#it’s a bunch of coding for participant data analysis

[nina-ya]

*cracks knuckles* okay it’s crunch time again I have to finish one jobs tasks as soon as possible because I have to wake up at 430 tomorrow for my other job! Yippee!!! I am so exhausted!!!

[digitalethnography]

Mobile Ethnography Analysis and Interpretation

In this video Siamack Salari talks about the differences between analysis, interpretation, and sense making in mobile ethnography projects. Siamack is an ethnographer and the founder of EthOS.

Video Transcription:

Analysis, and interpretation of mobile ethnography. Now, first of all analysis, what do I mean by analysis. Analysis is just sorting through what you have. It’s not about sense-making or interpretation. It’s about getting a really good 360 understanding of all the information that’s come through. Now platforms like ours have really amazing tools. You can code. You can filter by tasks. You can filter by participants, you can filter by segments, you can filter by different things people have said by sentiment. All sorts of tools to help you get an understanding of the data that’s come through. So that’s analysis, not to be confused with sense-making or generating meaning. This is where you can end up, if you’re not careful, negotiation with yourself and your own biases about what particular observations or groups of observations mean, which is why it’s so important to include other people in this process. You know, the saying without friction, there’s no traction. It’s really important to get into some juicy problem, row provoking debates, about what things mean and out of these Quite heated debates comes some amazing thinking, and interpretation. So don’t be, don’t be in one of those workshops where you all nod and agree. Provoke and really squeeze as much as you can out of these observations and what they mean potentially. And it’s absolutely fine during the analysis stage if it helps you to take groups of observations and characterize them into one observation or quotes, and create a single inferred quote that sums up a bunch of quotes so that it makes life a little bit easier when you’re trying to sense make. But back to, back to sort of adding meaning, this is not the same as generating actions because that’s the final step is, so you have analysis adding generating understanding and sense-making, and then the adding meaning bit. And this really is the toughest thing, you know, how many of us can hand on heart say here are the actions here is here is our piece of research that we completed. These are the insights and look what the client did with. It might have happened at some point, but unless you make up something it’s really quite hard and I think quite rare to be able to string a whole case study together. So, how do you make sure that your insights your meanings, your sense-making, is applied and turned into something. And here’s a really simple solution. Get the clients to discover these insights. I don’t mean, you don’t do them, you can do them, but keep them under your sleeve in the workshops. Allow clients to take ownership of the sense-making and what particular things mean, because that way nobody can push an Insight faster, more effectively or deeper inside an organization than somebody from within that organization. Okay, that’s the little trick and it is a trick that you can apply during workshops. Yeah, so analysis, just to sum up is not the same as sense-making. It’s about sorting. Sense making and adding meaning is all about understanding what it means. And again, the more heads you have in the room helping you to think through what these things mean, the better and the deeper the rouse that the more intense the better. I’ve been in meetings with General Electric appliances, where two Engineers, I think and a designer fought nose-to-nose, I thought it was going to come to blows over what something meant in an observation, right? Very important. And it led to some very interesting developments. And a third bit is adding meaning in a way that is actionable. Adding actions, creating actions. So, there we have it. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening.

[smileystudies]

feb 1 2021 // day 27 of 100 days of productivity

today:

answer/send emails

start auxiliares application

import data

start coding data

just some old stats notes today since I spent the whole day working on the computer, but it’s beautifully snowy outside!

all of my data for my thesis is exported in individual files (one per participant ugh) with a bunch of extra information so I was reeeeaaally dreading starting to code (aka translate raw responses into a number system for analysis) and having to weed through everything. Alhamadllh, however, I found out I can use Power Query to pull all the responses together into one beautiful spreadsheet so I can work with it more easily (!!!). now coding is going to be a normal pain instead of a massive pain 😅 hopefully I can find some new tricks to make it easier but I’m probably just going to have to suffer a little.

next steps: review R packages/commands and come up with a plan to code and then analyze the data. I think it’s gonna be within-groups ANOVA but I need to go back and make sure it makes the most sense...

[eponymous-rose]

Good stuff from yesterday!

1. Got the last of my grading done for the quarter! We obviously gave extensions to everyone on their final project, but grades were still due on the same date as always, so I had a one-day turnaround on a bunch of these 20-page final papers. Finished with a few hours to spare!

2. One student was really struggling in this class; we’d reached out to them on multiple occasions, and every time we tried to set up a time to meet, they’d agree and then not show up; they also hadn’t come to class (except for on quiz days) in several months. Unfortunately, one of the assignments in this senior-level class satisfies a requirement for graduation, and they didn’t do that particular assignment (even after we e-mailed them offering to extend the deadline on it by two months with no penalties). I mean, nobody sets out for no reason and goes “I’m going to sabotage my chances of graduating on time, just ‘cause it’ll be fun!”, so obviously there was a bigger problem here, and it was a big relief to realize there were contingencies for this: three different advisers reached out to chat with them and figure out how we can best help out with whatever’s going on and try to get them back on track to graduate. It was just reassuring to see that the question wasn’t “why is this student so bad at this?” and was instead “what’s gone wrong, how can we help, and how can we make sure this doesn’t happen to the next student going through a rough time?” Definitely an encouraging first experience teaching in this department.

3. Got a successful no-contact order delivered! It’s been tricky because my place is a little hard to find (it’s in a high-density housing area where these big fancy houses were rezoned to stick additional more-affordable housing in the backyards), and it’s hard to convey “you want to come down this alley and then walk up these tiny winding stairs to get to the “front” door, which is actually on the side of the building” in the little text box. But it worked! Big tip, of course. The shelter-in-place order feels a lot less isolating and overwhelming now that I have some groceries and a little comfort food in the fridge.

4. I volunteered a few months ago to participate in a pilot project for a new JupyterHub server hosted by the university, and I got the notification that everything’s up and running! I’m developing a new Python data analysis class for the department, which will run through the Spring quarter (so the first lecture is on Monday), and I was already pushing hard to make sure that this whole programming class should be doable from a student’s friggin’ phone if they didn’t have access to a powerful laptop or anything. That feels weirdly prescient now. Huh. Anyway, the upshot is that students will be able to write and test code, analyze large datasets, and create elaborate plots via nothing more complicated than a web browser. All the legwork’s happening on the cloud. Very, very proud of that.

5. A good friend is defending his PhD remotely in early April, and he realized that this means he can invite anyone and everyone! So excited I’ll get to watch and support him. <3

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, June 28 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles, podcasts, videos and infographics I came across since the late May report, although some may be older than that.

I am currently working on Etsy search testing and a few new blog posts and pages for my website, so it may be a few more weeks before I get a new report out. In the meantime, if you have an questions, comments or suggestions, please contact me here or on my website.  

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

Ecommerce sales are way up, but so are many costs, and delays in shipping are part of the problem. “...many of our merchants start preparing mid-year for peak-season volume, holidays. We’ve seen many merchants hitting and even exceeding their normal Black Friday and Cyber Monday volumes consistently through April, forcing them to adapt quickly for greater capacity.” UPS is charging high-volume customers a surcharge based on how much more they are shipping compared to normal times, and also for an increase in oversized packages. 

Mail delivery is still slow in many countries. Canada Post hit an all-time delivery record with 2.1 million parcels on May 19, but may finally be getting caught up. [article in French] Shipping between countries can also be substantially delayed, in part due to the lack of air traffic right now. USPS is using sea transport for packages to some European countries. And USPS rates are going up for international shipping in July, due to the new Universal Postal Union deal. "Anyone who is a bulk shipper, your rates are going up".

A reminder that the US economy isn't suddenly going to stabilize in the fall; it’s likely to crash. The US is now officially in a recession. Many people are not going to have money for a lot of discretionary spending. Furthermore, some categories of items will likely drop in price due to company closures, supply chain issues and bankruptcies. That will increase competition at the same time there are fewer buyers for many types of items. Ecommerce sales in the US are projected to rise 18% this year, but it won’t be enough to make up for the loss of brick & mortar retail sales. “The apparel and accessories category is typically the second-largest in e-commerce, for example, but will only grow 8.6% as consumers shift spending away from discretionary, non-essential purchases.”  Retail in the US is expected to be down more than 10% in 2020.

ETSY NEWS 

Etsy has released an addition to the iOS app that will allow shoppers to use augmented reality to see wall art on their home’s walls. The Verge was critical of how long it took for Etsy to catch up with the competition, and the fact that it is not available for Android yet. TechCrunch went into more detail. 

As mentioned last time, you can now add short, no-audio videos to your listings. Etsy is so big on this, they are offering listing credits and ad credits to sellers who upload 5 or more videos by July 6. As always, make sure you read the legal policies before you participate in this offer. 

The Etsy Design Awards are back, with submissions due by July 15th. Note that they are only open to 38 countries, for some reason. There is a forum discussion thread with tips, and a podcast [audio & transcript] with previous winners.

If you sell any items for kids, you will find this trending items article from Etsy useful. Searches including “kid,” “child,” or “baby” didn’t go up as much in April as one might have expected, given the pandemic shopping bump, but puzzles were popular. They include some search terms: for example, there was a “250% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “jump rope” in April. Also, “while school may look different this fall, we’re already seeing an increase for school-related searches compared to the same time last year.”

Face mask seller ZhenLinen was interviewed on NPR [text and audio] about mask selling, and was even asked about the offsite ads fees near the end. They sold 31,000 masks while their event-supply business was in pandemic limbo; most of those sales were through Etsy. The good news articles about mask sales, & suggesting Etsy as a source of masks, are continuing, although some do mention slow delivery times and even undelivered orders. By the way, if any mask sellers are looking for new places to sell, Facebook finally caught up and is now allowing mask sales, ads and other promotions. 

According to analysis of Etsy’s API data, May 2020 was Etsy’s best month ever. Remember that the API data misses things like sales of multiples, so it is not the most accurate source, but I don’t have any reason to doubt the statement is true. 

Etsy stock went over $100 for the first time, before dropping as the rest of the market went down. 

You have probably already seen Etsy’s statement on race issues after the recent murder in the US. “That’s why today we are announcing donations of $500,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative and $500,000 to Borealis Philanthropy’s Black-Led Movement Fund, as well as matching employee donations. We encourage our community to join us in supporting these important organizations.  Etsy is built on a belief that communities have the power to change the status quo. Change is hard-fought, and we are committed to this fight.“

If you have your real name on your Etsy account, don’t attract any attention from the police. 

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

If you don’t really understand what algorithms are and how they work for search engines, you will want to get caught up here. Key to understanding: “An algorithm is not a formula.”

This is a bit advanced, but it’s a good explanation of how to figure out searcher intent in Google results, and then fulfill it with new content. [video, transcript, and downloadable form]

Linking from one page on your website to another can be an important part of SEO. It can also help you get more page views, if you link to new pages from your most popular pages. Creating internal site links on the same page through a table of contents [advanced, coding info] can even get you more links in Google search results. 

