#a simple Google search would solve that 'issue' a bunch of people seem to have. if I see another comment I swear

[arttsuka]

I understand why ancient greek 'culture' is so 'popular' and well known on the internet but I wish people knew about a more bit about recent greek history as well (not modern, we don't have anything going on now. Recent as in, 1800)

[wildlyminiaturesandwich]

It’s time we talk about SimsDom again.

Most of you probably already know who and what Simsdom is but for those that don’t, Simsdom (or SimsDomination) claim to essentially be a CC finds website, which in essence I suppose they are... But don’t get your hopes up for a Lana replacement because they are SO much more than that. And not in a good way.

I know this is an old subject, and most people probably thought it was all over and done with, but Simsdom is still around and what’s worse is that I’ve noticed a growing trend among my fellow Game Changers who create content for Youtuber and Twitch/Mixer of promoting the site by using it to do CC shopping haul videos and streams, which is encouraging their viewers to use Simsdom. I’m not going to name names or point fingers but it made me realise that maybe some people don’t understand just how bad Simsdom is for the community in general, but especially for the amazingly dedicated CC creators of Simblr. And it’s just so disappointing to see people that some many in the community, including myself, look up to promoting this garbage site!

If you’re curious to know why this is a problem, I’ll explain under the cut. If not, keep scrolling... But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If you visit the Simsdom website (which I’ve purposely not provided a link to because you absolutely shouldn’t visit it) you’ll notice a whole bunch of custom content is available there, more than likely you’ll even find quite a bit from some of your faves like @peacemaker-ic​, @nolan-sims​, @storylegacysims​, @crypticsim​, @renorasims​, @savvysweet​ and MANY more. My stuff is even on there as well and if you’re a creator, the chances are high your stuff is too; whether you want it to be or not.

But don’t be fooled, myself and most of the other creators whose content appears on their site did not give permission for our content to be shared on there. In fact, most of us have specifically asked Simsdom to remove our content from their site. I say “most” because there are some people who willing uploading their content there (god knows why). The easiest way to the tell the difference is to look at who posted the content. If you see this:

That content has been shared by a bot, without the creator’s permission and more than likely against their many requests that Simsdom NOT share their content. If it says the name of the actual creator instead of “Exchange”, that creator uploaded it themselves.

You might also ask why anyone would care if their content was shared on a CC finds blog, after all, it means more traffic to our blogs and content, right? First of all, whether it brings in more traffic or not, is beside point. These creators have specifically requested Simsdom not share their content and they have been ignored, disrespected, threatened, and harassed. Simsdom claims that their users make up 30-90% of Tumblr creators traffic, but I call bullshit. I check my Google analytics every single month for traffic coming in to both my Tumblr and Blogger from Simsdom and I can tell you that LESS THAN 1% of the COMBINED TOTAL traffic from BOTH BLOGS comes from there. And when you understand how they operate, you’ll understand why that is.

- UPDATE -

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, they linked 5 creators that they claim meet their crazy statement that their site provides creators with 30-90% of their traffic. So I just thought I’d point out some interesting facts I noticed while looking at those sites.

One of those sites is dead; literally, it doesn’t exist anymore, if it ever even did. Another, @simiracle​, is a fellow Game Changer who reblogged this post, so I’m guessing they don’t have support there. And the other 3 are alpha CC creators, none of whom have ever uploaded any of their CC to Simdom, nor have they ever mentioned Simsdom on their sites in any way. However, all three earn money on their own content via either adfly, adsense, patreon, or some combination of the three; my guess would be they wouldn’t be too happy to find out Simsdom is making money off them too.

You see, Simsdom might sometimes link back to the original creators site, but often times they don’t. I’ve noticed quite a bit of the content of my own on their site directly links to the file on SimFileShare, completely bypassing both my Tumblr and my Blogger. This might not seem like a big problem, but what about if the creator has put specific instructions, requirements, or notes on the original download page that if the downloader doesn’t read could result in broken/unusable CC, or worse, a broken game?

- UPDATE -

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, they linked to SimFileShare’s page on SimilarWeb and claimed that I was lying about direct-linking to my files there because their site does not appear in the list of referring sites. What they failed to mention is that that list only shows the TOP 5 sites that link to SimFileShare regularly. There are still 385 other sites that aren’t shown and can’t be seen without having an account with SimilarWeb. Convenient, huh?

I also said they only direct-linked SOME content. With my content it was only about 4 or 5 things out of the 15 or so they have on their site and I didn’t check anyone else’s stuff but I have heard other creators say the same thing. So of course they’re not going to show up in the top 5 if it’s only SOME links.

But wait, there’s more.

Anyone downloading from their website without an adblocker is forced to wade through potentially harmful ads as well. Notice the blue button that says “download” at the top? That’s not a real download button and if you click it, it will instantly begin shoving pop ups in your face claiming you have a system error or that your local law enforcement agency has detected illegal activity from your IP. Yes, I clicked it. There is nothing of importance left on my HDD (it’s all stored safely on an external drive that isn’t connected to the PC at all) because this drive has been slowly dying for weeks and I’m destroying it tomorrow and replacing it with a brand new one, so I decided to take a chance.

These ads, which are on pretty much every page of Simsdom, are what’s called “Ransomware”, and it’s whole purpose is to distract you with fake pop up “warnings” when you click on it so that you don’t realise it’s actually downloading a very harmful file to your computer in the background. It’s designed to be next to impossible to close the pop ups, so that even if you somehow became aware of the download happening, you couldn’t get past the pop ups to stop it before it’s had time to finish downloading and automatically begin running it’s payload when it’s done.

What payload? That’s the scariest part, you won’t know until it’s too late. It could be something as simple as a trojan that will force your PC to mine bitcoins, which is still harmful because these mining trojans are resource hogs and put a massive strain on your CPU. Or a trojan designed to target and encrypt specific files on your computer (usually sensitive ones) and demand you pay a literal ransom (usually either in bitcoin or pre-paid cash) and if you don’t, your files will either be complete erased or leaked.

Or worse still, it could be something even more sinister such as a key-logger; a piece of spyware that is designed to track and log EVERY. SINGLE. KEY. you touch on your keyboard. So every password you use, every online banking key code you enter, all the conversations you have via Discord, Twitter, Tumblr, or any other form of instant messaging, that fanfiction you’ve been working on that you are too scared to show anyone in case they think you’re a pervert, your credit card and bank account number you use to shop online, what porn you look for, even your Google search history (regardless of if you’re incognito); all of it will be no longer private and in the hands of someone who could use it to steal your identity, empty out your bank accounts, charge thousands of dollars worth of goods to your credit card, or expose every little strange thing you do on your computer that you thought no one would ever find out about, unless you pay their ransom.

Scary huh?

Also notice that those Get Famous recolours I made don’t say that they actually require Get Famous? Why is that a problem, you say? For most people it’s not, you see “Get Famous Recolours” and you automatically know you need Get Famous to use them, but what about people who are new to using CC and don’t know that for my recolours to work you need the pack they came from? Yeh, that’s a problem, because that particular download is one of those ones that leads straight to SimFileShare:

It leads directly to the merged file, which is NOT the only file available for download in that set, just the largest. But no one who finds my content on Simsdom will ever know that will they? Nor will they read the part of the download page that clearly states Get Famous is required to use the recolours.

I hear you saying “But adblockers are a thing”. Yes they are, but that doesn’t solve the issue of them linking straight to the file. And also, here’s what happens when you try to download something from Simsdom with an adblocker enabled:

You’re forced to wait 180 seconds before the download button appears. THREE WHOLE MINUTES in which you cannot move from that page or the counter will stop, and it will only restart when you go back to that page and stay there for the entire three minutes. Even Adfly isn’t that gross.

So, all of that isn’t enough to discourage you from using this vile site you say? Well, let me introduce you to the person/people who run the site. There are plenty of examples floating around Tumblr of how disrespectful, arrogant, immature, and disturbing the owner/s are (just search for “Simsdom” and you’ll see) but here’s just a few posts showing “receipts” of what happened to creators when they ask for their content to be removed from the site: Here,  here, and here.

They have threatened to doxx several creators, tried to blackmail others, threatened to shut down some people’s sites, and even actually refused to remove people’s content unless they say “please”; as though these creators are six year old children who need to learn a lesson for not wanting THEIR content on someone else’s website!

All of this was said AFTER they made a post on their Tumblr saying they would respect creators wishes to not have their content on their site. I myself had a run-in with them as well but I don’t have the receipts because as soon as they finally agreed to remove my content (after almost 4 days of arguing with them and being threatened several times) they blocked me... and they continue to share my content to this day. That’s part of the reason why my motivation to create has been so low lately; I know its just going to end up over there, locked behind a paywall making money for these disgusting people and tricking simmers into thinking they have to pay to access my stuff.

But back to the story! Once they realised 99% of Tumblr creators — the people they get most of their content from — were going to ask to have their creations removed however, they changed their mind and instead started refusing to remove content. In fact, if you go to their website and use the contact form and choose the option “Remove my Content” they literally ask if you are Tumblr creator or not, and if you say you are, this is what you get:

And that “Our Rights here” link? That leads to this nonsense that literally contradicts itself with almost every single sentence:

“Creations can’t be uploaded without the creators permission... but we do not need permission to share your creations” “Feel free to contact us to ask to remove your content... but actually don’t bother contacting us asking to remove your content because we won’t” “SimsDomination is a free website... We don’t steal any content... *literally has other people’s free content locked behind a paywall and charges people membership fees to remove said paywall*”

And as for the EA terms part... I have news for you Simsdom, YOU are the only one breaking EA’s terms of use by putting content behind paywalls. I’m an EA Game Changer, I have actually read the terms of use AND spoken at length on the topics of earning revenue from CC, and why paywalls/memberships/exclusives are against EA’s terms of use with the Sim Gurus, have you? Didn’t think so.

