that Amazon isn't your only option out there.

In fact, teaming up with market marketplaces to securing clients, or taking alternative routes might be a better fit for your brand in the long run.

Here's where to get started.

What To Do Instead of Competing Head-On With Amazon

Amazon might be the all-mighty, but it is not the end-all-be-all.

It's a fantastic idea and an investment that will likely prove worthwhile in the long term, while it might take a bit longer to find up-and-running with unique avenues.

Listed below are a few Amazon alternatives available.

1. Use Niche Marketplaces

Yes, Amazon is the dominant product marketplace.

However, it's far from being the only one.

(picture source)

As a business, they can not manage to get into price wars. So they keep a close watch on profit margins and distribution agreements prior to listing together.

All marketplaces are an essential evil. They demand discounts and a cut of the profits. But they're also one of the best (if not, the only) ways to build awareness for new brands in the early stages.

The trick is to diversify your options so a single platform can not make or break you (like Amazon). And make sure that the terms work for you and that the marketplace represents your brand and image.

2. Build Your Own Database And Listing

And this enormous growth had nothing.

How did they do this?

They have managed to use Instagram and Facebook ads to construct a pipeline of prospects to market directly to the end-user.

By way of instance, they use content-based top of the advertisements to build interest and attention around their products up.

(picture source)

Then, they can use Dynamic Product ads to automatically retarget individuals who were just on their site. For example, you might check the Grey Whale Long Sleeve Onesie out.

And a few minutes later, guess what catches your attention back

You can make audiences based on your clients. These allow you to find brand new people who share a great deal in common with the individuals who spent money.

Advertising isn't a gamble. It works, and it ought to be an investment.

By way of instance, the more tightly targeted your audience Per.

(picture source)

This experiment from AdEspresso indicates that the Cost is almost cut by a 1% lookalike audience in half versus the 10 percent lookalike audience.

Now, imagine how that compares to an untargeted, random crowd people usually go after.

3. Give People a Reason To Shop With You Personally

There's a reason people shop on Amazon all the time.

The products are among the most affordable, the delivery is among the fastest, and the yields are among the safest.

Would you shop anywhere

That's the question to answer. How can you give a much better reason to people?

The answer is to promote unique color variations, warranty deals, exclusive offers, and more.

You could try looking at what the competition is doing. But that sort of mentality doesn't always work out nicely in the end. What works for them doesn't mean it'll work for you.

Another trick is to look at how different companies in other industries are tackling similar problems.

By way of instance, the travel sector is plagued by lots of the very same issues. Aggregators like Expedia take a huge cut off the top.

Here's how the Bellagio in Las Vegas responds.

"We guarantee that if you find a lower third-party room rate within 24 hours of booking on our website, we will not only match that rate, but give you an additional 10% off the lower rate."

They do not stop there, though. They also list out a couple of additional reasons like no hidden fees, better payment terms (book today, pay later), more cancellation policies, and other exclusive offers.

Hotels commonly use reward points that customers can exchange for bigger rooms, upgraded service, etc.. Except, they won't give points out .

So in the first instance, they're rewarding you with extras. In the event you don't book through 19, and then in the second, they're taking things away. They have gone to hand out benefits you can not get anyplace else, eliminating the need for you to book through another marketplace or site.

The other bonus is that the whole experience is owned by them. They're able to make sure that the customer has a positive, consistent experience from beginning to end. This is exactly what omnichannel promoting is all about - a seamless and consistent experience across channels.

Working with partners and other marketplaces - like Expedia, Booking.com, or Amazon - compels you to turn a lot of this control over and hope for the best. Amazon, for instance, doesn't (generally) allow their retailers to "own" the packaging. Do you have a exceptional product packaging or unboxing experience that is a part of your brand? Yeah, you can not really do this with Amazon.

4. Limit Products on a Competitive Marketplace Platform

Amazon is excellent for providing quick responses. It's kind of like Google AdWords in that sense as you can get almost instant direction on what's working (or not working).

In contrast, waiting for the SEO ball to get rolling takes forever. That selling through your site in the early days often doesn't pay off.

So you can use other marketplace platforms that are competitive and Amazon for a fast test bed for new products. Then, you can also try using a difficult minimum advertised price (MAP) to control how other sites price your goods.

By way of instance, you may institute aprice "floor" so that no matter what happens, your margins will adhere inside a generally-accepted range. That way, pricing ought to be consistent across customer touch-points if it pops up for less somewhere else, so some will not feel cheated.

However, it can help you hold margins company.

The problem, of course, is currently holding sites and other retailers accountable. If you tell them shipments will stop if pricing drops below a certain point, you want to be able and prepared to act on that promise.

Both will aggregate data to tell you precisely what people are charging across the 'net'.

They feature an enforcement email support to make sure all parties are complying. It can help you automatically fire-off a consistent sequence of messages that vary from policy notices to legal actions.

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Sell Smart, and You May Just Survive

Amazon's dominance in the eCommerce world is unmatched, and they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

They are convenient for buyers, making them a convenient and enticing marketplace for sellers. The problem is that Amazon is continuing to cut into merchant's sales. Fees are not the only issue or even the worst.

