#and YES it is FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT from automating other jobs

[askshivanulegacy]

OP is very much barking up the wrong tree, clutching pearls at "how dare you call AI images not art!"

Well, AI images are NOT art. The person who inputs the prompt for them is very much a lazy button-pusher and NOT an artist. If the prompter is akin to anything in the art world, it would be an art commissioner, because that's exactly what they do. And yet, the AI tool is just a tool. There's no artist involved.

A "broke, disabled hobbyist" using the AI tool is still a lazy button-pusher no matter how you want to look at it. Doesn't matter how broke or disabled they are. None of that will magically transform them from a button-pusher to an artist via AI. None of that will make their AI output into real art. Full stop. You can't wishful think that reality away just because you want the title of "artist." Is that unfair? Well, do you think typing prompts into a machine actually qualifies you to be an artist? Ever? No. You will need to find some other method of creation that doesn't outsource the process to a machine, if you want to be called an artist. The quality of being "unfair" doesn't make reality change.

Does it matter to anyone at all if that "broke, disabled hobbyist" wants to generate pretty images for their home? NO. Nobody cares! It will impact no one. Personal use is fine.

But you can't turn around and sell those images. You can't turn around and suddenly market yourself as an artist. You can't go to corporations and demand to be paid as a button-pusher to sideline real artists who devote time, effort, and skill to create real work. You can't tell an artist that you didn't want to pay them so you used the AI to mimick their work and get your art for free.

I mean. You COULD but that would make you a selfish, entitled ass.

I've seen other comments on this post talk about "fair use" and "collages" and "data collection."

When you collect data from people to use for published purposes, those people have to give permission. No permission was given; AI is theft.

When you make a collage, you don't sell it. If you want to sell it, you must legally source and seek permission from all your sources for their original work to be used in your derivative thing and sold by you. AI is theft.

When you make fanart under fair use you are also legally not allowed to sell it! All the fanart and fanfiction operate in a very gray zone. Fanartists assume that they're chump change and no one will go after them, and that they provide free promotion. It's a fair assumption! Legally, the real creators are allowed to take issue with it, if they want.

AI is theft. At the very minimum, it is theft of the data, because there is no legal basis for these giant corporations to make use of personal art and writing for the purposes of training an AI which they turn around and profit from.

AI is theft, AI is NOT art, and those lazy-ass button-pushers are NOT artists.

Economic anxiety has a way of bringing out reactionary sentiment in anyone if they're not careful.

It is deeply, deeply frustrating to watch it play out in front of me in leftist spaces such that self-proclaimed leftists are using actual, literal fascist arguments about Real Art vs. Fake Art and Real Labor vs. Lazy Button-Pushing.

These things don't become any less bad when you SAY your enemy is "some rich techbro" while calling broke disabled hobbyists "evil soulless automatons".

The central logic doesn't become true when you SAY you're targeting an inhuman machine while you screech obscenities about a great replacement at its operator.

When you say one minute "there is no unskilled labor, only undervalued skills", it doesn't magically absolve you of saying "nooo, you were supposed to automate away the BAD and DEMEANING jobs with no financial safety net for the workers, not THIS one I consider RESPECTABLE" in the next breath; it only makes you a fucking hypocrite.

"Fair use for me but not for thee" is not a rational position to prevent plagiarism and forgery; it's just a means to codify an ingroup and an outgroup.

"Degenerate art" is always, ALWAYS reactionary and proto-fascist thing to believe in, even if you wrap it up in other fancy words because you know "degenerate" is a Bad Word. "There is Good Art that makes society better and Bad Art, if you can even CALL it Art at all, that will rot our brains and turn us all into mindless drones if it's allowed to survive" cannot be made into anything but a reactionary position! Period! End of!

"Lazy button-pushers" are EXACTLY what corporations want you to think ANY automation operator is, so they can take credit away from those employees and criminally underpay them. They said the same damned thing about digital artists back in the early days of Photoshop. They say the same thing about overworked VFX artists today. You are DIRECTLY helping them make it worse with this argument.

The same old fucking trick of making you uncertain of your financial future so you lash out at other victims of the system because you "can't take the risk" of coming together to fight the actual enemy? Is working a FUCKING treat on way too many people who pride themselves on Not Being Like That - and it's even worse because a lot of the time pointing this out will get nothing but denial because maintaining pride in a leftist, progressive, pro-labor, pro-human Identity is more important to way too many people than ACTUALLY identifying the root of reactionary sentiment and the strategies used to spread it.

It makes me genuinely feel like I've fallen into a Fox News convention, hearing all these blatantly reactionary arguments and actively self-defeating strategies to Protect Labor.

[jcmarchi]

Brain Drain: A.I. And Indies

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/brain-drain-a-i-and-indies/

Brain Drain: A.I. And Indies

Introduction

I woke up this morning and put on a white Hanes t-shirt mass-produced by a machine able to produce clothing at a rate no human ever could. But shirts like this used to be made by humans. While making coffee, I ask Siri on my iPhone what the weather will be like today and what my day’s schedule looks like, and a few seconds later, an artificial intelligence-powered voice gives me the answers I’m looking for. After sitting down at my work computer to write this, I opened Spotify and checked out my Discover Weekly playlist, hyper-curated to my tastes based on the other music I’ve listened to over the past week.

On Instagram, my ads feel uncannily targeted to me, and on X (formerly Twitter), I see a new batch of posters for Amazon’s upcoming Fallout streaming series called out for using A.I. None of this is possible without machine learning, which is what powers A.I. in other, more automated interactions some people use in their life and work, be it the chatbot ChatGPT, image creator Midjourney, or something else. But, as things like Siri, targeted ads, and curated playlists on Spotify settle A.I. into our lives in such a way we might not realize, there’s a war brewing between humans and A.I. (and the people developing it and advocating for it) in the games industry.

Caves of Qud uses Markov chains, a type of generative A.I., as a tool for statistical prediction

“We’ve elevated as a species – we have the idea of creative art as personal expression,” Brian Bucklew, co-creator of the popular sci-fi roguelike Caves of Qud, tells me. “Generative A.I. is extremely transgressive because it’s not only displacing jobs, it’s displacing humans from a space where we’ve decided, ‘This is about personal expression.’ We’re looking at it and saying, ‘Can [A.I.] be good art if there’s fundamentally no expression underlying it?’ Nobody has an answer to that. [A.I. in creative spaces like art] is totally new, and I don’t think we’ve reckoned with that at all.”

A.I. in Independent Spaces

A.I. in Independent Spaces

Bucklew is one of the many independent developers – solo and within studios outside the triple-A publishing machine – I spoke to about A.I. and its use and effect on game development. Bucklew’s Caves of Qud has been in development for more than 15 years. He says he’s watched functions and jobs previously held by humans get replaced by automation and A.I. throughout his career. Even things he used to code by hand are now automated in game development engines like Unreal. He also says Caves of Qud is in a sub-genre that explicitly uses generative systems.

“These aren’t [language learning models (LLMs)]; this is not Midjourney,” he says when I ask if he uses A.I. in the game’s development. “This is not some of the new attentional-based A.I. that is getting a lot of the press right now, but this is absolutely machine-based generative systems. So the answer is no if you’re asking if we use LLMs to generate code, but the answer is yes, we use, for example, Markov chains [generative A.I. that uses current events to analyze the predictability and production of subsequent events] to generate books. And these really aren’t that different except, again, in scope.”

He says LLMs and Markov Chains are different but that both are statistical predictors; the latter is more primitive than the former, however. In either use case, he says good results come from hand authoring on top of the generative use of A.I. Javi Giménez, the CEO of Moonlighter and Cataclismo developer Digital Sun, agrees, noting there is no top-down mandate at the studio to use A.I. but that various developers there use it as a tool alongside their creative output.

Cataclismo

“What has happened naturally is that some people at the studio – sometimes it’s artists, sometimes it’s programmers, sometimes it’s designers – use some of the tools for specific tasks,” Giménez tells me. “Some artists, for example, might be using it to create compositions based on images they already created to explore things fast. [What] I see is that professionals on the team are adopting A.I. as something that empowers them […] and that’s something happening naturally.”

