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goldenagewebnovel · 3 years

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Volume 1 Prologue

Virtual Reality.

The ever sought after paradise for everyone who loves video games.

The first virtual reality developments came in the beginning of the century, but they were all based on external hardware. Awkward remotes and gloves, bulky goggles. The hardware became smaller, sleeker, more immersive over time. But in the end, all they were was an entertaining trick — limited by what it could show and who could even physically use it.

They brought the player closer to the screen then ever before. But they could never bridge the gap between the real world and the game. The true holy grail of gaming would lie in fully immersive virtual reality; that would take you to the very edge of the screen, and then pull you inside. To wake up inside your favorite game, whenever you wanted. It was the dream that could never be.

And then came the Digital Mind Project.

A private think tank based in the city of Seattle. They gathered the world’s best programers, neurologists, biologists, and psychologists. After working for over a decade, they did it. They mapped and named every possible neural pathway in the human brain and explained it’s function. They created the first complete, digital model of the mind, and it could think like one.

Overnight, the processing speed of all technology in the world skyrocketed. Data could be processed faster and more efficiently then ever imagined. Brain diseases that seemed incurable now had mapped explanations and accessible cures.

The digital and physical revolution that resulted led some people to question where the limit really was. If you can put the human mind in a machine, couldn’t it work the other way around?

Countries, governments, armies, corporations — they all fought to develop and control this untouched potential. But the leaders of the Digital Mind Project had decided to join the race, and, just like before, they won. They developed a full scanning pod, that only required a user to sit in it. The pod would sync to the electric signals of the nerves pathways and, upon triggering sleep, allowed the person to fully connect to the machine.

They sold the design for the pods to every business that could afford it, all at the same time. In the middle of the 21st century the age of Virtual Reality had truly begun.

The first games to come out were… disappointing, to say the least. Barely more then tech demos. Allowing the player to get a unique experience but hardly qualifying as a true game. A rushed attempt at formatting a classic MMORPG as the VR game, Fields of Fighting, was a disaster. It was riddled with horribly coded AI, clunky, unnatural movements, invisible walls everywhere that could physically trap players by accident. It was unplayable.

All the technology you could ever need for VR was available, but game designers were struggling to catch up. They had to learn to think and create in a whole new dimension. The old techniques wouldn’t cut it.

That learning curve led to a drought in Full VR games. Most companies stuck to their tried and true dimension of game design, and if people were lucky they might see a halfway decent Full VR game release once or twice a year.

Then, without any warning, two of the biggest games to hit the market were released in the same year.

The first was a sprawling, open world RPG called, Record of the Ancients. Set in the fantasy genre, this was a single player game that offered its players absolute freedom of choice to explore the world and affect it however they wanted. The game held its own share of bugs and the occasional empty plain or lack of detail, but there was nothing else like it.

The second game was a massive multiplayer sci-fi battle called, Solar Forge. Players could freely participate in large scale, solar system spanning battles. Anything from piloting a ship, to organizing a galactic cruiser, to dropping into and storming an enemy vessel with your squad. Two teams ranging anywhere from 50 to 300 participants all fighting a space war to decide a victor. The largest scale fights could even span days, and a lot of people became addicted to acting as a space marine.

These two games sold more then anyone dared to dream, proving just how unique Full VR gaming could really be. They also set the trend for how these games would be approached. Either broad, if shallow, experiences in a large environment or the chance for rich world building but in a very narrow and strict environment. No one would even attempt to make up for the failed promises made by the flopped Fields of Fighting experience.

Things stayed this way for over a decade. New games came and fell, but Record of the Ancients and Solar Forge remained on top.

One day, without any big press releases or industry fanfare, a new game started putting up commercials and advertisement. It promised to revolutionize Full VR and offer an experience greater then any of it’s predecessors. Deeper, more detailed worlds. No restrictions on player freedom. An MMORPG that could support millions of players across the world, all at the same time.

These claims were so preposterously huge that no one believed it. Especially because they were being made by a brand new games company called Aurum Productions, that no one had even heard of before.

But the ads kept coming.

And once people started looking into the game, and more specifically, Aurum Productions, they learned that this new game had some shocking secret weapons going for it. The founder of Aurum Productions was a man named Mike Wirth, one of the former lead programers of the Digital Mind Project. He had brought a gift for this new game: a new piece of technology called, Player Perception Tuning (PPT).

In order to allow the most robust, flexible, and realistic experience possible a machine alone couldn’t cut it. Instead, PPT allows the players own brain, already synced with their pod, to process the game’s data for them on the spot.

Instead of having to code every aspect of the game to recreate reality, they instead offer the brain a very convincing framework of reality, and allow the individual brain to fill in all the pieces. Instead of realism, the programers were going for impressionism.

What they got was more realistic then any game ever made before it.

Since every player was acting as their own processor, it made it much easier to have everyone play at once. Since they only had to design the framework, the game team at Aurum had that much more freedom to create a real, enriched world.

In the summer of the year 2076, the groundbreaking Full VR, fantasy MMORPG, Golden Age, released.

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In the void of space, above an endless fog, floats an island of gold and riches. There are artifacts, weapons, and sculptures — all crafted from precious metals and rare gems. Priceless artworks and fine clothing are lazily scattered about. The ground is made up of gold bars and golden coins. They drip from the bottom of the island into the void of the fog, but the island never grows smaller.

At the center of the island, purple strands of energy gather together to construct a humanoid wireframe.

From nowhere and everywhere at once, the Overvoice of the game speaks.

Hello, would you like to customize your character, or would you like a randomly generated one?

A voice from the wireframe responds.

“I’d like to customize.”

Very well.

From all over the island, wisps of light gather together to form a giant ball of light in front of the wireframe.

First, please select what race you would like your character to be. You can chose from Human, Dwarf, Orc, or Elf. You may also choose a ratio, of two of the previously mentioned.

“Human.”

Very well.

Some of the light gets shaved away, scattering into space. The ball of light has now roughly taken the size and shape of a human.

Please select what sex you would like your character to be.

“Um, I’ll take male for me.”

Very well.

Barely any light is shaved away but the figure of light now resembles a blank human male.

Please select your body type.

“How about we go with svelte but athletic. Like a martial artist kind of build, maybe?”

Very well.

This time, more light is shaved away and the figure now resembles a fit, athletic human man.

Would you like to move on to face sculpting, body sculpting, or voice sculpting next?

“You know what, just have everything else look like my real body.”

Very well.

Light flew away from the human figure in spirals of light until everything burst out. In the place of the light was a tan skinned, human man. The body was still athletic, decently tall, had long sideburns, stubble on it’s chin, gray eyes, and streaks of gray hair at the temples and the front. It had on a set of cotton pants and a cotton shirt, tied down by a coarse rope, and simple leather shoes. The body stared lifelessly at the wireframe in front of it.

In front of the wireframe, a hologram of a keyboard appeared.

Please spell the name of your character.

The wireframe reached out with a hand and pressed: D, 0, n. And hit enter.

Please pronounce how to say the name of your character.

“You pronounce it like you would for an Italian mob boss. Or like the dawn of a new day.”

Very well. Please step forward into your character to initiate syncing.

The wireframe took clumsy steps towards the human body in front of it. On contact, the purple lines of energy that made up the wireframe fused into the human body.

I could suddenly feel everything. The clothes against my skin. The shifting, hard coins that made up the ground under my feet. The cool breeze that started to blow across my face.

In front of my eyes I could see that the endless sky of space, littered with stars and streaks of purple throughout. Streams of the gold coins that made up the island were flowing off the edges. They were dispersing the fog.

In front of the island was a floating circular flat world. Absolutely huge, it took up my whole vision. There were three distinct continents in the center of the wide ocean.

The one on the left was made of sweeping mountain ranges and floating islands, that looked like they were made of gemstones.

The one on the bottom was a giant archipelago, made up of countless, rich islands.

The one on the right had sprawling green fields and verdant forests and crystal blue lakes.

The edge of the world had a misty, thick fog all around it, but I could see waterfalls flowing into the void of space underneath. The sun was bright and lit up everything beautifully. I could hear rising orchestral music playing from somewhere. From nowhere and everywhere at once, the Overvoice of the game spoke to me.

Welcome, to the world of Golden Age, D0n.

I felt like I could stare at that sight forever.

But I didn’t have that chance. Suddenly the ground began to rumble under my feet. The streams of gold flowing off the side rushed forward, and huge swaths of the island began to break off.

Eventually, the whole island destabilized, falling to the planet below. I went with it. As I was falling among columns of gold and treasure, I heard the Overvoice again.

Due to your region of origin, you will be starting in the Plains Continent. Below, you will enter the Tutorial Village. There, we have provided class instructors, resources, and all the knowledge you will need to explore the game. Have fun.

The ground was getting closer and closer. I could no longer see the edge of the world. Below me was an impossibly thick cloud.

All of the gold around me started to dissolve into particles of light.

I was in the middle of an uncontrollable free fall. The wind was rushing past me so fast it was whipping at my clothes and shoving my hair away. My eyes were tearing up from the force of it.

I felt a wide smile, that showed all my teeth, spread across my face.

It was time to play the game.

#Volume 1 #Story

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frozenmikan · 4 years

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We’ll make sure to keep our activities going, to tell everyone about how Aqours is doing, about where Aqours is from - Inami Anju, Aida Rikako, and Saito Shuka’s unwavering resolve

First years interview: https://aikyan.dyreatic.moe/post/624225195452940288/before-a-new-departurekobayashi-aika-takatsuki

Third years interview: https://ganbaramen.tumblr.com/post/625147563563204608/their-intention-is-always-to-be-by-your-side-the

If I gave up, Chika-chan would stop growing too

Love Live! Sunshine!!’s school idol group, Aqours, has just celebrated its 5th anniversary. The “Aqours 5th Anniversary Jimo Ai! Take Me Higher Project”, which includes the franchise’s first dome tour, has also been announced.

Inami: I expected quite a few big things to happen, since it is our 5th anniversary. But even I was surprised at how huge the entire thing turned out to be.

Saito: There really is quite a lot happening, huh?

Aida: We have Aqours CLUB 2020 too, and…

Saito: There are so many things happening that I can’t wrap my head around them!

Inami: Since the phrase “Jimo Ai” is in the title itself, it’d be nice if I could shout out to everyone that we’ve come all the way from Numazu, loud and clear!

What did you think of “Fantastic Departure”, the theme song of the dome tour, when you first heard it?

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Aida: I feel like our songs have gotten more and more mature over the years.

Saito: Yeah, totally! It feels like our songs are growing alongside us.

Aida: Yeah, they’re songs from a genre that Aqours could never touch in the past.

Inami: It does seem like the melody was written to conform to current trends.

Aida: You’re right, it does sound pretty stylish. It also makes you want to dance to the beat.

Inami: As an artist, I feel like we’ve managed to establish exactly what it means to be Aqours. Of course, that includes the lyrics too!

Aida: You can just feel Hata Aki-san in every phrase!

Inami: Yeah, yeah! Especially the “dolphin” and “whale” lines.

Saito: Having words related to the ocean in the lyrics makes it feel really Aqours-like. I think it’s pretty interesting how there’s a gap between the mature-sounding melody and the lyrics.

How was the recording?

Inami: It was really tough…!

Aida: If I focus too much on singing in my character voice, my sense of rhythm goes haywire!

Inami: Yeah, that! When I first heard “Fantastic Departure!”, the first thing I worried about was how I’d sing it!

Aida: Our songs started becoming really difficult around “Jump up HIGH!”.

Saito: No matter the song, the first thing I think about is how You-chan would sing it, but you’re right, it was quite difficult at the start.

Inami: So what do you do?

Saito: I just sing the entire thing as You-chan.

Aida: For me, I let my character voice out when I can, and pay more attention to the rhythm when I need to. That leads to the up-and-downs in my voice, I guess?

Inami: For me, I try singing it once with my own voice, paying attention to the syllables I’d stress. This expands my horizons and gives me more ideas. After that, I try to think of even more ideas as Chika-chan, and that makes my singing more expressive, I guess?

Aida: I think it’s amazing how Chika-chan sounds like Chika-chan whenever she sings.

Inami: I’m so glad to hear that! I’m sure all of us feel the same way, but if there was something I couldn’t do and I gave up on it without trying, Chika-chan would stop growing too. Because I feel very strongly about not wanting to stop Chika-chan from growing and developing, I challenge myself and do my best in everything I do.

Everyone in Aqours is the type to just go for it instead of worrying about it

How about the coupling song, “Aqours Pirate Desire”?

Aida: The lyrics certainly are very forceful. Our lyrics used to be things like “Got it!” and “Heave-ho!” after all, so they’ve definitely have gotten a lot more forceful compared to back then. There’s that, and how the pitch has become really low. It’s almost a full octave lower, so I was certainly a little flustered at the start.

Saito: The first thing I thought after hearing it was, “It’s so low!”

Inami: Yeah, I was like, “Dang, this is gonna be a tough one” (laughs).

Saito: I couldn’t help but wonder whether You-chan would be able to do it. That’s why I asked them to let me listen to my own singing over and over again during the recording.

The song’s atmosphere gives off the impression of a rather wild Aqours.

Inami: You’re right. It’s the first time we’ve had “pirates” as the theme of a song, after all.

Saito: They told us to go all out with the coolness during the recording!

Aida: It is a rather cool song, after all.

Inami: Maybe it’d be nice for Aqours to appear on stage while showing off our cool side. Up until now, we’ve always had a refreshing, cheerful, or straightforward look, so I think it’d be pretty fun to show off Aqours’ unyielding and firm side too.

Aida: The atmosphere Aqours gives off has changed quite a bit too, huh?

Inami: Yeah. Personally, I want to show off even more different sides of Aqours!

Tell us about your favorite parts of each song.

Aida: I like how the lyrics of “Fantastic Departure!” tells a story of us not knowing what’s in store for us in the future. But after seeing many, many things on our way here, we still want to continue discovering what’s ahead of us, and that there are still places for us to go. That made me really happy, and they’re all phrases I really love.

Inami: I’m really glad that the lyrics strongly convey how Aqours will keep pushing forward while also giving off the feeling that this is a new start for us. For “Aqours Pirates Desire”, I like the phrases like “Snatch it for ourselves!”, phrases that Aqours has never really had before. What about you, You-chan (Saito-san)?

Saito: I guess I like the lyrics in the chorus of “Aqours Pirates Desire”. I feel like it really gives off the feeling that Aqours will do anything, that we want to be given the opportunity to do anything and everything.

Inami: All nine of us are the type of people to just go for it rather than worrying about it, and maybe that personality of ours got through to Hata-san as well. For “Aqours Pirates Desire”, I find the part where we say we’ll “sail the seven seas” and “go beyond even that” interesting. We don’t usually end our sentences so forcefully too, and the word “crossbones” really packs a punch… The song is just packed with the new Aqours.

Saito: Though Riko-chan’s a part of Guilty Kiss, so I guess she’s already used to the “crossbones” part.

Aida: I wonder… Though you have to admit that there’s something about how all nine of us can now perform a song like “Aqours Pirate Desire” together, and not just as our subunits.

Inami: Yeah. Most of the Aqours members already like cool songs, and that’s being put to good use here. Maybe we’ll be able to go even further with this concept now that we’ve sung this song, and that gets me really excited.

Aida: It’s quite interesting how although the song is quite stylish, it still feels undoubtedly like a “Love Live!” song when the nine of us sing it.

The entire arena dyed in orange: “Memories never fade”

This January, you performed at Love Live! Fest together with μ’s and the Nijigasaki School Idol Club, breaking the walls between the franchise’s groups. What left the deepest impression on you at Love Live! Fest?

Aida: Can I talk about something that happened when we were off-stage? It’s got to be μ’s “Snow halation”.

Inami & Saito: That really was something!

Inami: We were waiting on the ship for our turn to perform, and because we just enjoy ourselves fully once we’re on stage, the wait before we go on stage leaves the strongest impression on us.

Saito: Yeah, that. The peak of our emotions happened when we were waiting. At that moment, I just felt really glad that I was part of Aqours.

Aida: Seeing the arena glow orange during μ’s “Snow halation” made me realize that memories truly never fade. It’d be nice if we could make the people watching one of our lives feel the same way one day.

Inami: Maybe this dome tour is our first step to achieving that. I’m also really glad that we’ve become capable of considering “sometime in the future”.

Any memories of your own performance during Love Live! Fest?

Inami: When we appeared on stage on our ship, I was really thankful that we were here as Aqours. When I first heard that we’d be appearing on the ship, we talked it out and agreed that we wanted to dance. We acutely felt the meaning behind us having to live up to the animation, as well as the power the nine of us have together, so we wanted to put that in our dance on stage.

After our performance, what we saw from the ship felt really special, and that made me really glad that we performed on the ship. Realizing that made me emotional once again.

How about you, Aida-san, Saito-san?

Aida: We were the opening act for both days, kicking the performance off with “Mitaiken Horizon”. That left a very deep impression.

Saito: Love Live! Fest was our first time performing “Mitaiken Horizon”. Also, it had been quite some time since our last concert, so I was really nervous.

Inami: I knew that I’d be frustrated if we didn’t manage to capture the attention of the people in the audience who were seeing us for the first time. I really gave it my all to make sure that we fulfilled the role of being the opening act and passing the baton on to the next performers.

How were the performances by the members of the Nijigasaki School Idol Club? They even put on some solo performances, right?

Inami: It’s really amazing how they performed on stage alone!

Aida: Fest was right after their 1st Live (Love Live! Nijigasaki School Idol Club First Live “with You”) too. Adding on to that, they even performed on the same stage as μ’s did. So that’s quite something.

Saito: If that were me back when I first debuted, I’d probably be terrified.

Aida: Yeah. Just having the courage to perform solo on that stage is already really amazing.

Inami: Amidst an audience that’s focused on them, and only them, I could tell that they really wanted to dye the entire venue in each and every one of their colors. That was just really emotional.

“We’ve started communicating with just our eyes”: The second years are the balancers

After five years, do you feel like you’ve grown?

Saito: I guess I now know how to look better in photos?

Inami: That’s really important!

Saito: I used to look terrible in photos! But now, I realize that I'm at the point where if I spot the camera cranes during a concert, I'll be like “C'MON LOOK OVER HERE" (laughs).

Inami: I used to be bad with photos too… I really wish I could change my artist photo I took way back then.

Saito: Yeah! Seeing that photo being used for some TV performance just makes me want to scream: “Just change it already!”

Inami: Exactly. Also, I used to be a very negative person, but I’ve definitely become overwhelmingly more positive over the years. Chika-chan is cheerful no matter what, and nothing can break her. She has so many ideas that it’s almost funny, and she still influences me to this day!

Chika-chan is so positive that sometimes I wonder whether she even knows the meaning of the phrase “giving up”. She’s been pulling me along, in a good way. Even now, I still have a lot to learn from her actions.

Aida: For me, it’s definitely my stamina. I really had no stamina at the start. I think I was the worst among everyone in Aqours. Especially during our 1st Live (Love Live! Sunshine!! Aqours First LoveLive! ~Step! ZERO to ONE~), I’d lose my breath halfway through a song, and just singing my solo part was pure suffering.