If you had, you’d realise that we are allowed to earn revenue from our CC by having ads on our blogs/sites provided they aren’t deceptive — you know, like that ad with the big blue button you have that shows up on every single page of your site — and don’t lead to anything malicious, which yours do. I clicked several of the ads on your site and they all either lead to disgusting 18+ websites, started producing ransomware pop ups like I described earlier, or tried to download a mysterious file called setup.exe to my computer (which was most likely a trojan as well). We are also allowed to earn revenue via donations and Patreon early access systems provided the content is also made available for free to the general public within 14 days.

We are not, however, allowed to lock content behind Patreon exclusives, memberships and paywalls such as Adfly; which is exactly what you are doing. Like Adfly, you are not only potentially exposing underage children to 18+ content and risking the safety of people’s PCs, but you are also forcing them to wait to click a link and charging membership fees to avoid having to wait to download said content that isn’t even yours; content that you have been asked REPEATEDLY to remove. That is the very definition of a paywall. It is NOT the same as Pinterest or Facebook AT ALL, they might have ads but they aren’t malicious and they do not force people to wait to view content.

- UPDATE - 

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, this is probably one of my most favourite Simsdom lies, because it never changes but it’s so easy to prove false! “Users don’t need to pay to download any content and don’t need to wait to download them” Oh really? Shall we take a look at your site on the old SimilarWeb that you love so much?

How strange. If you don’t make people wait, then why do you need adfly? And if no one has to pay, then why do you need premium memberships to get rid of the ads and wait time you don’t have? Odd.

Also, lets talk Adsense. I never said I had a problem with you having ads on your site; I said I had a problem with the TYPE of ads on your site. If you seriously don’t think your ads are in any way harmful, I’d suggest you take another look at your Adsense, because either it’s been hacked or you seriously don’t know what you’re doing. Oh, but that’s right, “Google will never display suspicious ADs“... Mmm hmm, you just go right on believe that. Yeh, it’s definitely not possible for Google to be hacked... Nope, definitely not.

Also, if you use your Adsense revenue to pay for your site.... what happens to the extra? Because based on your SimilarWeb page I can take a rough guess at how much you earn every month through Adsense alone and there’s no way your site costs that much to run. For that matter, where does all the extra revenue from Adfly, Short.st and this mysterious “other” go? And all the revenue you get from your premium subscriptions that you totally don’t charge people money for?...

Is that fish I smell?

You are not doing anyone any favours here, so stop pretending that you’re in this for anything other than money. Stop sharing content you’ve been asked REPEATEDLY to remove/not share and breaking EA’s and many creators TOUs!

If you’ve managed to make it this far, congrats lol I know this has been long and probably boring but thank you for taking the time to read the whole thing. All this post was meant to do was explain why people should not support Simsdom, and why I’m so disappointed in other Game Changers for promoting it, but it kind of got away from me a little.

Oh well, now you know what Simsdom is and why I will NEVER support them or willingly allow my content to be shared on their site. And if you do decide to still use their site, just... please be careful. My content will always be free and safe to download, just like the majority or CC creators here on Tumblr. Don’t pay for something you can get for free from the original source.

Also, if you’re looking for a Lana replacement (aka a good CC finds blogs that isn’t shady af like Simsdom) check out @maxismatchccworld!

- UPDATE -

This isn’t in relation to anything specific, just the situation as a whole. It seems Simsdom has just removed the search box from their website completely:

I’m sure it was totally legit reasons and not at all because they didn’t want anyone searching for their own content on the Simsdom website. Just like it wasn’t for that reason the last time too...

[namelessblacksheep]

WHY WE NEED A REVOLUTION

Growing up I recall a soft drink advert where they used to make the claim ‘the revolution will not be televised’. Given all the crap we see on TV these days I kind of hope that it is.

Don’t get me wrong, a revolution does not have to be a long series of riots or violence. It could be something completely different, but something that leads to a shift. Who knows maybe something akin to a revolution is actually taking place.

The reason I feel we need something akin to a revolution is that bubbling away under the surface of life is deep unhappiness. In the past decade or two so many things have been surfaced that have shocked us.

Across the globe, politics has quite frankly gone bat shit crazy. Unrest and discomfort in daily life are becoming the norm.

We had a global financial crisis that didn’t correct any of the wrongs that underpinned it.

On a weekly basis, we are learning that the people we celebrate and reward so highly, flout their positions and commit heinous harms. Justice is never likely to be served.

Huge corporations and powerful individuals continue to increase the divide between the haves and have nots.

It’s as if all of the rich and powerful have totally forgotten the concept of ‘with great power comes responsibility’. Failure is richly rewarded for some, irrespective of the cost it brings.

The masses though are placated with toys and avenues to keep them from rising up. I have never witnessed such a monumentally awesome age of great television. Fuck the real world problems out there, I’ve got several hundred hours of Netflix marathons to get through.

Then you feel a bit guilty that you are failing in your civic duty, so you decide to send an ironic GIF to Donald Trump – you know doing your bit.

You could cancel your Amazon Prime account and vote with your feet, but then you’d have to wait a few days for your deliveries.

You’d use a search engine to find a different provider, but you like Google. Google knows you so well that when you start typing shit it predicts what you want and you don’t need to hit another key.

It doesn’t scare you at all, not even the fact that you clearly have an Asian babes obsession or some of the suggestions are a bit worrying.

Sure, someone else could get right on that issue. Politicians for instance. They should be sorting this shit out, except they are far too busy trying to pretend to rule the world and avoid answering difficult questions.

Be honest. We are quite simply fucked right now. A revolution might be exactly what we need.

You may be in need of a little more convincing. You know as you are sat there skipping words and sentences for a quick fix that tells you whether this is worth your time or not.

5 minutes of your time, taking you from your busy life. The one where you're a battery plugged into a system that is fucking you every day. At least it all fits conveniently into your phone, I guess.

So, here it goes.

People have become weak

Everybody seems to be offended, like, all of the time. You can’t say shit anymore without someone either correcting you or reminding you of the new rules of engagement that nobody agreed to.

If you are one of these people, don’t be offended when I say that you are total Thundercunt. Seriously, I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

If you came here hoping to find something to annoy you, then you aren’t paying attention. Unplug your earphones and look at the world around you. It’s fucked. You could focus your efforts on doing something productive even if that’s being a better person, or a little less sensitive.

There’s plenty to be pissed about. People don’t want to focus on the big stuff that matters. They’d rather freak the fuck out about inconsequential nonsense that bruises their fragile egos.

We need a revolution so that we can all ‘man the fuck up’ (sorry feminazis) and start fixing shit like we’re Bob the Builder (or Betty if it makes you feel better).

We need to change the news narrative. Anyone else bored to tears with the daily Brexit coverage? Seriously, this storyline is more drawn out than the whole Ross and Rachael will-they-won’t-they saga.

For all the super-intelligent University educated geniuses that just graduated and have no fucking idea who Ross or Rachael are, go check out a TV show called ‘Friends’. It’s probably on the History channel these days anyway.

Brexit is like an un-flushable turd. A repetitive narrative that papers and broadcasters trot out every day. Seriously, this shite is more convoluted and contrived than the X Factor. It’s the epitome of the lowest form of entertainment and we need to change the record.

Whether you are for a Sunnyside-up Brexit or a Brexit with a side of Unicorn steak, I couldn’t give a damn. A revolution might at the very least give us all something new to get excited about and something we could all rally behind.

We need unity not division

Issues like politics, sport, and even mild banter have become so immersed in the underlying anger we're silently drowning in that no one seems able to have fun anymore.

I cannot remember a time when so many comedians couldn’t make a decent joke about the moronic state of the world and instead make sniping remarks to canned laughter.

Every decent sporting event seems to get overrun with people’s inability to enjoy the spectacle for what it is. Social media and chat forums are littered with petulant hatred and jingoistic tribal bullshit. The Brexit ‘have your say’ plays out like an anthem of bitterness with new vitriolic names invented every day.

We are descending into a bunch of spoiled children who express their pent up feelings through sending passive aggressive memes, angry hashtags and all manner of confusing emojis to make some innocuous point.

We are slowly becoming a mathematician with a broken calculator to solve all our problems. It can’t always be about division (see what I did there).

This diversity bullshit just isn’t working, let’s try something new like a bit of unity. You know: adding shit up to something bigger. I’m fairly sure Einstein would approve, and he was a smart guy.

Some folks need something better to do

If you spend most of your life sitting on your butt. You have all your stuff delivered to your door and your thoughts delivered to your phone or through your TV or laptop – you need a revolution.

We can call it a hobby or a social bonding activity. It’ll be a bit weird because all your new ‘friends’ might not look exactly like you, but you might learn a thing or two about the real world you live in.

Echo chambers are nice and safe because everyone in them thinks the same stuff. However, the real world is full of people ready to blow your mind in more than 140 characters or a 5-minute blog post. It could be exciting.

If you need convincing, watch the Matrix. Neo was simply sad old Thomas Anderson miserable as fuck, then he met Morpheus and learned to fly and loads of other cool shit.

If you already know what you think and it makes you comfortable to surround yourself with other people just like you, perhaps you should just join a cult and be done with it.

The system is broken

Seriously, guys, we have seriously screwed the pooch with the world at the moment.

The system’s broken and we are all just standing around waiting for inevitability to prevail.

The Avengers won't be coming to save us. Anyone who saw last year’s movie knows they are a bit down on their luck at the moment.

Thanos’ minions seem to be running the world and we all need to step up and become superheroes in our own right.

If you want to whip out the Lycra or Spandex – go for it. But do something, even if it’s just being better or not throwing hate out to the world because someone is different from you.

I don’t care if the revolution happens or even if it is streamed on Netflix or some other site. Change needs to happen and often that is as simple as everyone trying to be less of a douchebag than they might have normally been.

The only thing I can offer as a ‘reward’ or promise is that we might actually get some decent music back on the scene.

Revolutions tend to come out best in song. There has been no truly great era of music for decades now, and if ever there was a more compelling reason for a revolution this would be it.

Music is the anthem of the soul. It’s time for it to wake up and belt out something beautiful.