Guillaume Mezino, founder and developer at Kipwak Studio, which is working on a 3D wizard school sim called Wizdom Academy, says he first made the use of generative A.I. programs like Midjourney mandatory. Instead of using Google Images to search for references to creatures for players to encounter, developers at Kipwak used Midjourney.

“I said to all my team members, ‘Try to use it as best you can in every way you can and let’s see where we can go from that,” he says. “After a few days, it was the best decision ever. The artists saw it as a good ally to help them make decisions and open their minds to new possibilities.”

Wizdom Academy

Of course, it’s important to note there’s an inherent relationship between Mezino, the studio’s founder, and the employees there that might prevent said employees from saying otherwise. After all, he mandated A.I. to begin with. Would these developers want to use A.I. of their own volition? Anecdotally, within the wider games industry, I’d say no.

When I ask Mezino about A.I. replacing jobs at the studio now or in the future, he says most of the work A.I. does for Kipwak is work that a human would never have done. For example, he says Wizdom Academy features a lot of artwork. “If I had to pay humans, if I had to pay people to do 150-plus artworks, we would have never been able to do it,” he says. Instead, someone at the studio used A.I. to create those artworks. I ask if Wizdom Academy would exist without A.I. He says it would – just not as fast or as good. There’d be less art, fewer conversations (also powered by A.I.) to have with teachers at the school, and overall, “We would have gone for something way simpler, so less appealing, and I don’t think anyone wants that.” But that begets another question: Do people want the version of this game that uses A.I.?

Wizdom Academy

Even though Giménez’s studio uses A.I. in its processes, he still feels there’s a legitimate concern about where A.I. gets its information from. He believes more substantial intellectual property and copyright legislation is necessary to protect human creatives. He doesn’t know the catch-all solution, though. Mezino says his team only gives A.I. work that people at the studio have created by hand.

“We are not comfortable with the idea of work being used to train A.I., work that was not paid for by companies,” Mezino says. “We do what we can and for us, it means we always have to give it what we do first – to give it our job, our work, and we ask it to do something with it, and we take it back and work on it again. That’s the best we can do.”

Mezino, like Giménez, wants to see stronger legislative protections placed on how A.I. is used to protect original artists.

Wizdom Academy

A.I. and Ethics

A.I. and Ethics

Hilary Mason, machine learning expert and CEO of A.I. entertainment start-up Hidden Door, agrees. She wrote a book, Data Driven, with the Obama administration’s chief data scientist, DJ Patil. It centers on this topic and the questions and methods those interested in using A.I. should adopt to do so ethically.

She’s not immediately concerned with A.I., adopting the mindset that humans are still in control. But 20 years from now, she understands why communities are worried. “It’s not unreasonable to imagine a future in which you can describe a movie you want […] and there wouldn’t be technical limitations in the way of it being created for you right there,” she says. “And it might actually be great. How do we, today, set up the foundation so that when we have that capability, we will value human energy and creativity?”

Hilary Mason, machine learning expert and CEO of Hidden Door, an A.I. entertainment startup, in a video for Wired

She says there are activists and communities big and small, loud and quiet, working to make this happen. But she also admits it’s impossible to know what A.I. and the surrounding conversation looks like 20 years from now. For her part, Hidden Door strictly licenses the properties and IPs it uses to bring A.I.-created D&D campaigns to users. Not ready to share specifics, Mason says Hidden Door is partnering with a number of fiction authors to make these campaigns happen. She envisions a world where someone could watch a new Star Wars movie and immediately go home and whip up a D&D campaign set within the movie’s world, laws, and physics using Hidden Door and its A.I. dungeon master. And it would do so ethically thanks to licensing agreements that ensure the right people get compensated and share Hidden Door’s revenue.

Of course, Star Wars might be a pie-in-the-sky property, but Mason is excited about some of the book authors already on board.

Bridging the Gap

Bridging the Gap

For someone like Cameron Keywood, founder, director, and solo developer at DragonCog Interactive, A.I. was the only way to turn his vision of a game into something people can play, he says. “I have used it in development, but that was from a budgetary point of view because I’m a start-up studio, and artists, while they do good quality work, are quite expensive for the work I am doing, which is a visual novel,” Keywood tells me of his upcoming sci-fi game, Baskerville, that reimagines 1902’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. “I needed 30 backgrounds and 18 characters, and that would have cost a lot. For projects like that, I think it’s okay.”

Keywood says he questions where A.I. gets its learnings from, and while he appreciates that A.I. has allowed him to create a game he can’t otherwise make, he’d prefer to hire an artist. But financially, it’s not possible for him. He ponders using A.I. to create something like Baskerville that could earn enough money for a future project where he hires artists to create the art. Ultimately, he hopes A.I. remains the assist tool he feels it is today, but he could see it going a more disruptive route that ends with humans losing jobs.

Matt Wyble, COO of Marvel Snap developer Second Dinner, positions A.I. in a similar vein. “[A.I.] is unlocking our ability to make experiences that we couldn’t have made before,” he tells me via email. “It’s not replacing team members but rather, empowering our small but mighty team to create like they never have before.” Wyble’s coworker and Second Dinner vice president of A.I., Data, and Security Xiaoyang Yang likens A.I. tools in the workplace to building a “mech suit” for developers.

Baskerville solo developer Cameron Keywood used A.I. as an assist tool for background art in the visual novel

“Imagine A.I. as this ally that can play Marvel Snap across countless scenarios, mimicking players of varying skill levels using decks of different archetypes,” Yang writes to me via email. “Overnight, the A.I. tool analyzes all the games played and generates insights on game balance, spotlighting overpowered elements or underutilized strategies, which is invaluable for designers. With this new ‘Mech Suit,’ designers no longer had to release a game, knowing it might have balance issues, relying on player data post-launch to make adjustments, which often led to suboptimal player experiences. Now, designers in this mech suit can significantly reduce these instances by identifying and addressing balance issues even before the game hits the market.

“It’s a protective, rather than reactive, approach to game balance, ensuring players get a more polished experience from day one.”

Baskerville solo developer Cameron Keywood used A.I. as an assist tool for background art in the visual novel

When asked how A.I. could disrupt creativity within game development, Yang says it’s crucial to remember that the human element is at the heart of every game. He posits that games without a human’s touch don’t have fantasy, achievement, emotion, storytelling, and connection.

“It’s like what [Apple co-founder Steve Jobs] said about computers being the bicycle of the human mind,” Yang says. “In today’s context, A.I. is the e-bike of human creativity in game development. It empowers designers to explore wild new ideas, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in game design.”

Ultimately, he sees a future where progress in A.I. is not merely about leveraging technology for efficiency tasks like coding but also about embracing it as a tool and partner in the creative process. Of course, that line, the separation between a tool or partner and the loss of a job, grows thinner by the day. And in a world where executives continue to squeeze pennies on the dollar out of everything in game development, it’s not hard to see the day when leaders cross that line in the name of cost-cutting.

Kohlrabi Starship solo developer Katja Wolff opted not to use A.I. art or audio

Solo developer Katja Wolff of WolKa Studio, which is developing sci-fi farming sim Kohlrabi Starship, has primarily opted not to use A.I., even if she understands why someone in a position similar to hers might.

“I tried a lot of A.I. tools, but in the end, I decided not to use it beyond sometimes brainstorming,” Wolff tells me. “So basically, it’s zero A.I. art, zero A.I. audio, but sometimes I use ChatGPT for brainstorming in the English language because it’s not my mother tongue.”

As for why ChatGPT is as far as she’s gone with using A.I., she simply wasn’t impressed with the options for A.I. art and audio development, noting that programs like Midjourney can’t create the homogenized visual style one might want in their game. She thinks it’s a matter of time before these programs catch up, though. And as A.I.-powered technology grows more competent, she hopes legislators will work harder to protect creatives. She likes Steam’s approach: requiring developers to indicate A.I. usage on the game’s page but only after the developer proves the game doesn’t use copyright-protected data.