But I could feel myself slowly becoming more fit, day by day. There are still times when I feel like it’s too much, but it doesn’t show on my face anymore, so I guess I’ve grown in that regard.

Inami: Yeah, I get you! I’m really glad that I can now perform “Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru kai?” with a smile on my face the entire time (laughs).

Saito: “KimiKoko” is still pretty tough, even now…

Aida: Other than that, I feel like I’ve changed in lots of ways, so many that I can’t even begin to count.

Inami: During these five years as Aqours, every one of us has managed to take on and overcome different challenges, so I think about how much we’ve grown almost every day.

What do you think about the bond between the second years?

Aida: If we’re talking about the anime, the bond between the second years really solidified around “Aye-aye, My Friend” (episode 11 of the first season of the anime). I feel like after that, we took on the role of watching over the other year groups, with You-chan and Riko-chan supporting Chika-chan together.

Inami: And Chika-chan just throws her everything at anything she’s doing.

If I were to talk about myself, I’ve become much better at grasping Chika-chan’s emotions during our concerts. I’ve become able to find joy and perform songs alongside both of them with a smile on my face, even though they used to be songs where just singing and dancing took all my effort and concentration. I guess that’s when I feel the bond between us.

Aida: For me, because I know that their dances will definitely be perfect, I feel like I have no choice but to keep up with them.

Saito: Our songs as the second years are really energetic, so that shows how close we are.

What’s something that you’d never lose at versus the other year groups?

Inami: How we can be both playful and serious at the same time! That’s something I love about us too.

Saito: When push comes to shove, we’ll definitely get things done, but when we joke around, we go all out too.

Inami: Yup. We’ll mostly be fine, no matter what happens. We’re able to follow up on absolutely anything.

Aida: That’s also because of how much we trust each other.

Saito: We’ve started communicating by our gazes alone a lot more recently, right?

Inami: We can tell what the others are thinking just by looking at their eyes.

Aida: Working together as a year group feels really reassuring, in a different way from when we’re together as nine or in our subunits.

Inami: Even without talking it out, we’ll end up saying, “OK, we’ll give it a try, we’re fine!”. That’s why it’s really easy to be with this group.

Saito: The three of us as a group are pretty balanced, huh?

Inami: Yeah. Because the three of us often have to keep the conversation going during MCs and such, we have quite a lot in common. When my mind is completely occupied with reading the script in front of me, the two of them will follow up or respond to what I say with something appropriate. That’s something I can really count on, so I get to enjoy myself during livestreams and such with them around!

That, and our sense of time is pretty similar. Just when I start thinking that our MC segment during a concert has gotten a bit too long, and that now’s a good time to wrap things up, Riko-chan (Aida-san) will wrap up the conversation, and so on...

Aida: That’s something I tend to do… I’m the type to want to move on to the next thing right away. That, and to stop the first years from going on any longer (laughs).

Inami: It’s clear-cut, easy to understand, and interesting. I really like that part of you (laughs). You-chan is really good at following up when I pass the baton to her, so I can throw a topic at her without worrying too much. That’s why I feel like we’re balanced as a group. No matter what happens, our energy levels are just right, and I think that’s one of the second years’ strong points.

Be proud of the fact that you made our dome tour possible!

There’s still some time before we get the full details, but is there anything in particular that you’d like to do for your dome tour?

Aida: We’ve ridden on a ship and a steam locomotive, so I wonder what’s next.

Inami: If we’re going with the lyrics, it’s going to be a whale next. How about whales in our member colors?

Saito: I feel like people will just wonder what we’re riding on (laughs).

Aida: I guess I want to try all kinds of things without being constrained by what we’ve done up until now. Since being able to do a dome tour isn’t a given, I’d like to reflect on the fact that we’ve been given the chance to do this and leave no regrets behind.

Inami: Aside from our numbered lives, we’ve also been given the opportunity to perform an Asia tour and fan meetings. And now we have a country-wide dome tour; I think that’s really amazing. That’s why I’d like this tour to be one where we enchant everyone with Aqours’ radiance.

Saito: I wanna mess around during a concert…

Inami: Yeah, I do want to play around with some of the songs. Of course, there are songs with the choreography set in stone, so we’ll show that off when we can, and mess around when we can.

Aida: It’d be nice if the concert were something like a festival.

Inami: Yeah! I want the tour to be one that’d get everyone’s heart pumping, one that’ll make everyone in the audience realize their love for Aqours and the songs we perform!

Is there anything you’d like to be able to do by the time the dome tour starts?

Inami: There are quite a few songs that we haven’t performed yet, right?

Aida: I think there’s more than ten of them. Like “Bouken Type A, B, C!!”, “KOKORO Magic ‘A to Z’”, and “Dance with Minotaurus”.

Saito: Yeah! I can’t wait for “Dance with Minotaurus”.

Aida: That, and some more new songs, right?

Saito: The Aqours CLUB song too.

Inami: …Wow (laughs). They’re all songs with different styles and genres too, right?

Saito: Yeah. Especially the tour’s theme song.

Aida: The bridge seems pretty tough too.

Inami: Err… As soon as we can perform our new songs, I hope we can have fun while performing them! (laughs)

I’m sure your fans are looking forward to the 5th anniversary project too.

Saito: I was actually pretty surprised myself. We definitely only managed to make a dome tour happen thanks to everyone supporting us.

I’m really excited that we’ll be able to perform at huge venues, but I’ll make sure to not forget my roots too. To do that, I’m already thinking about re-watching the first and second seasons of the anime, as well as the movie before the tour kicks off. So, I hope everyone reading does the same too! Also, do watch over Aqours, who’ve surely leveled up since our 5th anniversary!

Aida: I never expected to be able to put on such a large-scale concert for our 5th anniversary. It's definitely thanks to all the fans who have been supporting us all this time that we're being given the opportunity to do this.

I think all of our fans should be proud of themselves because they’re the ones who brought Aqours all the way here to our dome tour. I hope to make this tour one where I get to express my gratitude to everyone, and I look forward to your support!

Inami: I hope even more people get to know about “Love Live! Sunshine!!” and Aqours through this interview, and I’d be glad if we left an impression on you. Aqours is in the process of challenging ourselves in all kinds of directions, and I think there are still many words and songs we can bring to everyone.

Although we already have an anime and a movie, personally, I want to start writing a new story with the nine of us in Aqours! With that desire in my heart, in order to tell everyone about how Aqours is doing, and about where Aqours lives, I’ll make sure to keep our activities going. I’d be grateful if you’d come along to witness Aqours’ world for yourself, and I’ll do my best to gain your support from now on as well!

What are the charm points of each of the second years?

Inami Anju -> Aida Rikako

Aqours is a group of voice actresses, actresses, singers, and many more, so all of us had different levels of experience when we first started out. Riko-chan (Aida-san) was never constrained by any of those roles, and she has a very clear idea of what she wants to do as “Aida Rikako”. I thought she seemed rather mature.

What’s more, Riko-chan really loves acting, and I myself love acting too. As we attended more recordings together, we gained the ability to throw all kinds of different lines at each other.

Throughout these five years, I think the person I’ve always talked with the most about “what I should do for Aqours” is Riko-chan. No matter what I talk to her about, she’ll definitely reply with a message or some idea that’s uniquely hers. What she says is very encouraging. We’ve been pouring out our love for acting and our characters together this entire time, so I think she’s the person I can open my heart to most easily.

Inami Anju -> Saito Shuka

You-chan (Saito-san) is very friendly, and since she’s the closest to me in age, from the very start our relationship was somewhat similar to that of childhood friends—just like our characters. Although she’s friendly, she knows where to draw the line, and she’s the type to take the feelings of the people around her into consideration without realizing it.

She never lets it show, but she’s really responsible. She’s really serious, and I believe she was given the leapfrog (in “Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru kai?”) and the center position for the 2nd single, “Koi ni Naritai AQUARIUM”, because she always challenges herself to do her best.

All three of us second years are serious, and we’re all balancers, so we just grew closer naturally without needing to work ourselves up over it too much. In the end, I usually have the responsibility of wrapping the conversation up. But both of them always watch over me by my side, to share in that burden of mine. There are things that I’d only share with the two of them, and all three of us have worries that only the other two understand. But, even if we don’t put them explicitly into words, we somehow can understand each other, and our emotions resonate with one another. So, I really appreciate and trust both of them.

Aida Rikako -> Inami Anju

When Aqours was first formed, Anchan was still a teenager, but she was the perfect leader from the very start. She really has her life together, and she has no weaknesses whatsoever. I was actually quite worried for her at the start… To me, it looked as if she constantly had a huge weight on her shoulders. But, at some point, it looked like the weight was lifted off her shoulders, and she became better at depending on the people around her. So, I think she managed to strike a good balance.

That, and she cares the most about the other Aqours members. She’ll be the first to come to our rescue no matter what happens, and she’ll be the first to notice and follow up if someone is feeling down. She’s really mature and dependable, despite being three years younger than me (laughs). When we’re performing together, I feel like I can leave everything to her, and our performances only manage to happen because of her.

Aida Rikako -> Saito Shuka

She’s so capable that you wouldn’t think that she’s the youngest. She’s been hard-working ever since our 1st Live, and the professional attitude of the other two second years is something I really need to push myself to keep up with.

Shuka will never let her exhaustion show on her face; she’s always smiling. She’s usually the mood maker, the energetic one in the group, but she actually pays a lot of attention to her surroundings. She’s also a kind girl who’s capable of noticing the subtle changes in the facial expressions of the people around her.

Saito Shuka -> Inami Anju

Even among the nine of us, she pays a lot of attention to crafting her role. Since Anju’s the leader, I’m sure she felt a lot more pressure than the rest of us when we just started off. But, she managed to overcome that together with Chika-chan, and she’s now our dependable leader. Aqours would be nothing without Anju as our leader, and we can rest assured because she’s our leader.

Saito Shuka -> Aida Rikako

How she pays attention to her surroundings, and how she always has her life together. That, and I really like how she’s a little out of it (laughs). Because she’s serious, there are times when my jokes don’t get through to her, but that’s because she really values the franchise as a whole, and because she has a very strong will. I like the ups and downs in her personality.

Q&A with Inami Anju, the voice of Takami Chika

Q1) Tell us something you love about Takami Chika-chan!

There’s too many, so this is going to be hard… Among the many things, I really love how she’ll never break, and how she can continue chasing her own radiance for her entire life.

Q2) Is there something you want, or something you want to do right now?

I guess it’d be time.

That, and I really want to get a scuba-diving license someday. When I first experienced it through one of the interviews for “Love Live! Sunshine!!”, I was told that I had a knack for it. Seeing a sunfish in Numazu’s oceans is one of my dreams!

Q3) Is there a book or a game that you’ve been hooked on recently?

Because I’ve been casted in “Boku no Hero Academia” (as Toga Himiko in the stage play), I’ve been reading it recently. If it’s a game, it’s gotta be “Pokémon”.

Q4) What did you want to be when you were a child?

This is really embarrassing (laughs), but a pâtissier. Oh, that, and becoming a mermaid. That was a serious dream of mine.

Q5) What do you normally do on your days off?

Sleep, play games, work out, and go for chiropractic sessions. There are some days where I just spend the day taking care of my body.

Q&A with Aida Rikako, the voice of Sakurauchi Riko

Q1) Tell us what you like about Sakurauchi Riko-chan!

How she really cares for Chika-chan. She’s always the first to notice if Chika-chan’s feeling down. Of course, she loves everyone in Aqours, and she’s always caring for everyone. I like how she’s usually the support for all of the Aqours members.

Q2) Is there something you want, or something you want to do right now?

It’s not easy to do this at this point in time, but I want to go on a solo trip someday.

I’ve always wanted to visit France. I love “The Rose of Versailles”, and I really want to visit the Palace of Versailles. Also, visiting some hot springs would be nice.

Q3) Is there a book or a game that you’ve been hooked on recently?

“The Promised Neverland”. I’ve always liked the comics in “Young Jump”. I also have the complete set of “GIGANT”.

Q4) What did you want to be when you were a child?

A singer.

That was my first dream, though along the way I became open to more than just singing.

Q5) What do you normally do on your days off?

I don’t set an alarm and sleep in until midday. Then, I watch TV, and just laze around mostly. I usually don’t go anywhere except for places around my house, so if I had the entire day free, I’d like to visit a shopping mall or something a little further from where I live.

Q&A with Saito Shuka, the voice of Watanabe You

Q1) Tell us what you like about Watanabe You-chan!

Can I talk about something physical…? (laughs) Since she’s in the swimming club and the school idol club at the same time, I really admire her discipline, and I also really like how strongly she feels about wanting to do something together with Chika-chan, and how she really cares for her friends.

Recently, I’ve really taken a liking to her curves.

She’s not too fat but not too thin; her body is the epitome of a healthy high school girl, and that’s really great!

In episode eleven of the first season of the anime, “Aye-aye, My Friend”, there’s a scene where the camera focuses on her thighs; the thought that went through my mind was, “That’s perfect!”. Her face also looks really pretty from the side. I like how she’s so beautiful that I don’t even have the words to describe it (laughs).

Q2) Is there something you want, or something you want to do right now?

I wanna go to a grilled meat place for some beef tongue! If the beef tongue is sliced thinly, I could eat that forever. But, I’ve started asking for a larger portion of rice with my meals, like a high school boy, so I think it’s about time for me to start cutting down.

Q3) Is there a book or a game that you’ve been hooked on recently?

I’ve liked this for the longest time, but “Bokura ga Ita (We Were There)”. I really love the character Yano Motoharu from “Bokura ga Ita”, and I seriously wonder whether he’d appear in real life. My brain is infected with shoujo manga, so I really want the heart-throbbing scenes in shoujo mangas to happen to me too.

Q4) What did you want to be when you were a child?

I really wanted to say “an idol”, but that was embarrassing, so I said I wanted to become a preschool teacher. But, ever since I was a child, I was dancing in the center for the dances we did in preschool performances, and I often thought that someday I’d become someone who’d be performing on stage.

Q5) What do you normally do on your days off?

I guess I go shopping by myself most of the time. Recently, I’ve started using my days off to go for massages or to visit a beautician, to keep my body in top shape. Most of the time I end up shopping somewhere on the way back.

TL: xIceArcher

TLC: arbshortcake

QC: Cornsplosion, Yujacha

#love live #love live sunshine #aqours #inami anju #anchan #aida rikako #rikyako #saito shuka #shukashuu

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deadcactuswalking · 3 years

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 17/04/2021 (Polo G, Dave, Doja Cat & SZA, Taylor Swift)

Okay, so, UK Singles Chart time – all hell broke loose. I knew Taylor Swift and Dave would make an impact but I was also not expecting all of the chaos to come with it. With that said, Lil Nas X is still at #1 for a third week with “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)” and let’s just get through with this. This is REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

In this starting rundown segment, I’ve got a lot to cover so I’ll make it quick, no nonsense. First of all, I cover the UK Top 75. Why the top 75? I’m difficult – even though it’s actually more convenient. Secondly, the notable drop-outs – songs that peaked in the top 40 or spent more than five weeks on the chart that are gone from the top 75 this week thanks to this avalanche of 14 or so new arrivals. This week, we say goodbye to a bunch of our debuts from last week as well as “telepatía” by Kali Uchis, “Bringing it Back” by Digga D and AJ Tracey, “You’re Mines Still” by Yung Bleu and remixed by Drake, “Midnight Sky” by Miley Cyrus, “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles, “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers and several #1 hits, including “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, “Sweet Melody” by Little Mix, “Mood” by 24kGoldn featuring iann dior, “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I and finally, “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi, after spending a whopping 113 weeks in this region... despite being terrible. I mean, it’ll be back next week but celebrate the little victories, like our returns, for example. “X Gon’ Give it to Ya” by the late DMX is back at #72 after the passing of the hip-hop icon last week. This legendary song was actually one of his later hits – not even a hit in the States – and originally peaked at #6 in the UK back in 2003. We sadly don’t see anything else from DMX returning but we do also see Taylor Swift’s re-recorded version of “Love Story” revisiting the charts at #45 off the album boost.

Now for the songs that fell or rose this week, starting with the notable losses, being songs that dropped five spots or more. First, we have “Your Love (9PM)” by ATB, Topic and A7S at #13, followed by “Don’t Play” by Anne-Marie, KSI and Digital Farm Animals at #17, “Hold On” by Justin Bieber at #20, “Save Your Tears” by the Weeknd at #22, “Up” by Cardi B at #23, “Commitment Issues” by Central Cee at #25, “Latest Trends” by AI x JI plummeting at #28, “Patience” by KSI featuring YUNGBLUD and Polo G at #29, “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo at #34, “We’re Good” by Dua Lipa at #35, “Anyone” by Justin Bieber at #40, “Black Hole” by Griff at #41, “All You Ever Wanted” by Rag’n’Bone Man at #43, “WITHOUT YOU” by the Kid LAROI at #44, “Binding Lights” by the Weeknd at #46, “Goosebumps” by HVME and Travis Scott at #47, “6 for 6” by Central Cee at #48, “Medicine” by James Arthur at #49, “Head & Heart” by Joel Corry and MNEK at #50, “Met Him Last Night” by Demi Lovato featuring Ariana Grande at #54 off of the debut, “Paradise” by MEDUZA and Dermot Kennedy at #58, Doja Cat’s “Streets” at #60 and “Best Friend” with Saweetie at #61, “Tonight” by Ghost Killer Track featuring D-Block Europe at #62, “Get Out My Head” by Shane Codd at #63, “Beautiful Mistakes” by Maroon 5 featuring Megan Thee Stallion at #66, “Track Star” by Mooski at #67, “Headshot” by Lil Tjay, Fivio Foreign and Polo G at #73, “What Other People Say” by Sam Fischer and Demi Lovato at #74 and finally, whatever’s left of Drake as “What’s Next” is at #68 and “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” with Rick Ross is at #70.

Our gains are arguably more interesting, as it’s impressive to climb five spots or higher or reach the top 40 for the first time in the midst of all this nonsense. Therefore, we do have just a few gains, those being “Runaway” by AURORA at #51 off of the debut, “Nice to Meet Ya” by Wes Nelson featuring Yxng Bane making a surprise attack at the top 40 going to #39 off of the debut, “Good Without” by Mimi Webb at #18 and “Ferrari Horses” by D-Block Europe and RAYE continuing its gains up to #16. That’s pretty much it – still took a while – so let’s get through those 14 new arrivals, huh? God help me.

NEW ARRIVALS

#75 – “Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing)” – Fred again.. and The Blessed Madonna

Produced by Boston Bun and Fred again..