Speed on mobile devices is also a big part of SEO as well as conversions. “a 0.1 second improvement in site speed resulted in Retail conversions increases of 8.4% and average order value increases of 9.2%.”

Bing made changes to its backlink tool, including the ability to see your competition’s backlinks. The option is part of Bing’s Webmaster tools, & allows you to analyze “similar sites”. Their Webmaster Tools now can also analyze your site for SEO errors. 

A former Google employee is starting a new search engine, called Neeva. 

Some SEOs recommend removing “low-quality” pages from your site to improve your overall rankings, but low-quality doesn’t necessarily mean pages that few people visit [text & video]. And short posts are not necessarily “low-quality”. If your page is mostly duplicate content, it is like low quality, but just repeating a few lines on each page is not duplicate content. 

Google missed a few episodes of its Google search news YouTube post during the pandemic, but they were back on May 26 with an update. They’ve also finally released their webspam report for 2019. “we observed that more than 25 Billion pages we discover each day are spammy.”

Advanced content [video with multi-language subtitles, & text summary in English]: Google, JavaScript, & links. 

Shopify sites have built-in blogs,and those blogs can help you get sales through SEO. And while we are on Shopify SEO, here is some advice on fixing technical SEO issues on Shopify sites. [the second is advanced content unless you know some coding]

While having an author page isn’t a requirement on any news/blog site, it might be a good idea anyway [text and video]. Content that is useful for readers is ultimately good for your site’s SEO. 

Here is a history of Google’s PageRank, and what it still does for ranking. 

Did the Google May core update really mess up organic search relevance? Some people think so. [I had noticed the Wikipedia drop but thought it was just for a particular search.] There may be more ranking updates underway right now. 

Google plans on introducing user experience as part of the ranking algorithm, although it won’t happen before next year, and we will get 6 months warning. Search Engine Land lists the following elements: “whether the page loads quickly, if it’s mobile-friendly, runs on HTTPS, the presence of intrusive ads and if content jumps around as the page loads.” They add a bunch of technical advice, and the tools to follow up on it. 

Do you find SEO confusing? Don’t worry - even the pros working for big companies make huge errors. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

Updated infographic with the common social media image sizes used today. (Several of these get published yearly, because there are always changes.)

Is blogging still relevant? [TL;DR - yes] And if you want to write more interactive posts, here are some tools for that. 

Video app TikTok made a lot of money in April, but is seeing competition from a new short video app called Zynn, which allows users to make money by watching videos and bringing in new users. However, Zynn has already been removed from Google Play store amid accusations of content theft. Instagram has a challenger called “Reels”, and even YouTube wants some of that TikTok traffic, so they are introducing 15 second videos. Meanwhile, TikTok is coming under closer scrutiny for its invasive tracking. 

Every social network apparently needs to have their own version of Stories these days, so Pinterest has introduced a new version of Story Pins in the US. “Unlike Stories on other platforms, which are often self-focused snippets from someone’s life, Pinterest Stories Pins are designed as clickable content focused on sharing ideas. For example, Story Pins could offer a step-by-step guide to cooking a recipe or creating a craft project. A Story Pin could also offer ideas around how to reorganize your home office, keeping the kids entertained, beauty tutorials and more.”

Google appears to be imitating Pinterest with their new release, called “Keen”. You add items yourself but Google then attempts to find more things you are interested in, using AI. 

If you are looking for some new tools to help with Instagram, Social Media Today compiled a list of 5 recent ones. They include image processing, templates, and analytics. 

Twitter is beta-testing the ability to tweet sound files directly from the platform, instead of embedding links to other sites. The article notes that these may be more difficult to moderate than text tweets would be. 

Two of the three parts of this article cover local businesses, but the middle part has some promotional ideas that mostly involve content marketing & social media. Nothing groundbreaking, but a decent list if you are looking for new free ways to advertise.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Semi-advanced - how to improve your Google Ads optimization score. 

GCLID is short for “Google Click Identifier” to help track ads and conversions. You can learn more here. [Understanding this is useful for both your own ad campaigns and understanding other ads, such as the Etsy Offsite Ads program.)

Money coming in from social media video ads has increased from the lows in April. Facebook ads have improved the most. 

New advertisers on Instagram will not necessarily have to link their accounts to Facebook any more. It may be linked to a campaign to “stop hate for profit” that calls for people to stop buying Facebook & Instagram ads during July, and which has attracted several big players such as Unilever and Verizon. Some companies are leaving all social media ads, or are extending the Facebook boycott until the end of the year. But as the first article points out, Zuckerberg’s complete control of voting means he can’t be turfed by a board just to protect profit, so a short boycott may not be the best way to get change. 

Facebook published a new explanation of how ads work on the platform. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

For people who are new to Google Analytics: here are some things you should be tracking, as well as these, and some tips on finding source info for SEO work. If you want to improve your customers’ experience with the site, check out these tips. [There is some crossover between the 4 articles, but I think that those of you trying to learn more detailed examples of how GA works will find everything useful.]

What is a “session” in Google Analytics? This article includes screenshots & tips on changing their length. 

You can get great keyword data from the Google Search Console - here’s how. 

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

Online shopping has received a huge boost from the pandemic lockdowns, and big online marketplaces are now competing for new small businesses to fill the growing demand. Walmart outsold eBay in May, for the first time ever. Things are slowing down a bit, though: “buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) had begun to “plateau.” BOPIS growth in May was 195% year over year, which was down from its April peak of more than 200%.”

Amazon is being criticized for allowing many prohibited items to be sold on the site, even through “fulfilled by Amazon”, so the items are stored in its warehouses. “Graham did not respond directly to many of our specific questions, including how many of the banned items that The Markup found had been sold, why the company had not noticed some of them for months, why some were listed as Amazon’s Choice, and why many were stored in Amazon’s warehouses for shipment. He did not respond at all to questions about why Amazon itself had offered banned items for sale. Most of the banned listings we reported to Amazon have been removed, although at least three have popped back up.” [emphasis added]

Amazon is now offering multi-channel fulfillment in the US; you don’t even need to use Fulfillment by Amazon to sign up. They’ve also introduced lines of credit for sellers, through a partnership with Goldman Sachs. 

eBay is rallying sellers to object to a proposed Louisiana law that would force marketplace sites to verify the identities of higher-volume sellers in the state. The law was passed anyway, and takes effect July 1. Here are the highlights of the new law.

Now-fired eBay employees harassed and stalked the EcommerceBytes owner and her husband for months after eBay’s CEO at the time said eBay needed to “take down” the site & its owner.

Walmart now has ThredUp as one of its third-party sellers on the Walmart website. They sell second-hand clothing and accessories for women & kids, often famous labels. Sales are all online but buyers will be able to return things to Walmart stores. 

Walmart has also partnered with Shopify, allowing small businesses to list directly on Walmart’s website through Shopify. This appears to be a limited initiative, as they only plan on including 1200 Shopify sellers by the end of 2020. Most analysts think this is a plan to compete with Amazon more directly. 

In addition to its existing website, Target is now offering items on Instagram Checkout. 

Shopify has been getting great media coverage lately, including this article suggesting them as an alternative to Amazon third-party selling, once the new “Shop” app gets some traction. 

BigCommerce has introduced drag-and-drop design tools for its website builder. 

Square has begun using rolling reserves to reduce its risk with some sellers. “In one instance, Legal Knock, a company that builds websites for law firms, told the Times that it never had a customer demand a refund for their work and yet Square kept $4,000 in reserve in May. Sean Weber, the owner, said he had trouble contacting the company and wasn't satisfied with its explanation. He even said Square blocked him on Twitter.”

Upcoming PayPal changes for US users include seller protection for some digital items, and not necessarily requiring buyers to return items to win a significantly not as described case. Remember that many PayPal changes start with the US and then expand to other countries; Canadian changes are here. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

When thinking about customer returns, remember that a lower-than-average return rate is not necessarily your top goal. “You may ask, “why would a merchant want to increase returns?” It’s because they’re using returns as a growth driver. They’ve figured out, for their respective businesses, that a higher rate of returns actually nets out to an increase in sales and repeat purchasing. So much so, that the overall uptick in business far outweighs the increased costs of more frequent returns.”

Consumers are reading reviews more than ever, but half of this study’s respondents said that “‘too many companies’ are creating fake reviews online.”

Many people are tired of the “things are different” ads that have predominated, & want to see more ads showing people getting back to normal. “The U.S., U.K. and the Netherlands are primed for a jump in fashion purchases, with significant percentages of consumers in those countries planning clothing purchases in the next 30 days. The finding suggests that fashion marketers may increase their marketing efforts to reach consumers who are ready to buy apparel as lockdowns are lifted.”

We don’t know what the holiday shopping season will look like this year, so ecommerce businesses should be planning for many different scenarios. 

Here’s an interesting overview of how some searches changed in the first few months of the pandemic. [infographic] And some of the shopping changes people made, especially Gen Z, may be permanent. “...younger consumers are shifting their habits faster than their older counterparts.” That report also states that “33% of these consumers have increased their online spending, for a net increase of 6%, versus 23% of consumers in older generations, or a net increase of 1%.”

Here’s more on the second-hand clothing trend that is hitting its boom years. “According to the report, secondhand goods are expected to make up 17% of a person’s share of closet space by 2029, up from just 3% in 2009.” Gen Z is a big user of Depop, which has a lot of altered and enhanced vintage clothing available. 

MISCELLANEOUS 

This article has inspired me to completely redo my website’s About page. Not yet, of course, but some day soon…

Speaking of websites, here’s a good list of dos & don’ts for a contact form.

eBay may be probing your computer when you visit, and that is not always legal. 

Free Zoom accounts can’t set up encrypted calls/meetings, because “the firm wants to keep this feature away from free users to work with law enforcement in case of the app’s misuse.”

Finally in privacy news, Google is being sued for still tracking you in various ways when you use Chrome’s incognito mode. 

[betabites]

D6 Star Wars

After a long long hiatus from the Star Wars setting and WEG D6 in particular, I have returned. 2nd Edition was literally the first RPG book I read, before I understood what RPGs were at all. I borrowed it from the library, where it was filed with the video game guides. I also read video game guides for games I’d never played, so I think I just figured all the numbers in the book were more of the same.

One crippling D&D addiction later, I rediscovered D6 Star Wars. In a very round-about way, using the Firefly system for Star Wars, and coming across D6 resources. I tried a few more kitbashed systems, and I have finally decided to, you know, actually run the D6 system. Sort of. I’ve got thirty odd years of folks’ house rules, several editions, and successor games to collate. I’m borrowing from 1st edition, 2nd edition, 2nd edition revised, REUP, Mini Six...

In any event, here are my current D6 House Rules.