Kohlrabi Starship

Like Wolff’s use of ChatGPT, RoboSquad Revolution developer Zollpa utilizes the program to streamline the studio’s organization. CEO Aaron Jacobson says Zollpa uses ChatGPT to organize notes after meetings, something that might take hours to do by hand but is done in minutes by A.I. “It’s something that we probably would pay a secretary a full salary to do for us and [ChatGPT] is just able to do that, and in a very short period of time with just a few clicks of a button.”

That’s one secretary job lost to A.I. at Zollpa.

Kohlrabi Starship

He says it uses ChatGPT to brainstorm new character classes, weapons, and names for the robotic characters in RoboSquad Revolution, which began as a blockchain idea that uses NFTs before sentiment around that technology soured (and funding money largely disappeared in that sector) and the team scrapped the idea. Jacobson says that technology might be integrated into the game one day.

Jacobson says Zollpa built RoboSquad Revolution narratively on the premise of A.I. Twenty years from now, A.I. robots have taken over and are “walking versions of Siri or something like that,” that you control with third-person shooter gameplay. Jacobson says that despite using ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas that make their way into the game, “the development of the characters in the game is absolutely 100 percent created by humans,” except for the voices; those are created by A.I., which Jacobson justifies narratively by explaining the robots in-game are powered by A.I.

Looking 20 years into the future of our real world, Zollpa marketing and brand specialist Richard Henne thinks the game development landscape will be a lot more competitive because of A.I.

Robosquad Revolution’s robot characters are voiced by A.I.

“I imagine that bigger companies who are squeezing for over-the-top profits are going to try to use this for everything from character models to generative levels, which again is already happening, to voice – all that stuff, I’m sure is going to be attempted to be fully replaced,” Henne tells me during the same conversation he and Jacobson explain the robots in their game are voiced by A.I. “My hope is that companies do not fall for that. But if we’re actually talking 20 years from now, I do think it’s probably going to be a lot more of a competitive landscape, there will likely be layoffs, there will likely be protests and social movements, and I would be very surprised if this doesn’t happen.”

But like Mason, Giménez, and everyone else I speak to, Jacobson and Henne want to see stronger legislation created to help regulate A.I., a technology that, by all accounts of those I talk to, is one where Pandora’s Box has been opened. Unfortunately or fortunately, it’s here to stay, depending on where you fall in this conversation.

The Problem on the Horizon

The Problem on the Horizon

Bucklew feels the issue at the heart of the A.I. discourse, the rightful concern that people will lose jobs to the technology, strikes at a problem with society itself: We do not protect those affected. He says using copyrighted content to train A.I. models is unethical and should not be allowed – you should have to compensate users. “The other side of it, which is just using automated systems to replace human labor, that to me – whether or not that’s ethical – we’ve decided as a society that’s what we do, right?”

The shirt I put on this morning was once a product created by human hands until the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century turned it into a more automated process. People lost their jobs. But time advanced, and jobs were created around the new emerging markets, jobs that hopefully the jobless picked up. Bucklew says the same happened with car manufacturing, construction, and many other workforce sectors. With proper transition management, he thinks these massive changes in how society works can be smoother.

Cataclismo developer Digital Sun does not mandate use of A.I., but various individual developers use it as a tool to bolster their output

“I think we’re in the middle of a [transition] now, and so it’s extremely painful for a particular alignment of laborers who are visual artists, musicians, or voice actors,” he adds. “And they don’t have a job to go to, and we don’t have any kind of safety net in society to say, ‘Well, you’re going to be fine. We’re going to allow you to move to this new constellation of labor,’ but nothing’s going to stop this constellation of labor. [The] cynical business lines of force are going to force that new constellation of labor because everyone else will simply not be able to do business on a competitive level without it.”

Cynically, Bucklew is not confident the cat can be put back into the bag, though. And he’s not confident we’re adequately prepared for the A.I. transition we’re barreling toward. He ponders whether we should focus more on what happens afterward when people lose their jobs rather than what’s happening today.

Caves of Qud

“To the extent that we allow capital to drive these systems, I don’t think there’s any route where all the labor that can be replaced by automated systems isn’t replaced by automated systems, and the questions we’re going to have to be asking in 5 or 10 years are ones that just seem bizarre to us,” he says. “[That’s] obviously disastrous for the way society’s stood up right now, where you should have a job and pay your bills with the money you earn.

“I think that alignment is failing quickly and will fail more quickly than we can figure out how to get people into new jobs. And so, we have a real problem over the next 50 years as these systems continue to take off.

This article originally appeared in Issue 365 of Game Informer.

[besttraining]

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SAP (Systems Applications and Products) is an enterprise resource planning software package developed by German company SAP SE. This highly advanced system enables organizations to manage their core business processes, customer relationships, and supply chain operations. As such, it requires trained personnel who can handle it proficiently. Therefore, getting certified in this domain can open up great opportunities for individuals seeking jobs or career advancement within this industry.

The city offers several specialized institutes that offer comprehensive hands-on experience with all aspects of ERP technology along with classroom instruction from expert trainers and consultants. These institutes help students acquire theoretical knowledge as well as practical skills related to implementing projects involving sophisticated systems like SAP R/3 Enterprise Core Components (ECC), Business Objects Solutions (BOS), Business Warehouse (BW), CRM Suite etc., thereby enabling them to use these tools more effectively on their job roles later on. Some popular institutions offering high quality SAP training courses in Kolkata include Brainware Group of Institutions, Prasad Institute Of Advanced Studies’ Computer Sciences Division, Tevatron Technologies Pvt Ltd., Etech Global Services etc.          

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Apart from technical proficiency acquired through these courses, learners can also benefit from other important soft skills such as communication capabilities, problem solving abilities, organization techniques etc. All these will not only give them an edge over others.

[arevadigitaltvmkl]

How Long Does it Take to Learn Python?

Depending on your objectives, learning Python will take a certain amount of time. For advice on maximizing your learning, continue reading.

Python basics normally require two to six months to learn. You can, however, quickly learn enough information to create your first brief programme. It can take months or years to learn how to use all of Python's many libraries.

Your learning curve for Python will be influenced by a number of variables, including how much Python you need to know to complete your task. For instance, if your goal is to learn enough Python to automate a particular task at work, you will probably be able to do so faster than if your goal is to learn enough Python to become a data analyst. 

The following are other factors that could influence how quickly you pick up Python:

1.Prior programming experience: If you've written code before, you could find that Python comes more easily to you.

2.Learning strategy: Depending on your learning goals, well structured courses could accelerate your learning.

3.Learning time: How much time can you commit to studying and practising Python? In general, it's a good idea to set aside a little time every day.

How long does it take to learn the fundamentals of Python?

Python can be learned from the beginning in two to six months, but depending on how much time you invest in studying, this might be considerably more or much less. IPCS GLOBAL's Python course in Trivandrum, for example, typically takes about four months to complete if you spend six hours per week studying.In two months, you could complete the course if you can devote two hours a day to it.

The following fundamental Python syntax and components will be covered in this course and many others:

Variables and types

Object and data structures

Indexing and slicing

Comparison operators

For and while loops

Functions

Lists, dictionaries, and tuples

Reading and writing files

Classes and objects

Web scraping

Application programming interfaces

Is Learning Python Worth It in 2023?

Yes. Learning Python is undoubtedly worthwhile in terms of variety, job prospects, and financial gain.

High Demand

There is a high demand for Python programmers in numerous sectors.

Python is, however, especially popular in the data science sector, where it is used for anything from simple data processing and visualization to the development of sophisticated machine learning algorithms.

Good Salary Package

In the US, earnings for jobs requiring Python expertise can reach well over $100,000 annually.

Incredible Versatility

In the Python community, there is an internal joke that Python is the second-best language for everything. Of course, the best is a matter of opinion, but Python is remarkably adaptable. It is used extensively in many different industries and is the most popular language for data science (R is a close second).

Its enormous acceptance can be attributed, in part, to the fact that it is one of the simpler data-related languages to learn and use. It also doesn't take years of study to master, which is advantageous for both companies and data scientists.

Is It Hard to Learn Python?

No, most people don't find learning Python difficult. One of the easiest programming languages to learn is thought to be Python. Even if you've never written a line of Python code before, you can learn to program in Python, but it will take time, and there will probably be frustrating times along the way.