This is one of the songs that really padded out our new arrivals list – to explain, a lot of the time, these songs were released weeks ago and only now gain enough traction to debut within the top 75 and hence be discussed by me. This one just happens to have popped up in a week where everything is going on already so it kind of gets lost in incoherency but regardless, this is a song from Ed Sheeran’s producer Fred Gibson, who I refuse to call by his stage name, from his most recent project featuring vocals from The Blessed Madonna, most commonly known right now as the producer and DJ behind the club mix edition of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia and hence the “Levitating” remix with Missy Elliott and, well, actual Madonna. The song itself is one I’m surprised is about anything but has these mostly spoken word vocals about how we as a world have “lost dancing” to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as hugs, and, well, that’s all she decides to elaborate about. She also guarantees that once everything is over, “what comes next will be marvellous”. Whilst I appreciate the sentiment, I think it’s almost a dangerous promise, given that we’ll be in this pandemic for longer than anyone expected and it’s pretty evident that we’ll still be keeping to social distancing as the vaccine roll-out continues all throughout this year. At this point, we’re still in lockdown and international travel will still be stunted for years after the fact. This song feels like The Blessed Madonna getting on her pedestal about the arts and their impact on people without going into any detail that warrants the soapbox, bizarrely over some synth-heavy deep house beat that decides to do little more than flutter through the entirety of the five-minute runtime. Yeah, this is pretty insufferable. Next.

#71 – “Slumber Party” – Ashnikko featuring Princess Nokia

Produced by CallMeTheKidd

Okay, so TikTok picks this one up and the label then decides to push this over “Deal with It”, a brilliant pop song that was right there and already had the high-budget video to boot? Regardless, this is taken from Ashnikko’s debut mixtape of sorts, Demidevil, and whilst as a whole the project does little more than act as harmless fun guising as anything more, a couple of the singles are genuinely pretty great, including this one, which seems to be a break-out hit for rapper Princess Nokia. This song relies on the jerkiness of its almost DJ Mustard-esque club beat and that warped might-be-a-flute loop to support Ashnikko’s similarly sloppy delivery, which decides to be as in character in possible – of which I mean that it is obnoxious and frankly ridiculously stupid. This isn’t a “slumber party” at all, and whilst the childish implications are if anything kind of unnerving, there is a lot of fun to be had here if you get past the “kawaii hentai boobies” in the chorus. Nokia’s verse continues the album’s general early 2000s aesthetic with her referencing many hits and singers from that time period in a pretty slick albeit one-and-done verse that should really be extended further than it is. I mean, I would have preferred that to Ashnikko’s second verse comparing her girlfriend to the little girl from The Addams Family, before mentioning how her eyes go black when she orgasms and that her spit tastes like Juicy Fruit gum. Okay, so when it comes to filthy lesbian rap I think I prefer acts like BASSIDE but for what it’s worth, this is surreal and fun enough for me to like. I hope it does well, but know she has better songs even on that same tape.

#69 – “Versus” – SL and M1llionz

Produced by Lucas Dante and Yng Cld

Oh, hey, another drill track by two guys produced by two guys for two guys to rap about how cool it is to be the two guys they are. I guess the gimmick here is that the single actually has an instrumental version as well for whatever reason; I guess they want people to remix the track. That would make sense, as this beat is immediately recognisable from that chipmunk squeak of a glitched vocal sample they use. In fact, I think I prefer the instrumental version because when those booming 808s come in, it hits really hard especially with the scattering drill percussion. SL and M1llionz are trading bars here in what is basically one verse and it’s not like they’re saying nothing of interest here as there is a viable enough amount of detail here in these bars about exactly what you’d expect. But that’s exactly what it is: exactly what you’d expect. By the first verse, you’ve already heard SL talk about watching The Boondocks and that’s about as interesting as it gets. Sure, the interplay between the two guys in this case is pretty smooth, but it goes on for about a minute too long and M1llionz has a lot more charisma than SL so it does feel like half the song is wasted away. The producers know that too, as they decide to fade the song out very quickly after M1llionz stops rapping his final bars. This is fine – on some days, I’d probably call it really good – but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.

#64 – “Starstruck” – Years & Years

Produced by Mark Ralph and Nathaniel Ledwidge

We’re not even out of that bottom third of the chart and we’ve still got a lot ahead of us before we get above that point. Here, we have “Starstruck”, sadly not the Lady Gaga or 3OH!3 song but instead the first officially solo song by Years & Years, which is now just frontman Olly Alexander after his bandmates’ departure, similar to Panic! at the Disco except the members seem to be on good terms, or Ritt Momney, except no one here is a Mormon missionary... yet. Whilst you could see this from a mile away if you had listened to that last album, it would be deceiving to say it’s only Olly this time around as he’s enlisted several outside producers and writers to craft a pretty straightforward love song. Well, is it any good? I’m not entirely sold on it, mostly because it seems to reject all of the lyrical intrigue there was in those past two albums – at least intermittently – for a pretty generic if not pure and lovely content, with the most interesting of lyrics being about sipping his partner up like cosmic juice, which I’ll admit got a laugh out of me. It is fitting for how this janky dance-pop song sounds as sonically it’s kind of a quirky mess with a lot of bassy grooves in the verses only to be replaced by a shiny synth blend that completely shrouds the chorus in video game sound effects and French house-esque filter effects. This sound is very much a late-2000s early-2010s throwback in some ways and throwing it back even further in others, which creates an interesting sound but not enough to not let this become easily stale after just the second chorus, especially if it’s going to purposefully fumble its climax for an awkward build-up that involves basically revealing the drop measures before it should have. Yeah, I want to like this but it just seems kind of confused as it is. I’m still going to listen to that third album whenever it comes, but I’m somewhat disappointed with this lead single thus far.

#57 – “Lingo” – Deno featuring J.I. the Prince of NY and Chunkz

Produced by Da Beatfreakz

Alright, so British rapper Deno has enlisted New York rapper J.I. – who I refuse to call by his full stage name – and Chunkz, who I’m pretty sure is some YouTuber, to hop on a beat from DaBeatfreakz, specifically this watery R&B beat with vocal loops drowned out by bass and some awkward mixing. Deno isn’t much of a presence in the verse or chorus, J.I. talks about some girl not chewing him right and Chunkz, who sounds awful on any beat with the whiny Auto-Tuned mumble, somehow doesn’t say anything of interest despite being the semi-professional comedian of these three guys, or at least not before Deno takes over his verse and they all give up for the last couple measures. Yes, that was one sentence – this song doesn’t deserve much more.

#56 – “Shy Away” – twenty one pilots

Produced by Tyler Joseph

I’ve never been that big a fan of twenty one pilots, but I was actually pretty fond of her most recent album, Trench. What fascinates me about them is how they seemed to have done really well for themselves that one time in the Blurryface era and have coasted off the success of that to fund some of their more out-there and experimental musical aspirations. I don’t think they’re looking for big hits anymore – which is good because this won’t be one – but people will always be looking out for what they do next, and they’ve just announced a new album coming soon with this as the lead single. Thankfully, it’s not that COVID-19 pandemic pandering from last year which got on my nerves a lot more than it should. “Shy Away”, instead, goes for... 1980s dance-punk, because, of course. I do love that jerky synth lead and how well it’s backed by that chugging bass and percussion, which we’ll always know is organic coming from Josh Dun. The song itself is a somewhat vague motivational track but not for no reason, as these lyrics actually originated from when Tyler Joseph was giving advice to his brother, a budding musician, trying to get him to see himself in a new light and find his unique purpose in music and not to “shy away” from continuing with his dreams. I can get behind that, especially if it’s going to have squealing guitar segues, an infectious power-pop chorus that will probably not leave my head for a long time and the excellent swell of guitars in that third verse before the brief breakdown in the post-chorus with all those squibbling synth effects. It’s just a wonderfully constructed song on all accounts, even if it sacrifices some of that unique personality we usually get from Tyler for the sake of making a tighter pop-rock song.

#52 – “You Belong with Me” (Taylor’s Version) – Taylor Swift

Produced by Taylor Swift and Christopher Rowe

I guess the best place to start with these re-recordings is the original song, which I’ve never liked. I’ve never seen a reason to enjoy Taylor’s entitled adolescent whining over some pretty garbage production making what may as well be organic country instrumentation sound like MIDI tracks. She doesn’t deliver a particularly good vocal performance, or at least one good enough to excuse “She wear short skirts, I wear T-shirts, she’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers”. There isn’t enough detail to make this seem like a toxic relationship so she ends up just sounding bratty. This new version, from a matured Taylor Swift a decade later, has decided not to change any of these lyrics and it just sounds worse coming from a Taylor who clearly knows a lot better and is in a happy relationship. Okay, the instrumentation sounds a lot more organic and has more of a groove than it used to, with some more intricate production moments that are cool, but that’s really the only change that improves on an already mediocre song. Taylor’s voice has improved a lot since that original recording but so has she, and her selling these lyrics with as much conviction while in her 30s just ends up sounding sad. It only makes sense to “reclaim” these songs if you’re going to try and make them your own again, and not representative of someone I don’t think Taylor is anymore. Alas, it’s listenable, but this could have been one of the more interesting re-recordings and nothing was done with it past the better mixing and a pretty epic guitar solo, even if it does feel unwarranted by the content.

#42 – “Way Too Long” – Nathan Dawe, Anne-Marie and MoStack

Produced by Scribz Riley, Tré Jean-Marie, Nathan Dawe and GRADES

For someone who is solely a producer and DJ, I say that’s two or three too many credited producers, but regardless, before we get to more Taylor Swift, which we will eventually, we’ve got some leftover house track with B-list stars that starts with the words, “Hey, yo, yo, it’s Stack Rack”. With that said, I actually kind of like this song with its strings swelling more than the usual track and its bass-heavy club groove in the verses being more complex in its percussion, especially when the sound design is that interesting in the second half of the verse as all of these effects and different synth patterns occur in the back of the mix, which kind of lets me forgive how anti-climactic the drop is. It’s not really an EDM song as much as it’s a light-hearted pop track and Anne-Marie isn’t taking it as seriously as she could, especially on that vocoder-drop chorus, which makes the song a lot more fun that it should be. MoStack is who really shines on this track though, as his verse is – probably unintentionally – very funny, as he twists the meaning of the song to a phallic joke, happily engages in monogamy, particularly with every British pop-star he can think of and says “forget quality, I want quantity”. He just lists famous singers by the end of this verse that he finds attractive and is completely gone off the deep-end by the time he’s ignored by Anne-Marie’s swell of a chorus. It’s not a great song and definitely falls into the traps that most EDM does but as it is, it’s a fun track with a surprisingly hilarious and sloppy guest verse from MoStack that I was not expecting, as well as just being inoffensive across the board.

#33 – “Mercury” – Dave featuring Kamal.

Produced by Manny Manhattan and Kyle Evans

Dave released a double A-side single – or at least whatever the equivalent for that is in the streaming age – and this was the less popular track, “Mercury”, with singer Kamal. If you don’t know Dave is, he’s one of the biggest and most celebrated rappers in the UK and this is his first solo release since 2019. I’ve usually been pretty happy with Dave’s releases – hell, Psychodrama was one of my favourite albums of 2019 – but I’m not entirely sure I can endorse this lazy trap beat relying on some gentle but overbearing pianos and groovier bass knocks. Really, the beat is pretty minimal so we can focus on what Dave’s saying, right? Well, we could, but why would we want to? Sure, there’s some good wordplay weaved into here and I don’t dislike his stories about gang violence and paranoia, even if they’re delivered in the most checked-out almost condescending way possible, but I can’t get behind the misogyny that seems to run a lot deeper than it does in typical rap. Sure, he makes the same googly-eyed observations about attractive women, describes some parts of the sex but interestingly not any part he plays, and also describes her as a “work of art”, but this is all after he dismisses women in general for not “forgiving him for his sins”, in some thinly-veiled Ariana Grande reference that leaves me more pissed off than he is, especially since Dave’s not as self-aware as he thinks he is, particularly because he himself can barely forgive himself for his wrongs in that second verse. Instead, he shrouds it in hedonism like any other rapper – what have the women got to do other than make good decisions for themselves about who they sleep with? He doesn’t go into disgusting detail like Digga D on “Toxic” but it rubs me the wrong way, especially if he’s going to then complain about the myth that is cancel culture. If this comes from a genuine place where he was genuinely attacked for something he didn’t deserve the abuse for, I’d understand, but why even complain about the supposed mob of Twitter users when the only tie you have to it is something reported on your brother by the right-wing press that everyone ignored? Other than missing the point terribly, it’s not like this song is catchy or notable. Even he acknowledges that this five-minute bore wouldn’t make the album, and it’s for good reason.

#32 – “Anywhere Away from Here” – Rag’n’Bone Man and P!nk

Produced by Rag’n’Bone Man, Mike Elizondo and Ben Jackson-Cook

So this is Rag’n’Bone Man’s second single from that upcoming album, or at least the second to chart, and after the surprisingly great post-punk rocker that was “All You Ever Wanted”, I’m excited to hear what a duet with P!nk could sound like. After all, they’re both rougher voices in the pop sphere, even if P!nk’s been doing it for much longer. Sadly, it’s a ballad... not to say they can’t do ballads well but this is a pretty minimal piano-lead track with some really badly mixed vocals from Rag’n’Bone Man as he channels an unintelligible Dave Grohl that’s way too loud in the mix, especially when the strings come in and cloud the mix. I do like the content once again with Rag’n’Bone Man as he continues to discuss the careless days of his youth, but this is more about growing older and eventually growing discontent with that lifestyle and each other, just wanting to be somewhere else. P!nk delivers this in a way that’s a lot more flattering to her voice and the instrumental, but when the borderline choir vocals come in with those terribly-mixed harmonies between the two and that pointless bridge, I give up on this song. It just refuses to go anywhere, I’m sorry, and it had a lot of potential but these voices don’t particularly mesh together especially over some basic piano and strings. This could have been great and as is, is less than mediocre.

#30 – “Mr. Perfectly Fine” (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault) – Taylor Swift

Produced by Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff

I didn’t listen to the re-recorded version of Fearless; instead I just listened to the six or so bonus “from the vault” tracks because that’s the only new content and I’m not big on any of it. It sounds exactly as you’d expect a 31-year-old woman reciting lyrics she wrote and shelved when she was a teenager, not even thinking they were good enough to release then, decades after the fact, and most of the songs just aren’t interesting at all. I think “Bye Bye Baby” is a great pop song but besides that there’s nothing much to enjoy in these tracks, at least from me. I know that Taylor’s biggest fans will love how she re-recorded leaked and rumoured songs that had been circulating but as someone detached from that, it does nothing for me. This song in particular is about Joe Jonas, because, of course, it was, and it’s a petty, sarcastic break-up song Taylor should be able to deliver confidently but ends up falling flat based on almost that awful verse melody alone, which is just janky, unpleasant and stretched out to the point of annoyance, especially if it’s going to be produced this well. She dug up this track seemingly only to get Antonoff on the record, and, sure, the chorus is catchy and has that one great moment with those crashing guitars, but it enjoys killing its momentum as soon as it gets going... for five minutes. Yeah, I’m sorry but I’m not interested in what was left on the cutting room floor a decade separated from the release of this re-recording, especially if this fully-fleshed instrumentation does little more than distract from how dreadfully boring this song is. Wake me up when she re-records Speak Now or especially reputation, because that will truly be fascinating.

#10 – “Kiss Me More” – Doja Cat featuring SZA

Produced by tizhimself, Carter Lang, Rogét Chahayed and Yeti Beats

I’ve forgotten to mention that three of those 14 new arrivals actually debuted in the top 10 this week, meaning, yes, whilst we’re nearly done, we’ve still got a lot to cover and we start with what seems to be the lead single from Doja Cat’s upcoming album, as she enlists SZA to assist her on this classily unclassy disco-pop song. Those main guitars do sound great, especially with Doja’s signature cooing over them, and that’s before we get to that slick pink disco groove not dissimilar to “Say So” but with a tighter, fun bassline and how quickly Doja strips off the subtlety. I could do without that mess of a post-chorus that is just a blend of too many, not very great vocal takes, but I do love how it leads into Doja’s unsubtle sex bars that actually go into some interesting detail, but not as much SZA being kind of filthy but also delivering a pretty great vocal performance, even if she starts with asking her partner for that “gushy stuff”. I do find it odd that it decides to censor “dick” of all words, but this production is great and I actually particularly like that final chorus and post-chorus once SZA starts harmonising on it. As is, it’s a pretty tight and likeable disco jam from two charismatic performers... co-written by Dr. Luke. Goddamn it, Doja, I don’t know what contract he’s got you in but Jesus, someone do something about that.

#9 – “Titanium” – Dave

Produced by Kyle Evans and P2J

This is our second Dave song and obviously the more successful of the two, at about three minutes shorter – thankfully – debuting in the top 10. It’s much better than “Mercury”, even if the song literally starts with him bragging about not needing vibrators to make his girlfriend orgasm. That said, the lyrics here are actually a lot slicker, flowing much like he did on “Streatham” as he lists so many precious metals you’d think he’s Bender. I do like the intricacies in these lyrics, even if he doesn’t really adapt it into any wordplay. He mentions how awkward that it is that his neighbours are going to vote Conservative as he brags in an almost freestyle-like structure in the single verse he spits, which has a couple flow switches and a lot more empty space than it should for a beat this awkwardly mixed, as whilst I like the trap percussion here, it really does not sound that great over borderline MIDI pianos. The little string inflections and drum fills here are cool though, and those intricacies are what makes Dave’s verse so interesting, as he foreshadows his bar about Tyson Fury with an ad-lib that Fury used himself as a build-up for his boxing matches. His JAY-Z references are also on point and pretty clever, it’s just that there’s still not much to this past that and I’m left pretty underwhelmed with these releases from Dave, even if they’re not from that next album, whenever that’s coming.

#3 – “RAPSTAR” – Polo G

Produced by Einer Bankz and Synco

Well, Lil Tjay debuted at #2 a couple weeks ago so I guess it’s only fair for his fellow “Pop Out” rapper, and the one I personally immensely prefer, Polo G to have his surprise, kind-of-out-of-nowhere top 5 debut. Much like “MONTERO”, this track was being teased for nearly a year, having first been shown as an acoustic collaboration with professional ukulele player – yes, seriously – Einer Bankz, who’s also credited with production here, in May of 2020. Just shy of a year afterwards, we get “RAPSTAR”, in the same vein of other all-caps trap songs about musical success like “ROCKSTAR” or “POPSTAR”. Maybe next we’ll get “NEOCLASSICAL DARK WAVESTAR”. Regardless, this song is basically just about being epic and Polo G can effectively sell that even in his more basic flexing because of that intermittent detail like when he says the only woman he talks to is Siri, which isn’t even a brag or a flex, more a sad admission of his crippling loneliness which I don’t think was intended. He also does more than empty flexing, discussing his past drug addictions and how he coped with that alongside all of the struggles he had to overcome at the same time. That second verse may start with him saying he’s 2Pac reborn but it goes a lot deeper into his anxieties than I expected. All of this is over a melancholy guitar-based beat with some great bass and better mixing than is expected of these pop-trap singles, even if it’s still far from perfect. Those eerie vocal loops in the background add a lot to this song and I think that chorus has a pretty great build-up, even if the percussion may seem a bit too basic and uncomplicated as an effective drop. I can’t really complain about this at all, though, as it is really good for what it is and I’m glad it’s this high.