Consolidated Skill List

By REUP, the skill list is insane. I checked out the 1st edition list, and more or less reverted to it. I went with my standard high society/underworld/outdoors breakdown of Protocol/Streetwise/Survival, because it’s got excellent coverage. Trying something new to me with Bargain/Command/Con social split, on the basis that it’s more gameable than D&D’s scare/lie/persuade ...thing. Brawl and Melee are redundant, but the ‘big fighter’/’quick fighter’ split is really hard to fight against. Currently, you get no benefit from having both.

Dexterity

Blasters: covers all blaster pistols, carbines, and rifles, as well as more esoteric ranged weapons like slugthrowers, disruptors, bowcasters, etc. 

Dodging: used to avoid blasterfire, and other such hazards.

Heavy Weapons: covers crewed weapons and anything that can be described as ‘man-portable but’.

Melee: covers all sorts of hand-to-hand combat, armed or otherwise.

Throwing: used to chuck grenades, ewoks, priceless idols, etc.

Knowledge

Astrogation: used to calculate hyperspace jumps, as well as basic knowledge of trade routes, planetary quirks, and the like.

Protocol: knowledge of bureaucracies, high society, rules-obsessed alien societies, etc.

Scholar: knowledge of education, learning, & research. Specializations indicate specific fields of study.

Streetwise: knowledge of the criminal underworld, the common folk, urban environments.

Survival: knowledge of how to survive in dangerous natural terrain, including dealing with local lifeforms.

Mechanical

Comms: use of communication equipment, including ciphering & code-breaking.

Gunnery: use of fixed weaponry (emplaced or vehicular).

Piloting: flying or driving starships, repulsorlift vehicles, walkers, etc.

Sensors: use of sensor equipment, and analysis of sensor data.

Shields: use of shields.

Perception

Bargain: use this whenever the social participants are trying to reach a deal (typically over credits). Also includes bribery.

Command: use this to coordinate a group of people, or to browbeat the weak-willed.

Con: use this to trick people to do something that isn’t in their best interest.

Gambling: use this to win in games of chance. 

Hide: use this to hide items or people, or sneak up on someone.

Search: use this to find something specific.

Strength

Athletics: any sort of activity relying on general fitness, such as running, jumping, climbing, swimming, etc.

Brawling: use for hand-to-hand combat, especially unarmed or with improvised weapons.

Lifting: use to perform short feats of strength.

Stamina: use for protracted activity of any sort.

Technical

Demolitions: make things go boom. Includes how to maximize the effects of explosions, and how to improvise your own.

Medicine: make the hurting stop. Advanced procedures require additional knowledge.

Programming: working with software.

Repair: fixing what’s stopped working.

Security: working specifically with security technology, including, but not limited to, locks, alarms, and surveillance networks.

Character Points & Force Points

Spending a Character Point (CP) gives you +1D on a single roll, or allows you to declare a minor change (there’s a shift change in ten minutes, this guard is hooked on deathsticks, etc). Spending a CP converts it into XP. XP, not CP, is spent to increase your attributes & skills. This means that you have to spend your CP (and be awesome) in order to become better.

Spending a Force Point lets you add +5D on a single roll, or allows you to declare a major change (this guard is a Rebel sympathizer, the last prisoner almost finished an escape tunnel).

The Wild Die

The Wild Die, on a 1, will either just be counted as a 1 (with no additional effect), or generate a complication (severity depending on the total dice roll and success/failure of the attempted task). Players are encouraged to suggest complications. Complications do not have to trigger immediately; they can be saved by the GM (up to 6) and deployed when they’ll cause the most damage. [This last bit is mostly for my current game, which is heist-focused. At some point, things are going to go horribly wrong.]

Static Defenses (directly from Mini Six)

In order to reduce rolling, your character’s defenses are static.

Dodge = (Dodge dice value x 3) + pips in Dodge

Parry = (* dice value x 3) + pips in *

* use your higher total skill in Brawl or Melee.

Soak = (Strength dice value x 3) + pips in Strength + Armor value

You can, as your only action ‘Full Dodge’ or ‘Full Parry’, which adds +10 to the appropriate defense. 

Spending a Character Point adds +3 to a static defense, spending a Force Point adds +15.

Minions, Henchmen, & Villains

Minions are defeated by any hit that beats their Dodge/Parry.

Henchmen are defeated by any hit that inflicts a Wound or worse.

Villains track damage like PCs.

The Force

Force is a sixth attribute, ranging from 0D to 6D for all creatures. ‘Force Sensitive’ just means you start with 1D in Force. More to be decided when/if it becomes relevant.

Dice-Based Resource Depletion (from Cascading Dice)

Limited resources are assigned a die value (from d4 to d20). When you use some of those resources, roll the associated die. On a 1, reduce the die value one step (i.e. from d8 to d6). If you roll a 1 on a d4, you’re down to one use of your resource left (one blaster bolt, 50 credits, etc).

Large expenditures may require multiple rolls at the same die value, but careful use (high rolls on attack, bargaining, etc) may allow things like ‘roll 3, pick 2’, rerolls, or the like.

Examples:

The operating expenses for a struggling restaurant is a d4, representing about 200 credits. One financial mistake (rolling a 1), and they’re down to 50 credits, and rent is due…

A heisting crew establishes a fund for their latest job. The fixer scraps together some liquid funds from her info broker job, about 6000 credits, giving the crew a d6 fund. They buy a speeder bike for the job, requiring multiple rolls on the d6 (since it costs ~2000 credits). They roll a 1, and their fund goes down to a d4.

A bunch of rebel scum raid an Imperial Weapons Depot, and come away with a speeder full of explosives. They gain a d10 of Explosives, which is good, because they’ve got a bunker to crack...

[adamsimonini]

2nd Month Tech Update: Going Down The Rabbit Hole

Building capacity through building a farm

I was able to host a Vue.js workshop for full-time staff and co-op students within the building. It consists of hands-on development material I built at my last job. The workshop aims to provide participants which practical knowledge to get up and running building with Vue.js within 2 hours. Specifically, it consists of an online IDE (integrated development environment) where everyone gets full access to their own instance of the project repository; and a standalone web app built with the very same code found in the repository. In other words, while participants learn concepts from the lessons, they can also peer behind the content to see the actual code generating the examples. What is more, there are challenges throughout where participants must use the previous lessons to continually improve their project: designing a personal farm.

The results of the workshop were promising. Though all participants had web development experience, many were not very familiar with modern reactive front-end libraries. It was their first taste. They were introduced to modern javascript ideas such as reusable components, importing and exporting modules, and state. Further, some participants inquired as to how they could incorporate Vue.js into their current work, which I consider a win. It means they understand the value of the technology, and they are starting to see, and contemplate, ways it can be wielded in their own jobs.

Adding internationalization

At the moment I am building the front-end with Vue.js, and a Vue.js UI (user interface) framework Vuetify. Vuetify is built using Google’s popular Material Design spec, and essentially provides me with a bunch of nifty pre-made components. I didn’t add in internationalization (also known as i18n, where 18 refers to the letters couched within the bookending “i” and “n” in the word “internationalization” - shout out to Wikipedia for that!) from the start of my project. I decided I would add it early on, and I did. However, even this slight delay in implementation cost me over a day of troubleshooting to get everything working as desired. I got a refresher on a lesson I have already learned many a times in IT: “Do fundamental stuff at the start, or else!”

Up in the air

Month two was an interesting one by the end of it. On the technical side, it feels like everything has bled into everything else. What it will congeal into I know not at this juncture. There have been two notable catalysts for this occurrence:

i) As a team, we have gone full-force into conversations, interviews, and discussions with teams & actors both internal and external to our department. Consequently, our expertise in certain domains (e.g., the staff expectations for the future system) have surpassed that of others, for whom this project is one of many on the go. We have spread our net wide.

ii) On the technical side, there is a sequence of events that need to take place in a somewhat ridged order. For example, in order for us to produce a solid front-end, we need questions about the back-end answered, and before questions about the back-end can be answered a back-end solution must be chosen, and before a back-end solution is chosen there needs to be a formal options analysis (OA). We don’t have all the dominoes in place, yet. This leaves us in a tricky situation. We have a good deal of knowledge into some important things now, but we are also lacking knowledge into other critical things. We want to start building, but we aren’t certain what the back-end and it’s API will look like. We want to develop a web app, but we don’t know where the app will be hosted (and consequently what restrictions will apply to it). We want to use modern web technologies, but we don’t know what technologies are familiar to the team who will take over once we leave. We want to play with the possible back-end solutions that are being investigated, but we can’t gain access to a sandbox of those technologies.

Entering month three, our main focus - and consequently my main focus - will be on resolving the aforementioned dissonance.                  

Milestones Achieved

changed my Node.js code to target a cloud MongoDB database hosted by MongoDB Cloud Services, so now my app reads and writes data to a remote database.

added internationalization and localization to the app, so users can change languages (with the option of components like datepickers changing their format, too)

as a team we raised our level of confidence and knowledge to the point where we can contribute to the options analysis process & take a more active stance on the technology side of things

installed Windows 10 Pro on my work machine (for under $3 CND on ebay.ca via an OEM license), in order to get access to Windows’ Hyper-V, which is required for Docker Desktop on Windows

finished introductory Docker course on Lynda.ca to learn about containerization, and how it can be utilized in my development process going forward

built workplace IT capacity through hosting a Vue.js workshop

[hotoblog-blog]

Facebook Drama

Security analysts have discovered a huge number of Facebook client records sitting on an incidentally open server. 540 million of client records were gathered and uncovered from two outsider companies, as indicated by analysts at security firm UpGuard, who found the information. What's New… In the specialists' review, Mexico-based online company Cultura Colectiva left in excess of 540 million records — including comments, likes, account names are put away on the Amazon S3 storage server without a secret phrase, enabling anybody to get to the information. Another reinforcement document on a different stockpiling server by dead California-based application creator At The Pool contained significantly progressively delicate information, including scratched data on in excess of 22,000 clients, for example, a user's friend records, interests, photos, group history, and registration. As indicated by UpGuard, neither one of the companies reacted to solicitations to have the information evacuated. Facebook reached Amazon to pull the information disconnected, a Facebook representative told TechCrunch. "Facebook's approaches restrict putting away Facebook data in an open database," said the representative. Facebook said there is no proof yet to demonstrate the information has been abused yet that it was exploring. It's the most recent information pass including the online life mammoth since the Cambridge Analytica embarrassment in 2018, which saw in excess of 87 million Facebook client records scratched without assent by the U.K.- based political information firm. The organization was blamed for utilizing the information to help fabricate profiles on voters with an end goal to help the presidential crusades for Ted Cruz and later Donald Trump. UpGuard found a bunch of scratched Facebook profiles including 48 million records in 2018 from LocalBlox, an information firm that rubs information from Facebook profiles.