AmazonBasics is literally pasting and copying your products, while offering better pricing and terms of consumers.

It's already happening in categories like patio furniture and printer paper. The solution is to diversify. Use Amazon like getting feedback and you extra focus, for what they're good at.

However, you should be exploring niche marketplaces, by building out your pipeline going directly to the consumer, using incentives for people to buy direct, and setting limits on these marketplaces.

Weaning yourself isn't straightforward. It will not happen overnight. But in the long term, it is going to be one of the best bets you've got for a future.

Work with other niche marketplaces.

Build your database and list. Remember the money is from the list.

Give people a reason to shop on your site. If they shop on your site have a think about ways people can acquire experiences and values.

Limit products on a competitive marketplace platform. Use Amazon (and the likes) as a testing ground and have a tricky minimum advertised price.

Do you have means to live in the age of Amazon? Leave them.

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mylinkspagereview-blog · 7 years

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Reach Influencer Review And Huge Bonus

Reach Influencer Review - Use Reach Influencer To Get To The Top!

Social media are a brand-new trend you have to include in your advertising and marketing efforts. Numerous hundreds of people are producing new accounts on websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This fad has actually made services sit up and also take notice, as well as it remains in your benefit to do the same. The following couple of paragraphs will provide you with some pointers that will help you to involve the social media sites sphere in a fashion that will certainly benefit your advertising procedures.

Click here: https://goo.gl/WVZDdo

Utilize a selection of media to boost your potential clients when Reach Influencer Having pictures, video, and video games can raise the allure of your web page a lot to those that make their method to it. Everybody has a different means they like to take in info, and also making use of variety will certainly permit you to reach them all.

If you are making use of social media to promote your item as well as you have actually composed an article, have it published to your Facebook page also. By doing this, everyone that gets on your buddies checklist has access to your post. The exact same applies for other social media websites.

To create Reach Influencer products that get observed, find out ways to compose focus grabbing headings. It does not matter just how excellent your products or items are unless the headline suffices to attract a visitor. Facebook followers are skimming numerous posts within their feed. How do yours stand apart worthy of a more detailed look?

If you are considering Reach Influencer, the very first point you need to do is register with as lots of social media sites as feasible with your favored account names. These account names should include your company names. This is especially vital for sites like Twitter where your account name is your shown name. As time goes on, it will end up being more and more tough for you to obtain the account name that you desire. Book those names now.

Your heading is important to a great post. A lot of social media networks motivate you to keep your posts short, and if you were to upload a lengthy short article, chances are nobody would certainly make the effort to review it. Attempt posting a connect to your write-up with a great headline that both gets your visitors' focus and discuss what the post is about.

When utilizing Reach Influencer know your audience. This is true for any type of advertising and marketing method, yet especially essential right here to guarantee your message is getting to the right people. Consider who can use your services or product and also seek them out making use of the requirements readily available when putting your ad on a social media sites website.

You could include applications such as SlideShare to LinkedIn. Try different applications as well as see which ones could be useful to you. SlideShare permits you to develop photo albums with in-depth descriptions for each and every photos. You can include photos of your products or have your clients send you pictures of themselves using just what they purchased from you.

Remember that social media sites's key function isn't simply to advertise goods or solutions. Social networking will let you gain much more understanding about your clients. Likewise, your prospective customers could develop connections with not just you, yet additionally your brand name. You undoubtedly have ample time to review your service or products, yet try to use this possibility to find more regarding your consumers as well as their opinions on a "non-spammy" degree.

To earn the most of Reach Influencer, react to inquiries as well as remarks in an extremely timely fashion. You do not wish to sit at your desk rejuvenating your inbox 24/7, but you do want to sign in numerous times per day ideally. Anybody asking questions is either a dedicated client you want to keep and obtain more service from, or an interested possibility who might open their purse if you provide some personal focus.

Keep functioning and also stay committed to utilizing social networks. Like anything worth doing, success is not mosting likely to occur over night. You will certainly have to smile as well as birth it at first. It can take a year or more to accumulate the following you imagine, so stick with your strategies and also continue to establish imaginative new ideas.

Placing video clips and images on your social media sites pages is necessary. People are very aesthetically drivened, and even if it is just your company logo design, we wish to see something that we could grab a hold of and link your company with. Its likewise wonderful to consist of video clips that display your item, commercials if you have them, or how-to video clips.

Write the sort of content that can be shared. Learn to compose in an interesting way that makes individuals wish to share your writing with their good friends and calls. This is one of the most crucial thing you can do with social media. If you intend to get to more individuals, you should deserve it; superior web content is critical.

Use switches for your RSS feeds to link to the sites that you post updates on. This way, the visitors of your blog have the ability to obtain your info in social media websites. This will certainly make it much easier for you to get your Reach Influencer off the ground operating.

To effectively market your service on social networks, you need to capitalize on Yelp. Yelp is an on the internet neighborhood where genuine people evaluate regional businesses. Yelp carefully filters its reviews to safeguard versus scammers, and also the Yelp area of reviewers is extremely close-knit. Favorable testimonials on yelp could bring your organisation authenticity and also aid bring in new customers. Ensure to check yelp for individuals's ideas and ideas regarding the best ways to boost your business and also aid yourself accomplish the most effective score possible on the web site.