Python Learning Speed Influencing Factors:

Your Programming Knowledge and Experience

The first element that can actually influence outcomes is the degree of coding expertise and experience. The length of time it takes to learn Python will depend on this factor. Your progress will also be influenced by your command of the English language, whether you have experience with programming, and how quickly you can understand mathematical reasoning and foreign languages.

Your Method of Learning Python

A programming language like Python or any other takes more commitment than a side project. To swiftly grasp this new language, it's crucial to decide what proficiency level you want to acquire and to establish a learning schedule.

The Time Devoted to Learning Python

It takes effort to learn Python, both physically and financially. It's critical to think about whether you can manage another obligation on top of your current job or hectic family schedule. Perhaps your schedule won't permit it. Being sincere with oneself before committing is a good idea.

Your Motivation and Engagement

Not the least important aspect for success is motivation. It's crucial to address the challenging questions head-on. Your level of motivation, your sense of urgency, and your true motive for learning can all make a huge difference.

Become an expert in Python and other Software Development Training courses in Trivandrum with IPCS GLOBAL’s Certificate

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[tedlyanderson]

Additional thoughts after considering further:

My good pal @inverts and I talked about the distinction between creation and curation, and the use of generative AI absolutely fits more into the second category. Generating a set of images, then refining prompts and so forth is an act of curation, in that it's about selecting particular works that fit within a set of parameters. It's a creative human act, but it still doesn't qualify as art, by my definition, in that it's not about making choices at every step of a creative process. (And yes of course the boundaries are soft—could you consider an entire collection of images a single "work"? How much choice do you have to exercise during the creation of a work? And so forth. But to my mind, generative AI fits better under the lexical category of "curation," and that's a distinctive thing from "creation.") This also provides a model towards the definition of editing as a creative act, though not art in and of itself. I briefly mentioned The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed, a collection of poetry generated by an early text-generating program called Racter. All the poems in that book had to be selected and edited by the team who worked with Racter, from a mountain of text.

Now that I've started vaguely engaging with this material, I'm getting more posts recommended by the tumblr algorithm (is that a generative AI act? oh, let's not even get into it), and several of them make the disingenuous comparison of "denouncing AI image generators as not-art is like denouncing photography in its early days." One poster who described themselves as a photographer even said that their job boiled down to pressing a button after setting a few dials, which is not fundamentally different from generating an image. My response to this is that photography is an art (again, according to my description of what is necessary but not sufficient for art/not-art) in that the photographer must make numerous non-trivial decisions about the composition of a photograph. These go beyond the technical (is it in focus, is there sufficient light, etc.) into the artistic: how the picture composed? where is the focal point of the image? is it arranged according to the rule of thirds, or is it centered, or is it using a different form of composition? Pictures can be taken for, let's call them purely pragmatic reasons—satellite pictures, traffic cameras, the pictures I had to take of my crumpled headlight after that Jeep ran into me last year—which is why they can be automated. If you're taking pictures for Google Street View, you don't care about the rule of thirds, you're trying to build a collection of every possible angle of a specific geographic area. Photography is a tool, a technology just like generative AI, to be sure. The difference is the degree to which the user is actually in control of the final product. The photographer who wants to adjust the angle at which the tree is photographed moves a few feet to the left. The generative AI user who wants to create a more balanced composition has no idea how to coerce the Chinese room of the generator into doing what they want, and has to resort to brute-forcing a thousand possible prompts until they get something vaguely close to what looks correct.

The generative AI user does make choices to generate their art, to be sure: they choose the words to prompt, and then the tiny imp at the heart of the electric box sends them through a dizzying mathematical spiral until you get a fetish anime babe at the other end. At what point does the user make enough choices that their work could be considered "art" under my definition? I dunno, go solve the paradox of the heap and get back to me. At the moment, if you can't tell me why this character's ribbon curls the direction it does, nor control that specific factor, I would say that you're still not an artist, just a generator of things that look vaguely like art if you squint. You're not cooking, you're ordering off the menu.

Reading posts from someone I follow on why image generators are a legitimate form of art and their use should be normalized, and it's refreshing to encounter some pro-generative-AI arguments more nuanced than "I don't want to pay artists." I still think they're fundamentally wrong, but it's been extremely helpful, because it's forced me to examine my own thoughts on the matter and determine why, exactly, I believe what I do. Something something mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone, idk, I didn't watch Thame of Groans.

(Of course I'm not going to mention the person by name or tag them or anything, and for that matter I'd appreciate it if people didn't reblog this. I'm not writing this to get into an argument; I'm mostly just consolidating my own thoughts into a semi-coherent form.)

There are a number of arguments that have been leveled against generative AI, some of which I find more persuasive than others. The energy usage and financial waste, for instance, are significant, but not relevant in the case of one person using a locally hosted image generator and not selling the results. The question of the quality of the work is similarly unimportant to the bigger question; AI-generated images are going to continue to get better-looking as the technology improves, and "good" versus "bad" art is impossible to define in a meaningful way for the purposes of this argument.

The copyright argument is much more important, particularly to me as a creator. Another user pointed out that copyright cases against LLMs (on behalf of creators whose works were included in the learning sets) could have a potentially deleterious effect on fair use and transformative artworks. I'm not hooked into the legal scholarship on this, so I can't respond to that point. I do think it's somewhat short-sighted of that user to say "AI is a tool like any other, its use can be good or evil, our true enemy is capitalism," and then turn around and attack copyright as some kind of uniquely evil legal technology, rather than a technology that can also be used for good (making sure artists are recognized and paid for their work) or evil (large corporations shutting down parodies). And yeah, the revolution would fix all this, but how long do we have to wait for that? And what can we do in the meantime?

Anyway, the one argument that made me genuinely examine my own beliefs was "what is art anyway, and can you define it in a way that does not disqualify large swaths of what is widely recognized as human creative work and also excludes generative AI?" Because that's the meat of all this—not whether image generators suck up too much energy (because it's not about the specifics of the technology, which will change and improve over time, just as new types of paint do not fundamentally alter the nature of painting) nor copyright (which is a whole other legal mess), but whether we can call this "art" at all. For that, you need a definition, and that's the sticking point.

The original poster named a couple common ways of defining art/not-art (the "smell test," i.e. I Know It When I See It, and the "quality test," i.e. Can You Hang It In A Museum, which are largely the same but from different perspectives), and points out that they and other definitions would exclude quite a lot of human endeavors that most people would describe as art (graffiti, calligraphy) as well as fields that are more difficult to define but could constitute art (mathematics, programming).

(They also ascribed to anyone who attempted to make such a definition the motivation of not just gatekeeping but unadulterated fascism, which is an argument I think holds no water and wins them no friends, but. Let's just leave the paranoia aside and concentrate on the argument itself.)

So what is art? How do we define it, and why do I fundamentally disagree that anything that comes out of an image generator can be considered "art"?

I don't think this is sufficient for a full definition, but after talking it over with friends, I think, in part, art requires a perspective, which is to say that it must be the result of individual human decisions about non-trivial components. Another way to state this would be that the artist (if indeed they are an artist) must be able to make conscious choices about the work that are beyond what is strictly necessary for its completion.

Should the background be blue or green? Would this sentence be improved by an adjective? How large of a flourish should this letter have? What if I carve the gargoyle's snarl more deeply? What color should the hair of my halfling rogue be? These choices are indicative of a product that would be widely recognized as belonging to the category of "art."

Obviously, there are still gray areas. Certain fields have both a creator and a performer; can we say that one is "more of" an artist than the other? What about commissioned works? What if the artist is creating something within a strict limit or form—for instance, the 14-line sonnet, or a novel without the letter 'e'? What about Duchamp's Fountain, or John Cage's "4'33""? What about works with a large number of creators, such as films or collaborative writings? What about works where there is a level of interactivity with the audience, such as video games or certain theater pieces? Those and other questions are certainly open to debate, and should be debated! But to my mind, they do not challenge the fundamental principle, which is that the artist is an artist because they exercise choice in the process of creation.