[townshade6]

Parents Tips when Purchasing your Young Children's First Cellphone

Picking the first mobile phone for your kids can be a difficult task and one that you need to control from the very start, you should setup situations for using the phone in addition to what internet site and games are best for your children. There is no right or wrong period to give your kid their first mobile phone, but various experts acknowledge that the much longer you delay to deliver your children and teenagers their first mobile phone, the better. However, what if you are a mother or father who wants to be able to connect with their daughter or son without getting them with their personal phone too soon? We have encountered a solution. Relay is a display screen-free, water-repellent, cell phone that allows your child to contact your cellphone with the tap of a button. Mother and fathers can communicate with their teenager’s Relay gadget using a Relay app employing their personal smart phone. For parents who want a smart phone with controlled phone numbers to give a call to their young adults, Relay permits children to phone mom and dad when they are at home from school or out with close friends, with out the added worry of the things they might be searching at on their displays or all of the different risks involved with allowing a kid smart phone use too soon. Father and mother can even utilize the Relay app on their smartphone to modify their kid’s gadget to play music files, offer language translation and speak to their close friends who've Relay smart phones. The Relay device alone is normally $50 and there is a $10 monthly charge to run it on the network. The phone Relay is offered at many retail stores. It will come in 5 pleasing styles, so you’re pretty sure to get the perfect last-minute gift on your own little one, or a nephew or niece. The top rated smartphone for young children can be found in all sizes and shapes, from 1-button press-to-call safety gadgets, to battle-tested Samsung smart phone with drop guard, to the cheapest iPhone if you would like your kids on your iCloud family storage space plan. It's still a rough choice when shopping for the littlest person in your life. We are here to help you find a mobile phone for your teenagers, preteen, or young adult - every single age, really. We're professionals on searching for smart phones for young children, just as much as we can aptly look for the ideal phones in the USA. We have looked into significant concerns, like parental controls, toughness, function restrictions, GPS unit tracking, and expenses. The suggested smart phones for young children will be extremely simple units mostly meant to create a path of interaction with mom and dad. look at here now For teens, we went forward and planned for low cost plain smartphones that allow phoning and sending text messages without way too many features and benefits for your small children to get swept up in. For high-school individuals, we mentioned low-cost smartphones that deliver a strong balance of market price and efficiency whilst maintaining solid parental configurations using Android and iPhones. Since most recent Android and iPhones cellphones operating the most up-to-date operating systems (like iOS 11.4 and iOS 12 beta) provide sufficient parental controls build in, adults will have no issue purchasing for their children and adolescents these styles of phones. Android Moto E5 The Moto E5 is not merely a single smartphone but instead a series of low cost cellphones with various product features. Even though their difference, they all make great budget selections for your children. Although affordable Android phones could be performing on out of date devices or software, the Moto E5 is updated with up to date processors and Android 8.0 operating system. The Moto E5 Play is usually toned down slightly, defining it as more budget friendly at 99 dollars. In England, the basic Moto E5 and the Moto E5 Plus will be for sale quite soon. Aside from the normal Moto E5, most of the others incorporate a water-repellent finish that might help you make certain that your kids would not harm their telephone. Galaxy S8 Active If you'd like to really give your child an extremely capable mobile phone but get worried they could ruin it and waste a lot of money, the Galaxy S8 Active is the perfect option. It provides all of the functionality a flagship Android cellphone calls for, but it’s crafted tough. The Galaxy S8 Active screen is sharp, the camera is great, and the battery is forgiving if your child forgets to charge it one night. All of that is packed right into a chassis with an great rating. In other words, it can handle a whole lot of carelessness. We dropped one screen-first onto a stone floor from five feet up, and the display was fine. The Samsung Galaxy S8 Active is supplied in the US on Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T. Customers on other systems and in the United Kingdom can look in its place at the Samsung Galaxy S8 and any of the top Samsung Galaxy S8 phone cases. Iphone SE Right from the Apple group of cellphones, the iPhone SE is not the most popular phone, but it’s still helped by Apple with the most up-to-date iOS 11 revisions. In spite of its years, it often works excellently with Apple’s A9 cpu, and it shall give your offspring almost all the cell phone capabilities they may want. The benefit of their generation is certainly that it comes at a very low price for an Apple device.

One of the primary problems about getting your teen an iPhone SE is that it is not built to end up being extremely robust. Fortunately, this is an obstacle that can easily be solved by way of a reasonably priced iPhone SE case. Apple's iPhone 7 or iPhone 8 If asking price isn’t an important challenge and you plan to get a phone case (or your teen has established themselves never to be reckless), the iPhone 8 can result in tremendous choices. Your daughter or son shouldn’t feel held back by any insufficient features (or style) on these newer gadgets, even though you may rest assured that the parental settings on iOS will be enough to keep track of your teen’s usage. Although the advance cost might be excessive, software help and support for these newer iPhones should last longer, so you would not have to be stressed about upgrading any time soon. As an added bonus, the iPhone cameras are exceptional, so you will get to see a lot of delightful shots of those things your kid is doing. There is one explanation to hand your daughter or son a cellphone: if they are often out of reach of reliable people and may perhaps have to speak to you or another caregiver. Please don't purchase your children a really expensive, luxurious smartphone. The Wait Until Eighth crusade, which encourages only allowing children cell phones once they start the 8th grade, makes some really good arguments, although it too quickly avoids cell phones and social websites, which are not the same elements. The system's central position, though, is the fact that younger children generally just require smart phones for calling and limited text messaging. The perfect telephone for tweens and kids is a basic voice phone, a screenless Republic Wireless Relay, or a 100 % pure tracking gadget like the Ankr. The moment you try to improve to a smart phone, don't spend too much cash. Children and teenagers aren't cautious. That's part of what precisely will make them children. They'll lose mobile phones, drop cell phones, dip mobile phones, and damage mobile phones. Assume it will sooner or later happen. There's a bunch of sound smart phones in the low collection that run more or less new, secure editions of the os's, are not annoying to use, and don't seem entirely not cool. There are even a handful of good ones below two hundred. We will not enter the never-ending controversy, never resolved, about mobile phone teenagers and radiation, but many mother and fathers have expressed alarm to us about it. The good reports is the fact that radiation worries only really come into play when a telephone is held exactly up to your brain for extended amounts of time, and children do not speak on the telephone with all their classmates and friends much these days: they text. Short interactions with parents on a plain cellphone, for protection or misc uses, won't injure any person. To have long interactions, purchase a cheap wired headphones. Whatever telephone you get, make sure to get a decent, rugged case for it. My boy enjoys a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 within an Otterbox Commuter case. I did not foresee how creative my kid turn into by working with the S Smart pen, frequently doodling and writing ideas. Because of the smart pen, the Samsung Note 4 isn't only a smart phone, it's an unlimited journal. Try to make a bargain with your children: Just in case they end up getting a telephone, you get to look at it. I check my teen's smartphone regularly. She's okay with that; that's the agreement. I don't go through her text messages, but she knows I've the option. A new obligation before purchasing your kid a cellphone should be to pick and choose the correct service package. The most inexpensive plan is Wireless internet-only, with no SIM chip. If so, they only experience coverage in well-known Wifi systems, and can't send out regular texts or make traditional phone calls. Your kid may, however, use iMessage and FaceTime on Apple iPhones, or Google Hangouts for text messaging and calling to other Google accounts on Google Android phones. Your company may possibly recommend a cellphone on a monthly installment plan. In cases where you are using a data bucket with your children, you should set a limit on their cell phone to a particular amount of regular monthly data with the intention that your children don't eat up all of yours.

[infotainmentplus-blog]