With just what you picked up from the tips in this post you ought to feel a little bit more certain regarding marketing on your own on numerous social networks sites. Place these suggestions into play and obtain your creative juices moving as you proceed forth in your efforts to boost your social networks existence. Increasing your exposure by connecting to millions of possible consumers will certainly have your sales expanding in no time at all.

Guidance That Will Aid In Reach Influencer.

Social media platforms have actually appeared the barriers and also created a perfect method for beginning or developed business to reach the masses. It gets rid of the boring feeling of basic message advertisements and supplies interactive opportunities that will entertain the target market. You need to learn to use Reach Influencer to the best of your capabilities as well as discover a means for your business to benefit from its popularity.

Take the time to respond to the feedback from your clients. If you want constructing an effective business, your clients have valuable information to share. The problem most companies have is that they are all ears and also no reaction. When consumers understand you are reacting to their needs via their feedback, they will intend to proceed operating.

It is very important to be patient when developing your Reach Influencer approach. If you do not have a clear technique and also bounce from one social website to one more, you could end up wasting time and also cash. Establish a plan that includes your details methods and also a sensible timeline to adhere to.

Location a social media sites widget on your site for wonderful results in Reach Influencer. This is a very easy way for visitors to share your site. A widget will certainly likewise let the site visitors share your page straight from your site.

Try using linking applications on Twitter to upload to your various other social media sites profiles at the same time. These linking applications are a significant time saver. When you publish a message on Twitter, it will immediately publish the exact same message on your Facebook, YouTube, and Google+ profiles, so you don't need to authorize right into every one of them to publish the same web content.

Post connect to other article and have blog writers showcase your material on their web site. This will certainly work if you return the favor and also if bloggers see your blog site as a great way to get publicity. Make sure there is no problem of passion between you and the blog owner who is mosting likely to showcase you.

Consider contracting out when starting a Reach Influencer project. There are a variety of extremely qualified and knowledgeable resources that you can make use of to enhance your Reach Influencer outcomes. It could set you back greater than doing it yourself, however the prospective boost in service because of their experience in Reach Influencer will likely be worth it.

You must develop a Youtube network to publish testimonials of your products and various other video clips relevant to your market. You could establish your account to make sure that your videos are posted right now on certain social networks. This will save you time and stop you from forgetting to update a site.

When you are producing your advertisements that will be placed on a social media web page, you need to make sure that it will be fancy and also interest grabbing. If you do not do this, it is most likely that your advertisement will certainly be glimpsed over with out a little acknowledgement. Make it fancy and also people will see it more frequently.

While having various ads on social networks sites, you should most definitely have a couple of unique offers for your organisation. This will certainly offer your prospective purchasers incentive to click your advertisement. By having specials on your ads, as well as only on these ads, the clients really feel a little extra obligated to go there as well as see what your company needs to supply.

Use your social media sites profiles to bring individuals to your shop or to buy your products. Inform your consumers concerning your current promos, or new places. Give printable discount coupons or limited offers just available to Facebook fans. People must consider making you a Facebook good friend as an intriguing point to do.

Use Facebook to run a special promotion or a competitors. Everyone enjoys winning something, so your followers are sure to obtain involved. Whether you use a cost-free product, an unique high-amount discount coupon or a huge or little prize, it will obtain people more actively included with your Facebook web page. It additionally constructs goodwill with your client base.

Use socials media for promoting special offers. People will certainly be driven to follow you if they recognize they can get unique deals and also discount rates for doing so. Use social media networks to involve your consumers and also give them an individual experience with your brand name.

To spark feedback and task in your Reach Influencer, run surveys with intriguing concerns. Facebook has an excellent feature for this. Surveys commonly go a little viral within social media sites, yet additionally work as good discussion beginners with your subscribers and also followers. It can likewise yield bonanza of stats you can utilize to target your demographics better.

When creating Facebook content or tweet material on Twitter, make sure to proofread it prior to entry. It is important to earn your web page look expert. It is alright to use specific abbreviations on Twitter, yet use them with care. Make certain that you place in that extra initiative, to make certain that all of your work is ideal, and also ready to be reviewed by others.

Consider opening an account on the expanding organisation oriented site LinkedIn. This website is designed for company experts to connect with each other and also their customers. It has incredible features that consist of ways for completely satisfied consumers to advise you to others, boosting your online reputation as well as reliability. You can likewise sign up with conversations pertinent to your service rate of interests.

Deal a competition or a free service, after that advertise it on social media. Money is limited in today's economic situation, so providing some points for free may provide the increase you have to expand your company. You can utilize a site like Twitter to hold competition illustrations. Make certain that you tell everybody that won, to increase the believability in the contest.

Advice, such as the paragraphs over, is constantly essential to seek when required. There will certainly constantly be individuals that have been involved much longer as well as can help out when things seem also difficult or complicated. In time, you will find your own particular niche and also proficiency of Reach Influencer. Your benefit for adhering to the advice could be a firm that is both successful as well as growing.