Thus, by my (admittedly partial and underdeveloped) definition, I don't regard AI-generated images as art. The algorithm does not choose in a meaningful way; it merely calculates the most statistically likely next word/pixel/frame/etc. based on the database and the prompt with which is has been provided. (If you want to claim that this constitutes a choice, please submit a 5,000-word essay on whether free will exists and how we could possibly know if it does.) The remixer samples a specific beat; the collage artist cuts a particular image out of a magazine; the parodist deliberately draws in a specific way. The computer computes. It uses a mathematical operation—which, by definition, is repeatable and will produce the exact same outputs, given the same inputs. (Yes, the results have elements of randomization. We all know that true randomness is impossible for a computer, so they produce quasi-random numbers using things like the system time and so forth. I don't want to split hairs on this specific point. You get what I'm gesturing to. Don't look at the finger, look at the moon.) A prompt limits the database to certain specific sets, which the algorithm assembles according to its internal logic. The input is disconnected from the outputs; anyone could input the same prompt and receive the same art. (Even The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed required an editor.) Generative AI is no more "creating" a piece of visual art than turning a radio dial to a specific station is "composing" the music that plays. The purely mathematical nature of its generative process makes it no qualitatively different from assembling a Lego set according to the directions.

The first obvious challenge to my partial definition is to say that it just restates the premise and shifts the goalposts: art is something that must be made by a person, and thus cannot be made by a computer. Which is fair! This is a verbalization of a belief I've always held about art, and which caused me to immediately (instinctively, unthinkingly) reject the idea that an AI-generated image could be "art." That's how I got into this discursive mess! It's why my brain recoiled when I heard someone call these images "art"!

But it also helps me understand why I instinctively categorize other acts and works as either "art" or "not art." A photograph was taken by a person at a specific time and a specific place, its elements arranged and its moment chosen according to the photographer's visual logic; it is therefore art. A hamburger put together by an underpaid worker at McDonald's is not art; a recipe by a chef that combines existing ingredients in a new way or using a new method is; a meal created by a person who tweaked a recipe might be. (That one might actually run counter to current copyright law, I'm not sure.) A mechanism assembled by a worker on an assembly line, identical in every way to another mechanism made by a different worker, is not art, because there was no choice on the part of the worker. (Could it be art because the designer of the mechanism exercised choice? Depends on the nature of the mechanism and the industry! Venmo me $20 for a debate.) A dance choreographed to produce a specific visual effect is art; an exercise designed to stretch certain muscles in the most efficient and painless way is not art. And so forth.

AI-generated images are not art. (They are also not a medium, which I saw several other commentators claim; an image is an image, regardless of where it comes from. I'm already knee-deep in linguistic debate, let's not cloud the matter any further.) Generative AI is a tool, and there are and can be creative and ethical uses for it! But to claim that it is capable of making art is giving agency to a thing that cannot have it, and claiming that someone who writes "sexy anime girl" in a prompt field is an artist is to expand the meaning of that word to the point of nonsense.

More than one person has brought up Jorge Luis Borges' "The Library of Babel" when talking about the potential of AI-generated works. It's got some bearing on the question, sure, but I feel like the more apropos point of comparison is his story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote." In that work, Pierre Menard is a friend of the author's who is attempting to become the author of Don Quixote—not in the sense that he is trying to plagiarize the work, or time-travel and replace Cervantes in history, but that he is trying to make himself into a version of himself that could have independently written Don Quixote. It's partly a critique of elements of literary criticism, in that Quixote would become a far more interesting book (according to the narrator) if it had been written by a 20th-century Frenchman rather than a 17th-century Spaniard (it was written some 28 years before Barthes' "The Death of the Author," for context). But in the context of the current argument of generative AI, and specifically to my fumbling attempts to defining what is and is not art, it's an illustrative example of what I think it all boils down to: any work of art is the work of an artist, who inevitably brings to the work perspective/knowledge/experience/an individual understanding of the world. Ascribing any such perspective to an algorithm is just fetishism. (And not the kind that generative AI is most often used for.)

Or, to put this way more succinctly and directly:

[senadimell]

AI art thoughts

Thinking about the AI artist thing (that’s apparently been going on on Twitter?) because it popped up in a discord server.

People seem to be asking the wrong questions. “Is this art?” is a fundamentally unenlightening question because some people use ‘art’ to mean “creative work that evokes good emotions/thoughts; an aspirational goal” and some people use art to mean “work that challenges perceptions; a neutral description.” People can talk in circles around each other all day and never get further when art means “good” for one party and “a thing that exists” for the other party.

Human component, creativity, beauty, etc...these are things that can’t easily be quantified and there’s at least a good century’s worth of people labeling infamous artworks as “not art,” so if you want to wade into that discussion, I’ll point people to Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades and maybe throw in a dash of Worhol and the Pop Art movement, and while we’re at it, let’s add debates about photography’s status as art/an artistic medium and why not add the camera obscura in as well.

Long story short, art is not fundamentally different from technology at a splitting-hairs level. Selecting pigments requires technical knowledge. Representing one thing in a symbolic way is a kind of invention (and I’m talking even at the basic level of ochre paints in caves or the invention of speech. Not that those things are basic, but that “technology” feels like a complicated thing but everything was new once). I can make music on a piano and maybe that stirs the soul but at the end of the day I’m also pushing buttons to move levers and strike strings. Any kind of music that’s not singing wordlessly involves a technology. Any art that’s not prop-less, shoeless dance requires manipulation of the physical world and requires some kind of technical knowledge. You’re not going to answer any AI debate by an appeal to “machines invalidate art!” because a paintbrush is also a technology and there’s no commonly accepted metric for the existence of souls.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t meaningful questions or statements to be made about AI-generated images if we lay aside the “is this art?” statement. I think we should also stop pretending that Art is/should be above the influence of Soulless things like Money and Politics because I’m pretty sure money and compensation has been part of the debate for longer than the English language has existed. Instead, I propose questions such as:

Who is the artist? (Who do I consider to be the artist, who does my society consider to be the artist, and who does that definition include or exclude? Why? Who thinks one thing vs. another/what are the competing interpretations? What are the societal implications of that judgement?)

Is this exploitive? (yes, next question)

Under what conditions? (complicated answer involving consent and unintended consequences)

Who should be compensated? How?

Will this restructure professional creative industries? (yes)

How? (similar ways that it has in other industries; cutting out a swathe of workers by automating their jobs, reducing ‘grunt work’ like generating tens or hundreds of images for a customer who will only pick 1 or 4 of them and shifting the focus of the profession to other avenues, much like the advent of computer calculation and computerized databases has drastically reduced the time it takes to run statistical analyses and has shifted the focus of research to generating better datasets and freed resources to other avenues while also (probably) reducing overall opportunities in the field; probably a bunch of other foreseen and more than a few unforeseen consequences as well)

Who benefits and who suffers from the increasing use, commercialization, &/or legitimization of AI-generated images? Who is considered expendable and who is considered worth protecting? Who may be targeted by it? By whom?

Which subjects will likely be promoted by this technology? Which subjects will be restricted? How? Why? By whom? What response is needed?

What is required for this technology to function? Where are the people involved? What ecological and economic resources? What response is needed?

What are the legal ramifications of this technology? Who will have access to codified state protection in theory? In practice? What about access to community protection? Professional protection? What response is needed?

What movements or technology is this similar to in the past, and how have people responded to it? How is it different? How are contemporary responses similar &/or different to historical responses? What effects did past technology/art have on society, and what can we learn from that impact?

Is it moral to continue refining/developing/selling AI tech to generate words/images?

Is it moral to use AI to generate images etc., and under what conditions?

Is it moral to purchase AI-generated images etc., and under what conditions?

Do the socioeconomic implications of AI work change my/our reaction to it? What does that mean to me/us? What conclusions is my community sharing with me, and how can I learn from it? What conclusion do I wish to share with my community, and what do I hope they will learn? How do these exchanges of experiences change our preconceptions?

Knowing the above questions, how should we/I approach AI-generated images? Who disagrees? Why? How should we engage with them?

Should we/I continue to support it or should we limit it? In what forums? in what forms? How should we support it or limit it? Individually? Socially? Professionally? Legally and if so, at what level and by which branch of government?