Conclusion

And with that, I’m finally, FINALLY finished with scouring through these new arrivals and I’ll admit that it was less of a mixed bag and more of a generally positive week, at least for me, as I found more I liked than anything I disliked, particularly with Best of the Week as that goes to twenty one pilots for “Shy Away”, with the Honourable Mention going to Ashnikko’s “Slumber Party” featuring Princess Nokia, although there’s a lot to praise on the charts this week. In terms of Worst of the Week, it’s probably going to go to Fred again.. and The Blessed Madonna for “Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing)”, with a Dishonourable Mention for, sadly, Dave’s “Mercury” featuring Kamal. I would like to note that Taylor Swift was awfully closer than she should be to getting that this week. Here’s this week’s top 10:

What to expect from this week? Gosh, I don’t know. AJ Tracey? Young Thug? Either way, we’ll see whatever happens to all this – whether it gets flooded out or they all end up sticking around – next week, so I’ll see you then. Thanks for reading.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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What Are NFTs and Why Are Comics Companies Selling Them?

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With an announcement from collectible maker VeVe, the world was introduced to the first officially licensed DC NFTs. “What is VeVe?” you might ask. Or possibly “What is an NFT?”

Excellent questions, friends! We will do our absolute best to explain them in clear, concise terms to you right now.

Here are simple answers to complicated questions: NFTs are ecologically devastating vaporware created to part very dumb, very wealthy collectors from their money, made by stoned libertarian math nerds trying to prove a point they think is profound but is actually just very banal. Veve is no different than any other secondary huckster that springs up around a particularly successful snake oil economy.

As for why DC is getting in bed with them, it’s hard to know if the company is trying to just be cutting edge or if it’s because AT&T took on a shitload of debt buying Warner, and like anybody with creditors breathing down their neck, they need to make several quick bucks or else.

THE NEXT EVOLUTION IN COMICS HUCKSTERISM

Two full decades after Metallica teamed up with record labels to make sure we didn’t own anything we purchased digitally, a group of rejected Captain Planet villains came up with a workaround: NFTs.

NFTs use blockchain, a distributed AI accountant that requires ENORMOUS amounts of processing power to work properly, to assign certificates of ownership and record transactions. Accepting the pitch behind blockchain technology requires one to step back to an absurdly abstract level, then a zoom back into the extremely micro.

Every transaction between two people is built around trust: I trust that you are giving me the thing I’m paying for, while we both trust that the currency I’m handing you has a (relatively) absolute value which will allow it to be traded for other things. Blockchain purports to eliminate that trust: it uses a distributed ledger that anyone can see and confirm to record our transaction; it uses an algorithm to make sure every copy of the ledger is the same; and it assigns tokens to each transaction that can be given a value.

NFTs add in an absurd additional abstraction: ownership of digital media. I have always had the ability to, for example, produce an animated reaction gif from a television show and sell that animated reaction gif to you for a fixed sum of money. You would be an idiot for purchasing that reaction gif for several reasons: anyone else could make the exact same gif and you could find it in iMessage’s search engine, for one. But nothing in the past has ever prevented this transaction from occurring.

The “innovation” around NFTs is that it uses blockchain technology to “prove” “ownership” and “authenticity,” a sentence that is so heavily caveated that to express it correctly in writing makes the writer look like a conspiracy theorist. The NFT assigns a ledger value to the piece of digital artwork, and then that ledger value is what is sold between parties. It is a non-fungible token – unlike Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency, the idea is these art pieces’ tokens’ inherent value doesn’t change (hence the non-fungible), while cryptocurrency is a token whose value is relative to other less imaginary currency.

This has led to some frankly embarrassing sales online. Jack Dorsey, the vacuous and bizarre founder of Twitter, is auctioning off his first tweet, something that already happened, that you can find with one simple Google search, for millions of dollars. Beeple, an artist the internet assures me is real, auctioned off a digital JPEG collage of all their previous works for $69 million. Jose Delgo, a comics artist from the ‘70s that very few people remembered until this happened, has made almost $2 million selling NFTs of his own artwork, spurring DC to email freelancers to remind them that they should not be using DC characters to try and skate atop this obvious bubble. Not because of the catastrophic environmental impacts caused by the blockchain algorithm, mind you. No, it was because AT&T needed to get some of that sweet, sweet tulip money.

THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS MOSTLY POOR PEOPLE

Joanie Lemercier, a French artist and climate activist, has sold six NFT pieces so far. The act of accounting for those sales – assigning a token, then transferring ownership of that token from Lemercier to the purchaser – was 8.7 megawatt hours of energy. That’s roughly equivalent to the entire energy consumption of his studio for two entire years.

The algorithm used for NFTs, like the one used for Bitcoin, other cryptocurrency, and all blockchain transactions, requires computers perform a certain volume of complex activity to access the ledger. That’s how it prevents fraudulent transactions – by making the barrier to writable access so high that it’s functionally impossible.

Of course, as demand for these transactions increases, so too does the computing power needed to record them. Hence the massive power consumption from Lemercier’s sale. Bitcoin transactions, especially since Elon Musk invested heavily in them to drive up their price (presumably the “pump” part of “pump and dump”), now use more energy annually than the entire country of Argentina.

Here’s the catch: in a perfectly green, zero emission energy environment, this wouldn’t be a huge problem. Unfortunately, as anyone who has gone outside in the past 18 months has noticed, we’re not quite there yet. And while adding another Argentina to global power load isn’t the same as adding another China, it is still a significant drain on existing grids, and if it’s not timed and sited right, it’s using very dirty power (it’s fairly complicated, but the short version is electricity generation generally gets dirtier as demand increases).

So when Grimes auctions off a certificate of creation for her digital artwork, she’s triggering a set of computer actions that put a massive stress on the power grid that churns out oodles of negative environmental consequences, which according to study after study fall disproportionately on poor people and people of color.

Or! Instead of auctioning off something that clearly doesn’t exist, maybe she’s just using fracked natural gas as laundry detergent for mafia cash.

DIGITAL MONEY LAUNDROMAT

Let’s say I was a certain very sadistic, very fictional, black mask wearing crime lord of an American city and I have $1 million in cash lying around that I made from my operation’s drug business. If I suddenly bought a house with that million dollars, the authorities would notice that large transaction (probably through transaction reporting from the bank handling the sale, or the property exchange paperwork that runs through City Hall) and start sniffing around to find out where that money came from.

The same goes if I were to purchase IRL fine art through an auction house. The auction house would ask questions about where that money came from, and if it didn’t like what it found, it would report it to the authorities. Same for buying cars, or businesses, or lots of other real life transactions.

Now replace bank, city hall, and auction house with “a bunch of computers playing tic tac toe against each other on a 1025 square board” and try and guess where the reporting comes in. We don’t have to wait for an answer, that reporting doesn’t exist.

NFT transactions are the perfect confluence of the shadiness of art dealing with the shadiness of off-book dark web money-moving. They’re not all money laundering, but they are easy enough to use as money laundering that the authorities are getting concerned.

PRECARITY, PANDEMICS, AND COMICS ART

So why are comics people doing this? To start with, we mean actual people, and not people in the legal sense of the word (corporations).

It’s not hard to see the eye popping amounts of money changing hands and understand why at least some of them are getting involved. But it’s equally easy to look at the economics of the pandemic era of comics creation and at least sympathize with the pull. Comic page rates have been largely stagnant since the 1980s – penciler page rates in recent years are actually lower than the modest demands made by creators during the abortive effort to unionize in the 1970s.

With that money being so limited, most artists relied on the sale of original art, sketches, and sales at conventions to help make ends meet. So the last year has been exceptionally tough on them. Add to that the trend towards digital art, where there’s no actual physical page produced for the comic, and it’s not hard to imagine a hard up artist, one year into not seeing another living soul except for when the grocery clerk brings a bag of food out to their car, seeing someone coming along waving a conservative five figures at them and not explaining the extremely convoluted yet catastrophic environmental impact of the proces, saying yes to the quick cash.

To their credit, many comics creators are repulsed by the idea. Several have expressed serious concerns with NFTs on Twitter, with Doomsday Clock artist Gary Frank expressing “bewilderment” at the idea of his art being used to sell one of these things, and Marsha Cooke, widow of New Frontier great Darwyn Cooke and manager of his estate, going so far as to ask DC to stop using his art in them.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Hopefully the companies involved (or thinking of getting involved) with NFTs listen to their creatives. Nothing more honors the spirit of Batman than using his image to help give a pallet of Bratva money a quick scrub.

The post What Are NFTs and Why Are Comics Companies Selling Them? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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usashirtstoday · 3 years

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Witch Never Let Your Wings Be Stolen From You Colorful T Shirt

In room before he made important decisions that’s what I asked as would be the Witch Never Let Your Wings Be Stolen From You Colorful T Shirt last voice in the room always tell me the truth which she will challenge my assumptions that she disagrees asked the hard questions is that’s the way we make the best decisions for the American people I got the chance to spend some time in my home today and Doug and I thank them in public for green to join and take this journey with you let me. Was the Rolling Stones I was this as the other saving people doing Dylan songs more likely all right now we on a lotand yes we are on a run back there if you want to turn aroundand wait I like to know it’s going to all right your room you are hereand I’m over thereand we’re over there I how are you I’m already nice to be with you like to send Scott that I still thank you but in any event your message was subliminal you didn’t to have any ax to grind with social injustice or did you not only ask was that we were the first working class singers that stayed working classand pronounced it in trying change actions which inningand I look where I looked down upon probably still out like a Bronx actions equivalent to that we the only change was Doughty needs you getting off likely to 21 when he me off the hook to write a Bronx accent it could be a Brooklyn accent it could the name of the oneand are getting all right is identical because like active duty in a gardening than before there were a couple assertive rock ‘n roll stars. Lot a literal kidnapper use the exact same tactic to kidnap Elizabeth Smart keeper a keeper prisoner for nine fucking months this issue is not and around public while he had about that this issue is not about politics school or the or the virus this is about the children if you put a mask on a child they looked no different than the two 2000 other kids around them they are unable to verbally communicate to anyone around them who might be able to help that they are being robbed of their individuality and it’s funny that she said they are unable to verbally communicate anyone around them because I came across this post on my Facebook feed and he said in a mask an adult or child cannot mouth the words help me were being trafficked zero say so so kidnap kids when kids get kidnapped or when people get kidnapped they would usually go so people know what was going on with the mask on your face they can see it so they’re stuck in a mask we can smile at each other anymore and mask we decimate our immune systems and

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about with all of his business dealing Donald Trump. 3 entertained on you just put lanes pretty easily on this bike without much concernand on the seating position isn’t overly harsh over like a lot of I know more performance focused bikes are great like this yellow strain on your ear rests the you don’t really have a strain arrested it upright enough was a problem on the neonatal when protection I you really forward into the wind just a little bitand so that does mean that you don’t feel like you’re currently holding onto the bars of 70 or 80 miles an hour to stay onand that was there are various windshields available for the bikes so you a lot highway writing speed there’s a way to set upand I personally thought this might be one of the first things I would do is probably exhausted intake I think that’s a very common thing for people to say that on this bike I think that the character the engine in stock form is a little too sedate for the capabilities of the chassis when he met is that I think this chassis would really benefit from a ladder more rambunctious more rent happy motorand there’s many ways to do that with a sportster Odyssey I easily like the college had almost built so that the SR 1200 had in this chassis that motor be a really good fit personality wise for the chassis is not everything else is an upgraded performance lies like the suspensionand the brakes I think that the bike could really use a little bit extra grunt from the from the motor little more sound obviously but also just a little more of a rent happy nature so I just think bike feel that more lightly on the exhaustand intake in a team goes a long way towards axis AI upgrade by a distaste to it some star focus cans so all in all I deathly recommend this for anybody looking for from the performance focused on I classic style bike I it’s is a really good option for that market I knew only hesitation I would have been recommending is if you do a lot of highly writing it does only have 5 feet is not to bug out on the highway provided you stand below 80 miles an hour your final bassinet regularly get about the sap sustained speedand then I say it does have a great healthy so if you’re just starting out it might not be the best bike to start with because it is ISO 5 poundsand is quiet all seat so it’s your first bike MS here called IR falling out I would recommend potentially starting somewhere else like that that’s just one word of caution it is your first bike to bear in mind is a day on the tall side item to see at least with a Harley in the rest of the motorcycle market is not a particularly tall bikes up on I don’t want to scare you away from that but definitely don’t you should check one out I sit on itand make sure that you feel like it’s a comfortable life for you because it is one thing that most of the feeling of sportster’ What’s up guys now laid I hear coming to from Laidlaw’s Harley Davidson LA area’s oldest largestand finest rally condition such a matter of using the on the brainy 20 18th boy Savoie has been an iconic motorcycle in the Huntington lineup for a long time now in my opinion the most iconic motorcycle Newton makes so that the news this yearand sure mostly heard by now Davidson completely revamped the soft tail chassis despite the sample is built on a brand new chassis I have a video that have a that really outlines exactly what was done these new platforms so I’ll put a link to a video in in a car at the end here so infallibly fashion you got these aluminum disk mag wheels here that’s our kind iconic traits about the sap boyand you got an LED day maker headlamp in this all the new Sawtelle said LED really bright headlampsand a sample assassin you’ve got this freight trains down the cell houses this LED light God’s the Harley Davidson fat boy insignia on the side of take care the software is a military tribute bike this because she has a know the star the wings in the USA down there Savoie comes its name comes from a combination toand bombs are dropped in World War II sap manand little boyand accommodationist to give you fat boy this bike you can be even purchase it in a 107 or 114 configuration this is the new Milwaukee eight engine this is the first in Milwaukee has been offered on a bike other than the touring bikes you have an external preload adjustment knob on this bike this is one of the few bikes the small unit comes with this theater to being the breakoutsand that Bob is your oiland the oil is no longer in the pan underneath the sea anymore it’s underneath the transmissions with the oil sump is you have a two piece seat on the spike is one of the cool things are related did this year with this new Sawtelle platform is all there seats are two piece seats so if you want a more comfortable passenger seat instead of having to buy a brand new seating is by the passenger portionand slap it on their new connection that seatsand so both the writerand the pastor can kinda get what they want one of the big things they did this year is a put a huge 240 mm rear tire on the back of this bike can of Walmart to make a lens to the name of the fat boy from you on this thing is the day is from will whit why is it ever put on a motorcycle as well hundred 60 mm front tire to state really is that so use a lot of what they call the satin chrome finishes on the spike on the primary casing there this is a new floorboard design the floorboards are higher social meaning will have to increase on this new software platform is not a shot of the military tribute insignia that has always down the fat boy family first came out in 1990and has pretty much been a staple Harleyand I have ever since then here is your four piston caliper for piston break CalPERSand that the single the single rotor single side single disc brake I should say the fuel tank is a 5 gallon fuel tank one of the things of the fat boys always been a distinguishing trait about the sample he had bullet holes in the the disk mag wheels for those boreholes with their cost now this is a USB port all of the softgels guys have a USB port on the left hand side of bike so you can charge your your phone or whatever electronic device you might have off of that USB ports not just you need to just the fat boy that all the soft tells how that so here’s a close to the display here so you guys sure you’re a speedo in analogand then you have a digital VIP passes switch here is your digital readout of your today it should be of your feel their digitally remaining miles if we run out of fuel you clock in there as welland the nest displays your RPMand the gear urine as well throw down or their cell in analog on your speedometerand then everything else is all digital is far as your your fuel your Ranger clock you tripand should beand anything with the 114 set is comes at ABS this is a decorative cath you guys this is spins offand you can put different decorative caps on the tank used to be the fuel gaugeand impasse mauled the snow I feel gauge all the gas goes in the right hand side here dimension of the 5 gallon fuel tank the Santos coming to sizes either 5 gallon or threeand half gallons of this does have the bigger the twoand there’s your bullet holes there in the center of the tank on the center console so they remove the boreholes from the disk wheelsand put in the center console there immersing the lens to the military tribute at this despite his homage to so all these new Sawtelle’s guys all security to all keyless this key here all it does is lock the forksand aluminum keys now need to mention the key limits is really cookieand the actuation in the 4 o’clock is a lot cleaner a lot smoother now that used to be in years past they used one of the things they do the Santos chassis you guys as they reduce the weights here between 30 to 35 pounds I need to these Sawtelle models they do that by really analyzing every party put on hisand tried to cut away wherever they could use a little number they could set a steel to reduce the weightand that you can doesn’t tell that the weight reduction is there so really sat wheels on the same this bike almost reminds you the bikes it is making Tron is really fat lookand style by through aggressive means styling your combined with that headlamp this is a really cool aggressive meaty muscle type of the styling summit go aheadand fire sing of CSand his sanity engineand can see what it looks like visually as it’s runningand everything so things of notes this know what dates they puts a dual counterbalance are in their the original arcade I was offered a touring bike he is single counterbalance in front of the engine download the oil cooler is no voltage regulator so there’s another flywheel in this version of the Milwaukee that specifically designed for the softgelsand that is between via the crank in the transmission cell gave that you counterbalance is on the spikeand so it’s the primary shaking forces are 100 reduced on this there’s very little vibration in Sawtelle fashionand that day was allotted to also really increase the rigidity of this whole bike from top to bottom the frameand the way the engine is mounted to the frameand all that so this bike is a lot stiffer 90 stiffer than the Diane chassis was in the figure thought is a 65 stiffer than previous model softgelsand it’s definitely noticeable guysand everything from rider input into handlebars to that the way that it’s liensand Excelerator to turn everything is just quickerand the reaction time is a lot better society is not it’s fun to go through this cachet as some of the highlights the suspension on these Sawtelle friends to I should I should add is far superior to the old Sawtelle frames it’s it was kind of the weird thing even call them soft tell anymore my frame because it’s it’s really nothing like the old Sawtelle that all funding Sawtelle about analogy still had hidden suspensions suspensions up underneath the seat his available colors guys the first was bike this is 10 black tempest by campus like a bluish blackish really deep like Pearl Flake color this is called industrial gray is a really cool this car lot in the next here is called Bonneville salt Pearl M Callan either started her day sickle colorand this economy is in the video this is the only could readand twisted Sherry to town here’s an anniversary this is legend blueand visit black the fat boy is the only model to come into different or both of the year anniversary colors to this is the non denim finishand this is the denim finish the call legend blue denimand it’s got a tattoo style graphics on its present we got one of these we sold pretty quickly out of the cool color is a musician stats on this thing here so the 107Q begins bike starts at 18 999 that’s for black wine goes up at 400 from their fear from card into it to town ABS is standard on the spike as well as the security system security system standard on all the soft tells this bike has a course in the walkie eight engine walkie eight gets its name from the four valves per cylinder with a total of eight valves has single camand I spent a lot of time on stats here got to what they call the most machined lake stir wheels to Brandon Willis share of a futuristic type of allele like the that I guess said before the solid disk wheel that they use for me years that they have have a futuristic twist on it unless really goodand after the 114 is 20 209 box so looking at about 1300 charge if you want the 114 which in my opinion it’s pretty well worth it so nobody likes to see the horsepowerand torque figures so let me show you what Harley Davidson publishes in their screaming Eagle section of the catalog here so this is for the 114 to begin stop soft tell by Fisher US stock is there for black dot in line down there soand this is at the rear wheel this is not the crank where everybody next to you write about their power to buy another car the crank that it’s about 85 hp at 4500 RPM on these dikesand this is with the 114and then your torque is about 109 foot pounds of torque at the rear wheeland that’s peeks at 3000 RPM so if you live in the websites I believe they claim hundredand 19 foot pounds of torqueand that’s can be measured at the crankand is number 14and on the 107 version they claim hundredand 9 foot pounds of torque at the crank so they go’s office invasive overall general information on this new Sawtelle frame Iand extremely impressed for you my videos ride probably five or six of the softgels of this pointand this never been able to ride a Harley Davidson harderand more aggressively than the softgels the sauces really are the performance frame in the Harley Davidson world which is kind of funny because before this software frame was probably the worst performing form frame councils from the worst to the best overnight there were frame being on staff really worry about because this new Sawtelle to see how performs no frame hands down are frame the question was is busy ethics are frame yes disliked dominates the ethics are freeand close know that the right is our right SARS for a time the FSR was some guides you to meet people live in the blessingand a curse as he was love their motorcycles for a long time Hill in nature God is the most collectible lifestyle is so many things are ingrained in people with you so that you have romanticized on the way things used to be held at the blessingand curse performanceand handling his overall he is power away everything about these new Sawtelle’s sis is better than the old real soft tell chassis that you kneeled to talk to you about family specifically the way I would best describe as a boy is is a muscle cruiser what I mean is this thing looks great very simplistic linesand futuristic flare headlamp in the wheels was still the classic lines in the rear swing armand everythingand the really set is onand everything this thing is not the best handling Sawtelle there’s other hands also like a low rider warrior Bob are you listening from the wheels in the scene because of an one can notice on this bike is as I was entering turns slowly if you’re on the break all turn this one is for this is like to lean overand take her to a slow way down your turn despite the good switch type of roads in the slow say what is really funny despite Dell is latest day start off dead stop’s role in on his like you get this trash in the rear the huge back thereand all I obey is on sky this thing is really fine stop stop by my is for sure it’s youand the suspension the monitor shock rear suspension training this year will turn right there is a perfect example of this need not be the likely the bike down shape the bikeand return to effect the better way why the shot the monitor shock on this bikeand there’s two rulings on the soft tell chassis is 3 inch travel in this rear shot all the mice had a shot with the exception of the Heritageand Bob for travel guides the suspension of this bike is just far superior to the old softgels in the message describe it as you have more than plan for dealing with the wheelsand tires stay in contact asphalt going over little Thompson was in the road like thatand that’s achieved by is the smallest designand also the seal cartridge design in the front for us since the show will the valve system in the front which was developed in a fight through my 27 three model year so he saw me feeling part beneficial theme of this 8 form being put in these the softgels uses is the cooling system is efficient to display the Oakland system that’s treated toilet on the heads really reduces the heat on these engines significantly seeking a lot less of that heat radiating up on youand is embedded in the different engine components of this bike is really apparent to me that he is reduced significantly on his run at a cooler temperature is based you have the cable auditory mice is the walkie engineand then have hydraulic clutch down south bank of the spikes the deal is okay you want so well here shifted the problem so good Smith still that the distinct feeling shifting here would expect from claimsand the sound to it in place a heavy piece of machinery that also really good analyzer nice is a quarter bar all internally wired really clean bar design nine can save on despite the ways everything is real simplistic styling is from Harley Davidsonand Alex forget the size these these sufferings are pretty small guys cells there is no more room on these were on the old Sawtelle’s immediate classroom 6’6 talland so despite was deathly a Francine position for me I know is probably seen despite Dell which back to 3 inches Jason try that out for me if I wasn’t as tall as I am holy the softgels might purchase big fan that because I do a lot of freeway writing tall like fairy radios in the communication of his remains family go through the small year that’s this boy this is this is for the guy that was down the weekends doing patriot Russell in the the more comfortable see if there be back there for more than 20 minutes or so there are two different sizes on this bike I will say you’re were limited on this bike also putting the breakdown of this bike bolted 240 mm rear tire sale of them were limited on your options for the sissy bar you have the more the below profile that you cannot play toward the back of this bike is a new cooldown came out from the softgels as they made it easier for you toward these bikes however this bikeand the breakoutsand the fact Bob will not accept toward cell this Like into the category of some muscle he a cruiser bike real clean lines you have on this by guys real simplistic risers on this life so you years are somewhat down despite the severe grade bike shoes so really good Blake blank canvas to customize this bike so I can say Wayneand his life for his life for someone that wants a bike to really freak on Felix’s work despite really toward the really fun by roleand also the senior pants customize for you like it wrote the classic lines simplistic engineering styling save things to customize it is the Sawtelle frame chassis of view customization options for seating position Chris floorboards lovers so if you’re guided down the freeway you a lot of long distance to arrive probably not the best bike for you persona really likes to call razor sharp handling not to Best Buy for a slowdowns initiated turn on this they really wide sweeping turns real applicable handling on this thing so looking for a roomand Jane Carver Best Buy I was the breaking on his on the softgels even noticing this break the breaking is really good guy support this helper Stasi price really really well so breaking is great on these things us with the way as well he shows to find people that you know life to this break the low rider anymore I really miss on this bikeand all weather race but the break just fine that way is really cool iconic model that leaves only improved on his lot faster the 114 even when I said sure THE SAME PLANT ONE FOR THE LAWN OR DOES THE FREEWAY I WOULD WANT TO SEEM LIKE ACROSS COUNTRIES LIKE THE WINDOWS DEALING YOU CAN GET A WINDSHIELD DESPITE REGULAR FREEWAY HAS THE RIGHT WINDSHIELD THAT HE WAS GUYS THAT CONCLUSION A REVIEW HERE SO MANY QUESTIONS AS ALWAYS COMMENTS SECTION BELOW YOU WANT TO USE A SITE AREA IS NOTIFY ME See Other related products: Witch Never Let Your Wings Be Stolen From You Colorful T Shirt