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politicalfilth-blog · 7 years

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Escape from the Echo Chamber: Travel Hack Your Tunnel Vision

We Are Change

Luke reports from Italy where he is joined by Lauren Southern and Brittany Pettibone. They discuss media bias, social media constructed echo chambers and the effects of immigration on western society.

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Luke: There has been a lot of negative feedback directed at me, for covering issues that Lauren and Brittany report on. To those people, I want to say that you will not dictate my content. I have even seen people in the alternative media community decide to trash talk and attack me for simply covering stories. I will always fight for the right to politically associate with anybody you want no matter what political stance you take.

The reason for this video is to talk about a bigger subject. A lot of people online build up their own echo chamber, and they construct their reality. As we know social media algorithms have been proven to create echo chambers because they sell more advertising. To be successful in media these days, you have to be on your computer 14 hours a day. You have to free boot content, and you have to cause drama, you have to cause infighting.

One of the reasons I respect both of you is because you actually travel, you go out and discover the truth for yourselves. The world is a lot different than it is online, in that world everything is about likes and clicks.

The reality is a lot different when you start traveling, how has your world view changed from traveling?

Lauren: Well it certainly destroyed a lot of media narratives for me, on both sides of the political spectrum. When I went to Europe the first time it was because I was interested in the refugee crisis, I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to find out if it was the way they were saying it was, if media outlets like Breitbart were lying. I wanted to know if they were all Syrian refugees or if they were from non-Syrian countries.

Calais Jungle Refugee Camp

I went to the Calais Jungle refugee camp, and what I found out was they were right. The left wing media companies were all talking about the “women and children, ” and they were lying. I saw a journalist there at the Calais Jungle, and they were facing the camera away from all the North African men towards the only children that were in the entire camp, to portray a false picture of what’s going on.

Did Travel Change Your World View?

Luke: How has your worldview changed from traveling and did any pre-conceived notions change from being in the real world.

Lauren: A lot of people in my community put immigration as one of the biggest problems, and I genuinely believe that immigration is a massive problem in Europe and America as well. Brittany and I and yourself were in Northern Ireland recently, and it’s about 95% white there, they don’t have a whole lot of immigration. Still, they have very serious conflicts going on there and they have degeneracy problems with drinking in the streets and other huge issues constantly going on.

I think this idea that you can just get rid of the illegal immigration and you will solve all the problems is blown out the water by walking through the streets of Northern Ireland. There are massive conflicts without immigration. As much as I do think it’s an issue, it makes things more complex when you walk on the ground. It gives you a better understanding of the reality and the complexity of these situations.

Luke: Brittany has your worldview been changed of any preconceived notions you had before your travels?

Brittany: Something I have noticed, is that online people that you disagree with tend to be extremely hateful towards you. When you go out in real life and meet them, most people are much more open to communicating. They aren’t going to say half the things that they might say online.

At the rally in Portland Oregon, I witnessed the Antifa becoming civil, communicating and having a reasonable discussion. By the end of it, they shook hands. Even though they still disagreed, they were able to be civil with one another. This is something I would never have imagined if I had only stayed online. When I went out and experienced things for myself, I realized that things are more complicated than they seemed. Online people won’t communicate, they just insult one another. In real life, they are more predisposed to this.

Media Content Incentivised by Money

Luke: One of the ways to make content more digestible is to make things black and white, make things very simple, to outline things into he’s good and they are bad. It’s one of the precursors to our society, not progressing forwards. Sadly being incentivised by clicks and other monetary rewards. I just wanted to share one other thing that I learned from my travels. Everywhere I go whether it be Europe or Chile or the Philippines, we are all human beings. The majority of people just want the same things, they want a family, they want peace, very few people are actually insane, crazy, psychopaths.

I’ve talked to some of the psychopaths, spoke with people who have murdered people before and you can look into their eyes and see that they are not the same as the majority of the people. Every where I go there is a common trait. That we all want peace and dignity in life, it all changes when you can make eye contact with somebody. We are all humans, let’s stop doing this, stop being divided and conquered. I think online discourse is pushing that in a very destructive way.

What do you think and what is a good way to combat that?

Lauren: Going to these camps, you meet people that you like, that are real people. Approaching things from the position of appreciating European culture and wanting to defend that, doesn’t mean that I hate these people. This is a much better position than from some of the comments that I see where people say things like we need to kill these people.

Brittany and I have a video coming out soon where we discuss the politics of hate versus the politics of love. Approaching things from a position of wanting to build up and create. To love and defend things rather than hating people for no reason. Your right a lot of people you meet just want the same things, they just view it from a different perspective.

Travel Hacking

Luke: You have to look these refugees in the eye, which makes you understand it from their perspective something you would not see or feel online. This is not a video saying that you should go out and travel. It’s not always that easy. The way I do it is through travel hacking, by building up frequent travel miles, using specific credit cards that allow me to fly.

If you put your mind to it, you can do this, and it’s a lot better from my perspective, get out in the real world do the actual reporting. Do the reporting that these two are doing, and show the world what is really going on. You don’t even have to travel; you can just make changes in your community.

Brittany: Yes, that’s what I was going to add, you don’t have to go halfway around the world and spend thousands of dollars. You can start locally. As soon as you walk out your front door you are likely to meet someone you disagree with and you can start that way and build from it.