Facebook has ended a scrappy routine with regards to approaching some new users for their outside email accreditations so as to confirm their records. After a Twitter user on Sunday shared a screenshot of Facebook asking them for the password to their email, the huge social media group confronted extraordinary analysis from security experts. A representative for Facebook revealed to The Daily Beast that it would never again participate in this training. Facebook has kept up that the secret word brief showed up for a few clients, explicitly new clients who were agreeing to accept Facebook on work areas with email tends to that did not bolster OAuth. OAuth, which is an open standard security convention utilized by Google, Amazon, Twitter, and Facebook, gives clients a chance to allow outsider customers access to their data without giving them their secret password. Engadget tried the organization's case on Tuesday morning that it never again requests email passwords, and it looks at. We agreed to accept another Facebook account with an iCloud email address, which doesn't utilize OAuth. Facebook then sent a five-digit security code to that iCloud email; it additionally sent a different email with a "Begin" connect, the two of which could be utilized to get into the new Facebook account - however significantly, it never approached us for the email account secret word. Facebook is confronting more examination over how it handles client passwords after various protection transgressions over the previous year. While the web-based life mammoth rushes to fix whatever underlying issue happens, the truth of the matter is that new issues dependably crop up. On the off chance that a 3,000-word pronouncement discharged a month ago by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on another "protection centered" vision for the organization is to be trusted, the organization needs to pay attention to security starting from the top. Be that as it may, the ongoing proof isn't excessively reassuring. facebook found in January that more than 600 million user passwords were put away in plain content. Facebook conceded back in November that it was giving over telephone numbers that clients accommodated two-factor security to outsiders.

[crookedtreepoetry]

Data Science Programs

You can enroll and complete the course to earn a shareable certificate, or you'll be able to audit it to view the course materials at no cost. When you subscribe to a course that's a part of a Certificate, you’re automatically subscribed to the total Certificate. Here, we’ll familiarise you with the basics of Data Science, MS Excel and other relevant ideas. We additionally offer a complimentary Python Programming Bootcamp and a profession important gentle expertise program with this course. Our course’s ultimate section introduces you to superior knowledge science concepts and covers topics similar to business intelligence, natural language processing, information engineering, and so forth.

One of essentially the most uncomfortable issues about studying data science on-line is that you just by no means really know if you’ve learned enough. Unlike in a formal college environment, when learning online you don’t have many good barometers for success, like passing or failing exams or entire courses. Projects assist remediate this by first displaying you what you don’t know, after which serving as a record of knowledge when it’s accomplished. The teacher makes this course actually fun and fascinating by supplying you with mock consulting projects to work on, then going by way of a complete walkthrough of the answer.

Students are properly prepared for getting recruited by the top corporations and work efficiently with different job profiles in Data Science. Subjects such as Analytics and Data Science have emerged as the most important needs of every company everywhere in the world. For every exercise that a business performs must be later analysed by information science professionals to extract valuable info. Jain University Entrance Test– This widespread entrance examination is carried out by Jain University, Bangalore to confess students who're excited about pursuing a bachelor’s diploma in information science. Data Science could be outlined as a mixture of implementing varied scientific activities corresponding to mathematics, calculus, graphs, charts, algorithms, computer packages, and much more.

Data science is a "concept to unify statistics, information analysis, informatics, and their associated methods" in order to "understand and analyze actual phenomena" with knowledge. It uses strategies and theories drawn from many fields within the context of mathematics, statistics, computer science, data science, and area knowledge. However, data science is totally different from pc science and data science. Our Master of Science in Data Science is the one on-line MSc program in information science.

Take this course when you’re uncomfortable with the linear algebra and calculus required for machine studying, and also you’ll save some time over other, extra generic math programs. Created by Andrew Ng, maker of the famous Stanford Machine Learning course, this is likely one of the highest rated knowledge science courses on the internet. Python is used in this course, and there’s many lectures going by way of the intricacies of the various knowledge science libraries to work through real-world, attention-grabbing issues. This is likely one of the solely knowledge science programs around that really touches on every a part of the info science process.

You will get job alternatives as soon as they're posted, recommendations to apply matched on to your skills and pursuits, and tips and tips that will help you stand other than the group. Each course sometimes incorporates 3-6 modules with a mean effort of 2 to four hours per module. If learning part-time (e.g. 1 module per week), it might take 6 to 12 months to finish the complete certificate. If learning full-time (e.g. 1 module per day) the certificates could be accomplished in 2 to 3 months. This Specialization is for software engineers, college students, and researchers from any subject, who are excited about machine learning and need to understand how GANs work.

Python is among the world’s most popular programming languages, and there has never been greater demand for professionals with the flexibility to use Python fundamentals to drive enterprise options throughout industries. This section of the course lasts for 12 weeks and consists of two assignments to check your data. We’ll introduce you to Python, Python programming, and the way you use Python in knowledge science.

With the expansion of the economic system of India and the growth of the enterprise sector, knowledge science has a fantastic scope in India. The college students must have accomplished their post-commencement in science with related specialisations corresponding to B.Sc. Statistics, B.Sc. Mathematics, B.Sc. Computer Science, or any other equal diploma from a recognised board or college.

In addition to earning a Professional Certificate from Coursera, you may additionally obtain a digital badge from IBM recognizing your proficiency in Data Science. They need a strong understanding of statistical analysis and arithmetic, that are important pillars of Data Science. A good understanding of these ideas will allow you to perceive the fundamental premises of data science. Machine studying is a priceless software to find patterns in large data units. To manage large data sets, data scientists have to be familiar with databases. However, non relational databases are rising in recognition, so a greater understanding of database structures is useful.

Only professionals having specialised information in the field of Data Science can perform these actions. This program is offered for people who're thinking about taking up the position of knowledge scientists however have no elementary thought about the area. Instead of focusing totally on a particular topic, the courses will stress on providing an summary of knowledge science, the types of issues tackled beneath it, and a few foundational strategies. By the ending, you should have a better sense of the way to proceed with extra advanced certification. There’s a base ability set and level of information that each one information scientists should possess, regardless of what trade they’re in.

It’s okay to complete just one course — you can pause your learning or end your subscription at any time. Visit your learner dashboard to track your course enrollments and your progress. This course offers an introduction to information science with no coding involved. In this non-technical course, you’ll be launched to every little thing you had been ever too afraid to ask about this quick-rising and thrilling area, while not having to put in writing a single line of code. In this course, you’ll learn to use the information, how to put together the information so as to perform operations on it. You’ll perceive the whole course of to extract important info from the pile of knowledge.

Besides this, corporations are able to pay good salaries to data analysts. This course is intended for Junior-stage Data Science students, and can allow them to establish, define, and explore numerous potential issues and initiatives, for comply with-up in the capstone course sequence. is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate promoting program designed to supply a way for sites to earn promoting charges by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

From Predictive Analytics using Python to Machine Learning and from information visualization to Big Data everything is roofed in the comprehensive course. I hope these FREE Data Science Courses on 360digitmg will certainly help you to reinforce your knowledge of science and machine learning skills. If you've any doubt or questions, feel free to ask me within the remark section. After attempting a bunch of free on-line sources to be taught python, a colleague benefited from 360digitmg.

Data science seeks to seek out patterns in knowledge and use those patterns to predict future data. It draws on machine studying to course of giant quantities of information, discover patterns, and predict developments. It attracts from many scientific fields, and as a science, it progresses by creating new algorithms to analyze information and validate current methods. It is among the many best knowledge science courses for working professionals because it’s completely on-line and doesn’t require you to quit your job for continuing your studies. You will receive 25 expert coaching periods for doubt decision and progress feedback. This course sequence is likely one of the most enrolled in and highly rated course collections on this record.

I found courses, books, and papers that taught the things I wished to know, and then I utilized them to my project as I was learning. I discovered so much in a such short time period that it looks like an improbable feat if laid out as a curriculum. When becoming a member of any of those courses you need to make the same commitment to studying as you would in direction of a college course.

Yes, 360digitmg is sweet for brief courses that present sufficient info in a short period of time. 360digitmg is an Inexpensive, simple-to-use platform and has extra particular courses on information science. This Machine Learning Training will also assist you to understand the ideas of Statistics, Time Series, and totally different lessons of machine learning algorithms like supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement algorithms. Throughout the Machine Learning Training, you’ll be fixing actual-life case studies on Media, Healthcare, Social Media, Aviation, HR. Self-guided (but structured!) studying paths fully empower your solo research sessions day after day, but there's no purpose to do itall alone.

This is an entry-degree course so don’t count on to get detailed information about the topic. This is the basic step that you need to take so as to lead a successful data analyst profession. You will also know what areas are essential in Data Science and therefore could make informed selections on what areas to concentrate on learning. You can be a part of a couple of these programs to be taught Data Science from scratch and add an in-demand skill to your resume.

Since the primary course in this collection doesn’t spend any time instructing primary Python ideas, you must already be comfy with programming. Spending a while going via a platform like Treehouse would in all probability get you in control for the primary course. An extremely extremely rated course — 4.9/5 on SwichUp and four.8/5 on CourseReport — which is taught live by a knowledge scientist from a prime company.

Python being some of the broadly used languages is the brand new mantra for success. It is the primary tool for analytical professionals and is likely one of the high programming languages within the year 2019. Our purpose is to make the students get acquainted with python and become proficient in the most well-liked programming language.

It is likely one of the greatest options for science graduate students to go for pursuing a Master’s in Data Science after finishing their commencement. Data Science is a subject of study that offers the gathering, analysis, and processing of numerous information or info to extract options. It offers the understanding of many structured and unstructured data with specialised information to get the required insights.

By completing the assignments and lectures, you'll earn the certification of completion, which could be showcased in job purposes. If you’re extra involved within the machine studying aspect of information science, take a look at the Top 5 Machine Learning Courses for 2020 as a complement to this text. When I first began studying information science and machine learning, I began by making an attempt to predict stocks.

If you plan on taking this course it would be a good idea to pair it with a separate statistics and likelihood course as well. With an excellent mixture of theory and software, this course from Harvard is one of the finest for getting began as a newbie. It’s not on an interactive platform, like Coursera or edX, and doesn’t supply any type of certification, however it positively prices your time and it’s totally free. The one downside of this MicroMaster’s, and lots of courses on 360digitmg , is that they aren’t offered as incessantly as different platforms.

Explore more on - data science course in hyderabad with placements

360DigiTMG - Data Analytics, Data Science Course Training Hyderabad

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Contact us ( 099899 94319 )

Hours: Sunday - Saturday 7 AM - 11 PM

[experttal]

Hire Python Developers | Dedicated Python Programmers | Experttal Hiring A Python Developer

Hire Skilled Python Developers on ExpertTal and Get Work Done on a Flexible and Secure Platform

Today, Python has grown so much that it is not only limited to data science, and Machine Learning, but it also extends to industries such as web development and IoT. Therefore, for machine learning engineers and scientists, Python is a backbone tool today. This makes role of the Python developer very effective in the development of python, which is why there is a demand and usage of python developers in many multinational companies.