In other words, “is this ‘art’ or not?” is honestly a dead end and that shows in the discussion by the evidences people bring up to support their point (the “it’s art” people bring up how it’s similar to things commonly considered art, and “it’s not art” usually bring up things like Soul or Human Expression but also a lot of human socioeconomic concerns for Actual Artists and how we value them).

A lot of people saying “AI-generated images are not art” mean “AI-generated images are not good (for us)” and I think that the above questions offer more specific ways to ask and answer that question.

[sunsuenm]

Get Paid To Take Pictures With Your Phone – 20 Ways That Work（Next）

This is an article citing a high-quality blog. For more high-quality content, please go to the blog：https://italiangoat.com/

Other Ways To Earn With Photos

You don’t have to be a seasoned photographer — or even artistic — to make money with your photos. Cell phone images of more mundane things can still earn you extra cash. Here are some more options to make money from photos for the more practical types.

#18. Take Pictures Of Receipts

You can get paid for taking pictures of things as ordinary as grocery receipts.

With apps like Fetch and Ibotta, you can get rebates from your grocery purchases. They offer rebates on things you likely buy at the grocery store every week.

Simply download the app, and buy one of the items or brands that offers a rebate (no coupon required). Snap a photo of your receipt, upload it, and get paid via PayPal.

You won’t make a mint on apps like these, but they’re a great way to put extra cash back in your pocket for grocery shopping — something you have to do anyway.

#19. Take Pictures Inside Stores

Dozens of companies want eyes on the ground to assess how their employees treat their customers, how products are displayed, and how clean their stores are. That’s where you (and your trusty cell phone camera) come in.

As a mystery shopper, you pose as a normal customer. But you’re on a mission to covertly take photos of specific things in a store’s interior to give the company valuable information.

Mystery shopping has been around a while, but apps like Mobee, Shopkick, and Field Agent have automated the process. Get notifications of new assignments near you. Sign up for a shop, complete the requirements, and upload your photo inside the app.

Mobee and Shopkick apps pay in gift cards to common stores (Amazon, Best Buy, Sephora, etc.), but Field Agent pays cash via PayPal or Dwolla.

#20. Take Pictures Of Help Wanted Signs

Editor’s Note: In April 2020, Indeed announced that JobSpotter (discussed below) was indefinitely ceasing operations as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll update this page if the app is brought back online.

By submitting photos of help wanted signs in your neighborhood, you can earn points through the JobSpotter app. JobSpotter posts these jobs to Indeed.com, one of the largest job search engines on the web.

To ensure accurate data about the location that’s hiring, photos must be of signs hung in the window of the establishment. JobSpotter has specific standards for images (not blurry, not taken from a car, contains no people), so be sure to read the requirements before starting this side hustle.

You can redeem JobSpotter points for Amazon gift cards.

#21. Take Pictures Of Yourself Looking Great

Authenticity and real people (not airbrushed models) are all the rage in photography and advertising right now. One of the most unique subjects that you have constant access to is you! Telling your story, showcasing your look, and being yourself can gain you a loyal following as an online influencer.

Influencers have almost boundless income potential as the influencer market is slated to grow to $8 billion in 2020.

If you have a sizable following, brands will pay for individual posts. But if you’re not a big fish yet, companies like Stylinity will pay you a commission for shoppable items in your selfies that feature the brands they work with.

And this isn’t just for the fashionistas. Stylinity works with travel, automotive, home decor, books and electronic brands as well.

#22. Work As A Freelance Photographer

To build up your photography business, try advertising your services on Fiverr and other freelance websites. They broadcast your photography to a worldwide customer base, which is great whether you’ve been doing photography for years or are just breaking into the space.

There’s healthy demand for food images for cooking blogs, product photos for e-commerce stores, and lifestyle stock photos. Rather than taking images and hoping they sell, contracting with a client via Fiverr ensures that you’re producing photos that someone will pay for.

Unlike other photo websites, as a freelancer you work with your clients directly and you can set your deadlines and rates for your services.

Common Questions Can I sell photos that contain people or private property?

You may or may not need permission to sell photos that contain people or property. Copyright law is complicated, so make sure you review the requirements of your chosen platform before uploading your pictures. You can also refer to this FAQ from the American Society of Media Photographers for more info about when you need a model release and/or a property release.

What kinds of pictures sell the best on stock photo sites?

The most in-demand stock photos are those that have a candid, authentic look — things like kids playing, coworkers at a meeting and friends chatting. Also, photos that include people of diverse backgrounds and less-represented demographics are increasingly popular.

Can I sell photos on more than one app or site?

Generally, yes. In fact, it’s a good idea to upload to many sites to increase your exposure as a photographer and up your chances of getting accepted. Each site and app may have different requirements on exclusivity, and some may pay you a larger royalty for exclusive rights to a photo. So do your homework before you upload.

Can I sell pictures of myself?

Yes! You don’t need to be a model, either. In the post-airbrush world, people crave authentic pictures of real people. Most cell phone cameras have a time delay function, so spend some time on the other end of your camera. There’s no reason you can’t be the star of your stock photos.

Where can I learn how to take great pictures?

Photography is a learned art, and as any photographer will tell you, it’s a lot more complicated than just snapping a pretty picture. There are numerous online courses (through websites like Skillshare and Udemy, as well as through colleges) and books on photography. Several blogs also offer great tips and information on how to get started. Get to know the basic functions of your smartphone camera, and when to use them. Pay particular attention to the fundamentals of photography (e.g., the rule of thirds, fill the frame, etc.), since no camera, lens or filter will make up for errors like bad composition. If you’re new to photography, pick up a book on the subject and practice the principles before monetizing your hobby.

Summary One great thing about photography that is unlike many other business ideas and side hustles is its potential as passive income. You only have to shoot, edit, and upload each photo once. After that, you can sell the photo again and again.

None of these photography businesses are get-rich-quick schemes. Each of these apps and websites requires time, effort and a bit of practice on your part to see what works. That’s true in any business.

With the ceaseless hunger of social media users, companies and websites for fresh new content, the need for creative images is greater now that ever before.

And with the near-universal availability of cell phones, you can certainly make money with the camera you carry in your back pocket every day.

I will regularly share the high-quality content of the blog and let it spread out to help more people.

[robert-c]

Who Is To Blame for the Loss of US Manufacturing Jobs?

The current administration would like us to believe it is China, because that seems “right” to a base that doesn’t get all the facts and blindly believes whatever it tells them. The harsh truth is most of us, including the people who worked in those US manufacturing jobs, are the reason they are in China, and other places around the world.

In the spirit of “free enterprise” all of us customers seek out the best (as in lowest) price for goods. True a great many Americans are working in jobs that leave their budgets pretty tight (even before the pandemic) and have no real option but to buy the cheapest goods they can. At the same time there are the rest of us who could afford to pay more, but don’t see it as a priority. Of course corporations and business owners looking for larger profit margins share some of the blame, but like their customers they are also looking for the “best deal”.

Some will spin the story that wages for manufacturing jobs in the US were too high. They will blame unions, the minimum wage, and government regulations on businesses. Yes, those “awful” regulations that protect workers from unsafe conditions, and require businesses to be responsible for the harm they do.

Despite tariffs and other punitive actions most of these jobs cannot and will not be brought back to the US, and if somehow they were, the goods they produce would be too expensive for most of the customers to afford. There are niche manufacturing areas that will likely stay here for a longer period, and ultimately the cheap labor in foreign countries will demand higher wages. But the real end of all of this will be the automation of virtually all manufacturing positions, and perhaps quite a few of the office jobs as well. Smarter and smarter machines, robots if you wish, will be doing more and more of those kinds of jobs.

It might seem like a good idea to follow someone who claims he can bring back the past and solve your current problems, but defensive and retaliatory methods won’t change the trends of history. We need new thinking, we need to figure out what sort of jobs, training, industries and organizations will make the most of the labor force we have. Fundamentally this may not be that different from times in the past when whole new industries rendered entire classes of previous jobs obsolete. Buggy whips, candles and lanterns were once big businesses. Now, only a relative few specialty makers exist.