Luke: Beautiful, so that’s Brittany Pettibone and Lauren Southern and of course stay tuned and subscribe for more.

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conchitaled · 7 years

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What Creates Talalay Latex Mattress the Least difficult By yourself Can Just take?

Talalay Latex Mattress is the type of guidance that your self want to start off developing a substantially wholesome lifetime. Now that you reside in just a globe that operates hence immediate and busyness keeps becoming inside of your course to obtaining a thorough and comprehensive daily life, you require in direction of choose take care of of anything at all. This consists of sleeping. That seems too trivial a issue in the direction of pay any consideration to and your self would not be wrong in the direction of at any time imagine hence. Still sleeping is an vital part of your lifestyle cycle. Gentle sleeping potential customers in direction of a Quite relaxed and bright mind as your physique has bought what it needs: a loosen up, a split in opposition to stresses daily life ever throws at it working day in just working day out. With a intellect and entire body extensively replenished of electric power, on your own can preserve up with restricted schedules and a very chaotic day at do the job. But inside real truth, whilst, These (including potentially you) hardly ever take this. Comfort and ease sleeping contains turn into some sort of a luxury they can't afford to pay for. Your brain is therefore preoccupied with things and with a entire body that does not buy the supports it demands in direction of wind out, it is gravely not possible for on your own toward take pleasure in a night’s Terrific rest.

What does it take by yourself in direction of get hold of this sort of a issue? Let’s begin with stating that you want a device that promotions supports hence your physique can unwind. With a cozy body, tender sleeping will shortly comply with and your mind turns into its possibility in the direction of choose a crack. A mattress, as these kinds of, is these an crucial section of your evening relax. However, All those can be reported in the direction of have no concerns concerning this make any difference. They (and possibly like you) very easily get what ever bed they stumble upon 1st. If the thing resembles a bed, or if the factor does not drain the revenue out of their wallet, then the matter will at their house. Clumsily picking out a mattress will cause by yourself consequently considerably further more than what by yourself feel is a optimistic bundle at the shop. A mattress that does not conform nicely to your human body will trigger you to pain all earlier mentioned your joints. And yourself yes do not will need in direction of be informed what transpires each time your system aches whilst on your own are striving in direction of sleep. Even anytime your system does not ache, oneself will quicker or later on build sleeping ailment that originates versus the awkward sleeping. The Talalay Latex Mattress is a perfect company by yourself need to have in direction of counter this sort of prospective problems.

Obviously, there is at this time a significant ponder mark hovering on your brain once currently being advised that the Talalay Latex Mattress is the easiest decision for you-and that is a specified. As soon as probably quite a few styles of mattresses, it would be difficult for yourself towards think that there is even 1 mattress that can fulfill your requirements, right? Well, oneself will not notice if on your own do not offer you it a try initial, that is for confident. Absolutely, yourself will have to have some convincing toward be capable toward view the thing for what it particularly is. Consequently, let’s locate out what can make this design and style of bed a far better final decision for you:

1.Fantastict thickness and natural material A Talalay mattress is written of an Eight inch thick latex-made layer that, While blended with other layers that constitute the mattress as a whole, gives even more than enough service for your physique body weight. This layer of rubber is produced of 100% organic and natural written content so by yourself do not consist of to fear with regards to a factor at the time it arrives to producing your bed room totally free of dangerous chemical substances and anything.

2.Qualifiedd solution A Talalay Latex Mattress is both Cradle in direction of Cradle and Oeko-Tex certified. Cradle to Cradle certification is granted in direction of a merchandise that conforms in direction of the legislation that gives equilibrium towards generating solutions and maintaining the atmosphere preserved. Put simply just, a Cradle toward Cradle certificate is meant in direction of be certain that a content is generated with superior high quality and natural written content however is in essence absolutely free of waste-which, in transform, does not destruction the environment.

Upon the other hand, the Oeko-Tex certification is a process of assuring buyers that the substance they get has gone throughout a sequence of rigid good quality exams. And head yourself, this kind of exams are a lot. A materials ought to transfer for the duration of certification process in advance of being announced free of unsafe chemical compounds of any variety.

3. Conformity towards Seven zones In essence conversing, Although you look for to discover the most straightforward sleeping level, the bed your self employ the service of should be in a position toward offer you supports on 7 zones (points) along the line of your body. Sleeping looks and appears like a thing by yourself naturally do-you include been sleeping for a great deal of days in just your lifestyle. Regretably, sleeping is a matter that contains challenging putting, which, Although remaining unchecked, would add in the direction of misalignment of the back, midsection, and neck. Ongoing misalignment will lead toward any variety of bodily deformities and, of program, sleeping disorders.

A Talalay mattress is made with the power to be changed such that it supports your physique absolutely and dispersing tensions extra evenly. As a consequence, there would not be any issue upon your human body that suffers towards feeding on in direction of take upon your whole body body weight When lying down.