Let’s take a look at the new YouTube Music (hands-on) The new YouTube Music is out. We’ve heard about this a ton over the last year. It’s going to eventually replace Google Play Music in Google’s lineup and, unlike its predecessor, it links directly to YouTube in a ton of ways. It’s one of Google’s more ambitious releases over the last year or so as it hopes to compete with the likes of music streaming juggernauts like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and others. Could this be the one that breaks the mold? Silly, required rhetorical questions aside, let’s take a look at the new YouTube Music and see what it’s really about. YouTube Music’s UI To be perfectly honest, YouTube Music’s UI is delightful. It’s a little bland and minimal. However, you can also get to just about everywhere in the app within two taps. The app consists of three main screens: the home screen, the Hotlist, and the library. The home page shows recommendations for things like new releases, various playlists, music videos, and stuff like that. The Hotlist is basically just the most popular and most trending music videos. The library shows your playlists, saved artists, saved albums, downloaded content, and your liked songs. You can tap the profile picture in the top right to see more stuff. That includes settings, downloads, viewing/listening history, the switch account action, and the help/feedback section. The settings are fairly bare-bones with most settings dealing with network usage, notifications, and a restrictive mode that blocks things like offensive language. The actual music player UI is fairly standard fair. There aren’t any surprises here. Swipe up for playlists and hit the three-dot menu for additional options. That’s it for the UI, really. It’s simple, effective, and quick to navigate. It shouldn’t take long to get it down. We really hope they keep that core simplicity as they continue to add features to the app. We can definitively say that this is vastly easier than Google Play Music ever was, even if there isn’t much here yet. Content YouTube Music’s content is a little bit of a mystery. It offers all of the music videos from YouTube. That gives it a list of songs greater than any streaming service. There is also a separate selection of stream-only songs without video. Searching for content shows both along with other people’s playlists and albums. Thus, it solves the age-old problem of not finding a song on your streaming service and then opening YouTube to find it there. This app searches for both in the same spot. Subscribers have unmitigated access to both video and audio-only content. We’re not sure how many on-demand, non-video songs YouTube Music supports. We imagine it’s in the tens of millions much like Google Play Music and other comparable services. The app still gives access to every music video on YouTube, though, and that really helps fill in the blanks left my most other streaming services. The integration between on-demand music streaming and music videos is present in every function of the app and that’s where things get awesome. You can create playlists with both music videos and on-demand music in the same place, giving YouTube Music the most powerful playlist creation tool this side of the Internet. Additionally, all videos have a toggle that turns off the video for an “audio-only” mode (an older feature from before the big update), essentially turning all music videos into on-demand music streams. Thus, in practice, you can’t really tell the difference between a music video from YouTube or an on-demand song from YouTube Music. Integrating the two together was a stroke of genius. In terms of content, even in its current form, it has more music than whatever you’re using. Additional features There aren’t a ton of additional features aside from the usual array of music streaming mainstays like playlists, music on-demand, and other such things. The app is fairly bare-bones right now, but we expect that to change as the app and service both mature. There are a few extra things, though. The previously mentioned restrictive mode makes the app more friendly for younger folks or those that flat don’t like swearing. The app also has Chromecast support (of course). This is an early access beta, though, so there aren’t a ton of extra features to write home about yet. It should get a bunch of features from Google Play Music as they integrate the two over the course of the next several months. We’re sure there are other plans for this app as well that we don’t know about yet. In short, there aren’t a ton of additional features yet, but there is more than enough evidence of new features coming to the app sooner rather than later. What we didn’t like Nothing is perfect and that includes the new YouTube Music. We did see a few flaws that we’ll talk about briefly in hopes that they get fixed before too long. For some reason, the app doesn’t show song lengths in search results. This is odd because YouTube shows length in its search results. Considering that bands like Dire Straits have live versions of Sultans of Swing that are both five minutes long and 11 minutes long, we would’ve liked to have seen track lengths so we know what we’re dealing with. Everything you do in YouTube Music is reflected somewhere in the main YouTube app for better or for worse. Any playlists you make in YouTube are visible in YouTube Music and vice versa. Every song on YouTube Music is also a video on YouTube. This may reflect in your recommendations on the standard YouTube app as well eventually. You can choose video quality on YouTube, but not audio quality. The same goes for YouTube Music. You get whatever audio came with the video and that’s it. It’s usually fairly middle-of-the-road stuff. It’s not terrible by any stretch, but we’re definitely not dealing with high quality MP3s either. Most people likely won’t notice or care and that’s fine. However, those who enjoy higher quality audio might be disappointed. Finally, there are a swath of popular videos that are basically entire concerts in a single video. YouTube viewers rely on comments and video descriptions for time stamps so they know where the songs start and end. YouTube Music doesn’t show comments or video descriptions. You can see why that might be a problem. Longer concert-style videos are still better on the main YouTube app. Quite frankly, other than changes to the UI, we’re having trouble discerning the difference between the new YouTube Music and the old one. Most of these issues are nitpicks, but they are issues we would like to see fixed sooner rather than later. There are also some UI elements that seem a little under-cooked. However, this is an early release, so we kind of expected those. Wrap up YouTube Music is a very interesting product. Its massive library of content already eclipses everything else on the market, even SoundCloud and its absurd number of tracks. The integration between YouTube and YouTube Music is neat and the promised inclusion of the best parts of Google Play Music should make almost any music fan giddy with excitement. This one has a lot of potential. However, like we said a moment ago, there really isn’t much of a difference between the new YouTube Music and the old one. There are no audio quality settings, everything you listen to is a video that is available on YouTube anyway. Aside from a scaled back UI, a larger focus on music, and removing non-music content, you’d be hard pressed to find features in YouTube Music that aren’t also available in the main YouTube app. For now, we recommend that you don’t cancel your Spotify subscription yet. YouTube Music is in early access beta and it has a long way to go. There is definitely promise, the app works well, and some of the ideas here are utterly fantastic. However, until it starts acting more like its own product and less like an off-shoot of another product, it’s difficult to recommend that people spend money on it. Of course, we want to hear your thoughts as well! Tell us what you think in the comments below. DOWNLOAD FROM GOOGLE PLAY More YouTube Stuff! Here are all 5 YouTube apps and what they do! YouTube is the world's most popular streaming service. You already know what you can find there. The service is so big that there are multiple apps for browsing all of the content. They're all let … Apple Music vs Spotify vs Google Play Music For well over a decade, the music industry has been trying to figure out the Internet and they have failed more often than they have succeeded. Declining music sales and the rise of free sources … , via Android Authority http://bit.ly/2sheyiN

[developeragent]