How to Hire a Great Python Developer

For a moment put yourself in a scenario where you have received some huge funds from investors and got a chance to show off your product in the market. Full of enthusiasm, you get ready and hire an engineering team to work on the first version. As time passes, your funds are all dried up and you have got nothing in hand to show to your investors.

Unfortunately, this is a very common situation in the current scenario and happens with a lot of business owners who work with inexperienced Python developers for the sake of saving costs. We are here to save you from following this approach that will end up in more significant expenses, stress, and fuss.

Here the question arises how would you avoid it? Hiring skilled and experienced Python developers is your one stop solution.Here’s what you should know to hire skillful developers who will work on your product at full capacity.Understand the correlation between different technologies and their structure

When you start searching for the best python developer then your job is not just to search through bunches of CVs but It’s about searching for a person who’s having deep knowledge of the technology stack and development tools.

Learn to analyze the full picture of the candidate’s experience, define whether they grew their skills over time, what projects they participate in, and what new tools they’ve learned during their career. Once you have done a thorough analysis , you can easily evaluate the candidate’s expertise and learning capability.

Providing information about your project will draw attention of candidates

To draw the attention of the best candidates, you need to pique their interest and provide value. The best way to do this is by describing all the ins and outs of your project, the benfits it will cause to the target audience, and its potential for the future. Also it’s essential for you to inform the candidates whether it’s a short or long-term project and what career growth opportunities it will offer them.

Points to consider before hiring a Python Developer

Hiring a Python programmer is not a piece of cake. Before rolling up your sleeves and sorting through CVs, you should know exactly who you’re looking for. We have pin pointed the main points that you should keep in mind:

Defining your project’s scope and complexity is must

Before hiring a development team, defining your project scope and its complexity should be on your priority list. Creating a document that describes the purpose of your product, its goals and benefits, main users, and potential scale can be a good idea. All these factors will define the size of your development team and the experience level of the python developers you need.

Be clear about what stage is your product at

The development time and the size of your developer team will solely depend on the stage of your project. If you already have some features I mind and looking to scale your product, then it can take some time for python developers to analyze the project logic and architecture and examine the existing code.

Each project is different. There’s no one-size-fits-all. Keep in mind what stage your product is at and its complexity when looking for python developers.

Tech stack features & complexity defines the expertise of your developers

Tech stack, features, and the complexity of your product will define the expertise your engineers need, as well as the tools they should be experienced in. For example, if you are using any specific software in your project, you need to make sure that the developer has experience with it and can start working with it quickly.

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[dailynewswebsite]

How QAnon conspiracy theory memes are spreading on Facebook in the UK

Far proper memes from the US are being shared and unfold within the UK. TY Lim/Shutterstock

A headteacher in Stoke-on-Trent informed me that, alongside making certain a COVID-safe return to highschool for her pupils this September, she’s having to reassure mother and father that their youngsters is not going to be forcibly taken away and remoted in a secret location if they begin coughing at school.

The headteacher retains getting despatched a Fb submit warning mother and father to “get up” to the menace within the UK’s Coronavirus Act. “Is that this true, can you’re taking my youngster?” she is requested.

The Fb submit these mother and father had seen started going viral mid-August. It’s certainly one of a number of comparable posts seen within the UK and Australia, and follows a sample in lots of posts linked to the QAnon conspiracy concept. These usually embody a direct enchantment to oldsters, difficult the reader to do their very own analysis to “show” the veracity of the declare, a name to defend particular person rights towards large authorities, elites, or some undefined “they”.

A part of a Fb submit from August 11 that was marked as false data by Fb. by way of Fb

Regardless of being rapidly fact-checked and tagged as false, this and associated posts which use the hashtag #SaveTheChildren are nonetheless circulating and the phrase “covid act 2020 youngsters in class” nonetheless comes up as an autofill possibility for those who seek for “covid act” on Google.

Learn extra: QAnon conspiracy theories in regards to the coronavirus pandemic are a public well being menace

The facility of memes

For the previous 5 years, my analysis has checked out how strangers discuss with one another about politics on Fb. I’ve centered on 4 English constituencies – Stoke-on-Trent Central, Burton and Uttoxeter, Bristol West and Brighton Pavilion – monitoring conversations by way of public pages, posts and public data on folks’s timelines and profiles.

By means of the 2015, 2017 and 2019 UK basic elections, I noticed the elevated polarisation of these Fb conversations and with it elevated incivility, partisanship and sectarianism. I used to be struck by the rising use of memes and the way a handful of core themes made their approach from meme to perception. Through the 2019 election, I observed how memes from far proper US Fb pages have been being posted and unfold by way of folks within the UK constituencies I used to be finding out.

I just lately determined to discover how the upcoming US election may be translating into partisan concepts on Fb within the UK. I made a decision to give attention to one meme, and the person Fb customers who cared sufficient about that concern to share or remark publicly – and see the place it took me.

So, in late August, I returned to Fb after a seven-month hole and picked the meme that occurred to be on the prime of my timeline – a submit from the group Migrant Watch shared by the web page of UKIP Brighton & Hove. This was constantly probably the most energetic meme-seeders among the many constituency get together Fb teams I comply with.

The place can one meme take you? Creator offered

I’d discovered hyperlinks over the last election between the energetic seeding of anti-migrant, anti-immigration memes by UK customers and US far-right organisations and people, and so I anticipated to seek out comparable hyperlinks by way of that meme. However the meme additionally led me to profiles that appeared to belong to UK moms and grandmothers participating with QAnon conspiracy theories from the US. This follows a sample seen by different researchers on this discipline, for instance Daniel Halpern and his colleagues who discovered girls and folks with politically right-leaning views extra prone to share conspiracy theories. Different analysis has discovered that excessive political beliefs – whether or not to the far-right or far-left of the spectrum – are a predictor of perception in conspiracy theories, and that motivated reasoning leads us to imagine what we need to imagine.

So in deciding on to give attention to a meme seeded by a bunch on the political proper (or far-right, relying by yourself perspective) it ought to maybe be anticipated to see some engagement with conspiracy theories. What was uncommon, based mostly on the findings of my 2017 and 2019 analysis, was what number of girls have been sharing theories that originated with QAnon.

QAnon conspiracies

Of the 45 folks to touch upon this Migration Watch meme shared by Brighton & Hove UKIP – 27 have been girls and most, from what I may inform from their profiles, have been apparently middle-aged grandmothers. Once I checked out what different content material these girls have been sharing, I discovered memes about anti-animal cruelty, anti-Black Lives Matter protests, anti-BBC proms and content material in favour of Brexit.

A few of the girls have been additionally anxious in regards to the menace to “our” youngsters posed by paedophile rings. And on this they demonstrated the subsequent degree of political meme sharing – freely interacting with content material from each the UK and the US.

For one lady that meant sharing conspiracy theories from Mama Wolf, one of many Fb accounts circulating QAnon content material. One in all these was entitled “Epstein Islands frequent flyers” a hotch-potch of unfounded accusations linking Hilary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Invoice Gates, Madonna, the Queen, and different (principally black or Jewish) “elites” to the late Jeffrey Epstein, a worldwide youngster trafficking community, medicine harvested from youngsters’s blood, and secret messages coded into Trump’s press briefings on his plans to avoid wasting the kids.

I discovered one of many similar Fb customers who had shared the Migration Watch meme additionally sharing a submit calling for folks to flood the BBC’s Fb web page on August 25 with the #saveourchildren tag. “They received’t cowl youngster trafficking so we’ll carry it to them. It’s time to take this up a degree,” mentioned the meme.

Hidden radicalisation

The bubble communities we inhabit on Fb defend us from various views to our personal, whereas additionally making it simpler for views to be bolstered, enhanced ��� groomed even – in direction of extra radical positions.

Fb encourages swimming pools of the like-minded, whether or not by way of structure that encourages what the activist Eli Pariser’s termed “filter bubbles”, or what the psychologist Daniel Kahneman known as “cognitive ease” – our willingness to imagine concepts which can be acquainted, snug – simple – to imagine, and to keep away from concepts that may take effort to simply accept. It’s additionally attainable to sport Fb’s algorithms to govern public opinion, because the investigative work of journalists equivalent to Carole Cadwalladr and Craig Silverman has proven.

However seeing a radical meme isn’t sufficient to set off extra of the identical content material, it’s how we work together with the content material that issues to Fb. The depth of curiosity wanted to remark after which share a political thought will set off extra of the identical and, doubtlessly, take the person by way of growing ranges of radicalisation.

An individual with casually racist views can rapidly turn out to be groomed in direction of adopting extra radical views.

It may be tempting to dismiss the anti-mask protesters or teams marching to Buckingham Palace to #SaveOurChildren as just a few thousand cranks in a sea of wise folks. However we have no idea the dimensions of the iceberg – beneath every seen protester could also be 1000’s of partial believers, together with an unknown variety of folks serving to QAnon to develop.

Editor’s word: this text has been up to date after publication to supply additional context about analysis on this space.

To seek out out extra in regards to the historical past of conspiracy theories, how they unfold and the way harmful they’re, hearken to our Knowledgeable information to conspiracy theories, a collection by The Dialog’s The Anthill podcast. Pay attention right here, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or seek for The Anthill wherever you get your podcasts.

Sue Greenwood doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that may profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/how-qanon-conspiracy-theory-memes-are-spreading-on-facebook-in-the-uk/ via https://growthnews.in

[amymarie23]

Week 4: Data Management and Visualization

Work Before Week 4 I completed a bunch of data management to be able to get week 4: https://amymarie23.tumblr.com/post/620203304691138560/before-week-4-data-management

Week 4 code and output:  https://amymarie23.tumblr.com/post/620202907488436224/before-week-4-data-management

 Research Question: Is an earlier age at onset of drinking associated with more relatives who drink in the family?