4. Cotton-quilt include and wool layer The Talalay latex helps make up the innards of the bed. On its surface, on the other hand, the mattress is stacked with a layer of pure wool. Becoming non-synthetic, the wool will be proven constructive for a lot of reasons. Artificial wool is laced with a person far too lots of chemical substances within its generating. This will induce people who are allergic to incorporate assaults after sleeping on it. All those who are sensitive would go through towards skin ailments. Those people without having mentioned disorders nevertheless incorporate much larger possibility in direction of produce indications the moment inhaling risky content unveiled as a result of the content. Within just addition, this wool layer generates for neat and dry slumber, leaving your overall body with much less heat, which would direct to amplified comfort and ease concentrations.

5.Long lastinge The mattress is intended with heightened sturdiness, creating it a considerably superior investment decision in direction of take. Firmness is always self-confident even for the 1 generated for couples.

The Fantastic factors above Talalay Latex Mattress also broaden in direction of its slat. The slat of a Talalay bed is developed quilted with purely natural wool as properly for the exact same motive its appear is lined with equivalent content material. A double mattress of this bed is intended this kind of that just about every person occupying respective sides would be capable to improve the slat of his or her section in the direction of a place that fits their convenience place, without having the other individual using toward big difference their individual settings. The slat is additionally adjustable on its stress, offering by yourself independence in just identifying the issue of firmness upon the mattress.

With these sure things it is made up of toward Deliver yourself, the Talalay Latex Mattress is unquestionably the ideal remedy that your self can obtain once it arrives toward manufacturing you appear to be delicate every single period oneself require to take a split versus the never-ending demands of day by day things. Using this mattress, by yourself are yes towards appreciate a Terrific night’s rest that promotes healthier everyday living and enhanced ease and comfort. Health dangers are significantly lower and bodily characteristics will not be compromised. By the stop of the day, what is greatest substantial is that oneself need a service for your system each time it is time in direction of slumber nearly anything off.

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freeimaginationjournal-blog · 8 years

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White Savior Complex and White Privilege by Jessie Johnson

Peggy McIntosh, a feminist and anti-racism activist, indicated that “whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.” This is a major reality of our society and the manner in which race relations are presented. I strongly agree with the assertion that whites are privileged, ignorant to these privileges, and therefore perpetuating their privileges. When this occurs, racial injustice is in effect maintained as well. A major icon of this phenomenon appears in the industry of the white savior complex. By suggesting that advantaged white people are helping black people by offering a non-committal “helping hand”, the true requirements for change in social injustice are ignored.

I came across a recent example in the media of white people using their advantaged voices to speak what is their idea of protection into a black community. In January of this year, a white clergy in Florida promoted a new hashtag, “#UseMeInstead”, to tell the Florida police department to stop using mugshots of young black men in their target practice. On the surface, this may not appear to have any reason to spark discomfort, “but it’s fallen into a ‘white savior’ narrative that these white clergy have come to the aid of these helpless black people.” (Kuruvilla). I believe that these white clergy members are acting out of genial intentions, but also from a naïve and ignorant stance; their ability to “take a stand” against the implied racism in the routine of target practice is yet an example of their delight in the comfortable and safe white privilege that is theirs. If a black male were to approach this example of racism and express his discomfort in the police department’s target practice rituals, one can imagine the unfortunate possible outcomes, especially given the prevalence of police brutality that stems from white fear in our society. However, as a white clergy member, there is no fear to be had when making this feeble attempt at undermining racism; rather, there is a great deal of room for self-satisfaction. The danger in this attitude lies in the mentality that “we have to save them because they can’t save themselves” (Cole). This mindset that black communities are helpless and in need of white saviors will only leave room for more white privilege, and more unjust race relations.

This idea of a white savior is adored and encouraged by Hollywood; the best, and most often offered, kind of hero is a masculine and white male. As suggested in the clever title of the article, “Does My Hero Look White in This: Hollywood’s White Saviour Complex” in The Artifice, Hollywood benefits from the naivety of society that applauses white people for their assistance in black communities. This admiration for a white savior creates an assumption that whites are actively fighting against racism, and lends to the widely spreading false notion that racism is merely a “thing of the past.” Although in some instances it is true that white people are actively fighting against racism and white privilege, it is not happening with the intensity that any true change requires. White people must move past ignorance and into the commitment it takes to fight against racism, but it must be acknowledged that white privilege only nurtures the existing social injustices.

A major success in Hollywood occurred in 2009 when The Blind Side made its cinema debut. Although this true story has heartwarming and inspiring moments, I feel that the movie depicted Micheal Oher as incompetent, unintelligent, helpless, and doomed for disaster without the grace of a white savior. I found interest in learning more about Lee Anne Tuohy, the white woman who offers Oher her home, and I came across an article titled, “Leigh Anne Tuohy, Racism, and the White Savior Complex.” This article described an instance in which Tuohy was eating at a diner with her friend who noticed two young black males “hunched over” in their booth. Regarding these two young men, Tuohy’s friend stated, “I bet they are up to no good.” Tuohy explains how she then approached the young men, and learned that they were simply texting friends making plans to go to a basketball game. After this encounter, Tuohy found it appropriate to Instagram a photo with her new “friends” and proudly reminded us of the good old sentiment, “Don’t judge a book by its cover!” The problem with not exploring Tuohy’s bold approach to these teenagers is that one may miss the problematic meaning and reasoning behind her actions and statements. The author of this article alludes to the meaning behind Tuohy’s reminder not to judge a book by the cover; “It begins with the assumption that the “cover” tells you something unappealing about the contents of the book or person” (Leigh Anne Tuohy, Racism, and the White Saviour Complex). If these two teens were white, would Tuohy have jumped on the opportunity to be a “savior?” I find it very unlikely that Tuohy approached the two young men in order to combat the racism of her friend; if her intentions were to influence her friends prejudiced mindset, then could she not have found a better way that did not involve intruding on the personal space of the boys? It seems likely to me that Tuohy did assume the teens were indeed “up to no good,” and she could therefore bestow her white wisdom on them and spark a desire to change their troublesome ways.