Mustafa Suleyman: The liberal activist who cofounded Google's

Mustafa Suleyman is a 33-year-old entrepreneur and activist.  He sold his artificial intelligence company DeepMind to Google for £400 million in 2014.  Suleyman dropped out of university and worked as an activist before getting involved in artificial intelligence.  Mustafa Suleyman is one of the three cofounders of DeepMind, an artificial intelligence (AI) lab in London that was acquired by Google in 2014 for a reported £400 million — the search giant's largest acquisition in Europe to date.  Listen to a few of Suleyman's talks on YouTube and you'll quickly realise that he's a left-leaning activist who wants to make the world a better place for everyone as opposed to an elite few. He differs from many of today's tech founders in that he genuinely seems to care about the welfare of everyone on the planet. The 33 year old — affectionately known as "Moose" internally at DeepMind and amongst his friends — lives in Peckham, South London, with his artist fiancée. He can often be seen on Twitter retweeting Labour politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn and making his thoughts known on issues like homelessness, diversity, and inequality.  DeepMind may be owned by one of the largest companies in the world but Suleyman strongly believes capitalism is failing society in a number of areas. He explained this during a talk at a Google event last May.  "We believe today that in some sense, capitalism in many ways has delivered so much for us over the last couple of centuries," Suleyman said at a Google ZeitgeistMinds event in London. "We've delivered so much progress. No other construct or idea has been able to distribute benefits so broadly and so rapidly. And yet in many areas, capitalism is currently failing us. We actually need a new kind of set of incentives to tackle some of the most pressing and urgent social problems and we need a new kind of tool, a new kind of intelligence, that is distributed, that is scaled, that is accessible, to try and make sense of some of the complexity that is overwhelming us." DeepMind's not-so-simple mission is to solve intelligence and then to use that to solve everything else. The company is building complex algorithms that can learn for themselves using techniques similar to those seen in the human brain. Ultimately, it hopes to end up with something that works like an artificial hippocampus — the part of the brain that is mainly associated with memory, and long-term memory in particular.  Since its incorporation in 2011, DeepMind has been aggressively hiring some of the smartest computer scientists, neuroscientists, mathematicians, and physicists around the world. Today it employs around 700 people across offices in the UK (London), Canada (Edmonton and Montreal), and the US (Mountain View). The vast majority of DeepMind's staff (over 500 people) are currently located across two floors in Google's main office in London's King's Cross.  Unlike his cofounders, Suleyman does not have a background in science. As a result, he is more focused on the business side of the company and today he is trying to find applications for DeepMind's technology both inside and outside of Google while also ensuring that the company's work in AI remains safe and ethical.   Suleyman grew up in North London and developed a passion for philosophy Suleyman grew up just off Caledonian Road in North London where he lived with his parents and his two younger brothers. His father was a Syrian-born taxi driver and his mother was an English nurse in the NHS. Suleyman went to Thornhill Primary School (a state school in Islington) followed by the free, but selective, Queen Elizabeth boys school in Barnet. Suleyman read widely as a child, according to a Wired feature on DeepMind from June 2015, developing an early love for philosophy. He also had a passion for business and entrepreneurship from an early age and he wasn't afraid to try to hustle his fellow students on the school playground.   When I started secondary school at 11, me and my best friend started selling sweets in the playground.   "Ever since I was a kid I was always starting small businesses and dreaming they would one day grow like crazy," Suleyman told Business Insider. "When I started secondary school at 11, me and my best friend started selling sweets in the playground. We would go to the wholesaler and buy in bulk and rent people’s lockers to store them in. We started hiring other kids out at break-times to sell for us. It got pretty big before the teachers shut it down." Suleyman moved from selling sweets in the playground to exploring how he could help the disabled in his spare time.  "A few years later, a team of us got together and spent a summer visiting restaurants and attractions across London in a wheelchair we borrowed to review their accessibility for disabled people," he said. "Based on that, we published an 80-page guide to London for young disabled people. "It's part of the reason why I believe so strongly that if we rewrite the incentives for businesses today to include social responsibility in addition to fiduciary duties, plenty of leaders will jump at the chance to redirect their energies toward building a better, fairer world." As a straight A student, Suleyman could afford to be fairly selective about where he went to university. He chose to go to Oxford — one of the top (and most elite) universities in the world — to read philosophy and theology. Interestingly, Suleyman joined Oxford's Mansfield College, which is leading the charge on anti-elitism at the university; nine in 10 of the students it admitted in 2017 came from state schools. "Philosophy and theology is an interesting course and I thought it was a nice combination," Suleyman said. "Mansfield is an amazing place to study theology, and my tutor was one of the leaders in the field." But Suleyman realised that he didn't want to focus on education in his late teenage years. Young and eager to get out into the world and use his intelligence to have an impact, he dropped out of the centuries-old institution at 19 because he didn't feel like his degree was practical enough.  "Throughout my life, I've always been focused on maximizing social impact with everything I do," said Suleyman. "At the time, I was enjoying studying philosophy and theology but it felt so abstract and impractical to me. "Like many teenage activists I guess I was restless and angry at what I saw as such widespread injustice and inequality. And I felt compelled to do something to help people directly in the wider world." Suleyman dropped out of Oxford to set up a counselling service for young Muslims After dropping out, Suleyman and his university friend Mohammed Mamdani set up a telephone counselling service called the Muslim Youth Helpline which went on to become one of the largest mental health support services of its kind in the UK.  "I wanted to broaden my scope to tackle social challenges affecting all of society, not just a specific subgroup," Suleyman said. "At the Helpline I realised that the problems many of our service users were facing were actually rooted in the wider systemic inequalities and prejudices present in broader society." At 22, Suleyman left Muslim Youth Helpline after realising non-profit organisations are held back by multiple factors.  "After three or four years, I realised in some sense the fundamental limitations of charities," Suleyman told The Financial Times. "It was really difficult to scale the organisation and to raise funds in a sustainable way."  He went on to work for former London mayor Ken Livingstone.  "When I got an offer to work for Mayor Ken Livingstone on human rights policy, it seemed like a brilliant opportunity to to fight the systemic injustices that create so much of the suffering I saw first hand at the Helpline."  He left City Hall when he realised that government wasn't the vehicle to promote radical systemic change either. "It was pretty challenging and despite all of the high-minded principles it was actually really difficult to get practical things done on a day-to-day basis," Suleyman told the FT.  Suleyman worked with the UN, the US government, and Shell Following his stint in politics, Suleyman helped to cofound a consultancy called Reos Partners, which aims to help drive change on global issues like food production, waste, and diversity.  "[Through Reos Partners] I ended up working for a whole bunch of different organisations including the UN, the US government, the Dutch government, WWF, Shell," he told the FT. His work for Shell was on sustainability-related projects. "We worked all over the world, ended up growing [Reos Partners], which is still going today, to about five or six offices around the world — specialising in large scale conflict resolution and negotiation." Suleyman left Reos Partners in 2010 after a year-long piece of facilitation work at the Copenhagen climate negotiations left him feeling frustrated. "There was a very natural alignment back in late 2009, early 2010 when I had just sort of finished the climate negotiations, which of course were at the time a massive disaster and everybody was really broken hearted" he told the FT.  He added: "Traditional vehicles for addressing climate change — the various meetings and minds, grassroots campaigning, high level political negotiations, waiting for spontaneous market driven outcomes — were, to put it bluntly, just not working fast enough. Time and again we found ourselves failing to come to grips with a dizzyingly complex world, with groups of the smartest experts struggling to make sense of the relationship between cause and effect. "Of course climate change is just one of many strands of a complex, interdependent, and dynamic set of problems that we currently face as a species. If we don't tackle these problems, the future of humanity and the planet is at best uncertain. At worst, it's an extremely grim prognosis."  DeepMind was born in London in 2009 Realising the potential that technology and AI have to benefit the world, Suleyman set up DeepMind around the end of 2009 with his childhood friend Demis Hassabis and a New Zealander called Shane Legg.   Before incorporating DeepMind, Suleyman and Hassabis (who were friends through Hassabis's younger brother) had many deep discussions and debates about how to improve the world. They typically approached the matter from different angles but they both say they're fundamentally motivated by the opportunity to alleviate human suffering at scale, and they've talked about how best to do that endlessly. "Demis and I grew up in the same neighborhood and his younger brother and I were — and still are — best friends," said Suleyman. "We often had conversations about how to improve and impact the world — from solving inequality to malnutrition. He felt the solutions would come through simulations that could model the complex dynamics in the world causing these problems, while I would always emphasize more near-term practical change efforts. "Building and applying general purpose learning systems combined our two different approaches. And after working in many different arenas — from government to think tanks and the charity sector — trying to tackle our most intractable social challenges, it was clear to me that we needed new institutions, creativity and knowledge in order to navigate the growing complexity of our social systems. Reapplying existing human knowledge was not going to be enough. Starting a new kind of organisation with the single purpose of building AI and using it to solve the world's toughest problems was our best shot at having a transformative, large scale impact on society’s most pressing challenges." Suleyman is well-liked across DeepMind and the UK tech sector. Many people said they liked the fact that he's humble and down to Earth, and they respect the fact that he's willing to talk about difficult issues like equal pay and capitalism in a way that many other tech leaders aren't. He's seen by some as a revolutionary and whether he realises it or not, may people are more than willing to sign up to his mission and his way of thinking. In the company's early days, Suleyman made several trips to Silicon Valley and successfully convinced billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to invest in DeepMind, telling them that he and his cofounders planned to hoover up as much brain power in Europe as they could and get these smart young people working on the most advanced AI systems on the planet. Frank Meehan, an early investor in DeepMind and a former board member on virtual assistant startup Siri, which was acquired by Apple in 2010, said he first met Suleyman when DeepMind employed about six or seven people and was based out of a tiny office in London's Russell Square. "Mustafa is a key part of the whole thing," Meehan told Business Insider. "He's confident, he's energetic, and he stays on top of things," said Meehan. "He's focused and he gets things done." Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), former head of the No 10 Policy Unit, and an independent reviewer of DeepMind Health, described Suleyman as an "open" and "rounded" leader, adding that he respects his willingness to talk about the big issues facing the world's tech giants. "Everyone thinks if Mustafa is running the world it would be a pretty amazing place, to be honest," Taylor told Business Insider. "The question is whether or not he is someone inside the system genuinely transforming the culture of Google, or, if you were cynical, is he the kind of acceptable face for an industry that knows it has its issues but is actually going to plough on regardless?" Taylor added: "I think he works with the most genuine intentions but the reality is well-intentioned people don't always do well-intentioned things." Commenting on his relationship with Suleyman, Hassabis said: "Mustafa is a fantastic cofounder — we were family friends growing up together in North London and we share a deep belief in the potential of scientific and technical advances for positive social change. He brilliantly leads our applied and commercial efforts including spearheading our work in healthcare and energy, as well as being a respected thought leader on the ethical and societal impact of AI." Suleyman is leading DeepMind's health projects DeepMind's algorithms have been used by Google to reduce the amount of energy used in its vast fleet of enormous data centres by 15%. "Anything that we can do to reduce the amount of energy required to deliver the same service is fantastic for the planet and has a very significant dollar impact at the bottom line, which is also good," Suleyman said in July 2016. Google has also used DeepMind's  WaveNet neural network to generate the Google Assistant voices for US English and Japanese. Looking outside Google, Suleyman, who oversees a growing DeepMind Health team, has convinced several NHS trusts to work with DeepMind on projects including a patient monitoring app for clinicians and an AI system that can learn to spot early signs of cancer. DeepMind's work with the NHS didn't get off to the best start and Suleyman found himself under the spotlight when a freedom of information request from New Scientist revealed the extent of a data sharing agreement with the Royal Free Trust in North London, which was DeepMind's first NHS deal. The deal — which was later deemed illegal by the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's top data regulator — gave DeepMind access to 1.6 million NHS patient records to help it build a kidney monitoring app called Streams.  Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in a statement at the time: "There's no doubt the huge potential that creative use of data could have on patient care and clinical improvements, but the price of innovation does not need to be the erosion of fundamental privacy rights. Our investigation found a number of shortcomings in the way patient records were shared for this trial. Patients would not have reasonably expected their information to have been used in this way, and the Trust could and should have been far more transparent with patients as to what was happening." But that's the only major setback that the company has had since it was acquired by Google.  Looking ahead, DeepMind is keen to work with the National Grid to see how it can cut energy consumption across the UK in the same way that it's helped Google in its data centres. Beyond that, Suleyman is also one of the founding members of the Partnership on AI — an organisation set up in September 2016 to ensure that AI is developed safely, ethically, and transparently — along with Facebook's AI head Yann LeCun, Microsoft Research director Eric Horvitz, and several others. Suleyman accepts there are very real concerns about the future of AI While AI clearly has great potential, academics, philosophers, and technologists have warned that AI may be humanity's biggest downfall if it is programmed incorrectly or harnessed for wrong doing.  Renowned scientist Stephen Hawking said at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon last November: "Success in creating effective AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don't know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it."  When it comes to DeepMind's research, Suleyman and his cofounders realise that there are two sides to the coin. The DeepMind leaders allowed their startup to be acquired by Google on the condition that Google set up an internal AI ethics board to oversee AI developments across the entire organisation. Little is known about the mysterious ethics board but Suleyman said at a Bloomberg conference in 2015 that he wanted Google to disclose the board members. He's been asked about the board several times since then but remained tight lipped.  "Getting these things right is not purely a matter of having good intentions," Suleyman wrote in Wired this month. "We need to do the hard, practical and messy work of finding out what ethical AI really means. If we manage to get AI to work for people and the planet, then the effects could be transformational. Right now, there's everything to play for." SULEYMAN'S 3 FAVOURITE BOOKS Van Illich's "Deschooling Society," a penetrating commentary on the shortcomings of institutionalised education. Illich accomplishes that most difficult of feats, complementing his critique with a set of practical and creative proposals for alternative approaches. "Inventing the Future" by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams tackles the likely ramifications of intensified automation for the future of work, and the prospects for policies like UBI. The book distinguishes itself by taking absolutely seriously the difficult and contentious political dimensions to this debate. "Transparency and the Open Society" by Roger Taylor and Tim Kelsey is a timely and detailed inquiry into the complexities that surround greater openness, together with a framework for thinking through transparency as effective policy. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here are the best iPhone apps of 2017 from Dragplus http://ift.tt/2EWIJAH

[thedeadshotnetwork]