 Data Analysis

Variable:

·         AGEDEPENDENCE and TOTALRELATIVES

o   Describe AGEDEPENDENCE – age of onset of alcohol dependence

§  Count: 5008 participants

§  Unique: 8 (8 age categories or ranges)

§  Top: 15-25 (most picked) with a frequency of 3312 participants

§  Frequency: 3312

 o   TOTALRELATIVES for AGE DEPENDENCE

§  Total Relatives – sum of the number of parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who had drinking problems

§  Count: 5008 participants

§  Mean: 1.209265

§  Standard Deviation:  2.172356

 ·         AGESTARTDRINKING and TOTALRELATIVES

o   Describe AGESTARTSRINKING – age when participant started drinking more than sips or tastes of alcohol on a regular basis

§  Total Relatives – sum of the number of parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who had drinking problems

§  Count: 33,891 participants

§  Unique: 8 (8 age categories or ranges)

§  Top: 15-25 (most picked) with a frequency of 26,858 participants

§  Frequency: 26,858

 o   TOTALRELATIVES for AGE DEPENDENCE

§  Count: 33,891 participants

§  Mean: 0.736331

§  Standard Deviation: 1.640893

 Figure 1- Number of Participants Who Started Drinking More Than Sips of Alcohol at Each Age Range

·         Unimodal and skewed right

 Figure 2- Number of Participants with Onset of Alcohol Dependence at Each Age Range

·         Unimodal and skewed right

 Figures 3a and 3b: Number of Participants that Start Drinking More Than Sips or Tastes of Alcohol Within Given Age Range that have that Number of Total Relatives

·  Total Relatives

o   0-8: unimodal distribution that is skewed right

o   9-11 (>10):  uniform distribution

Figures 4a and 4b: Number of Participants with Age of Onset of Alcohol Dependence Within Given Age Range that have that Number of Total Relatives

·Total Relatives

o   0-9, 11: unimodal distribution that is skewed right

o   10: bimodal distribution

  Determining an Association

Explanatory Variable – Total Number of Relatives – Quantitative

Response Variable – Age Onset Alcohol Dependence 0r Age Start Drinking - Quantitative

 Figure 5: Black Scatter Plot - Scatterplot for the Association Between Total Relatives and Age Started Dinking More than Sips              

·         X-Axis - Total Number of Relatives with Drinking Problems

·         Y-Axis –Age Started Drinking More Than Sips or Tastes of Alcohol

 Figure 6 Blue Scatter Plot - Scatterplot for the Association Between Total Relatives and Age of Onset of Alcohol Dependence

·         X-Axis - Total Number of Relatives with Drinking Problems

·         Y-Axis- Age of Onset of Alcohol Dependence

 Conclusions for Data

Tables 3 and 4 clearly show that as the age range decreases, the number of relatives with drinking problems increases.  Figures 3a, 3b, 4a, and 4b graphically show this association.

Both scatterplots indicate more relatives with drinking problems are associated with younger participants in both age of onset of alcohol dependence and age when start drinking more than sips or tastes.

Therefore, I conclude that an earlier age of onset of drinking is associated with an increased number of relatives with drinking problems.

[evanvanness]

Annotated edition for Week in Ethereum News Feb 9

There’s too much going on in Ethereum for Substack!

This edition was so massive that I found out that Substack (my email provider) has a character limit, because it started giving me warnings when I wasn’t even done.  So to make space, I cut out some of the default language in the bottom sections that few people read.  Probably should switch some of that language up anyway.

Link for standard version of Week in Ethereum News without my commentary.

Eth1

Latest core devs call. Beiko’s notes

EIP1962 generalized elliptic curve and pairing engine implementation in Go

Nethermind v1.6.1 – better tip of the chain tracking and reorg handling, JSON RPC bugfixes

Parity v2.7.2 and the next steps for Parity client maintenance under GPL3 (though reportedly most participants preferred a more permissive license)

Slockit’s Incubed ultralight client server setup wizard

On the core devs call, they’re going over what makes sense to include in the next fork.  The second EIP1962 implementation is the link in here, important because it’s the alternative to the MatterLabs implementation for the generalized precompile.

Nethermind continues to improve with constant releases.   Parity kicked off their “OpenEthereum” transition of the client to the community.  Apparently the DAO idea is on the backburner - if reports on Twitter are to be believed, they would have held the majority of the tokens.  That’s crazy, presumably the idea was that they’d be giving them out over time to the contributors.  It would have been nice to have a better writeup somewhere

Headsup: at some point there is going to be (another) fight over ProgPoW.  It’s an odd beast where both sides are convinced that they have already won - meaning that anger and disgruntled ragequits are almost guaranteed.  

If you’re the sort of person who ragequits because you didn’t get your way, then there’s a reason why forks of Ethereum exist.

Eth2

Danny Ryan’s quick eth2 update – it’s optimization time

What’s New in Eth2

Latest eth2 call. Notes from Mamy and Ben.

Jim McDonald: defining eth2 network metrics

A look at Rocketpool’s GUI

Nimbus’ first mobile testnet on Android. Plus part 2 of building Nimbus on Android.

Eth2 research team ask me anything on Reddit

Rocketpool is currently the 3rd most clicked of this week’s issue.  I’ve been of the opinion that CLI is fine for staking - most people who are willing to stake their ETH at the start can handle a CLI, I think.  Rocketpool is conservatively estimating to go live in Q4 - I imagine that the staking rewards will be substantially higher in q3 pre-rocketpool, and then will go down again around q1 2021 when exchanges/custody services start staking for their customers.

Nimbus mobile testnet is neat.  The idea has always been that you can run a validator on a mobile phone.  It’s happening!

Layer2

Batch Deposits for [op/zk] rollup / mixers / MACI

Matic explains advantages and limitations of Plasma and rollups

A relatively straightforward section this week. 

Stuff for developers

Kendrick Tan’s practical guide to building zk dapps

Kimi Wu’s hands on your first zk dapp

OpenZeppelin contracts v2.5 – with CREATE2, enumerableset and big NFT gas savings

Remix v0.9.3 – you can now test the functionality of receive & fallback functions

ABDK adds a number converter to its online toolkit

ethers.js and Google’s Bigquery

Alethio adds API endpoints for Rinkeby, Kovan and Ropsten testnets, as well as webhooks

MythX, Quantstamp, Runtime Verification, Sooho, SmartDec and ConsenSys Diligence starting Ethereum Trust Alliance, a security rating system for deployed Eth code

Time travel queries using a subgraph from The Graph

Brownie now supports Vyper

Microsoft’s Azure Eth development kit is now generally available

A write up of the bug that Sam Sun found in three of Kyber’s bridge reserves

EthVigil’s interactive tutorials for devs new to Ethereum concepts

3Box Comments and Chatbox plugins now have emojis, likes, and votes

I like to highlight the zk stuff as it’s clearly the future.  

Sam Sun just keeps finding bugs.   

Checkout the EthVigil tutorials.  They look pretty slick!

Though it’s still early days (the standard thing to say on every panel at every crypto conference), a sign of maturity is that things like Microsoft’s Eth dev kit being generally available isn’t an earth shattering headline anymore.  Everyone now knows that all the world’s biggest companies are experimenting with this technology, almost always on Ethereum, yet they’re also often quiet about it.  

It’s usually safe to just replace “blockchain” with “Ethereum” in most MSM headlines.

Ecosystem

Why ENS uses Ethereum and not a new basechain. (Also: ENS’ registry migration is complete)

How Whisper-fork Waku does DNS based discovery

ConsenSys lays off 14% as part of strategic transformation

Matt Leising says he knows who the DAO hacker is

SHPLONK, an explainer of last week’s paper from Boneh, Drake, Fisch, and Gabizon

Matt Leising has identified...the best way to sell a book by claiming that he has  identified the DAO hacker.  He’s been teasing it for a bit.  I sure hope this holds up better than the Newsweek “scoop” identifying Dorian Nakamoto as Satoshi.  After it was clearly debunked, the Newsweek authors kept claiming that their “forensic analysis” was correct.  Embarrassing.  Let’s see the evidence.

The zk naming schemes are great.  Zero knowledge is one of those things that is exploding because of blockchain.

ConsenSys had a round of layoffs this week, though as you see below, it also acquired a municipal bond broker-dealer.  Coverage was actually reasonable - it’s another sign that perhaps this industry is (sometimes) growing up a bit.

Enterprise

ConsenSys acquires Heritage Financial Systems, a municipal bond broker-dealer, to tokenize them on Codefi

Governance and standards

Two articles on DigixDAO dissolution: as an example of DAOs working (though just 58 addresses voted out of 11,000+) and Coinfund looks at the Digix voting power

Why ragequit is game changing

Live on mainnet

Colony is in public beta live on mainnet

First 10,000 zkDai is on Aztec

Mattereum’s asset passports are live on mainnet

District0x’s District Registry is live on mainnet, a TCR for its community

Coronavirus whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang is memorialized on mainnet

AirSwap Delegates is live on mainnet. Configure automated trading rules, onchain limit orders, liquidity integration with Kyber, and ability to add new tokens

I love the idea of Colony and want to get a chance to test it.

I had to break up the app layer section this week because there were just too many things.  Obviously a DeFi heavy list, and many of the things in the next “application layer” section are also on mainnet.  Things are shipping!  The distinction between the two sections was a bit arbitrary, as is always the case.

Application layer

DeFi hit $1 billion USD equivalent locked up

Maker Dai Stability Fee 8%; DSR 7.5%

Data viz on Maker’s Sai to Dai migration success

A spreadsheet of admin keys in DeFi

Etherisc’s flight insurance app returns on Rinkeby testnet using Chainlink

Idle Finance v2 (an autobalancer similar to Staked’s RAY)

Collateral Swap – swap between Maker collateral (eg, ETH<>BAT) with Aave + Uniswap

List of DeFiZaps – one click to do a bunch of DeFi actions

Gelato, a no code bot to automate your Ethereum tasks. Tutorial

Gauntlet’s analysis of why Uniswap is a good oracle

Credentify, an API to issue standard European education credentials stacked into ECTS

Circles’s universal basic income is live on Kovan testnet

Maple Loans undercollateralized loans through communities with the option to slice up the risk CDO-style

Zero Collateral loans with cDai, live on mainnet (but unaudited alpha software)

Dharma’s dtokens – wrappers around Compound tokens, a la rDai, but for services to take profits. In this case, 10% of interest to Dharma

DeFi hitting $1b USD is definitely the story of the week.  Of course there are criticisms you can make (it’s risky, the risks are cascading, there will likely be some kind of crisis at some point, oracles are centralized, etc etc) but as Josh Stark and I wrote in our Year in Ethereum 2019 piece, DeFi is an alternative financial system and in many ways a remarkably better one.   Way less paperwork, much less settlement times, better transparency, not to count the various improvements on censorship-resistance, trustlessness, permissionlessness, etc.

I liked Avichal’s tweet:

Imagine a Fintech startup tweeted: "We launched two years ago. Today we have $1 Billion in collateral and have given out a cumulative of $1B in loans!" Every VC in the world would want to know what the hell the startup does and how it works. 2020 is going to be wild for crypto. pic.twitter.com/yb8gfISSoX

— Avichal Garg (Electric Capital) ⚡ (@avichal)

February 7, 2020

One thing we linked in the Year in Eth piece was a story about a Turkish football star who is now driving for Uber because Erdogan froze his bank accounts in Turkey.  I take the story with a small grain of salt, but it’s a reminder than any wealth you save is...sometimes not really yours if it resides in a bank. 

Unsecured/undercollateralized loans is definitely becoming an area of experimentation, with multiple projects on Ethereum.  

Tokens/Business/Regulation

Hester Peirce speech proposing an SEC safe harbor for tokens

Op-ed: America falling behind the world in blockchain

Viewing GDPR from a blockchain lens

6 central banks to talk digital currency in April

Ethereum needs more entrepreneurs and product people just as much as more devs

Are stablecoins parasites on ETH?