Why is our culture set up this way? Where does white prejudice receive its nurturance and reap the most rewards? I believe that one basis of this idea stems from religion. For example, the images of Jesus Christ, Christianity’s icon of achieving salvation, often display an unlikely portrayal of a Caucasian male with flowing fine hair and the purest of blue eyes. I have yet to meet a Middle Eastern who displays these physical characteristics. The Mormon religion may make the most blatant religious claims; Joseph Smith, a prophet in this faith, states:

There is a reason why one man is born black and with other disadvantages, while another is born white with great advantages. The reason is that we once had an estate before we came here, and were obedient, more or less, to the laws that were given us there. Those who were faithful in all things there received greater blessings here, and those who were not faithful received less...There were no neutrals in the war in heaven. All took sides with either Christ or with Satan. Every man had his agency there, and men receive rewards here based upon their actions there...The Negro, evidently, is receiving the reward he merits" (Doctrines of Salvation published 1954,1:61,65,66).

I find this claim to be a flagrant example of the disgusting tendency in human nature for groupthink and brainwashing. This dangerous phenomenon only adds to the perpetuation of white privilege and the devaluation of black bodies. Contributing to the white savior complex, this religious claim is followed up with “hope” for those born “black and with other disadvantages”; if one finds true faith in the proudly white prophet of Mormonism, their blackness will slowly be taken away through the generations and whiteness will be achieved. It is a rampant and deceitful, yet accepted, notion that black skin is attributed to an affiliation with Satan, but meanwhile it is ignored and denied that white privilege is completely unmerited. The idea that black people receive the reward their skin color merits contrasts with Peggy McIntosh’s definition of white privilege; “I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious” (McIntosh). This statement convicts me of my own oblivion; I have not given enough thought regarding what it means in my own life to be handed privileges because of my skin color. I have also not given enough thought to how I can refuse these privileges in a way that sparks actual change.

I have, however, felt great discomfort when I reminisce on my past “volunteer” experiences. In high school, I made many trips that spanned from a weekend to a week into the North Side of Pittsburgh, where I would volunteer with The Pittsburgh Project. This foundation does offer a permanent presence in a poverty stricken neighborhood, but as for my involvement, I merely hopped on a bus with thirty other white members of my church, and formed a short term relationship with homeowners on the North Side. I was met with the pained statements of little girls such as “I wish my hair was as soft as yours”, and “Why can’t I have your skin?” I wished that I could use a megaphone and tell every African-American child that their beauty is just as real as anyone else’s, but what actual change would that trigger? What was my short presence in their lives telling them… that change and progress can only come in the form of a white savior?

What is it exactly that causes white people to look into black lives and feel the urge to bring salvation? The U.S. Consensus Bureau released data regarding the financial situations in White, Black, and Latino communities. Poverty rates described by race show that 27.2% of black communities are in poverty, versus the 9.7% of white communities that face poverty. The same statistics tell us that the median household income in a white family is $123,300 whereas the median household income for a black family is $15,600. I believe that our culture has made it extremely difficult for African-Americans to find a way out of poverty, and rather than fighting for a change in our system, white folk would rather offer a non-committal form of help by extending their whiteness; “Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral; normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow “them” to be more like ‘us’” (McIntosh). This reluctance to cause real change allows our society to blame black poverty on black culture rather than American culture and economics as a whole. This has always been easy for white people to do; Carl Von Linneas, father of taxonomy, said that the “Africanus” variety of Humans contained the “phlegmatic”, “lazy”, and “sluggish” humors, which bare responsibility and explanation for the caprice and unpredictable nature he attributed to African Americans.

I believe that the white savior complex has become a major industry in our society. If the notion that black people are helpless without white interference is not analyzed for the inherent racism it perpetuates, white privilege will continue to thrive as well as racial injustice. “Such ‘privilege’ may be widely desired without being in any way beneficial to whole society” (McIntosh). As Peggy McIntosh so accurately suggests, this complex should cease to be seen as desirable and beneficial for any and all parts of society.

References

Cole, T. (2012, September 1). The White- Savior Industrial Complex. The Atlantic.

Kingsle, K. (n.d.). Does My Hero Look White In This: Hollywood's White Saviour Complex.The Artifice.

Kuruvilla, C. (2015, January 26). White Clergy Spark Debate By Telling Cops #UseMeInstead for Target Shooting Practice. The Huffington Post.

Leigh Anne Tuohy, Racism, and the White Saviour Complex. (n.d.).DemocraticUnderground.com.