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mysticdragon3md3 · 7 years

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thoughts after Yuri on Ice ep7

1:15 AM 11/25/2016 Honestly, I've been reluctant to post about Yuri on Ice ep7, because the fandom is so focused on the romance, especially in this episode, but I don't see Victuri ready for that step yet. And more importantly, there are other things, some more important things, going on in this series.

6:25 AM 11/21/2016 I have to admit that before I watched Yuri on Ice ep7, I had seen the spoiler screengrabs on Tumblr. After ep6, I just wanted to see what the fandom was like! I totally wasn't looking for spoilers! ;o; Everyone was posting screengrabs of the most spoilery moment in ep7. -.-; Fortunately, I've been mostly immune to spoilers for the majority of my life. (It wasn't until Madoka Magica when I discovered spoilers were finally effecting me.) For me, the value of a series is in every scene's ability to be an enjoyable experience, each and every time it's re-watched. So I don't really care about knowing what happens. To me, what counts is if the series is actually able to make me _feel_ what happens, with its presentation. So I thought, "What the heck, I'll just go ahead and watch ep7, without writing my reactions during it." After all, there's not much surprise for me to document in my reactions, when the most spoilery moment was already spoiled.

But I will say that I was surprised to see the YOI fandom so gung-ho about this new series being like a flagship of homosexual romance anime. It felt strange to me, because I had been aware of the yaoi/BL/shonen ai genre(s) for the longest time. Not that that genre is realistic enough to count as an actual "homosexual romance" to take seriously. Yuri on Ice is able to differentiate itself from those pre-established BL and Romance genres, because it was marketed as a mainstream anime. (In this post-Haikyuu era, lots of manga publishers and anime producers seem to be betting on the "sports anime" genre for their next popular series. Much in the same way that after Bleach and Death Note became popular, Shinigami became a copied trend, along with strong, no-nonsense heroines with short dark hair, styled after Rukia Kuchiki, like Tokiko Tsumura, Ryo Miyakozuka, Mikasa Ackerman, etc.) With that mainstream marketing, Yuri on Ice was able to get a lot of eyeballs on it, which necessitated that it smooth out a lot of the niche quirks from the BL genre. Actually, the series isn't rooted in the BL genre nor is it basing itself as a primarily Romance genre story, so that's probably what actually saved it from the unrealistic melodramatic cliches of the BL and Romance genres. According to Tweets from both the director and writer, they initially wanted to avoid a romance story, especially a heterosexual romance, because both had been overdone and they were tired of all the associated cliches. (Especially in Japan, where stringent gender roles had mapped out a whole overused outline of heterosexual romance stories.) But when the writer noticed the characters taking on a life of their own and taking the story to a romantic leaning, the director simply encouraged that they just go with it and let the characters do what they want. The story _organically_ evolved into containing a homosexual romance. Still, it's also trying to juggle "character study", "sports anime", and Romance, all at once. Because of that, even though the series is gradually embracing more romantic elements, Yuri on Ice is able to avoid being predominated by a lot of the trite "harlequinn novel"-esque cliches from the BL and Romance genres. Yuri on Ice feels more like a Drama that happens to have some romance, rather than _just_ a Romance with all the cliche unbelievable melodrama. In addition, Yuri on Ice is also trying to be a "sports anime", so it has no time to waste on becoming a primarily Romance genre series. Though I still feel that Yuri on Ice isn't exactly an effective "sports anime", it is still enough of a "sports anime" to keep the story from becoming nothing but a Romance genre story. Which I'm glad for, because like the writer, I'm getting tired of those cliches too (unless there's a good reason to pursue them). So I was very surprised to see the YOI fandom so incredibly focused on the romantic subplot of the story.

Not that Yuri on Ice doesn't have a few Romance genre cliches. Like I noted in my reactions to episodes 1-5, so much of Victor's first appearance in Hasetsu, insisting on becoming Yuri's coach, is just too reminiscent of the "otherworldly girl" subgenre (what TV Tropes calls the "Magical Girlfriend" trope). A specific section of the "harem anime" genre, it usually involves some unbelievably attractive girl, coming out of no where, from a completely different world, to insistently attach herself to the passive, herbivore protagonist, thus turning his world upside-down, with her "powers", lack of familiarity with the mundane, and the people from her world, following after her. (If Yuri on Ice had stayed to that formula, Yurio would have stayed in Hasetsu, living with Yuri, Victor, and Katsuki family, all together.) Urusei Yatsura, Ah! Megami-sama, Tenchi Muyo, Saber Marionette J, Wish, etc. Very specific cliches and tropes from that genre, are preformed by Victor, despite the writer's interviews saying that she wanted to avoid Romance genre cliches. Thank goodness that was her intention, because she kept the cliches to a subtle minimum, yet still kept enough, to use what was effective about them: comedy and plot progression. Even in episode 7, she kept the cliche "manly" trait of "I don't know what to do when people cry in front of me", because "manly men aren't experienced enough with emotions to know how to handle the intensity of crying"---as the misleading stereotype goes. ^^;;;;; Also in episode 7, Victor was threatening to enact another cliche, the BL genre "kiss to calm you down". But even in that scene, you could still sense the writer's reluctance to let Romance genre tropes take the wheel. She put a stop to that trope by writing Yuri as shouting back to Victor what would really be appropriate, rather than just allowing a big splash-page kiss, that editors usually tell their manga-ka to bait readers with, through fanservice. That was refreshing. Sure, 1 or 2 scenes later, the writer let Victor fully enact a different BL/Romance/Shoujo manga trope, the "dramatic tackle-kiss out of no where", but I feel it was appropriate to the moment. Whereas, in the BL, Romance, and Shoujo genres, such a cliche is usually baseless or given little supporting context...other than cheesecake fanservice to snare an audience.

Honestly, after ep7, the YOI fandom became a minefield. Any criticism or differing interpretation of Victuri seems to be taken as a homophobic statement. So I've been reluctant to post anything about Yuri on Ice anymore. But my blog is a record of my fandom, for *me*. It serves as _my memory_, so I should post what I want. And what I want to acknowledge is that even though I would love some Victuri, Yuri is an inexperienced, unromantically-inclined virgin, and that archetype, in anime and manga, has repeatedly been used for much more slow-burn love stories, where that archetype often doesn't even realize they are in love. (Ryo McClean from Fake; Sawako Kuronuma from Kimi ni Todoke; etc.) It's very much unlike the usual Romance genre, where all characters are constantly looking for love, know it when they feel it, and often even jump too soon into misinterpreted relationships, based on false assumptions of love's presence. And for those of us who relate to characters whose lives don't revolve completely around Romance, for those of us who relate to the unromantically-inclined, passive protagonist, there's preference for seeing a story develop solid reasons and at a gradual pace, to allow for emotionally visceral processing. That is what the pure-hearted, inexperienced virgin archetype often provides in their romance stories, and it'd be a shame to turn him into another dime-a-dozen rom-com protagonist. I mean, if virgin little innocent Yuri actually fell in love, I'd expect the story to show the full weight of that realization _ON-SCREEN_ and give it the time for dramatic weight. I think anything less, like off-screen implication or narrative exposition dump, would be an insult to Victuri and to any fans of Katsuki Yuri. Even the fact that the YOI series is trying to be a "sports anime" doesn't excuse it from relegating its romantic subplot offscreen, especially the milestone points of a romantic subplot. YOI, in my opinion, has functioned more as a "character study" story than anything else. And as such, a romantic relationship involving the protagonist, is too important of a life event, to give sub-parr portrayal, through limited time and mere on-screen implications. Katsuki Yuri is a character who started the series feeling alone, and his whole arc seems to be growing into realizing he is not alone, by (re-)forging bonds with other people. The most intense type of human relationships is romantic, and with such significance, especially in relation to Yuri's type of character development, if YOI doesn't portray his realization into love, on-screen and given all the time it needs in portrayal, for the full emotional impact---especially for a "character study"---I will pitch a fit. I want my Victuri to have the red carpet rolled out for its portrayal and given all the luxurious prep it deserves. Anything less, like simply laying responsibility on the audience to just assume things about the most important relationship in Katsuki Yuri's life, and I will be beyond disappointed.

#md3 watches yuri on ice

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ankitmadan · 3 years

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A Complete Guide to Chatbots

Discussion drives deals and this is a verifiable truth. For clients, it is imperative to have somebody to pose inquiries and explain questions, somebody who could direct them and suggest them the most ideal alternative.

Today, discussions can be robotized, and today there is no compelling reason to have an actual individual joined to every client. These days, conversational business turned into a quickly developing popular expression and chatbots assume a vital part in this field.

Today, I might want to talk about why chatbots turned out to be so well known and why web based business and m-trade organizations vigorously put resources into it.

What is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a PC program or a man-made reasoning which directs a discussion through hear-able or text based strategies. It recreates how a human would act in a programmed way, improving the proficiency of the interaction.

Chatbots are generally utilized for client assistance, data procurement or lead age.

The most exceptional chatbots are controlled by man-made brainpower, assisting with understanding complex solicitations, customize reactions, and improve associations over the long haul. This innovation is as yet in the improvement stage and has a great deal of possibilities.

As these days everything goes towards robotization, Chatbots permit individuals to dispose of routine undertakings and spotlight more on an essential side of the business. Also, a colossal speed of preparing clients' solicitations with chatbots assists with acquiring clients' devotion. Allow me to feature that quality is kept up and at times even expanded as robots submit less mix-ups than people. Besides, as chatbots don't have feelings they handle the emergencies, struggle circumstances much better.

There are two sorts of chatbots. The main kind of capacities depends on a bunch of rules, and the subsequent sort capacities utilizing AI, NLP, AI. Chatbots that capacity dependent on a bunch of rules are prohibitive. They can just react to explicit orders as opposed to deciphering a client's language. Rule-based chatbots are incredible if clients are simply expected to have straightforward questions that allude to a restricted arrangement of data.

Concerning the AI Chatbots, they work through AI to deal with a wide scope of discussions and solicitations from clients. Rather than just reacting to explicit orders, AI chatbots can decipher a client's language to comprehend and address their issues. Simulated intelligence chatbots bode well in the event that you need to deal with complex questions and remarks from clients, for instance, a client requesting an item proposal.

Chatbots insights

Shockingly, Baby Boomers (age 55+) are bound to expect profits by chatbots than Millennials (age 18-34). 83% of online customers need support during shopping.

Information from Google Trends shows in the course of the most recent five years, search volume around "chatbots" became 19x as people and organizations understood their worth. Also, as per the HubSpot research report, 71% of individuals use chatbots to tackle their difficult quick. 56% of individuals would prefer to message than call client assistance and 53% of individuals are bound to shop with organizations they can message.

As per Ideal, 37% hope to find fast solutions to inquiries in a crisis, 35% hope to find definite solutions or clarifications, 34% utilize a chatbot as a methods for getting associated with a human.

The greatest advantages of utilizing a chatbot: 64% – the top advantage is the capacity to get 24-hour administration, 55% - getting moment reactions to requests, 55% – finding solutions to straightforward inquiries.

In a review by LivePerson, 38% of individuals studied felt good about their chatbots encounters, while just 11% felt antagonistic.

With respect to the top worries about utilizing a chatbot, 43% of individuals report that they like to speak with a human above all else, 30% stress over the chatbot committing an error, 27% stress over getting to it just through a particular medium, 24% concern it will not talk in a well disposed way.

How about we take a gander at another Ubisend report to help understand the potential: 1 out of 5 shoppers would consider buying labor and products from a chatbot, 40% of purchasers need offers and arrangements from chatbots, customers will spend more than $400 through a chatbot.

"Our chatbots are now performing better compared to email when contrasting natural development, read rates, and snap throughs. We realize that fans need to feel near their #1 specialists, and this arrangement assists us with interfacing them in a manner that is true. Email simply doesn't give a similar chance to flaunt your character." — Jeremy Kutner, VP of Web and Mobile at Warner Music Group

Chatbots versus Email

Noteworthy, isn't that so? Indeed, man-made reasoning will actually want to comprehend and recollect all that you say, or ask, regardless of how basic or complex. Conversing with a PC will be just about as normal as conversing with a human and obviously individuals will begin considering chatbots as a decent wellspring of data and a phenomenal answer for addressing the issues in the most proficient manner conceivable.

Indeed, the worldwide chatbot market is relied upon to reach $1.23 billion by 2025 with a building yearly development pace of 24.3%, as indicated by a Grand View Research report.

Chatbots use cases

As the level of customers who like to purchase online is unavoidably expanding each year, chatbots are turning into an absolute necessity to have the option to go to every client that needs help.

Furthermore, what are the current most mainstream chatbots use cases?

1. Request Food

These days it is very simple to arrange food on the web, particularly with the assistance of chatbots by messaging, tweeting, voice, or even from a vehicle. A brilliant model is Domino's pizza. It allows you effectively to construct another pizza, get it and track your request all from Facebook Messenger.

2. Item Suggestions

Numerous customers realize they need to get a few shoes yet probably won't have a specific thing at the top of the priority list. For this situation, chatbots are a decent arrangement, they can offer item ideas dependent on what individuals need: shading, style, and so forth For instance, H&M's Kik chatbot can construct an outfit for you.

3. Client assistance

Brands like Airbnb, Evernote, and Spotify use chatbots on Twitter to give day in and day out client support. The fundamental thought is to rapidly give answers and address client protests, or basically track the situation with a request.

4. Individual Budget Help

Chatbots make it simple to make exchanges, get warnings about financial exchange patterns, track your individual accounting records, or even get help discovering a home loan. For instance, a few banks carried out chatbots to permit clients to check their own and venture accounts and suggest new speculation openings.