Mustafa Suleyman: The liberal activist who cofounded Google's £400 million artificial intelligence lab (GOOG) Mustafa Suleyman is a 33-year-old entrepreneur and activist. He sold his artificial intelligence company DeepMind to Google for £400 million in 2014. Suleyman dropped out of university and worked as an activist before getting involved in artificial intelligence. Mustafa Suleyman is one of the three cofounders of DeepMind, an artificial intelligence (AI) lab in London that was acquired by Google in 2014 for a reported £400 million — the search giant's largest acquisition in Europe to date. Listen to a few of Suleyman's talks on YouTube and you'll quickly realise that he's a left-leaning activist who wants to make the world a better place for everyone as opposed to an elite few. He differs from many of today's tech founders in that he genuinely seems to care about the welfare of everyone on the planet. The 33 year old — affectionately known as "Moose" internally at DeepMind and amongst his friends — lives in Peckham, South London, with his artist fiancée. He can often be seen on Twitter retweeting Labour politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn and making his thoughts known on issues like homelessness, diversity, and inequality. DeepMind may be owned by one of the largest companies in the world but Suleyman strongly believes capitalism is failing society in a number of areas. He explained this during a talk at a Google event last May. "We believe today that in some sense, capitalism in many ways has delivered so much for us over the last couple of centuries," Suleyman said at a Google ZeitgeistMinds event in London. "We've delivered so much progress. No other construct or idea has been able to distribute benefits so broadly and so rapidly. And yet in many areas, capitalism is currently failing us. We actually need a new kind of set of incentives to tackle some of the most pressing and urgent social problems and we need a new kind of tool, a new kind of intelligence, that is distributed, that is scaled, that is accessible, to try and make sense of some of the complexity that is overwhelming us." DeepMind's not-so-simple mission is to solve intelligence and then to use that to solve everything else. The company is building complex algorithms that can learn for themselves using techniques similar to those seen in the human brain. Ultimately, it hopes to end up with something that works like an artificial hippocampus — the part of the brain that is mainly associated with memory, and long-term memory in particular. Since its incorporation in 2011, DeepMind has been aggressively hiring some of the smartest computer scientists, neuroscientists, mathematicians, and physicists around the world. Today it employs around 700 people across offices in the UK (London), Canada (Edmonton and Montreal), and the US (Mountain View). The vast majority of DeepMind's staff (over 500 people) are currently located across two floors in Google's main office in London's King's Cross. Unlike his cofounders, Suleyman does not have a background in science. As a result, he is more focused on the business side of the company and today he is trying to find applications for DeepMind's technology both inside and outside of Google while also ensuring that the company's work in AI remains safe and ethical. Suleyman grew up in North London and developed a passion for philosophy Flickr/Matt Brown Suleyman grew up just off Caledonian Road in North London where he lived with his parents and his two younger brothers. His father was a Syrian-born taxi driver and his mother was an English nurse in the NHS. Suleyman went to Thornhill Primary School (a state school in Islington) followed by the free, but selective, Queen Elizabeth boys school in Barnet. Suleyman read widely as a child, according to a Wired feature on DeepMind from June 2015 , developing an early love for philosophy. He also had a passion for business and entrepreneurship from an early age and he wasn't afraid to try to hustle his fellow students on the school playground. When I started secondary school at 11, me and my best friend started selling sweets in the playground. "Ever since I was a kid I was always starting small businesses and dreaming they would one day grow like crazy," Suleyman told Business Insider. "When I started secondary school at 11, me and my best friend started selling sweets in the playground. We would go to the wholesaler and buy in bulk and rent people’s lockers to store them in. We started hiring other kids out at break-times to sell for us. It got pretty big before the teachers shut it down." Suleyman moved from selling sweets in the playground to exploring how he could help the disabled in his spare time. "A few years later, a team of us got together and spent a summer visiting restaurants and attractions across London in a wheelchair we borrowed to review their accessibility for disabled people," he said. "Based on that, we published an 80-page guide to London for young disabled people. "It's part of the reason why I believe so strongly that if we rewrite the incentives for businesses today to include social responsibility in addition to fiduciary duties, plenty of leaders will jump at the chance to redirect their energies toward building a better, fairer world." As a straight A student, Suleyman could afford to be fairly selective about where he went to university. He chose to go to Oxford — one of the top (and most elite) universities in the world — to read philosophy and theology. Interestingly, Suleyman joined Oxford's Mansfield College, which is leading the charge on anti-elitism at the university; nine in 10 of the students it admitted in 2017 came from state schools. "Philosophy and theology is an interesting course and I thought it was a nice combination," Suleyman said. "Mansfield is an amazing place to study theology, and my tutor was one of the leaders in the field." pettifoggist/Flickr But Suleyman realised that he didn't want to focus on education in his late teenage years. Young and eager to get out into the world and use his intelligence to have an impact, he dropped out of the centuries-old institution at 19 because he didn't feel like his degree was practical enough. "Throughout my life, I've always been focused on maximizing social impact with everything I do," said Suleyman. "At the time, I was enjoying studying philosophy and theology but it felt so abstract and impractical to me. "Like many teenage activists I guess I was restless and angry at what I saw as such widespread injustice and inequality. And I felt compelled to do something to help people directly in the wider world." Suleyman dropped out of Oxford to set up a counselling service for young Muslims After dropping out, Suleyman and his university friend Mohammed Mamdani set up a telephone counselling service called the Muslim Youth Helpline which went on to become one of the largest mental health support services of its kind in the UK. "I wanted to broaden my scope to tackle social challenges affecting all of society, not just a specific subgroup," Suleyman said. "At the Helpline I realised that the problems many of our service users were facing were actually rooted in the wider systemic inequalities and prejudices present in broader society." At 22, Suleyman left Muslim Youth Helpline after realising non-profit organisations are held back by multiple factors. "After three or four years, I realised in some sense the fundamental limitations of charities," Suleyman told The Financial Times . "It was really difficult to scale the organisation and to raise funds in a sustainable way." He went on to work for former London mayor Ken Livingstone. "When I got an offer to work for Mayor Ken Livingstone on human rights policy, it seemed like a brilliant opportunity to to fight the systemic injustices that create so much of the suffering I saw first hand at the Helpline." He left City Hall when he realised that government wasn't the vehicle to promote radical systemic change either. "It was pretty challenging and despite all of the high-minded principles it was actually really difficult to get practical things done on a day-to-day basis," Suleyman told the FT. Suleyman worked with the UN, the US government, and Shell Following his stint in politics, Suleyman helped to cofound a consultancy called Reos Partners, which aims to help drive change on global issues like food production, waste, and diversity. "[Through Reos Partners] I ended up working for a whole bunch of different organisations including the UN, the US government, the Dutch government, WWF, Shell," he told the FT. His work for Shell was on sustainability-related projects. "We worked all over the world, ended up growing [Reos Partners], which is still going today, to about five or six offices around the world — specialising in large scale conflict resolution and negotiation." Suleyman left Reos Partners in 2010 after a year-long piece of facilitation work at the Copenhagen climate negotiations left him feeling frustrated. "There was a very natural alignment back in late 2009, early 2010 when I had just sort of finished the climate negotiations, which of course were at the time a massive disaster and everybody was really broken hearted" he told the FT. He added: "Traditional vehicles for addressing climate change — the various meetings and minds, grassroots campaigning, high level political negotiations, waiting for spontaneous market driven outcomes — were, to put it bluntly, just not working fast enough. Time and again we found ourselves failing to come to grips with a dizzyingly complex world, with groups of the smartest experts struggling to make sense of the relationship between cause and effect. "Of course climate change is just one of many strands of a complex, interdependent, and dynamic set of problems that we currently face as a species. If we don't tackle these problems, the future of humanity and the planet is at best uncertain. At worst, it's an extremely grim prognosis." DeepMind was born in London in 2009 Realising the potential that technology and AI have to benefit the world, Suleyman set up DeepMind around the end of 2009 with his childhood friend Demis Hassabis and a New Zealander called Shane Legg. DeepMind Before incorporating DeepMind, Suleyman and Hassabis (who were friends through Hassabis's younger brother) had many deep discussions and debates about how to improve the world. They typically approached the matter from different angles but they both say they're fundamentally motivated by the opportunity to alleviate human suffering at scale, and they've talked about how best to do that endlessly. "Demis and I grew up in the same neighborhood and his younger brother and I were — and still are — best friends," said Suleyman. "We often had conversations about how to improve and impact the world — from solving inequality to malnutrition. He felt the solutions would come through simulations that could model the complex dynamics in the world causing these problems, while I would always emphasize more near-term practical change efforts. "Building and applying general purpose learning systems combined our two different approaches. And after working in many different arenas — from government to think tanks and the charity sector — trying to tackle our most intractable social challenges, it was clear to me that we needed new institutions, creativity and knowledge in order to navigate the growing complexity of our social systems. Reapplying existing human knowledge was not going to be enough. Starting a new kind of organisation with the single purpose of building AI and using it to solve the world's toughest problems was our best shot at having a transformative, large scale impact on society’s most pressing challenges." Suleyman is well-liked across DeepMind and the UK tech sector. Many people said they liked the fact that he's humble and down to Earth, and they respect the fact that he's willing to talk about difficult issues like equal pay and capitalism in a way that many other tech leaders aren't. He's seen by some as a revolutionary and whether he realises it or not, may people are more than willing to sign up to his mission and his way of thinking. In the company's early days, Suleyman made several trips to Silicon Valley and successfully convinced billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to invest in DeepMind, telling them that he and his cofounders planned to hoover up as much brain power in Europe as they could and get these smart young people working on the most advanced AI systems on the planet. Frank Meehan, an early investor in DeepMind and a former board member on virtual assistant startup Siri, which was acquired by Apple in 2010, said he first met Suleyman when DeepMind employed about six or seven people and was based out of a tiny office in London's Russell Square. "Mustafa is a key part of the whole thing," Meehan told Business Insider. "He's confident, he's energetic, and he stays on top of things," said Meehan. "He's focused and he gets things done." Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), former head of the No 10 Policy Unit, and an independent reviewer of DeepMind Health, described Suleyman as an "open" and "rounded" leader, adding that he respects his willingness to talk about the big issues facing the world's tech giants. "Everyone thinks if Mustafa is running the world it would be a pretty amazing place, to be honest," Taylor told Business Insider. "The question is whether or not he is someone inside the system genuinely transforming the culture of Google, or, if you were cynical, is he the kind of acceptable face for an industry that knows it has its issues but is actually going to plough on regardless?" Taylor added: "I think he works with the most genuine intentions but the reality is well-intentioned people don't always do well-intentioned things." Commenting on his relationship with Suleyman, Hassabis said: "Mustafa is a fantastic cofounder — we were family friends growing up together in North London and we share a deep belief in the potential of scientific and technical advances for positive social change. He brilliantly leads our applied and commercial efforts including spearheading our work in healthcare and energy, as well as being a respected thought leader on the ethical and societal impact of AI." Suleyman is leading DeepMind's health projects DeepMind's algorithms have been used by Google to reduce the amount of energy used in its vast fleet of enormous data centres by 15%. "Anything that we can do to reduce the amount of energy required to deliver the same service is fantastic for the planet and has a very significant dollar impact at the bottom line, which is also good," Suleyman said in July 2016. Google has also used DeepMind's WaveNet neural network to generate the Google Assistant voices for US English and Japanese. Google DeepMind Looking outside Google, Suleyman, who oversees a growing DeepMind Health team , has convinced several NHS trusts to work with DeepMind on projects including a patient monitoring app for clinicians and an AI system that can learn to spot early signs of cancer. DeepMind's work with the NHS didn't get off to the best start and Suleyman found himself under the spotlight when a freedom of information request from New Scientist revealed the extent of a data sharing agreement with the Royal Free Trust in North London, which was DeepMind's first NHS deal. The deal — which was later deemed illegal by the Information Commissioner's Office , the UK's top data regulator — gave DeepMind access to 1.6 million NHS patient records to help it build a kidney monitoring app called Streams. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in a statement at the time: "There's no doubt the huge potential that creative use of data could have on patient care and clinical improvements, but the price of innovation does not need to be the erosion of fundamental privacy rights. Our investigation found a number of shortcomings in the way patient records were shared for this trial. Patients would not have reasonably expected their information to have been used in this way, and the Trust could and should have been far more transparent with patients as to what was happening." But that's the only major setback that the company has had since it was acquired by Google. Looking ahead, DeepMind is keen to work with the National Grid to see how it can cut energy consumption across the UK in the same way that it's helped Google in its data centres. Beyond that, Suleyman is also one of the founding members of the Partnership on AI — an organisation set up in September 2016 to ensure that AI is developed safely, ethically, and transparently — along with Facebook's AI head Yann LeCun, Microsoft Research director Eric Horvitz, and several others. Suleyman accepts there are very real concerns about the future of AI While AI clearly has great potential, academics, philosophers, and technologists have warned that AI may be humanity's biggest downfall if it is programmed incorrectly or harnessed for wrong doing. Renowned scientist Stephen Hawking said at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon last November: "Success in creating effective AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don't know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it." When it comes to DeepMind's research, Suleyman and his cofounders realise that there are two sides to the coin. The DeepMind leaders allowed their startup to be acquired by Google on the condition that Google set up an internal AI ethics board to oversee AI developments across the entire organisation. Little is known about the mysterious ethics board but Suleyman said at a Bloomberg conference in 2015 that he wanted Google to disclose the board members. He's been asked about the board several times since then but remained tight lipped. "Getting these things right is not purely a matter of having good intentions," Suleyman wrote in Wired this month. "We need to do the hard, practical and messy work of finding out what ethical AI really means. If we manage to get AI to work for people and the planet, then the effects could be transformational. Right now, there's everything to play for." SULEYMAN'S 3 FAVOURITE BOOKS Van Illich's "Deschooling Society ," a penetrating commentary on the shortcomings of institutionalised education. Illich accomplishes that most difficult of feats, complementing his critique with a set of practical and creative proposals for alternative approaches. "Inventing the Future" by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams tackles the likely ramifications of intensified automation for the future of work, and the prospects for policies like UBI. The book distinguishes itself by taking absolutely seriously the difficult and contentious political dimensions to this debate. "Transparency and the Open Society" by Roger Taylor and Tim Kelsey is a timely and detailed inquiry into the complexities that surround greater openness, together with a framework for thinking through transparency as effective policy. NOW WATCH: 7 science-backed ways for a happier and healthier 2018 — this is what you do the very first week January 20, 2018 at 03:25PM