This isn’t about specific policies of any present or future administration as much as it is an appeal to look at the big picture and realize that there is no holding back the future. Finding someone to blame for problems that are more or less inevitable appeals to a certain emotional element, but it has never been a solution to the changes that are the natural consequences of development. Put in those terms, attempts to hold off these changes are like trying to stay stuck in the past. Memories may have romanticized those periods, but if we are honest, they were far from perfect and that’s part of why they changed.

[atmperson61]

Api Testing As Well As How To Do It

Java Online Examination

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Content

Qualified Software Application Test Automation Engineer.

Automation Testing Resources.

Test Automation With Selenium Webdriver.

Leading Tips For Knowing Java Programming.

Create A Junit Test Course

Is Java a dying language?

Python is recognized as an official language at Google, it is one of the key languages at Google today, alongside with C++ and Java. Some of the key Python contributors are Googlers and they continue to use, promote, and support the language actively.

Usage different sorts of Varieties, Course String, and also normal expression. Know how to utilize various modules to solve various obstacles. Register currently to obtain once a week automation, efficiency, and protection testing from a few of the leading professionals in the industry. Kuldeep is the founder as well as lead author of ArtOfTesting.

After that this training can assist, if you don't believe of them as collections. Do you mix Cucumber with JUnit, or are all your tests composed utilizing Cucumber?

Licensed Software Program Examination Automation Architect.

Yes, it works on a several systems such as UNIX, Windows, Mac OS. The Java language's shows is based on the idea of OOP. We will see this thoroughly in later part of this Java Tutorial. Do you think of Selenium WebDriver, RestAssured as well as Cucumber as tools or as libraries that you make use of to support your automating?

Automation Testing Resources.

What happens if you only learn to code with libraries, instead of finding out exactly how to code the fundamentals well. Demos of real-time coding and completing a few of the exercises to demonstrate how to make use of the IDE and follow a TDD coding design from the beginning. For unskilled attendees this is useful since it shows what is feasible and also provides a begin on the answers.

Computer is a course which has 2 qualities particularly Version and Cost. Apple as well as Lenovo are the objects of the class Computer. To comprehend what is a class and also object carefully, allow me offer you a fundamental example related to a computer system. Java is a high-level programs language originally established by Sun Microsystems in 1995.

Lees verder With Selenium Webdriver.

Is Java in high demand?

9, found that Java lost popularity in September, with an estimated 17.9 percent of developers using it as opposed to 18.8 percent in the previous month's index. Java still finished as the top language, but if the downward trend continues, the C language, ranked second with 17.7 percent of users, will be No.

For more skilled attendees they can see the distinction in coding strategy from other languages as well as will find coding nuances that much less experience attendees are not quite prepared to take on yet. Employing good testers who can code, is difficult - it might be far better to 'expand' them, in which case they require excellent training.

Glassdoor will not function effectively unless web browser cookie assistance is enabled.Learn how to allow cookies.

For instance, the character 'w' on its own will be interpreted as 'match the personality w', but utilizing '\ w' signifies 'match an alpha-numeric character consisting of highlight'.

\ Utilized to show that the following personality should NOT be analyzed essentially.

For example, the '.' metacharacter implies 'match any kind of single personality however a new line', yet if we prefer to match a dot personality rather, we would certainly utilize '\.'.

Leading Tips For Knowing Java Programs.

Declaring an approach in youngster course which is already present in the parent class is called Approach Overriding. At bezoek deze pagina , Java knows which technique to conjure up by examining the technique signatures. So this is called assemble time polymorphism or fixed binding.

Can I learn Java in 6 months?

You can learn the basic in two months if you put the time into doing so. However, learning how to design and implement a real world Java application correctly based on a detailed design doc will take more experience.

Should I learn Java or JavaScript?

Even with competition from new languages, the demand for Java developers remains strong. In fact, Java is among the most in-demand programming languages on the job market, depending on whose numbers you look at. Today, Java is the most popular choice for writing Android apps.

We produce an Item by invoking the producer of a course with the brand-new key phrase. Computer is a class name followed by the name of the recommendation laptop. After that there is a "new" key phrase which is used to allocate memory. Finally, there is a contact us to constructor "Computer()". This phone call initializes the brand-new object "brand-new Computer()".

This allows the handling of various runtime exceptions using shot, catch, finally key words. OOPS ideas-- In this tutorial, we will find out about the OOPS or the Object-Oriented Programming idea in Java. After that, we will research the 4 columns of OOPS-- Inheritance, Encapsulation, Polymorphism, and also Abstraction carefully with the help of instances and also code snippets. The Java programs language utilizes exemptions to deal with mistakes and various other extraordinary occasions. In order to use an abstract method, you need to bypass that technique in below class.

He is competent in examination automation, performance testing, large data, as well as CI-CD. He brings his years of experience to his existing function where he is committed to informing the QA professionals. Exception Handling in Java-- In this tutorial, we will discover Exception handling which is one of the most essential functions of Java programs.

Hands-on-- Operators, Conditionals, Loops to fix difficulties. Practical usage of Techniques, Class, as well as Things for solutions. Read and also compose data from the Console, Text data, Excel, and also Database.

Hope you have actually heard a phrase "Instantiating a class". The expression "Instantiating a course" suggests the exact same point as "Producing an Object" which we carried out in the above program. Whenever you develop an Item, it implies you are producing a circumstances of a course, consequently "instantiating a course". Customer defined approaches accept any kind of names which a programmer assigns.

[glensmith088]

9-step success formula for small QA teams to switch from manual to automated testing in 2020

Do you or your team currently test manually and trying to break into test automation? In this article, we outline how can small QA teams make the transition from manual to codeless testing to full-fledged automated testing. The transition will not happen overnight but can be successfully achieved much easier than anticipated.

1 – Say no to mundane repetitive manual testing

Your willingness to say no to mundane and boring repetitive manual testing is the first real step towards automated testing! As a team, you need to acknowledge that manual testing is haunted by repetitiveness and is error-prone. Any team will eventually get bogged down by doing the same thing over and over again impacting team motivation. Some teams will overcome this challenge by automating small bits and pieces of repetitive work. For example, a script to import test data into a database, a utility to generate random test data, etc.

2 – Know impediments to switching to automated testing

Once you acknowledge as a team that you need to move to automated testing, the next step is to know what is stopping your team from making this move. In most cases, it is the fear of complexities involved in automation ie., learning programming. “Can we learn a new programming language and implement a successful test automation project?” are the kind of questions that come to mind. To allay such fears, teams should start small and pick the right tools that suit their testing needs. For example, think before picking a tool that does not work well with iFrames if your application is using iFrames heavily, or start to build out a test automation framework if your team doesn’t have any automation experience, etc.

3 – Start simple and small but make it successful

A good beginning is half the job done. It is very important to pick simple and small test cases when your team is new to automated testing. Pick the test cases that you manually test very often but are easy to test. Simple and small test cases are easy to automate, debug, maintain, and reuse. Don’t go crazy with automation and start with most time taking or complex ones first or you will make your beginning harder and reduce your chances of success. For example, start with a simple login test case, creating a user, etc.

4 – Pick the right tools and frameworks

Making the process easier for your team to adopt is the key to success. It will be easier when you choose a combination of tools and frameworks. Yes, you heard it right! It has to be a combination of tools. You can no longer rely on one single tool to get success on your test automation. Selenium execution will probably be the foundation as it is the most popular and convenient tool to use with different programming languages. Start with codeless testing tools built on top of Selenium. Codeless testing tools could cover most of your simple to medium complex manual tests.

Get ahead with instant test automation

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5 – Learn and practice programming

Pick up the programming language that your team is most comfortable with. Codeless testing might be able to cover most of your manual testing but for complex steps or tests, you would need to write scripts. Learning is not enough, you should put your learning to practice to understand and write good code. But do not go deep where you cannot stand. Remember as a team, your goal is to ensure the quality of the software by automating repetitive manual tests.

6 – Be very clear on what to automate

Your team has to prioritize which tests to automate. Just because you have this new-found knowledge of automated testing, does not mean it should be applied to everything — in fact, it is impossible to automate all tests, and many things are better off being done manually. Trying to automate complex and less often used tests is a formula for failure and is not worth your team’s effort. Here is where your manual and exploratory testing skills should be put to use whenever a new feature is released.  Run risk analysis to determine parts of your application that should be automated. In addition, you will have to pay attention to details like if your application is web-based, you will want to create a list of the browsers and devices that are going to be essential to your particular test suite.