5. Timetable a Meeting

These days, everybody is exceptionally occupied and it turns out to be extremely hard to set up gatherings. In any case, chatbot can accomplish the work for you. For instance, Meekan is a great model, it sees everybody's schedules to discover times when everybody is free.

Chatbots Benefits

We should take a gander at the primary advantages of chatbots:

1. Time and cost proficiency

Via robotizing discussions that would require a representative to reply, associations set aside time and cash that would then be able to be designated to different endeavors. Rather than having individuals doing manual, redundant assignments or responding to comparable inquiries, those people may zero in on additional energizing things.

"Conversing with virtual representatives will assume an inexorably vital part: clients would prefer not to hang tight for answers to straightforward inquiries. Also, business would not like to distribute assets to address similar inquiries again and again." — Phil Vanstone, Program Manager at Shopify Plus

2. Deals

Chatbots utilize direct messages to assemble valuable data to offer successful and pertinent help. For instance, chatbots can ask clients for what good reason they wound up being on this site. Or then again individuals could utilize chatbots as a counsel for suggestions. Additionally, the chatbot will recollect every one of client's decisions and give the client significant decisions the following visit. Just as filling in as viable channels for illuminating or reminding clients about new items or advancements on the online business store.

3. Guide clients

Shockingly, some of the time it isn't clear where data is. Also, at times clients simply leave the site since they couldn't discover items they were looking for. Also, at times clients don't know about what they truly need and need. By posing a progression of qualifying inquiries, chatbots course clients to the best spot for them to discover the data they need.

4. Every day administration

Perhaps the most well known employments of chatbots is to give speedy answers in a crisis. In any case, there are a ton of associations that don't offer 24-hour administration and for them to build deals without expanded a ton the expenses, chatbots are a great alternative.

Demand for data scientists is still high and growing day by day. To learn more about careers in data science field. Visit us at, Data Science Master Program in gurgaon

#chatbots #chatbots applications #Data Science Master Program in gurgaon

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benjamincyfl2871-blog · 5 years

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The Private Of Fortnite V Bucks Free

Money Laundering Scheme Uncovered Using Fortnite V

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Now for some latest exciting news: New leaks have appeared online that point to snow coming to the record of Fortnite Battle Royale for the winter season. Fortnite take a litter player base. That's why Epic is ensuring that all eligible players with open qualifiers are 13 years or older, and that players between 13 and 17 years old must have permission from the parent or legal guardian” to qualify to the Planet Cup. That crowd contains more than 14 Programs to create your Fortnite FPS get advanced and minimize lag, also that controls over 30 Windows Tweaks & increases to augment show and finally Enhance your FPS while enjoying Fortnite.

It's already no technique that scammers have occurred wanting to make a fast buck by suggesting gamers free V-Bucks, the exclusive currency that Fortnite players use to buy new things and skins from the popular battle royale activity. May became probably the most successful month for which we have stats free, with Fortnite: Battle Royale getting in $318 million (concrete post-May figures are demanding to get). That is it the best-performing competition of it is style before that metric.

If you've been looking at a certain skin or want to save up to get some new items you'll know about Fortnite V-Bucks. They're the in-game currency which permit you to acquire new items like skins and gliders for your Fortnite makeup and load-out. Receive the lowdown on Fortnite: Battle Royale, which is right now with season 7. In most multiplayer shooter games, the want is to eliminate. This is not the reason if you are likely to enjoy Fortnite. Your aim is to live, not kill. For instance, even if you kill 50 opponents, you could lose.

Fortnite is the biggest activity of 2018, when you see an individual who games regularly, there's a great chance they're showing this. The game itself becomes open, but players need to use in-game V-Bucks to buy customizations. EPIC UPDATES & EVENTS - Weekly updates constantly fuel the pleasure. New gameplay modes, vital and crazy new looks for your avatar, new guns and items….Fortnite is always expanding.

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Whilst BattlEye is sent with the likes of Fortnite, PUBG etc - most people have no idea what it is or why this display an slip. The creator of Fornite Battle Royale have said the game will remain free-to-play permanently. Fortnite Save the planet currently costs $39.99 to join in, but after both modes leave Early Access later this year, Save the World will also become free-to-play.

Figure 1: Data illustrates the estimated revenue of Fortnite compared to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds between June 2017 — June 2018, based on the Edison Trends dataset. While you can't directly gift V-Bucks to another player, you have a couple of options to assist them get their Fortnite fix: buy them something certificate for their own platform of choice, or buy a pack with particular information.

Avoid The Top 10 VBUCKS Mistakes

After the announcement starts, you'll see a preview in the upper-right crook regarding your own game (that you can minimise, if you want). This survey window enables people quickly toggle your microphone and webcam at next away, and also click on the "chat" tie to picture exactly what everyone is around on your bad Fortnite death streak. If you're wondering what items come in the Fortnite shop right now, for the morning in which you're reading this, you can start onto the Fortnite Battle Royale shop items guide We'll be updating this web site every period, to echo all the make new objects to Epic brings to the Fortnite store.

Well, Fortnite's success isn't based entirely on the fact that it is free, but instead, it is due to how well the free-to-play asset interlocks with the premise and features of the game itself. Which means that the fact that Fortnite is open on the moment is a brilliant source that greatly supports the other elements we will be discussing. Clearly the votes are in and that been officially confirmed - Fortnite is the best Battle Royale game off there.

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Fortnite: Save The World is a co-op survival game using all the same products and guns as you'll get in Fortnite Battle Royale, and draft the person with body defenses before playing behind an attack of AI controlled zombies. Survive the night then people gain rewards such because different systems, gear, blocks with building materials to do it all once again. With state two very different modes along with staying inside first access, it is wonder how very Fortnite runs both here PVE and PVP modes. As such, you don't really need a super powerful PC to be able to play the game.

Epic Games are aiming to develop a little kind of Fortnite Battle Royale for persons to enjoy with their allies with creative mode, using a smaller starting ball. In conclusion, I found a backdoor breach into the databases of some big gaming business. The Fortnite Battle Royale database lets myself toward pack as many sources so I want in any Fortnite Battle Royale account.

Is VBUCKS Worth [$] To You

No one believed Fortnite would be popular this minute with, but that gone on to adapt and competition for its spot at the top in the battle royale ladder. Microsoft say simply moved out a new Xbox Live Gold deal open to entirely new customers and everybody who dropped the membership by October 1: three months of use with 1,000 V-Bucks for a sum of $10. That cost really constitutes the V-Bucks open, as 1,000 V-Bucks would cost Fortnite players five bucks when purchased separately.

And so these were some of the best system that is usually used to walk free v cash in fortnite game without use any real income. Fortnite Battle Royale is an online multiplayer survival shooter developed by Epic Games , in which 100 players fight to be the last person take here sport lasting less than forty seconds. It is a free game utilizing some mechanics on the original Fortnite, a success sandbox game, many aspects in the battle royale” type of sport.

Your report defense is your top priority! Keep your report with permitting 2FA. As a reward for defending your bank account, you'll uncover the Boogiedown Emote in Fortnite Battle Royale. It's unclear at this time just how the Buried Treasure item will work, however. It'd make sense if the item somehow showed a singular, powerful tool hidden somewhere around the map—but most Fortnite fans don't know what to expect quite yet.

So that's everything you need to know by getting stuck in Fortnite and Fortnite Battle Royale. We'll understand anyone from the channel. With reply , Epic staff member darkveil” said, Yes!” The plan is in place but it is formally a little difficult,” according to the comment. Epic wants to provide mini-BR” activities in Creative where users can configure the Hurricane, use the bus drop feature, and other events from the central Fortnite battle royale island.

To get Fortnite on a COMPUTER or Mac, you'll call for a Epic Games account. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem a basic way to block childen from acquiring events going on your own account, if they tell your password, though we've asked Epic Games and will update that feature when we consider back. The best Time Sound Buttons in the greatest soundboard for Fortnite. Use it in Lobby, in Sport or After Death! Create your best moments by performing online.

According to several news websites, Fortnite is known to these type of hacks And they are treating them as a significant sin also hiring legal actions and also can veto the version who are trying to cut or cheat in the system. For the frequent events of gentle violence, Fortnite is regarded 12+ by PEGI, Pan European Game Information But as with many activities of this type, plenty of children younger than 12 are performing, so that essential that fathers become aware of the safety points which have been there elevated, with the way to help their descendants play safely.

Fortnite Battle Royale isn't merely the biggest competition of 2018; that a genuine cultural phenomenon. From middle-school playgrounds to frat house parties to million-view YouTube livestreams , that turn into the obsession for countless fans. Gaming hasn't seen everything that deep since stretch of Minecraft. Fact No: 2 : - Fortnite will ban all gamers who will try to hack or cheat the routine.

Once you have existed accepted to the free gift, there will be an acceptance email. All you want is start the idea with following the order to sign hip toward the Samsung account, download Fortnite game, then understand the 15,000 V-Bucks along with the Galaxy skin for free. A now-deleted tweet from a fake Epic Games report said: Fortnite will be turning drink with Sept 26th 2018.

This pattern must finish. That worked with CS:GO as it would basically create the hitboxes larger, in Fortnite, go on the modern game engine, that only smushes the character model down. Any perceived effect they have in your ability to show is a excuse. The designer can believe understanding in Fortnite's footsteps and count another, limited-time game approaches that fun with the BR formula, or perhaps map-changing ingredients to maintain game environment warm. Or Respawn may follow PUBG and increase another, smaller roads with something else server amounts to mingle points up.

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businessguide12-blog · 5 years

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Optimizing Your Site for Voice Search, Business Guide to CRM

New Post has been published on https://businessguideto.com/trending/optimizing-your-site-for-voice-search-business-guide-to-crm/

Optimizing Your Site for Voice Search, Business Guide to CRM

20 Things Small Business Owners Need to Know

1—How to Optimize Your Site for Voice Search

Google voice search is changing the way users search for the information they need.

Nearly two-thirds of all smartphone users have used voice search to find local business information in the last year. The impact of voice search is changing the way Google handles search queries—and businesses need to ensure their websites are optimized to keep up.

The key to voice search is speed. Google knows that when someone asks for information out loud, they don’t want to wait around for the answer. Websites that load more quickly rise up Google’s SEO rankings.

And the informality of voice search puts greater value on a conversational tone of writing. Consumers are asking questions in natural language, and they want brief, down-to-Earth responses such as those typically found on an FAQ page.

Voice search is still new, but it’s likely to account for half of all online searches by 2020. Optimizing for search requires a business to be constantly ahead of the game.

Check out the infographic below from Headway Capital to learn more.

2—The SMB Guide to CRM in 2019

Guest post by H. John Oechsle, President & CEO, Swiftpage. He has a 30-year track record of building highly profitable and sustainable revenue growth for emerging companies and established global leaders.

The New Year to-do list for an SMB owner can be daunting. No doubt you’re thinking about myriad administrative and organizational needs relating to accounting and finance, staffing, your product and service roadmap for the year and more. In the course of all this productive planning, and as you look to build stronger relationships that drive ROI in 2019, consider how you’re responding to customer information.

Your patrons have shared their data all last year through clicks, subscriptions, customer service requests, sales inquiries and more—and now expect your business to be able to turn those interactions and touch points into a more targeted, holistic experience.

SMBs that cater to the right customers—and to enhancing the customer experience—can expect to see big gains. With CRM revenues at $39.5 billion and growing, leaders are investing in this software to improve customer interactions that lead to sales.

From improved customer experiences to increased productivity, CRMs are on the rise for a reason and have become powerful and customizable enough to adapt to the needs of SMBs across industries. With that said, let’s take a closer look at what small businesses need to know when looking for a CRM—or evaluating their existing solution—in 2019.

CRMs are big with small businesses

Popular for a reason: The CRM landscape is evolving, with SMB-focused solutions increasingly providing greater value to small businesses than enterprise level competitors are able to offer; the social CRM sphere alone is estimated to reach $10 billion in 2019. With real-time insights into customer information, the ever-evolving CRM model will drive relevant content to better fulfill customer expectations.

Easy does it: The right CRM can work magic, serving as a single platform that can span across the entire breadth of an organization—sharing information and providing value for customer service, sales, product development, management, operations and more. The sales-cycle will no longer be filled with fragmented or piecemeal information conducted offline on notepads and whiteboards.

Time to act with analytics

Playing nice with predictive analytics: Businesses need to craft effective ads, select which customers to cross-sell to and address their customer churn. Since you have access to intelligent information, the question becomes—how will you aggregate and leverage all this data? Today’s best SMB-focused CRMs capture metrics more effectively than ever before. You’ll receive digestible and actionable information in one space.

Getting real with artificial intelligence: CRM and AI are quite a dynamic duo. When combined, they can bolster the revenue of your business with a predicted $394 US billion dollars gained by 2021, according to Statista. When paired with a good SMB CRM, AI technology can act as a virtual detective that collects clues to build customer personas, improve your ability to personalize interactions and put the right information in front of your team (and your customers) to help create meaningful interactions.

Machines that dance to your algorithms: Once an external function of CRM, machine learning is now integrated into advanced CRM solutions for SMBs. And as the demand for customer intelligence increases, you can take the next best step to make a sale based on your history in the sales cycle. These systems recommend communications based on your customer preferences. The best SMB CRMs are designed to make sales and marketing recommendations that help you close deals faster and cater to your customers’ specific needs.

Experience is the new journey

Mapping your customer’s path: If you want to improve the customer experience, listen to your patrons. Trust that your target market is willing to pay more for a quality 1:1 experience. Old data models relied on placing people into broad groups, casting customers as two-dimensional characters based on gender or profession. The best SMB CRMs go well beyond raw data to construct a realistic snapshot of each customer based on new intel they themselves provide: clicks, online accounts and conversations. From awareness to post-purchase, analyzing the ups and downs of your strategy will show when to apply the gas (or brakes) with a customer and focus on retention.

Grow through retention: As a small business, you want to move seamlessly from conversion to retention. Make sure your CRM taps into behavioral insights and personally re-engages lost customers. CRM automation can free up your time, allowing you to focus on building core customer relationships without having to manually track down interactions. Tech-driven CRM systems will communicate across channels to rapidly seek information in order to understand each unique situation.

Automate your marketing process: Natively integrated marketing automation technology in an SMB CRM solution can help a business improve sales in a hurry. Once you’re able to see which pieces of marketing content lead to customer engagement, how the customer engages, how long and what their next steps are—you’ll wonder how you managed before automating. Marketing automation technology designed specifically for SMBs has gone a long way toward leveling the playing field between small and enterprise level competitors across a variety of industries and market verticals.

Nurture the conversion: Nurtured leads convert faster, and more reliably, than when a business relies on the customer to do all the work. Understanding when and how to act on a lead is critical. Since good rapport is all about good timing, the right CRM will work in tandem with your sales team to proactively guide customers toward the products and services best suited to their needs.

Reach for cloud-based solutions

Mobile is flexible: Increasingly affordable, elastic and with you everywhere you go—the sky’s the limit when your CRM lives on your mobile device. In fact, 68% of CRM solutions will be cloud-based in 2019 and the best cloud-based SMB CRM solutions will have a dedicated (and strategically designed) mobile component. Plan to adopt a CRM system you can rely on while in the field visiting customers with an app that gives you access to specific information instantly at your fingertips.

Go for layers with a subscription model: For SMBs, it’s often preferable to pay a small flat monthly fee instead of a more substantial upfront cost. The subscription billing model allows small businesses to effectively control, plan and manage their budgets—while also ensuring their technology is updated and they have access to customer support as the company grows and needs change.

The bottom line

In 2019, an effective CRM can provide your SMB with an opportunity to proactively anticipate customer needs and guide the customer experience while streamlining and unifying disparate areas of the business. A CRM won’t solve all your problems, but the right CRM can lead to marked improvements throughout the business while positively contributing to bottom line growth in a variety of ways. Get out there and find the right solution for your business’s growth in 2019!

By Shavi Goel, Product Marketing Lead for Jobs at Facebook

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more job openings than unemployed workers in many regions across the U.S., forcing businesses to rethink how they find new employees.

This means hiring will become even harder for small businesses, many of whom are already strapped for time and resources. In fact, nearly 40% of U.S. small businesses today report that filling jobs is more difficult than they expected.

Whether you’re a family-run restaurant, a local clothing boutique, or fast-growing tech startup, these five tips will help you hire the right people for your business this year:

1—Make your job description crystal clear. Start with a straightforward, well-defined job description, so potential candidates have a clear idea of the job’s requirements and can understand if it matches their skills and interests. Make sure to include the key details including salary, benefits, work hours and more to inform as many qualified applicants from the start.

Pro Tip: Don’t get too creative in your word choice—job seekers are much less likely to discover openings with eccentric keywords.

2—Use additional questions to gather information. Learn about job candidates quickly by using extra questions to gather information. Example questions could be, “are you looking for seasonal work or something more permanent?” and “Have you ever worked in this industry before, and if so, what appeals to you about it?”

Pro Tip: Using additional questions in the application will help you save time later on in the hiring process by narrowing in on candidates that match your needs.

3—Reply promptly and professionally. In a tight job market where openings outnumber candidates, it is even more important to respond quickly to applicants. To save time, keep your replies short and to the point. Develop canned responses that you can easily customize to ensure responses are polished yet personal.

Pro Tip: If you need support, try enlisting your coworkers so they can help with job postings and communicating with candidates.

4—Try using video for screening. After people apply, try asking them to record a short video on their computer or phone introducing themselves and explaining why they’d be a good fit for the role. Video is a quick way to get a sense of a candidate’s personality, especially if you are hiring for customer-facing positions.

Pro Tip: Ask candidates to send the video over a messaging app such as Facebook Messenger so that you can easily create a rapport about the video and ask follow-up questions.

5—Respond to every applicant. One of the top frustrations from job seekers is not hearing back from a business after they apply. Whether or not you are interested in their applications, remember to reply (with a thank you) and let them know you’ve received their response.

Pro Tip: There’s a possibility that your applicant might be a customer, or refer a future customer, so you want to make sure they have nothing but a positive experience with your company.

Hiring doesn’t have to be difficult. By implementing these best practices, small businesses and entrepreneurs can find the right candidates without having to sacrifice on time or resources.

4—State of Female Entrepreneurship

According to the new “State of Female Entrepreneurship” report from Visa, 79% of American women entrepreneurs feel more empowered now than they did five years ago. However, they still face a number of obstacles to growing their businesses. To help, Visa just hosted its first She’s Next, Empowered by Visa event in Atlanta, one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. for women-owned small businesses.

“Women-owned small businesses are essential to our economy and Visa wants to provide these incredible women with tools and resources that can help them grow and advance their businesses,” says Suzan Kereere, global head of merchant sales and acquiring, Visa.

Visa surveyed female small business owners across the U.S. The full study is available here and key findings include:

She’s Next, Empowered by Visa – Atlanta Event

In Atlanta more than 150 female entrepreneurs heard from industry leaders, including, Facebook, Square, Yelp, Instagram Story School and Authorize.Net. The keynote was delivered by fashion icon Rebecca Minkoff.