[dianehoffmaster]

You might be thinking ‘there is snow on the ground, who cares about summer’ but in a few months, you will be shaving your legs and putting on your bathing suit!  While you don’t need some ridiculously fit ‘beach body’ to enjoy the pool, knowing how to get in shape for summer means that you will feel just a little less self-conscious about that muffin top or those not so muscular thighs!  It seems like those extra holiday pounds went on REALLY fast, right?  Well, I can tell you right now that they won’t come off as fast as they glommed right onto your butt! Hopefully, these tips along with the affiliate links for products that may help will whittle away those extra pounds!

How to Get in Shape for Summer

I am a 40 plus woman with 2 children and I am always searching for easy ways to get in shape.  So, like most people who want to learn about a topic,  I head to my old friend Google to help me learn about it.  What do I find if I Google the term ‘getting in shape”?  I find pictures of buff looking women doing pushups on the beach and links to sports supplements to help me run marathons.  Okay, Google, let’s be realistic here a minute, shall we?  I am middle aged and have a lot of things that hurt if I so much bend over to pick up the newspaper wrong.  I have two children who beg for ice cream on a regular basis and I have NO willpower.

So, how is this very busy, middle-aged woman supposed to get in shape for summer so that she can be seen at the pool in a bathing suit without feeling self-conscious?  I am still working on losing a few pounds but here are a few ideas on how to get in shape for summer that I thought I would share.

  Watch what you drink

Put down the soda, vitamin water, and coffee and start drinking more water.  Yes, this is not easy.  It is also not always tasty.  But, getting in shape means that you need to find ways to flush your system and trick it into thinking it is full.  Drinking lots of water is one easy way to do this.  Put a giant pitcher on the counter or in the fridge and vow to finish it by the end of the day.  Add slices of fresh fruit to it or a spritz of fresh lemon or lime juice. Get a fruit infuser water bottle to make your own healthy flavored water.

Get moving

That seems so simple, right?  Want to know how to get in shape for summer?   Burn calories!  The only way to burn calories is to get your behind in gear and get moving.  I have been trying to do something very simple: walk more!  Instead of sitting in my chair to check email or talk to my mom on the phone I head out and take a walk in the neighborhood while I work or chat.  If you are dropping your child off at soccer practice and sitting in the bleachers, how about you go with your walking shoes on and take a few laps around the field while you wait.

If you want to get a bunch of exercise equipment, check out Craiglist or ask your friends.  People are always happy to get rid of them since a lot of times they just end up as clothes hangers and storage spaces.  At least a good pair of walking sneakers doesn’t take up much space.

Choose herbal teas

So, I am not a doctor, dietitian, or anyone you should actually listen to when it comes to medical advice.  Let’s just get that straight before I continue! I do, however, really believe in the benefits of many herbs when it comes to health issues.  My cabinet is full of herbal teas to help solve just about every ailment you can think about.  I have detox teas, water flushing teas, and even an appetite suppressing tea.  Once a day I have a mug…usually with breakfast.  It’s a great way to increase fluid intake without extra calories and support your digestive system at the same time.

If you are not currently an herbal tea drinker, just an FYI for you:  They don’t all taste that great.  In fact, some of them taste like water that has been added to sticks and dirt.  Add a little Stevia and lemon juice if you have to for a no-calorie sweetness and flavor. Check out Amazon for a few herbal teas for weight loss if you want to try them.

Increase your fiber intake

This goes back to the whole concept of tricking your body into thinking it is full. Fiber takes up a lot of space and takes a while to digest. Getting in shape isn’t easy if you are constantly hungry!  Apples, nuts, seeds, beans, brown rice, fresh veggies, chia seeds….whatever has a decent amount of fiber in it works to help fill you up.  Eating an apple and drinking a glass of water 30 minutes before your meal will fill you up so you don’t eat too much at your meal.

Leave yourself notes

Okay, this might sound weird but I am all about lists and sticky notes.  Always head to the fridge at 3 PM for a snack?  Stick a post-it note on the fridge with a big NOOOOO written on it or leave yourself an inspirational message.  Whatever works to help you walk away from the fridge and stick to your diet plan.

Learn what a portion size really is

In addition to burning calories, you need to stop taking in as many calories as you currently do.  I do not count calories, weigh and measure, or in any way try to quantify the food I am eating.  I am far too lazy for that.  Learning how to get in shape for summer means that you have to reduce your calorie intake…there is no magic bullet when it comes to shedding pounds.  Eat less, exercise more.  But, if you think that a serving of potatoes is a heaping mound on your plate next to the 12-ounce steak you are sorely mistaken.  Check out some nutrition sites to learn what a serving size is for your age/weight/height/etc.  Eat more veggies and fruit, choose lean meat instead of processed meat food, skip the sauces and just try to make smarter food choices. They have portion control containers on Amazon that might help.

Snack Healthier

I am a snacker and that is not going to change just because I have to lose a few pounds.  I get cranky when I am hungry!  Making smarter snacking choices is high on my list of things to change this month. Healthy snacks still satisfy my need to munch but also provide some sort of nutrition and health benefits at the same time.  As much as I love Cheetos, they really are not a healthy snack choice so I have been trying to limit those to special occasions. Everyday snacking has become things like apples with almond butter, cheese sticks, veggies with low-fat dip, or snack chips made from whole grains.

If you are wondering how to get in shape for summer, the key is to start NOW so you don’t expect miracles once May gets here.  While running marathons and lifting weights may get you buff, there is no reason you can’t start making a few simple changes in your ever day life to slim down and tone up!

Have any other tips for getting in shape for summer?

  Like this post?  Learn more about   healthy weight loss  here:

5 Things I Learned About Healthy Weight Loss and Dieting

and a Weight Loss Motivation Board!

  The post A Lazy Mom’s Guide: How to Get in Shape for Summer appeared first on Turning the Clock Back.

[lewiskdavid90]

95% off #The Python 3 Bible™ | Go from Beginner to Advanced in Python – $10

Python – Complete Guide to learning how to program. Go from Beginner to Advanced level in Python with coding exercises!

All Levels,  – 8 hours,  73 lectures 

Average rating 4.1/5 (4.1 (173 ratings) Instead of using a simple lifetime average, Udemy calculates a course’s star rating by considering a number of different factors such as the number of ratings, the age of ratings, and the likelihood of fraudulent ratings.)

Course requirements:

Should be willing to learn and treat this as a full course – please take notes and put lessons into practice for maximum benefit. Only the very basic computer skills are needed Access to a computer with internet connection.

Course description:

========================= TESTIMONIALS =========================

“Everything is explained perfectly!” – Mouheb

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“Great set of Python Tutorials. The instructor walks you through the classes and materials in an easy to understand manor. A++” – Mirko

“Just did my first program very early on, which was exciting” – Chloe

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If you want to learn Python to advance your skills, then this is the course for you!

If you have no previous knowledge or experience in Python, you will like that the course begins with Python basics. Even if you have some experience in programming in Python, this course can help you learn some new information you had missed before. Each section of the course is linked to the previous one in terms of utilizing what was already learned and each topic is supplied with lots of examples which will help students in their process of learning. Upon the completion of this course, you should be able to write programs that have real-life applications.

What I think is the best about this course is that you can search questions others have had, post your own questions, and get answers to challenges you are currently facing in learning and using Python.  You get paid Python expert technical support in this course here to answer every single question you ask!

If you have any suggestions on topics that have not been covered, you can send them via private message. I will do my best to cover them as soon as possible.

Thank you for reading this. I hope to see you in the course soon and I hope you will enjoy your time learning as much as I have!