McIntosh, P. (n.d.). White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies.

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digitalmark18-blog · 6 years

Text

SSL vs. Website Security

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/ssl-vs-website-security/

SSL vs. Website Security

SSL Certificates

Chrome 68 not secure warning for HTTP websites

All types of SSL certificates verify the domain name of the website.

Let’s see the types of SSL certificates:

Domain Validated SSL Certificate (DV SSL)

DV SSL Certificates are the most popular SSL certificates on the Internet, even though they only validate the domain name.

DV SSL Certificate

Let’s Encrypt offers these kinds of certificates for free. We also have a guide explaining how to install an SSL certificate.

Organization Validation SSL Certificate (OV SSL)

OV SSL Certificates require more documentation for a Certificate Authority to certify the organization making the request is registered and legitimate.

These certificates will display the name of the organization if you click on the padlock that appears on the top left corner of a browser.

OV SSL Certificate

Premium Extended Validation SSL Certificates (EV SSL)

EV SSL Certificate

SSL Certificates and Malware Infections

SSL certificates cannot protect a website from a malware infection, nor can they stop a website from spreading malware.

Ironically, infected websites served over HTTPS will ensure the integrity of the malware until it reaches its potential victims, aka the website’s visitors.

A website’s padlock in the address bar does not mean the website is secured. It only means that the information between the website’s server and the browser is secured.

That is something both webmasters and Internet users need to be really mindful of.

What is Website Security?

Defining website security is not simple, but here’s a good definition we like to use:

There are no turnkey solutions to security; instead it’s a combination of people, processes, and technology that help create a manageable and scalable approach to security for any organization.

These are the top 10 blacklists:

Google Safe Browsing

Norton Safe Web

Phish Tank

Opera

SiteAdvisor McAfee

Sucuri Malware Labs

SpamHaus DBL

Bitdefender

Yandex (via Sophos)

ESET

What is the Difference between SSL and Website Security?

We can imagine that the reason why some people get SSL confused with website security is because HTTPS/SSL provides:

“non-repudiation” of the party – answering the question is that really you?

integrity check (unchanged)

privacy (unseen) of the data in transit.

To sum it up, in an HTTPS website, data in transit is protected, but the website itself can still be vulnerable.

We have discussed more about how SSL differs from website security in a recent webinar:

youtube

Conclusion

SSL certificates only account for a small piece of the website security puzzle.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Sucuri Blog authored by Gerson Ruiz. Read the original post at: https://blog.sucuri.net/2018/09/ssl-vs-website-security.html

Source: https://securityboulevard.com/2018/09/ssl-vs-website-security/

0 notes

digitalmark18-blog · 6 years

Text

SSL vs. Website Security

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/ssl-vs-website-security/

SSL vs. Website Security

SSL Certificates

Chrome 68 not secure warning for HTTP websites

All types of SSL certificates verify the domain name of the website.

Let’s see the types of SSL certificates:

Domain Validated SSL Certificate (DV SSL)

DV SSL Certificates are the most popular SSL certificates on the Internet, even though they only validate the domain name.

DV SSL Certificate

Let’s Encrypt offers these kinds of certificates for free. We also have a guide explaining how to install an SSL certificate.

Organization Validation SSL Certificate (OV SSL)

OV SSL Certificates require more documentation for a Certificate Authority to certify the organization making the request is registered and legitimate.

These certificates will display the name of the organization if you click on the padlock that appears on the top left corner of a browser.

OV SSL Certificate

Premium Extended Validation SSL Certificates (EV SSL)

EV SSL Certificate

SSL Certificates and Malware Infections

SSL certificates cannot protect a website from a malware infection, nor can they stop a website from spreading malware.

Ironically, infected websites served over HTTPS will ensure the integrity of the malware until it reaches its potential victims, aka the website’s visitors.

A website’s padlock in the address bar does not mean the website is secured. It only means that the information between the website’s server and the browser is secured.

That is something both webmasters and Internet users need to be really mindful of.

What is Website Security?

Defining website security is not simple, but here’s a good definition we like to use:

There are no turnkey solutions to security; instead it’s a combination of people, processes, and technology that help create a manageable and scalable approach to security for any organization.

These are the top 10 blacklists:

Google Safe Browsing

Norton Safe Web

Phish Tank

Opera

SiteAdvisor McAfee

Sucuri Malware Labs

SpamHaus DBL

Bitdefender

Yandex (via Sophos)

ESET

What is the Difference between SSL and Website Security?

We can imagine that the reason why some people get SSL confused with website security is because HTTPS/SSL provides:

“non-repudiation” of the party – answering the question is that really you?

integrity check (unchanged)

privacy (unseen) of the data in transit.

To sum it up, in an HTTPS website, data in transit is protected, but the website itself can still be vulnerable.

We have discussed more about how SSL differs from website security in a recent webinar:

youtube

Conclusion

SSL certificates only account for a small piece of the website security puzzle.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Sucuri Blog authored by Gerson Ruiz. Read the original post at: https://blog.sucuri.net/2018/09/ssl-vs-website-security.html

Source: https://securityboulevard.com/2018/09/ssl-vs-website-security/

0 notes