There was also contactless-enabled vending machines creating a unique shopping experience featuring select items from Atlanta-based, women-owned small businesses—100% of the purchase price of products sold from benefited Women’s World Banking, a non-profit providing low-income women entrepreneurs around the world the financial tools and resources they need to thrive and pursue their dreams.

Attendees received a resource-filled She’s Next toolkit full of information about how to run and improve your business from industry leaders, key resources and a description of Visa’s full suite of payment services designed for virtually every business need. The toolkit will soon be available to download online for small businesses nationwide.

For more information on the She’s Next, Empowered by Visa initiative, visit www.visa.com/shesnext.

5—Workplace Trends

In a recent survey Paychex, Inc., a leading provider of integrated human capital management solutions for payroll, benefits, human resources, and insurance services, asked full-time employees working in companies with 1,000 workers or fewer about workplace hot topics, including benefits, pay equity, HR technology, corporate social responsibility, and if these HR trends are impacting them.

Maureen Lally, Paychex vice president of marketing says, “While employers can implement changes from the top, employees ultimately define what the American workplace looks like. Their habits, preferences, and behaviors are what shape company culture.”

Response highlights:

Benefits: Employees are split on the most complicated aspect of making annual benefit elections: 29% say it’s keeping up with plan changes; 28% say it’s trying to predict personal and family needs; and 28% say it’s evaluating all of the providers and plan options. For women, trying to predict personal and family needs when making benefits selections is the number one most complicated aspect of the process at 33%. That ranks third for men at 24%.

Retirement: 51% of employees feel very confident in their retirement savings, but for 25% that confidence is dependent on Social Security remaining intact. This confidence increases as employees get older: 48% of w: orkers age 18-34 are confident in their retirement savings, 51% ages 35-49, and 58% of those 50-65.

Pay equity: 48% of employees—regardless of gender—have expressed verbal or written concern to their current employer that their current pay rate was not equitable to another employee with a similar role and responsibilities at least once during their career. 77% of men are confident their employer is auditing employee pay for gender equity, while 74% of women say the same.

HR technology: 71% of employees expect their employers to provide them with a high level of employee self-service that allows them to accomplish various HR tasks (update address, enter life event, fill out tax forms, report hours, manage retirement, etc.) on their own. And 85% expect such self-service applications to provide a simple, intuitive user experience, similar to the consumer apps frequently used in their personal lives.

Workplace ghosting: When asked if they had ever “ghosted” (leaving a current job or not reporting for a new job without informing the employer) from a current or potential job, 27% of employees admitted they had. Younger workers are much more likely to have ghosted companies. Of those aged 18-34 and 35-49, 33 and 30%, respectively, admitted ghosting, compared to only seven% of employees who are 50-65 years old.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR): Working for an organization that is socially responsible is important to workers regardless of age—95% of those aged 18-34, and 94% of those 35-49, agree that it’s important for their employer to be socially responsible. That dips slightly to 90% for those aged 50-65.

“CSR is an important driver in attracting and retaining talent for companies today,” says Laurie Zaucha, Paychex vice president of HR and Organizational Development.

Click here to read a white paper featuring a deeper dive into data about these key workplace trends.

6— Need for Speed

Speed is essential when it comes to websites. Load time statistics from numerous studies clearly show that if the average page load time exceeds 3 seconds, abandonment rates soar. High bounce rates telegraph to search engines that visitors don’t find the website useful, which directly affects your ranking.

And if that wasn’t enough, the numbers clearly show that shoppers avoid returning to e-commerce sites with performance issues.

The marketing truism that there is no negative publicity doesn’t coincide with the digital reality of social media and interconnectivity. Nearly half of the users share negative experiences with their peers, spreading the word of heavy, unresponsive sites faster than said web pages load.

Check out the infographic below from Hosting Tribunal to get up to speed.

7—Infusionsoft Rebrands as Keap

Infusionsoft has rebranded the company as Keap, a name it says represents the very essence of the grit and passion small businesses put in each day to keep going, keep serving and keep growing. It is also launched a new product, also named Keap, the industry’s first smart client management software built specifically for small businesses in the home, personal and professional service industries. For 17 years Infusionsoft has been a pioneer of CRM and marketing automation software for small businesses. With the Keap product launch, the company is expanding to serve a new market.

Keap COO Keith Reed says, “With the introduction of our Keap, we are able to serve an even larger market of small service providers who have been shut out of the benefits of automation because software providers have made it too hard and expensive.”

Targeted at small service providers such as interior design, home repair, fitness or business consulting, Keap is smart client management software that automates repetitive sales and client-related tasks like appointment scheduling, following up on leads/quotes, and collecting payments. It does this by intelligently prompting the user when and how to follow-up with personal and professional communications.

Keap CEO Clate Mask adds, “We discovered small service providers waste time juggling five to seven tools just to book appointments, send communications, provide quotes or collect payments. That is 50 hours a month that could be spent servicing more clients, growing the business or at home with family. We knew we had to make this easier.”

Here are some of the top benefits of Keap’s new smart client management software:

The company revealed a new Keap brand identity, visual redesign, logos and a marketing campaign Quiet the Doubters.

8—ADP National Employment Report

Private sector employment increased by 213,000 jobs from December to January according to the January . Broadly distributed to the public each month, free of charge, the ADP National Employment Report is produced by the ADP Research Institute® in collaboration with Moody’s Analytics.

January 2019 Report: Total U.S. Nonfarm Private Employment: 213,000

By company size:

Small businesses: 63,000

Medium businesses: 84,000

Large businesses: 66,000

Franchise employment**

**Complete details on franchise employment can be found here.

“The labor market has continued its pattern of strong growth with little sign of a slowdown in sight,” says Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “We saw significant growth in nearly all industries, with manufacturing adding the most jobs in more than four years. Midsized businesses continue to lead job creation—however the share of jobs was spread a bit more evenly across all company sizes this month.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, says, “The job market weathered the government shutdown well. Despite the severe disruptions, businesses continued to add aggressively to their payrolls. As long as businesses hire strongly the economic expansion will continue on.”

To obtain additional information about the ADP National Employment Report, including additional charts, supporting data and the schedule of future release dates, or to subscribe to the monthly email alerts and RSS feeds, please visit www.adpemploymentreport.com.

9— How to Vanish from the Internet

Want to disappear from the world wide web? WD Storage (Whitefields Document Storage) shows you how in the infographic below.

10—Help for Massachusetts Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship for All (EforAll), a leading inclusive entrepreneurship program and its Spanish language program, EparaTodos, are stepping up in a big way to support small businesses affected by the gas explosions on September 13, 2018.

EforAll’s program EparaTodos was named the lead organization to conduct outreach to businesses owners who have been impacted by the recent gas explosion in the communities of Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover.

EparaTodos has been working with a consortium of partner organizations and cities/towns: City of Lawrence, Town of Andover, Town of North Andover, ACT Lawrence, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Lawrence Partnership, Mill Cities Community Investments, Massachusetts Small Business Development Center Network, MassDevelopment, Merrimack Valley Small Business Center, Essex County Community Foundation, and Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation.

Esther Encarnacion, Outreach Project Manager for this effort says, “We have a team of 10dedicated individuals who have been working tirelessly to address the needs and concerns of the 840 businesses that have been impacted by this emergency. The outreach team is out in the community, pounding the pavement, and working directly with affected business owners to offer assistance in a number of key areas.”

EparaTodos, in partnership with the Lawrence Partnership and the Essex County Community Foundation, is offering the following services at no cost to affected businesses:

David Parker, EforAll CEO says, “When so many businesses were impacted by the gas incidents, we knew EforAll had to do something. Some of our very own staff and entrepreneurs have been affected and we see our support services as a way to not only lend a helping hand, but to help businesses contribute to their local economy once again.”

11—Pricing Violations

ORIS Intelligence, provider of actionable insights that preserve pricing integrity for manufacturers, recently unveiled new insights into pricing violations and unauthorized sellers. Online spending grew by nearly 20% during the 2018 holiday shopping season, reaching over $110 billion in sales. With the continued increase in online shopping comes an increase in pricing violations and violators. New ORIS data shows that for the average brand, 75% of their total sellers are unauthorized, with the housewares industry at the highest rate of unauthorized sellers at 85%. In addition to violators, pricing inconsistency is also an issue as the average violation rate sits at 14%, with the apparel industry showing the biggest discrepancy with 20% of their URLS in violation.

“With the proliferation of online marketplaces, third-party sellers and ecommerce activity comes more opportunity for pricing inconsistencies and violations,” says Pamela Springer, CEO of ORIS Intelligence. “A Minimum Advertised Pricing (MAP) policy is only as good as the enforcement behind it, so ORIS is continuing to focus on ensuring brands get control of their online presence by helping them understand and catch issues before they escalate. Our data and tools assist in making it easier to enforce policies and reinforces the complexity and extensiveness of this issue, which is why we are delivering near real-time insights across all channels.”

With its deep expertise into MAP, ORIS is also sharing its top tips for 2019:

Make the most of MAP: More companies are realizing the impact a properly executed MAP policy has on not only brand integrity but revenue. In addition, trusted retailers will start ensuring the brands they work with are committed to their MAP policy, and we expect to see retailers that exclusively work with brands that enforce MAP.

Sniff out seller strategies: As more manufactures enforce MAP, sellers will continue to be creative in trying to find ways around MAP by playing games. ORIS data shows that 12% of violations only occur during non-business hours, when retailers think manufacturers are not watching.

Push prices: Due to the increase in brands enforcing MAP, we’re seeing brands begin to increase their minimum pricing, to counteract those that violate it.

Get more information here.

12—Performance-Based Pay in Communications Industry

Bevel, a public relations consultancy that connects clients with stakeholder communities, recently announced the first application of performance-based pay to the communications industry. At Bevel, Associates and Directors are driven to achieve results through year-end performance-based bonuses and quarterly payouts based on success metrics including number of speaking opportunities, award submissions, customer events, in-person meetings with reporters and media coverage for clients.

“A first-year analyst makes on average $150k and third-year analysts make up to $350k. An assistant account executive (AAE) in PR generally makes 34k a year, the same rate as a cashier at Trader Joe’s and the industry wonders why there’s a massive talent drain. It’s simple. Top talent wants to get paid for their work,” say Jessica Schaefer, CEO of Bevel.

The structure of the firm mirrors that of a typical hedge fund or private equity firm leveraging a PM/analyst model. Bevel’s Directors manage their own portfolios of clients and have two associates working underneath them. Each portfolio is diversified and includes a mix of crypto, fintech, consumer tech and venture capital funds. Directors are incentivized by client retention and management of their respective associate teams.

“Our success as a firm is driven by how much we can move the needle for our clients. We want to work with and build category leading brands. In order to do that, we need to attract top talent and maintain peak performance,” Schaefer adds.

The New York-based firm recently opened an office in Los Angeles and was named 2018 “Small Agency of the Year.” For more information, please go here.

Quick Takes

13—How to be a Better Negotiator

The better your negotiation skills, more likely you are to succeed. Take a look at this guide from Hiscox insurance to sharpen your skills.

14—Facebook Advertising

Want to know more about advertising on Facebook? Check out this guide from AppInstitute.

15—Getting Personal Loans

Best Egg, the consumer lending platform supported by Marlette Funding, LLC, is partnering with SuperMoney to help consumers achieve their financial goals. SuperMoney integrates with leading financial service companies to offer a seamless and transparent comparison-shopping experience. Borrowers complete a short online form and receive real-time personalized loan offers from SuperMoney’s lending partners.

The partnership with SuperMoney is another step in Best Egg’s ongoing journey to make online personal loans frictionless for customers. Find Best Egg here.

Cool Tools

16—New Tools from QuickBooks

QuickBooks just launched a sales tax calculator landing page on their site. With nearly 11,000 local sales tax jurisdictions in the U.S., the goal is to help SMBS see how the different sales tax affects their businesses. It also can help avoid the hassle of figuring out sales tax and all of the rules that exist in each state, including the multiple factors that could change a sales tax calculation.

Quickbooks Sales Tax automatically takes into consideration the important information from your business, as well as tracks and automatically updates all of the rules and rates according to every change by the states, to produce the right rate for every transaction, from calculation through filing. This reduces your business’s risk of error and minimizes the likelihood of a sales tax notice or audit

17—Compensation Management App for SMBs

Zenefits just announced the availability of Compensation Management, a new app within the Zenefits People Platform. Based on actual salary data from small businesses nationwide, Compensation Management is the first software tool designed specifically to take the guesswork out of competitively and fairly paying the people working in SMBs.

While compensation benchmarks and software tools exist on the market, both are priced and scoped out of range for small businesses, which are left to make their best guesses. With the average cost to replace an employee at 33% of their salary, according to the Work Institute, making poor salary decisions can have a significant impact—especially on small businesses.

Compensation Management can help small businesses identify market competitive and fair wages by role, industry, and geography. The app poses questions during set up to help business users determine the compensation philosophy that best maps to each company’s unique priorities and values. Then it provides insights on salaries for new hires, new promotions and new roles as the company grows. It helps young businesses keep a pulse on pay equity across its organization, aligning pay to role and performance, which call all be tracked in the Zenefits platform.

Key features in Compensation Management include the ability to:

18—Mobile HR App

TriNet, a leading provider of full-service HR solutions for SMBs recently announced the release of its latest version of the TriNet Mobile app, which further enables SMBs and their employees to access their HR data—anytime, anywhere.

The updated TriNet Mobile app helps SMBs streamline HR processes, improve employee engagement and offer real-time access to HR information. It also includes easy access to HR functions, such as submitting time-off requests, retrieving information on health benefits and accessing a detailed view of payroll data. Additionally, employees can access a company directory and communicate directly with their teams through the app.

TriNet mobile features

TriNet Mobile is available for download on iOS and Android.

19—Guide to Social Media Analytics Tools

You can’t get the most out of social media unless you monitor and analyze your results. How do you do that? Check out this guide to some top social media analytics tools from FitSmallBusiness.

20—The Art of Shipping Specialty Goods:

The shipping of specialty goods, such as fine art, furniture, oversized or fragile objects has not yet been streamlined. With the recent report that U.S. online sales of non-conveyable goods has hit $30 billion, equal to about 10% of total e-commerce sales, ARTA, the contemporary logistics platform for shipping specialized items, is introducing a new approach to logistics.

“The market for buying and selling luxury items has exploded, and ARTA has been at the forefront of helping art dealers, auction houses, designers, businesses and consumers manage the end-to-end process, including providing stellar customer service from collection through the last mile,” says Adam Fields, Founder and CEO of ARTA. “This industry needs an automated solution that allows for the fulfillment of specialized goods as easily as FedEx does for small parcel items, and ARTA is poised to deliver it. ”

In 2018, ARTA upgraded its solution, adding 10 new features including ARTA Instant Quote, which enables buyers and sellers (businesses or consumers) to immediately receive bookable quotes through the ARTA Shipping Calculator. The platform already allows users to easily shop for additional quotes from ARTA’s vast network of more than 350 service partners.

Looking ahead to 2019, ARTA predicts a few trends for shipping specialty items:

Increased demand for buying specialized goods online: Buyers are becoming more comfortable with purchasing high-value, fragile, or oversized goods online—goods that cannot be shipped and handled by conventional parcel networks. And given the global nature of ecommerce, online sales of items from furniture, art and design objects to medical and workout equipment will present a tremendous opportunity for businesses and individuals invested in this category.

Focus on digital fitness: Businesses that understand how to leverage new technologies, from data analytics to automation and platform solutions, will come out ahead in 2019. Along with an increased demand for buying specialized goods online, consumers will expect that fulfillment of these items should be as seamless as purchasing something on Amazon. Thus, companies will have to invest in supply chain solutions that can support these trends in order to compete and gain market share.

Perfecting payments: Just like with the traditional e-commerce market, the payment process will become more automated for specialty items as shippers and logistics providers cater to providing a more ubiquitous experience. Compliant solutions that support various payment methods for high value transactions and multiple currencies will be essential to support the market demand.

Business stock photo by Africa Studio/Shutterstock

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Optimizing Your Site for Voice Search, SMB Guide to CRM, How to Hire Smarter and Other Things Entrepreneurs Need to Know

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ever1needssumdick-blog · 6 years

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The History Of Music: From Grunts To Guitars

flex CombsThe past Of Music: From Grunts To GuitarsMotivational Articles | February 25, 2007Where accomplish music free tv online gin, and site is it going? after what precedent did we get to the group of piece we have today? last radio and recorded melody improving music? This fragment examines the history of music, and provides guess for the types of music to expect in the future. Where move music begin, and where is it going? comic answers are surprising. responsible is a modern evolution leading people back to the rock it antecedent created decennial of millennial of dotage ago. ai conflicting development is discover ever extra complex sounds, and spawn a star of smaller audiences for more musicians.Before humanity could write, and even back they could speak, tempo and sole tones were used to communicate. breathtaking song of a bird may have inspired a prehistoric father to mimic and help on the noise. deposition of archaic music is sparse, for there was no language to describe the sound to descendants. Drumming body and mimicking are considered to be the head "music". This continued with words living added as speech was discovered.After the development of writing, piece became extra refined. Crafted instruments were added. Harmonies were created. Pipes, flutes, basic stringed instruments, and similar means were used to spawn the early sounds that modern father could well recognize as music. The oldest known song is over 4000 years old, written in cuneiform, and uses the diatonic scale. This stretch is introduce to as "ancient" music.Further developments spawn more parochial sound, as different automation discoveries in different breadth led to unique instruments. While "classical music" is generally pretended to be the tone of writer like bath or Beethoven, it actually refers to any music of this period. climactic music was usually routinely inspired or supported, and usually educated formally as a skill rather that developed ended experimentation. just as musical code unified regionally, the easygoing masterworks of the breadth were ordinarily performed accede to the rigid recorded work.Folk rap continued rapidly after. here was generally the safe of the unlearned classes, those that could not write or read. scientific orally, this music was learned and modified second and second again to reflect the personal style of the performer. that type of music usually portrayed the concerns of the uneducated class. allure was mostly not supported, but tolerated, but the government and religious leadership. The belief of people music smooth continues as a character of music to this day around the world.Classical music developed into a less austere modern style of music, mixing with the thought of special artistry from folk music. Performers would still handling either reported or educated pieces, but would add their exclusive touch. climactic music would sound contrasting each turn it was played, direct when played by the same performer.The invention of recorded rap and wireless began the slide backwards. Recorded piece is bona fide rigid. allure never changes. Audiences prepare to forecast live completion to be as warm to the recorded rap they have been interested to as possible. layer music confess amatures to closely thespian the infant performer. toward appeal to a greater audience, music started to become less an expression of what the composer wanted to say, and more what the crowd would fee to hear.This trend advance today in the design of ever simplifying music. Music enjoy to be quick and easy to identify. Complexity would top to missed sales. countless modern styles forgo one the theme or the melody completely. Recycling past music in the style of sampling gives an artist an instant audience, while set the finesse possible.Fortunately, the Internet own for all artists from any kind to fray the drop in music artistry. affecting low price tag of opening makes it possible for almost everyone to return an audience. The small cost too allows composer to do what they wish, fairly than gratify to a larger audience. Hopefully, this will concede the tendency in favored music to reverse, discover ever other artistic and unique rock in the future. Article Tags: family Music, Recorded Music climactic author, Alex Combs, is the webmaster of http://www.landoflyrics.com . here lyrics station allows visitors to reminisce about their favorite melody and soundtracks while unearth new accent and design they be allowed enjoy.