Full details Go from Beginner to Advanced in Python Programming by learning all of the basics to Object Orientated Programming. Gain general knowledge in regard to Python programming language Write scripts for general productivity tasks Read and comprehend Python code Gain knowledge in regard to general programming concepts

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Full details

Reviews:

“Right off the bat, although the title seems to suggest that this a beginner class, frankly, intermediate would be more appropriate.. Sure, some of the beginning is a rehash, but most of this tutorial is ‘eye’s glazed over”. One glaring error the author makes is the HORRIBLE ASSUMPTION that everybody runs Windows10. To get the downloaded Python and Sublime TExt programs to run, he correctly points out that the path statement to the location of these programs must be added to the enviormental variable. Now, in Win 10 it is fairly easy, but not in 7 as most people have. In fact, with his instructions, you will damage your machine, although not seriously as i did. Mainly, it’s not being able to use cmd line functions unless you put them back in. Putting in a new path statement in 7 is quite different than it is in 10. The Author chooses a teaching style that is stating a bunch of facts without proving or explaining them. A great analogy is saying 2+2 = 5 and The sky is green. One would expect him explain himself or hope that some of his hired guns would answer questions in the Q & A section.. Unfortunately, they were there in the beginning but fled after a week. I CANNOT recommend this course to a beginner, because of what I wrote above, and you will lost interest because of the lack of explanations of his dictates.. But since you paid for it, keep it for future reference for when you have a more grounded understanding of the basics As for why I gave it 1 ½ stars? I stuck with 1 star but one of his hired guns is the very attractive Sadeta Kulevic but she seems to be a little English challenged. Several times, someone would post a question and her response was ” I don’t understand your question” Myself, I have issues with the concept of indentation of code lines. Could never get that explained properly. Ms Kulevic, I noticed was studying Computer Networking and since I am a network guy, I know that subnetting is one of the harder concepts to grasp and be able to do in your brain in 45 seconds or less. I offered to trade that knowledge for some more guidance on the indentation issue, but it never got anywhere Good luck” (Mikey B Barrett)

“because of there isn’t subtitle because my mother language isn’t English and i find hard to hear what the teacher say the second reason is the teacher don’t reply all of questions” (Abdelaziz Said Abdelaziz)

“Great set of Python Tutorials. The instructor walks you through the classes and materials in an easy to understand manor. A++” (Mirko Cukich)

  About Instructor:

Ermin Kreponic Suppoman ®

Strongly motivated young IT expert, Linux enthusiast with a passion for troubleshooting network related problems. With an exceptional eye for details and a sense of urgency when it comes down to problem solving. Skills – Advanced knowledge of Linux command line – Installation, configuration and maintenance of servers that run under Unix/Linux type operating systems To name a few: DNS, TFTP, FTP, SSH, APACHE, SMTP, VSFTP and some others – Troubleshooting a wide range of network related problems. Meaning, digging deep for packets on any given network. Using one of my favourite tools for capturing and filtering packets on the network, Wireshark, and resolving end-user issues – Good understanding of Cisco routers and IOS operating system – Configuration and implementation of Linux firewall namely Iptables – Supervision and filtration of network traffic – Tightening down security and pen testing networks for possible vulnerabilities – Good knowledge of network gear brands and their strengths or weaknesses – Preforming system back up – Fair knowledge of Bash scripting – equipment installation, upgrades, patches, and configuration. Personal note: I do not sleep much, but that is not only because I work hard, rather instead it is because I enjoy this line of work, it is extremely rewarding in every way that matters

Why are 40,000+ Students enrolled in my 19 courses? 1) I am proof my strategies work with 500,000+ fans online and a daily reach of 1,000,000 people. 2) I teach Masterclass Courses on Facebook Ads, YouTube, Instagram, Google Ads, Twitter & Udemy. 3) My courses are interactive live tutorials – no boring slideshows! You can copy and paste my exact systems. ► Don’t delay, every second could be costing you money! ◄ I’ve achieved a number 1 app on the iOS app store, and top selling Udemy courses, using Online Marketing. Learn how to grow your fanbase on Facebook using my Facebook Ads & Facebook Marketing Course: 10+ hours of HD video. Learn to build a fast-growing, popular and revenue generating YouTube business with The Complete YouTube Courses with your own videos and without filming: 14+ hours of HD classes. Learn how to create a high-growth, traffic and revenue generating Instagram account with The Complete Instagram Domination Course. If you want to learn how to market your business and products online, enrol in my courses today!

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[dianehoffmaster]

You might be thinking ‘there is snow on the ground, who cares about summer’ but in a few months, you will be shaving your legs and putting on your bathing suit!  While you don’t need some ridiculously fit ‘beach body’ to enjoy the pool, knowing how to get in shape for summer means that you will feel just a little less self-conscious about that muffin top or those not so muscular thighs!  It seems like those extra holiday pounds went on REALLY fast, right?  Well, I can tell you right now that they won’t come off as fast as they glommed right onto your butt! Hopefully, these tips along with the affiliate links for products that may help will whittle away those extra pounds!

How to Get in Shape for Summer

I am a 40 plus woman with 2 children and I am always searching for easy ways to get in shape.  So, like most people who want to learn about a topic,  I head to my old friend Google to help me learn about it.  What do I find if I Google the term ‘getting in shape”?  I find pictures of buff looking women doing pushups on the beach and links to sports supplements to help me run marathons.  Okay, Google, let’s be realistic here a minute, shall we?  I am middle aged and have a lot of things that hurt if I so much bend over to pick up the newspaper wrong.  I have two children who beg for ice cream on a regular basis and I have NO willpower.

So, how is this very busy, middle-aged woman supposed to get in shape for summer so that she can be seen at the pool in a bathing suit without feeling self-conscious?  I am still working on losing a few pounds but here are a few ideas on how to get in shape for summer that I thought I would share.

  Watch what you drink

Put down the soda, vitamin water, and coffee and start drinking more water.  Yes, this is not easy.  It is also not always tasty.  But, getting in shape means that you need to find ways to flush your system and trick it into thinking it is full.  Drinking lots of water is one easy way to do this.  Put a giant pitcher on the counter or in the fridge and vow to finish it by the end of the day.  Add slices of fresh fruit to it or a spritz of fresh lemon or lime juice. Get a fruit infuser water bottle to make your own healthy flavored water.

Get moving

That seems so simple, right?  Want to know how to get in shape for summer?   Burn calories!  The only way to burn calories is to get your behind in gear and get moving.  I have been trying to do something very simple: walk more!  Instead of sitting in my chair to check email or talk to my mom on the phone I head out and take a walk in the neighborhood while I work or chat.  If you are dropping your child off at soccer practice and sitting in the bleachers, how about you go with your walking shoes on and take a few laps around the field while you wait.

If you want to get a bunch of exercise equipment, check out Craiglist or ask your friends.  People are always happy to get rid of them since a lot of times they just end up as clothes hangers and storage spaces.  At least a good pair of walking sneakers doesn’t take up much space.

Choose herbal teas

So, I am not a doctor, dietitian, or anyone you should actually listen to when it comes to medical advice.  Let’s just get that straight before I continue! I do, however, really believe in the benefits of many herbs when it comes to health issues.  My cabinet is full of herbal teas to help solve just about every ailment you can think about.  I have detox teas, water flushing teas, and even an appetite suppressing tea.  Once a day I have a mug…usually with breakfast.  It’s a great way to increase fluid intake without extra calories and support your digestive system at the same time.

If you are not currently an herbal tea drinker, just an FYI for you:  They don’t all taste that great.  In fact, some of them taste like water that has been added to sticks and dirt.  Add a little Stevia and lemon juice if you have to for a no-calorie sweetness and flavor. Check out Amazon for a few herbal teas for weight loss if you want to try them.

Increase your fiber intake

This goes back to the whole concept of tricking your body into thinking it is full. Fiber takes up a lot of space and takes a while to digest. Getting in shape isn’t easy if you are constantly hungry!  Apples, nuts, seeds, beans, brown rice, fresh veggies, chia seeds….whatever has a decent amount of fiber in it works to help fill you up.  Eating an apple and drinking a glass of water 30 minutes before your meal will fill you up so you don’t eat too much at your meal.

Leave yourself notes

Okay, this might sound weird but I am all about lists and sticky notes.  Always head to the fridge at 3 PM for a snack?  Stick a post-it note on the fridge with a big NOOOOO written on it or leave yourself an inspirational message.  Whatever works to help you walk away from the fridge and stick to your diet plan.

Learn what a portion size really is

In addition to burning calories, you need to stop taking in as many calories as you currently do.  I do not count calories, weigh and measure, or in any way try to quantify the food I am eating.  I am far too lazy for that.  Learning how to get in shape for summer means that you have to reduce your calorie intake…there is no magic bullet when it comes to shedding pounds.  Eat less, exercise more.  But, if you think that a serving of potatoes is a heaping mound on your plate next to the 12-ounce steak you are sorely mistaken.  Check out some nutrition sites to learn what a serving size is for your age/weight/height/etc.  Eat more veggies and fruit, choose lean meat instead of processed meat food, skip the sauces and just try to make smarter food choices. They have portion control containers on Amazon that might help.

Snack Healthier

I am a snacker and that is not going to change just because I have to lose a few pounds.  I get cranky when I am hungry!  Making smarter snacking choices is high on my list of things to change this month. Healthy snacks still satisfy my need to munch but also provide some sort of nutrition and health benefits at the same time.  As much as I love Cheetos, they really are not a healthy snack choice so I have been trying to limit those to special occasions. Everyday snacking has become things like apples with almond butter, cheese sticks, veggies with low-fat dip, or snack chips made from whole grains.

If you are wondering how to get in shape for summer, the key is to start NOW so you don’t expect miracles once May gets here.  While running marathons and lifting weights may get you buff, there is no reason you can’t start making a few simple changes in your ever day life to slim down and tone up!

Have any other tips for getting in shape for summer?

  Like this post?  Learn more about healthy weight loss here:

5 Things I Learned About Healthy Weight Loss and Dieting

and a Weight Loss Motivation Board!

  The post A Lazy Mom’s Guide: How to Get in Shape for Summer appeared first on Turning the Clock Back.