Why ETH will sustain a monetary premium

The SEC should have figured out some kind of safe harbor in 2016, and then we wouldn’t have had the mania and fraud and misallocation of capital that occurred in 2017 that set the space back.   But still, better late than never - though certainly some things have happened outside of the US because of the SEC.  Decentralization in action!

Kames’s article calling for more entrepreneurs is an interesting one.  Is more devs the bottleneck or is it better entrepreneurs?  

I’ve never liked the “monetary premium” angle.    What I do find amusing is how many Bitcoiners point to something written at the peak of BTC’s 2017 bubble where a legacy finance guy tries to get his friends to buy BTC (I hope they ignored him then!) and not ETH with the argument that ETH is intrinsically valuable, but BTC is not, therefore all the value will accrue to BTC.

Only in crypto, folks.

General

Dispelling Bitcoin maximalist myths about Ethereum

a visual introduction to Merkle trees

Accelerating powers-of-tau ceremonies with optimistic pipelining

How does cryptocurrency have value, part 2 of Maker’s intro series

It’s impressive how much fake news is created about Ethereum by Bitcoin maximalists.  I’m convinced that a decent chunk of Bitcoin holders actually think that Ethereum runs on Infura, and another chunk think that an Eth full node needs 10 TB.  A bunch of the crypto clickbait media feeds these falsehoods because they can get cheap clicks from Bitcoiners.   

If you don’t know what a Merkle tree is, check out the intro.  

See you next week.  Somehow I’ll try to get an issue out in the midst of EthDenver.

[appdesignworld-blog]

Apps Within Apps: UX Lessons from WeChat Mini Programs

WeChat, the most popular social Mobile App Development company  application in China, had 1 billion monthly active users as of March 2018. A product update at the end of 2017 introduced a new significant function from the program: WeChat miniature programs (such as mini games). Mini apps are much like programs, but they're built within WeChat: they believe as though apps within a bigger app.

Mobile site

Native app

WeChat official accounts for that Provider

We wondered how Folks perceive the gap between these different Stations and whether specific jobs are better suited to a single channel than to another. To find out, we conducted a usability-testing research with 10 WeChat consumers in Beijing.

Even in the Event That You won't be designing a WeChat miniature app, the user-experience Consequences of the type of extensible user interface really are intriguing. Traditionally, websites and software programs are closed packages that can't be extended by consumers or third party providers. In contrast, the WeChat mini apps are another experience architecture, associated with goods such as:

Add-ins for broad software packages, such as browser Toolbars and spreadsheet toolpacks (e.g., statistical analysis features which may be inserted into Excel for those few users who perform ANOVAs, without confusing the huge masses)

Facebook Messenger App, which affirms third-party matches, News, and shopping services within the Gamesand Discover segments of the app.

Integration apps Provided by SaaS (Software as a Service) Companies (by way of instance, Slack users can install integrations that let them connect to a Google Calendar event or a Trello card directly from within the Slack application.)

Intro to WeChat Mini Programs

For those not familiar with miniature programs, below are a Couple of examples of What they are and how they work.

Mini apps are mobile programs built for and within the WeChat platform. There are mini programs for games, food shipping, shopping, ticket revenue, home solutions, image editing, and more.

Users mentioned this feature and believed that it would Save storage space on their phone.

Discovery happens primarily from online social sharing and Offline QR-code scanning. Offline, ads with QR-codes promote miniature programs. By way of example, a shopping mall promoted a miniature application for prepaying parking fees.

Mini apps can be accessed in the WeChat home display, but Because WeChat's chief function is chatting, the house screen is devoted to current conversations. To see mini apps, users will need to swipe down from the top; this action shows a listing of recently used miniature apps. Although swiping was easy and convenient for regular min-program users, new or infrequent users weren't likely to detect programs in their own unless they staged down or someone shared a program with them.

5 UX Lessons from WeChat Mini Programs

1. Maintain the core functionality and content that users expect.

Individuals who have used your business's (full-sized) app have mental Models and expectations concerning the material or services you provide. If a miniature version of an application makes it almost impossible for users to find the center content they want, people will use the app they're acquainted with rather.

Of the JD shopping miniature program was not as informative as the JD mobile program:"On the [cellular app's] homepage, I can browse for discount information [she swipes via the carousel of pictures at the top]. It also displays whatever I've seen and bought, and recommends more similar items. All that information will probably NOT be shown from the mini program." She believed that the miniature program had less content, and so she did not want to store on it. Another user, a 24-year-old female, had a similar Issue Using a mini-program version of a food-delivery service called Meituan. "The first thing I do when I open the delivery app is getting a few coupons. That app will automatically demonstrate some coupons every time you log into, and that I don't know if the miniature program is going to do that." She opened the miniature program and was frustrated:"No, there aren't any [vouchers ]. This is all expensive. Also, there aren't as many promotions displayed [in the carousel] as in the business app."

If a mini program can't do everything that the cellular app can, it must Support a handoff solution--an easy way for users to move between the mini program and the mobile app or website to view the full content.

2. Always consider the context of use. On cellular, support Quick pursuits and layout for interruption.

Throughout our study, many people complained that if a WeChat message arrived While they have been in a mini program, they couldn't readily check the message and resume their activity from the program. Rather, they needed to give up the program to see messages. Regrettably, some miniature programs did not save users' progress, forcing them to begin again. Since, in its heart, WeChat is a social-communication tool, miniature programs should be made to accommodate multitasking. To minimize the chance of disturbance, flows should be effective and have minimum interaction price. Here are some suggestions for implementing these principles:

Save users' progress in order that they can go back to a job later. A Racing mini game called Joyful Ball enabled users to save their progress and return to it later. A 20-year-old male user complimented this attribute:"I play it mainly on public transport and in class once I am bored. It is all fragmented moment. This allows me to stop and go back to it without losing my place, which is good."

This type of reminder will help users who whined that they had left something in their own shopping cart. Item from the cart.

Minimize consumer attempt by having good defaults based on WeChat-account data. By way of example, the JD miniature program could automatically fill users' information (address and phone number) on the webpage, because JD accounts are directly connected to customers' WeChat accounts. Therefore, even users who start the JD miniature app for the first time may appreciate"one-click payment" and not have to enter their information.

3. Take advantage of the platform's core functionality.

Many users said that they learned about most mini programs and miniature Games from group chats or by friends. Good mini programs make the most of the WeChat's core functionality, which is communication. By way of instance, JD's mini program promoted bunch purchases on the homepage even more than the mobile app did. (Group purchases operate by providing a discount on a product if enough people agree to purchase the product. When an item doesn't get enough orders, no one receives the item.) The emphasis on team purchases makes sense in the WeChat circumstance, because the platform makes it easy for users to share a link to their WeChat friends and encourage them to participate in a group purchase.

Encouraging users to share is good for your organization. But Don't overdo it! During our testing, many users complained that miniature programs, especially mini games, driven them to share content with other people. Participants explained,"If I need to talk about a game to get rewards and continue playing, I'd rather not even get the benefits," and"Compulsory sharing is your worst." A 20-year-old man user stated,"People will share on their own in case you have really great content -- Don't force me to perform it like a pyramid scheme."

4. Design miniature apps with infrequent users in your mind.

Many of our research participants stated that they prefer mini programs for Services that they only use sometimes, to save space on their phone. By way of instance, a user explained,"If I just need to use the function once a month, I'd use the mini program. By way of instance, dry cleaning. I do not need to download an app for cleaning. I could only use the mini program." Designers must figure out the requirements of occasional customers and tackle them at the mini app directly.

A fantastic example is the SF Express mini application for postal shipments. Compared with the more comprehensive mobile program, this mini program addressed occasional usage by centering the layout around the most common user activity, Schedule pickup.

App (left) featured Program   react native development company  pickup, which was the primary demand for consumers who sometimes used the support; compared, the corresponding mobile program (appropriate ) had many more features. Infrequent use necessitates intense usability and also an emphasis On quick learning, because you can't assume that users will accumulate knowledge about the layout with extended use. Traditional usability guidelines also apply to miniature programs. Here's an illustration from our study:

Design easy navigation for learnability. For Example, Carrefour's miniature program used texts and icons in the navigation bar, which has been favorable for older adults. A 55-year-old male user who didn't even know how to search for a mini program might easily browse different categories and things in this program, since it was easy and intuitive enough.

5. Confirm smooth cross-channel transitions.

A customer can interact with an organization on many different stations: The mobile app, a mobile site, a desktop site, a WeChat mini program, a WeChat official accounts, and so on. Designers should consider that the entire customer journey, providing a smooth user experience across channels.

Simplify channel switching. A Fantastic example is How JD shopping told users once the thing they wanted was back in stock. Since, unlike WeChat official reports, mini programs are not able to send notifications, the JD mini app offered a QR-code of their corresponding JD WeChat official account; after this accounts allowed users to get messages from JD and discover when their item became available. During our testing, a user followed this procedure and got a notification for the VR glasses he wished to order. He remarked,"it's quite considerate of this company."

Deliver some content before requesting users to switch to another Channel. Switching between stations has a high perceived price: users need to think that the transition would be well worth the effort so as to create it. During our testing, 1 mini program required an individual to follow along with the company's WeChat accounts to get more information about its products. Since this petition was too much too soon (she'd hardly opened the mini program and clicked a button), she left the program immediately.

A miniature program asked Users to subscribe to the organization's WeChat account shortly after they opened the program and then clicked on a button on the homepage. 1 study manager left the mini programimmediately.

Offer easy avenues for switching channels. Throughout She wanted to download the cell program, but she browsed and couldn't find any method to access the cell program from the miniature program.

Conclusion

WeChat mini programs are a brand new interaction channel; such new stations can Be anticipated to arise anywhere, any time. Designers must be nimble and adapt their products to these new ways of interaction.

To take advantage of these new microsoft  opportunities, it is important to Know their strengths and limitations. If you find yourself designing an app in a app or designing for limited-functionality channels (e.g., a smartwatch, a voice assistant), keep these points in mind:

Add value to this product based on the circumstance and Frequency of use.

Think about the cost of switching stations and how to create transitions seamless.

Deliver content and graphics for this platform's users.

[software-testing-tips]

The Beginner's Guide to Usability Software Testing

Usability software testing is a way of evaluating a product or site's user experience. By testing the usability of the product or website with a representative group of their users or customers, UX investigators can ascertain if their real users can easily and intuitively utilize their product or website.

UX researchers will typically conduct usability studies on each iteration of their merchandise by its early development to its release. This allows UX investigators to uncover any problems with their product's user experience, decide how to correct these problems, and ultimately determine whether the product is usable.

Identifying and fixing these new problems saves the company both time and money: developers do not need to overhaul the code of a poorly designed product that is already built, and the product team is more likely to launch it on schedule.

After conducting their analysis, they will assess the results and report some interesting insights into the job lead.