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clarenceomoore · 6 years

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Five 2018 Predictions — on GDPR, Robot Cars, AI, 5G and Blockchain

Predictions are like buses, none for ages and then several come along at once. Also like buses, they are slower than you would like and only take you part of the way. Also like buses, they are brightly coloured and full of chatter that you would rather not have in your morning commute. They are sometimes cold, and may have the remains of somebody else’s take-out happy meal in the corner of the seat. Also like buses, they are an analogy that should not be taken too far, less they lose the point. Like buses.

With this in mind, here’s my technology predictions for 2018. I’ve been very lucky to work across a number of verticals over the past couple of years, including public and private transport, retail, finance, government and healthcare — while I can’t name check every project, I’m nonetheless grateful for the experience and knowledge this has brought, which I feed into the below. I’d also like to thank my podcaster co-host Simon Townsend for allowing me to test many of these ideas.

Finally, one prediction I can’t make is whether this list will cause any feedback or debate — nonetheless, I would welcome any comments you might have, and I will endeavour to address them.

1. GDPR will be a costly, inadequate mess

Don’t get me wrong, GDPR is a really good idea. As a lawyer said to me a couple of weeks ago, it is a combination of the the UK data protection act, plus the best practices that have evolved around it, now put into law at a European level with a large fine associated. The regulations are also likely to become the basis for other countries — if you are going to trade with Europe, you might as well set it as the baseline, goes the thinking. All well and good so far.

Meanwhile, it’s an incredible, expensive (and necessary, if you’re a consumer that cares about your data rights) mountain to climb for any organisation that processes or stores your data. The deadline for compliance is May 25th, which is about as likely to be hit as I am going to finally get myself the 6-pack I wanted when I was 25.

No doubt GDPR will one day be achieved, but the fact is that it is already out of date. Notions of data aggregation and potentially toxic combinations (for example, combining credit and social records to show whether or not someone is eligible for insurance) are not just likely, but unavoidable: ‘compliant’ organisations will still be in no better place to protect the interests of their customers than currently.

The challenges, risks and sheer inadequacy of GDPR can be summed up by a single tweet sent by otherwise unknown traveller — “If anyone has a boyfriend called Ben on the Bournemouth – Manchester train right now, he’s just told his friends he’s cheating on you. Dump his ass x.” Whoever sender “@emilyshepss” or indeed, “Ben” might be, the consequences to the privacy of either cannot be handled by any data legislation currently in force.

2. Artificial Intelligence will create silos of smartness

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a logical consequence of how we apply algorithms to data. It’s as inevitable as maths, as the ability our own brains have to evaluate and draw conclusions. It’s also subject to a great deal of hype and speculation, much of which tends to follow that old, flawed futurist assumption: that a current trend maps a linear course leading to an inevitable conclusion. But the future is not linear. Technological matters are subject to the laws of unintended consequences and of unexpected complexity: that is, the future does not follow a linear path, and every time we create something new, it causes new situations which are beyond its ability to deal with.

So, yes, what we call AI will change (and already is changing) the world. Moore’s, and associated laws are making previously impossible computations now possible, and indeed, they will become the expectation. Machine learning systems are fundamental to the idea of self-driving cars, for example; meanwhile voice, image recognition and so on are having their day. However these are still a long way from any notion of intelligence, artificial or otherwise.

So, yes, absolutely look at how algorithms can deliver real-time analysis, self-learning rules and so on. But look beyond the AI label, at what a product or service can actually do. You can read Gigaom’s research report on where AI can make a difference to the enterprise, here.

In most cases, there will be a question of scope: a system that can save you money on heating by ‘learning’ the nature of your home or data centre, has got to be a good thing for example. Over time we shall see these create new types of complexity, as we look to integrate individual silos of smartness (and their massive data sets) — my prediction is that such integration work will keep us busy for the next year or so, even as learning systems continue to evolve.

3. 5G will become just another expectation

Strip away the techno-babble around 5G and we have a very fast wireless networking protocol designed to handle many more devices than currently — it does this, in principle, by operating at higher frequencies, across shorter distances than current mobile masts (so we’ll need more of them, albeit in smaller boxes). Nobody quite knows how the global roll-out of 5G will take place — questions like who should pay for it will pervade, even though things are clearer than they were. And so on and so on.

But when all’s said and done, it will set the baseline for whatever people use it for, i.e. everything they possibly can. Think 4K video calls, in fact 4K everything, and it’s already not hard to see how anything less than 5G will come as a disappointment. Meanwhile every device under the sun will be looking to connect to every other, exchanging as much data as it possibly can. The technology world is a strange one, with massive expectations being imposed on each layer of the stack without any real sense of needing to take responsibility.

We’ve seen it before. The inefficient software practices of 1990’s Microsoft drove the need for processor upgrades and led Intel to a healthy profit, illustrating the vested interests of the industry to make the networking and hardware platforms faster and better. We all gain as a result, if ‘gain’ can be measured in terms of being able to see your gran in high definition on a wall screen from the other side of the world. But after the hype, 5G will become just another standard release, a way marker on the road to techno-utopia.

On the upside, it may lead to a simpler networking infrastructure. More of a hope than a prediction would be the general adoption of some kind of mesh integration between Wifi and 5G, taking away the handoff pain for both people, and devices, that move around. There will always be a place for multiple standards (such as the energy-efficient Zigbee for IoT) but 5G’s physical architecture, coupled with software standards like NFV, may offer a better starting point than the current, proprietary-mast-based model.

4. Attitudes to autonomous vehicles will normalize

The good news is, car manufacturers saw this coming. They are already planning for that inevitable moment, when public perception goes from, “Who’d want robot cars?” to “Why would I want to own a car?” It’s a familiar phenomenon, an almost 1984-level of doublethink where people go from one mindset to another seemingly overnight, without noticing and in some cases, seemingly disparaging the characters they once were. We saw it with personal computers, with mobile phones, with flat screen TVs — in the latter case, the the world went from “nah, thats never going to happen” to recycling sites being inundated with perfectly usable screens (and a wave of people getting huge cast-off tellies).

And so, we will see over the next year or so, self-driving vehicles hit our roads. What drives this phenomenon is simple: we know, deep down, that robot cars are safer — not because they are inevitably, inherently safe, but because human drivers are inevitably, inherently dangerous. And autonomous vehicles will get safer still. And are able to pick us up at 3 in the morning and take us home.

The consequences will be fascinating to watch. First that attention will increasingly turn to brands — after all, if you are going to go for a drive, you might as well do so in comfort, right? We can also expect to see a far more varied range of wheeled transport (and otherwise — what’s wrong with the notion of flying unicorn deliveries?) — indeed, with hybrid forms, the very notion of roads is called into question.

There will be data, privacy, security and safety ramifications that need to be dealt with — consider the current ethical debate between leaving young people without taxis late at night, versus the possible consequences of sharing a robot Uber with a potential molester. And I must recall a very interesting conversation with my son, about who would get third or fourth dibs at the autonomous vehicle ferrying drunken revellers (who are not always the cleanliest of souls) to their beds.

Above all, business models will move from physical to virtual, from products to services. The industry knows this, variously calling vehicles ‘tin boxes on wheels’ while investing in car sharing, delivery and other service-based models. Of course (as Apple and others have shown), good engineering continues to command a premium even in the service-based economy: competition will come from Tesla as much as Uber, or whatever replaces its self-sabotaging approach to world domination.

Such changes will take time but in the short term, we can fully expect a mindset shift from the general populace.

5. When Bitcoins collapse, blockchains will pervade

The concept that “money doesn’t actually exist” can be difficult to get across, particularly as it makes such a difference to the lives of, well, everybody. Money can buy health, comfort and a good meal; it can also deliver representations of wealth, from high street bling to mediterranean gin palaces. Of course money exists, I’m holding some in my hand, says anyone who wants to argue against the point.

Yet, still, it doesn’t. It is a mathematical construct originally construed to simplify the exchange of value, to offer persistence to an otherwise transitory notion. From a situation where you’d have to prove whether you gave the chap some fish before he’d give you that wood he offered, you can just take the cash and buy wood wherever you choose. It’s not an accident of speech that pond notes still say, “I promise to pay the bearer on demand…”

While original currencies may have been teeth or shells (happy days if you happened to live near a beach), they moved to metals in order to bring some stability in a rather dodgy market. Forgery remains an enormous problem in part because we maintain a belief that money exists, even though it doesn’t. That dodgy-looking coin still spends, once it is part of the system.

And so to the inexorable rise of Bitcoin, which has emerged from nowhere to become a global currency — in much the same way as the dodgy coin, it is accepted simply because people agree to use it in a transaction. Bitcoin has a chequered reputation, probably unfairly given that our traditional dollars and cents are just as likely to be used for gun-running or drug dealing as any virtual dosh. It’s also a bubble that looks highly likely to burst, and soon — no doubt some pundits will take that as a proof point of the demise of cryptocurrency.

Their certainty may be premature. Not only will Bitcoin itself pervade (albeit at a lower valuation), but the genie is already out of the bottle as banks and others experiment with the economic models made possible by “distributed ledger” architectures such as The Blockchain, i.e. the one supporting Bitcoin. Such models are a work in progress: the idea that a single such ledger can manage all the transactions in the world (financial and otherwise) is clearly flawed.

But blockchains, in general, hold a key as they deal with that single most important reason why currency existed in the first place — to prove a promise. This principle holds in areas way beyond money, or indeed, value exchange — food and pharmaceutical, art and music can all benefit from knowing what was agreed or planned, and how it took place. Architectures will evolve (for example with sidechains) but the blockchain principle can apply wherever the risk of fraud could also exist, which is just about everywhere.

6. The world will keep on turning

There we have it. I could have added other things — for example, there’s a high chance that we will see another major security breach and/or leak; augmented reality will have a stab at the mainstream; and so on. I’d also love to see a return to data and facts on the world’s political stage, rather than the current tub-thumping and playing fast and loose with the truth. I’m keen to see breakthroughs in healthcare from IoT, I also expect some major use of technology that hadn’t been considered arrive, enter the mainstream and become the norm — if I knew what it was, I’d be a very rich man. Even if money doesn’t exist.

Truth is, and despite the daily dose of disappointment that comes with reading the news, these are exciting times to be alive. 2018 promises to be a year as full of innovation as previous years, with all the blessings and curses that it brings. As Isaac Asimov once wrote, “An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.”

On that, and with all it brings, it only remains to wish the best of the season, and of 2018 to you and yours. All the best!

Photo credit: Birmingham Mail

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techscopic · 6 years

Text

Five 2018 Predictions — on GDPR, Robot Cars, AI, 5G and Blockchain

Finally, one prediction I can’t make is whether this list will cause any feedback or debate — nonetheless, I would welcome any comments you might have, and I will endeavour to address them.

1. GDPR will be a costly, inadequate mess

2. Artificial Intelligence will create silos of smartness

3. 5G will become just another expectation

4. Attitudes to autonomous vehicles will normalize

Such changes will take time but in the short term, we can fully expect a mindset shift from the general populace.

5. When Bitcoins collapse, blockchains will pervade

6. The world will keep on turning

On that, and with all it brings, it only remains to wish the best of the season, and of 2018 to you and yours. All the best!

Photo credit: Birmingham Mail

Five 2018 Predictions — on GDPR, Robot Cars, AI, 5G and Blockchain syndicated from http://ift.tt/2wBRU5Z

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babbleuk · 6 years

Text

Five 2018 Predictions — on GDPR, Robot Cars, AI, 5G and Blockchain

With this in mind, here’s my technology predictions for 2018. I��ve been very lucky to work across a number of verticals over the past couple of years, including public and private transport, retail, finance, government and healthcare — while I can’t name check every project, I’m nonetheless grateful for the experience and knowledge this has brought, which I feed into the below. I’d also like to thank my podcaster co-host Simon Townsend for allowing me to test many of these ideas.

Finally, one prediction I can’t make is whether this list will cause any feedback or debate — nonetheless, I would welcome any comments you might have, and I will endeavour to address them.

1. GDPR will be a costly, inadequate mess

2. Artificial Intelligence will create silos of smartness

3. 5G will become just another expectation

4. Attitudes to autonomous vehicles will normalize

Such changes will take time but in the short term, we can fully expect a mindset shift from the general populace.

5. When Bitcoins collapse, blockchains will pervade

6. The world will keep on turning

On that, and with all it brings, it only remains to wish the best of the season, and of 2018 to you and yours. All the best!

Photo credit: Birmingham Mail

from Gigaom https://gigaom.com/2017/12/11/five-2018-predictions-on-gdpr-robot-cars-ai-5g-and-blockchain/

#Gigaom

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mindthump · 6 years

Photo

tinyBuild’s odyssey from indie developer to compassionate publisher http://ift.tt/2Ax5qdh

Presented by Intel

“We didn’t want to go through that emotional distress again.”

In 2011, Alex Nichiporchik was working with Flash games, when he stumbled across No Time To Explain. It was a simple, five-minute joke game, as Nichiporchik describes it, designed by a UK developer, Tom Brian, over the course of a weekend.

“I noticed that it was trending all over the place,” Nichiporchik recalls. “And it was around the time of Indie Game: The Movie, and the idea of making indie games seemed more feasible. You could get something indie onto a major platform.”

So Nichiporchik approached Brian, suggesting that they join forces to turn this joke game into a commercial title that could be published on Steam. tinyBuild was born. The only problem? There was no money to develop it. Brian had left college and was just making a living off Flash games. That was his only income. The solution the duo came up with was a new crowdfunding platform: Kickstarter.

“The platform had just launched and there was no real video game section. So we went there, we set a goal of $7,000, and we ended up raising $26,000, which was a record at the time. It was mainly because of Notch. He retweeted the Kickstarter tweet and backed us — he was the biggest backer. And from there things spiraled out of control. The game was going viral, every trailer was getting lots of hits, and we were trying to get onto Steam.”

They did not get onto Steam.

Before early access and Greenlight, it was almost impossible for indie developers working out of their bedrooms to get onto Valve’s draconian platform. The other option was finding a publisher that could help them. A Russian publisher, Buka, offered the pair more money, with which they could hire an actual developer, since tinyBuild only had experience with Flash, and also promised to get the game onto Steam.

“They never paid us. They just kind of ignored us for five years. Just this year they paid us their debt.”

Without Steam and a publisher’s assistance, tinyBuild ended up releasing only the first half of the game in the time that was promised. It was a commercial and critical flop, Nichiporchik admits. Very few sales were made by selling it on their website. It was enough to finish the second part of the game, however, and then they were done with indie development.

“We were out.”

That wasn’t the end of No Time To Explain, though. Steam announced Greenlight. Finally, tinyBuild were able to launch their game on Steam, in the second batch of Greenlight games. Unfortunately, there were more problems. Windows 8 had just launched, and the developers soon realized that No Time To Explain had a 50 percent fail rate on Windows 8 PCs. Despite this, the game gained traction thanks to YouTubers. It was doing well. But not well enough for tinyBuild to want to ever develop another game.

Nichiporchik was trying to figure out what to do next when he encountered another game. “We stumbled upon a game called SpeedRunner HD at a German game show. I sat down to play this god-awful looking game, and the developer told me that it was just about to launch on Steam and that it had already launched on Xbox Live Indie Games. It kind of resonated with me. I realized that these guys had something really special on their hands, but they weren’t going to reach an audience because of really obvious issues, specifically the lack of visual consistency and flair, like characters and humor.”

Despite their bad experiences with development, tinyBuild decided to partner up with the SpeedRunner HD developers and co-develop the game. They’d work on the art, the marketing, and figure out a good launch strategy, while the SpeedRunner HD developers would focus on developing the mechanics. The title was also tweaked to SpeedRunners.

The transformation

It was around the time of SpeedRunners’ launch on Steam early access that tinyBuild started to become known as a publisher. Nichiporchik remembers that it was Kotaku who first called them one.

“OK, sure, we’re a publisher,” he said. Nichiporchik and his colleagues realized that their bad experiences with indie development could be used to help other struggling indies, just like they did with SpeedRunners.

Empathy is a big part of tinyBuild’s philosophy as a publisher. They know how hard development can be, and how new developers can get taken advantage of, or not know what their game is worth, or how much money will be needed to make it a reality. Nichiporchik recalls one negotiation where he found himself in a bizarre situation, negotiating up. There were costs the developers hadn’t considered, so they simply weren’t asking tinyBuild for enough money.

“It’s all about making the developer happy,” he explains. “Even when some games don’t sell that well, my main goal is to make sure that the developer can make game number two. There is a team that we’ve been working with where their first game didn’t do very well, but we love working with the team so much that we just made a situation where they could make game number two.”

For Nichiporchik, it’s all about putting himself in the developer’s shoes, as well as finding ways to make sure they have more games to make. Sometimes that means offering more money than they ask for, and sometimes that means simply responding to emails and requests for help as quickly as possible. Now that tinyBuild gets so many game pitches, and works with a larger number of developers, the publisher is also able to get these teams to help each other.

“We’ve been combining teams. Party Hard and Party Hard 2 are examples of this. The first was developed by Pinokl Games, and they were just under a dozen people. With the second one, we didn’t really know what to do. The first one was a success, so expectations for a sequel were high. We had another developer pitch an idea to us, and when I looked at a gif they sent us, I thought it looked amazing, but then I played it, and it didn’t really play that well. At a conference last year, all of us got together, and I suggested that the team work with the original Party Hard team, with them working on the visuals while the original team worked on the gameplay.”

As the indie space has become more crowded and competitive, tinyBuild has also had to come up with some clever marketing strategies, especially at conventions. Luckily, Nichiporchik has had some experience with this. Back when tinyBuild was working on SpeedRunners, they decided to get a bit creative during PAX Prime.

“This is going to sound really bad. We got a spot in the indie booth at PAX, where we were meant to showcase No Time to Explain—a single-player game—in a tiny kiosk right next to Papers, Please. We swapped it out for a 4-player co-op game, Speedrunners, and we kind of blocked the whole booth because the thing about Speedrunners is it organically creates a crowd. Just imagine the Enforcers at PAX trying to deal with this crowd. The day before, we were walking around the show floor with my business partner Luke, and he’s a tall guy, and we strapped a laptop to his neck and four controllers hanging on velcro, just wandering around giving the game to a bunch of people.”

Right now, tinyBuild is trying to do more of what Nichiporchik calls AA games. Not little indie projects, but not big AAA games either. Hello Neighbor is the first example of this, with its larger scope and much bigger budget. In Hello Neighbor, players will have to stealthily explore their sinister neighbor’s home in an attempt to figure out what he’s hiding. The titular neighbor, however, has procedural AI and might react in ways players don’t expect. He’s not entirely unlike the xenomorph from Alien Isolation.

Publishing an elaborate stealth horror game on Steam and Xbox One is a far cry from tinyBuild’s origins as a struggling Flash developer. The difficult journey has been worthwhile in the end, however, informing the publisher’s unique approach to partnering with indie developers.

Hello Neighbor is due out on December 8.

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