Advantages of Usability Testing

Usability software testing provides an unbiased, precise, and direct examination of your product or site's user experience. By analyzing its efficacy on a sample of actual users who are detached from the sum of a total investment your team has put into creating and designing the product or site, their feedback can solve most of your team's internal debates.

Usability software testing is convenient. To run your study, all you need to do is find a quiet room and bring in portable recording gear. If you don't have recording gear, someone on your team could just take notes.

Usability testing can tell you what your users do on your website or product and the reason why they take these activities.

Usability testing allows you to address your merchandise or website's issues before you spend a lot of money producing something which ends up using a bad design.

For your enterprise, the instinctive design promotes customer usage and their results, driving demand for your product.

Phases of a Usability Study

Choose which part of your product or website you want to test. Do you have any pressing questions regarding how your customers will interact with certain parts of your design, like a particular interaction or workflow? Or are you wondering exactly what users will do first when they land on your product page? Gather your thoughts about your product or website's pros, cons, and areas of improvement, so that you can produce a good hypothesis for your own study.

Select your study's tasks.

Your participants' tasks need to become your consumer's most common goals when they socialize with your product or website, like creating a purchase.

Set a standard for success.

For instance, when I had been in a usability study for HubSpot's Content Strategy instrument, I had to incorporate a blog post to a bunch and report what I did.

Compose a research plan and script.

At the beginning of your script, you need to include the goal of the study, if you are going to be documenting, some history about the solution or website, questions to find out about the participants' current knowledge of the product or site, and, ultimately, their activities. To create your study consistently, impartial, and scientific, moderators should stick to the same script in each user session.

Delegate roles.

Whoever on your staff is best at staying impartial, not giving in to social stress, and making participants feel comfortable when pushing them to complete the tasks should be your moderator

Note-taking throughout the analysis is also just as important. When there's no recorded data, you can't extract any insights that will prove or disprove your theory. Your team's most attentive listener ought to be your note-taker through the research.

Locate Your participants

With such a tiny sample size, it is difficult to replicate your actual user base on your study.

To recruit the ideal participants for your study, create the most detailed and specific personality as you possibly can and incentivize them to participate with a gift card or a different monetary reward.

Recruiting colleagues from different departments who'd possibly use your product is yet another option. However, you don't need any of your team members to be aware of the participants because their private relationship can create prejudice -- since they would like to be wonderful to one another, the researcher may aid a user to complete a task or the consumer might not want to re criticize the researcher's merchandise design.

Conduct the analysis.

Throughout the true research, you should ask your participants to finish one task at one time, without your aid or advice. In the event the participant asks you how to do something, don't say anything. You want to understand how long it takes users to find out your port.

Asking players to"think out loud" is also an effective strategy -- you will know what is going through a user's head when they interact with your product or website.

After they finish each task, ask for their feedback, like when they expected to see what they just saw, if they would have finished the task if it was not an evaluation, if they would recommend your product to a friend, and what they would change about it. This qualitative information can pinpoint more pros and cons of your own design.

Analyze your information.

You'll collect a ton of qualitative data after your study. Assessing it can allow you to discover patterns of difficulties, gauge the severity of each usability issue, and provide design recommendations into the technology team.

When you analyze your information, make certain to listen to both the consumers' performance and their feelings about the product. It's not unusual for a participant to swiftly and successfully achieve your goal but nevertheless feel negative about the product encounter.

Report on your findings.

After extracting insights in the own data, report the key takeaways and layout the upcoming steps for improving your product or site's design and the enhancements you expect to see through the next round of testing.

[goodcore101]

Custom software development process stages

One by one, here I described all development stages for custom software we follow in Syndicode (the agency I work in). Custom software development process stages in details.

In my custom software development handbook, I talked about and shared different nuances to consider before someone hired a dedicated development team to work on a product. In addition to access to the core business data, signing an NDA, and many other non-functional but important issues, you have to understand custom software development process stages.

Custom software development is an iterative process that goes through defined process stages to implement all the required features and reach the desired result. Even if we aim to create a custom product specifically tailored for the specific group of users or an organization, the development process still heavily depends on software development methodology your software development partner follows. (For example, Syndicode follows Agile methodology). But the main iteration stages are pretty similar.

Сustom software development process

includes the next stages:

Analysis and Planning

— a collection of requirements,

— research,

— changes management,

— risk management,

— software architecture.

Design

Development

— backend development,

— frontend development.

Quality Assurance and testing

Intermediate deliveries

Documentation

Maintenance (software evolution)

Reporting

If you’re looking for details, here they are.

Analysis and Planning

Collection of requirements in custom software development is a cornerstone. At this stage, we understand the niche, business values and plans of our client. Whether the client wants to launch a web app for logistics or develop an IoT platform, together we need to go through a Discovery Session. This is a meeting (online or offline) between client’s and developer’s team the main purpose of which is to define a tech stack and product’s features to be implemented. Tech stack for custom software development might contain a bunch of different technologies like Ruby, PHP, NodeJS, GoLang, Python, Swift, Kotlin, Elixir and so on… They are defined according to a technical specification created by software architect or lead developer. Find out the other Discovery Session tasks, key participants, timeframe and results.

Software development research aimed to understand the current tech trends and main characteristics of the technologies meant to be used in this particular project. All the difficulties and best practices count. Apart from the tech side, project manager and business analyst do research about implementation and maintenance prospects. SWOT for current competitors should be prepared as well. After this research, we usually create a plan for the software development process and wait for the client’s approval.

Changes management helps us to prepare, equip for and adopt all the possible changes that might appear during the process of custom software development. Because we might face changes in tech, design, business needs and priorities from the client or even the end-user anytime. Changes management is connected with risk management in software engineering. Here, risk management stands for risk containment and mitigation. We should be ready to act when a risk arises, drawing upon the experience and knowledge of the entire team to minimize the impact to the project.

There are 5 types of risks you can face working in a software development company:

New technologies (that are not tested yet)

Functional requirements There is a risk that the change in elemental requirements will likely propagate throughout the entire project, and modifications to user requirements might not translate to functional requirements.

System architecture Wrong platform, component, or architecture can have disastrous consequences.

Performance Users’ and client’s expectations on performance should be met no matter the changes and failures occurred during the process of product development.

Organizational This risk heavily depends on reliability and professional skills of your software development partner.

Design

If you’re developing a web or mobile application, one of the major things you need to get right is the way your app looks and feels. For example, if your field is eCommerce, a poorly designed app will lose you many potential customers. That is why visual design, your brand identity and user experience of your digital product play one of the most significant roles. I devoted a whole page to describe the purpose of the great UI/UX design, the main terms, history, some examples and processes for design development — read a comprehensive UI/UX design guide.

Development

Backend development handles the functionality of web applications. You can’t see it on the screen but every interaction in the human-computer system is possible thanks to backend development. Backend development refers to the server side of development where you are primarily focused on how the site works. It is code that manages user connections, connects the web to a database, and powers the web application itself.

Here in Syndicode, we work with many different languages for backend development, but Ruby is our language of choice. Ruby on Rails (Ruby’s main framework) backend development helps the workload become easier for the architects and developers through the collection of pre-packaged codes that make the development of the backend seamless and fast. It makes the entire programming a lot speedier and more profitable. As far as most businesses now want to get a web application, I compiled the list of the reasons why Rails is ideal for web app development. And here you can explore the examples of the most famous web applications built with Ruby.

Talking about frontend development I mean everything you can see on the screen. Look, feel and design — that are the 3 main parts generated by code for your digital product in frontend development. Frontend development is focused on the client side of development and responsible for seamless user experience.

In Syndicode, we use JavaScript and its main frameworks like React and Angular (and explore Vue.js as we see a lot of potential use cases for it). Also, we work with CSS and HTML.

For custom mobile development we use Ruby on Rails for mobile backends and RESTful APIs. When there’s no need for heavy effects or computations we use React Native. This technology is beneficial for marketplaces and CRM, or projects where you need just to duplicate what you have on the web and add some geofencing, notifications, and other mobile features. For native development of iOS applications, we use Swift. The same story with Android SDK — we choose it in cases when features could be implemented only in native tech stack. Also, when it’s required in the project, we work with Python, Node.js, and PHP. Also, we are big fans of Flutter.

Of course, the tech stack for custom software development might have every possible configuration, depending on the client’s needs, and we are not bound to one technology just because we like it.

QA and testing

Quality assurance is a set of activities for ensuring quality in software engineering processes. This stage ensures that software meets and complies with the defined or standardized quality specifications. QA is a process that checks the developed software to ensure it meets the desired quality measures.

Software testing is the process of checking developed software for any mistakes or bugs. This helps to validate and eventually verify the product as to whether it is ready for the market.

What is the difference between QA and testing? Put is simply, QA enhances the quality via improvement of the development process and testing enhances it via finding bugs.

Intermediate deliveries

Intermediate deliveries great because they help to provide a fast feedback loop that immediately show developers the effects of their work. Mistakes are fixed quickly, while beneficial changes can be released and deployed to customers without having to wait for a distant future release date. Find the example of continuous integration and delivery with Github, Gitflow, and Jenkins.

Documentation

Development documentation stage encompasses all written documents and materials dealing with software product development. Except for pre-development documentation (where you should describe:

vision statement;

initial assessment document with stages of development;

roadmap;

technology stack;

software requirements specifications;

wireframes and UX roadmap),

you also should add documents created in course of the software engineering process. There are only two main types of them:

coding documentation;

testing documentation.

Also, software development agency must provide post-development documentation that includes:

support papers, and

users manual.

Maintenance

Software maintenance is a continuation of the collaboration with the client to improve, modify and update software product after delivery to correct faults and to improve performance. There are 4 categories of software maintenance:

Corrective — to rectify some bugs detected while the system is in use, or to improve the performance of the system.

Adaptive — to modify and update when the customer needs the product to run on new platforms/operating systems/hardware/software.

Perfective — to support the new features or to change functionalities according to the customer’s demands.

Preventive — to prevent future problems of the software. Some problems might be not significant at this moment but may cause serious issues in the future.

Reporting

Reporting helps us to inform our client about the current stage of development or issues found or solved during the software development process. This is a critical part of effective project communications and management strategy. As in the early stages of development so as in the middle and when the product is released, we prepare a project status report. Also, there is a project management report that includes:

general product info;

status Info;

milestone review;

project summary;

issues and risks;

projects metrics, and so on.

Reporting keeps the client updated to what is happening with the custom software during its development. And reporting generates trustful relationships between a software development company and the client which guarantees transparency and loyalty — the key factors of successful cooperation.

This part of the story was related to the process you’ll go through while developing your product. But there are also aspects a business owner should consider long before the development starts. Such aspects as innovations. To be successful you have to embrace new technologies and hacks available nowadays. Do you want to know what innovations can grow your business and save money?

Thanks for reading!

(Content Source: https://syndicode.com/2019/05/23/custom-software-development-process-stages/ )