7 – Zero tolerance to unreliable automated tests

Just like, as manual testers, you refuse to be content with failing tests, you should not tolerate automated tests that pass at times and fail at other times. Unreliable tests will lose your team’s confidence and is a stepping stone for failure. As an example, if there is a failure in the initial steps of a lengthy test case, you can not be sure if there’s no bug beyond that step. Such uncertainties will be bad for team morale and make the whole automation effortless fruitful.

8 – Do not neglect team collaboration

Successful outcomes for any project are guaranteed by a collaborative team. It is no different for test automation. All your team’s automated tests have to be in a single repository accessible anytime & anywhere. A changelog indicating who made the change to which test case for traceability and accountability should always exist. The tool you pick should allow for collaboration and also make it easier to categorize, tag, sort, and filter the 100’s of tests that you would have created over time.

9 – Get the fundamentals right

Do not forget the testing fundamentals. Whether it is manual or automated testing, testing concepts and fundamentals always apply. Refer these articles to understand the fundamentals of test automation

Secrets of     test automation

Test     Automation 101

Best practices for continuous agile testing

Automated testing might seem daunting when you start, but all it really takes is a consistent effort to make it a success. Continuous learning and practice using your resources will help. Take comfort in knowing that even the experts don’t know it all. No matter how good an automation engineer you become, there’s always more to learn.

Get ahead with instant test automation! To know more about automated testing, visit https://cloudqa.io/

[sowjanyauniverse-blog]

TOP 10 IT COURSES IN 2020

The relationship between businesses and technologies are emerging day by day. New technologies have been launching in the market, and companies are looking for those candidates who are certified in those technologies, and who are skilled enough in their platform IT Courses. Even if you are a fresher and looking to work on new technology, you can get certified and get a good job in top companies. Here are the top 10 technologies which are currently ruling the IT market. They are:

1.   Cloud Computing Technology:-

 One of the most trending technologies in the IT Courses industry is Cloud Computing Technology. We’re now utilizing many cloud-based administrations, for example, from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, HP, and others. Cloud computing is around the “On-demand service” design which enables clients to acquire, design, and deploy cloud administrations themselves utilizing cloud administration inventories, without requiring its help.

Generally, individuals and Corporates would purchase programming and introduce them to their PCs for use. With the coming of the Internet, a wide range of projects got accessible on a ‘Cloud’. Cloud computing clients don’t claim the servers and other physical foundation that stores these projects. Rather, they lease the projects — or the utilization of the projects — from a specialist co-op/provider. This helps spare assets since the client pays just for the assets that the individual uses. Huge advancements in virtualization and dispersed figuring, just as improved access to the rapid Internet and a frail economy, have quickened corporate enthusiasm for Cloud registering IT Courses. 

Some popular and important subject in cloud computing is

·         Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

·         Platform as a service (PaaS)

·         Software as a service (SaaS)

·         Network as a service (NaaS)

·         Database as a service (DBaaS) and few more services.

  The fast improvement of information being produced progress in virtualization, and cloud computing, and the combination of server centers frameworks are making popularity for talented IT Courses experts. Qualification: Anyone with fundamental information on PCs and the Internet can begin with the underlying modules of cloud-based courses. Individuals with programming aptitudes in.NET or J2EE may straightforwardly choose the further developed modules in cloud processing. Microsoft’s cloud computing service, Windows Azure is one of the reliable course alternatives.

2.   Database Administrators (DBA):-

 Some popular DBA is (Oracle, DB2, MySQL, SQL Server).

In an extremely unique and dynamic Software/IT industry, the one course which you can depend on for a steady profession is Database Administration (DBA). DBA is all about creating, managing and keeping up large information records; and from the few database flavors accessible in the market, Oracle can be your most solid option. Others are famous, however, once you are through with Oracle, the ones like MySQL and DB2 can be effectively adapted later on in a lot shorter period.

To move to further develop levels, courses like Data Warehousing can be sought after further. Again likewise with numerous Software/IT courses, there is no least eligibility to learn DBA, yet a customary recognition/graduation in PCs keeps on being favored from an occupation point of view.

To improve your profile, you should search for certifications (after fulfillment of course or self-learning) like from Oracle or IBM. Interest in DBA will stay positive as there’s no task in Software/IT Courses that doesn’t utilize a database, regardless of the size of the undertaking. So in case, you’re vigilant for a stable employment choice and information support (automatically) charms you, at that point a DBA course is the best approach!

3.   JAVA – J2EE and it’s Frameworks:-

 The most generally utilized innovation by practically all the regarded organizations crosswise over a domain around the globe is only Java. What’s more, with regard to what precisely you should realize, Java keeps on being an unending sea where you should concentrate on boosting your core portion of it, however, much as could reasonably be expected. Hopefuls regularly lose control with the appeal of JSP and Servlets, yet that murders you like sweet toxic substance over the long haul. There are a few things you should focus on when you are learning JAVA. They are

·         J2SE — Core or primary Portion.

·         J2EE — Java server pages (JSP) and Servlets along with Enterprise JAVA Beans (EJB).

·         Struts — Framework for Java.

·         SPRING or potentially HIBERNATE (For increasingly complex and propelled applications).

 There are numerous frameworks and supporting advancements for Java hopefuls Yet, the over ones are an absolute necessity and most on-demand ones in the Software/IT Courses showcase.

To learn Java, there is no qualification all things considered, yet on the off chance that you’re focusing on a tolerable activity, at that point you will require a Bachelor/Master’s certificate in computer field alongside it. So if a vocation in any of the above significant areas premiums you and the enthusiasm for relentless coding satisfy your spirit, at that point look no more remote than learning Java.

4.   Software Testing:-

 A profession choice regularly involved (or for the most part disagreeable/disregarded) to an industry fresher is Software Testing. While the reality of any medium or huge scale venture is that it’s inadequate without the Testing groups. An untested application is consistently the most unsafe one and suspected to worsen in the longer run. Testing is a procedure used to help specify the accuracy, fulfillment, and nature of the developed programs. Because of that, testing can never totally set up the accuracy of the programs.

Testing helps in checking and approving if the product or software is working as it is proposed to work. This includes utilizing static and dynamic viewpoints to test the application. Testing should regularly open different classes of errors in the least amount of time and with the smallest amount of effort. An extra advantage of testing is that it shows that the product or software seems, by all reports to be functioning as expressed in the specifications.

Any Testing course should cover these minimum topics as mentioned below Static Testing, Dynamic Testing, Load Testing, Black box Testing, White Box Testing, Unit Testing, Regression Testing (Software), Web Regression Testing, Automated Regression Testing, etc.

A software tester appreciates a similarly quicker and simpler arch to the development in IT Courses companies.

5.   Data Analysis:-

 The market wildly needs a master’s or expert’s in the data Analysis. Because of an exceptional increment in the measure of data, the ability to prepare and understanding it has gotten vital. Specifically, everyone has attracted up for estimating and following everything, and the understanding of how to manage the hard outcomes accomplished will be the most likely requested.

For this situation, the procedure to depend on computer’s isn’t compelling, since the best business results can be accomplished by planning an intelligent way to deal with data information and analysis.

There are Kinds of Data Analysis available in the market.  They are

·         Data Mining

·         Statistical Analysis

·         Business Intelligence

·         Content Analytics

·         Predictive Analytics

Therefore, a position to make spot designs, uncover the patterns and estimate probabilities is definitely the expertise of things to come in the IT circle.

6.   System Administration:-

 For the ones who are attached to installation and computer organization exercises like User Management, framework security, chance administration, bundle establishments – System administration can be a captivating decision.

Likewise, with CISCO innovations, framework organization is additionally widespread as a course among non-IT applicants. You have to have done 10+2 or legitimate recognition/graduation (IT or non-IT) to begin with this course and afterward show up for the confirmation tests or certification exams.

Except if you hold an ordinary IT graduation, the certifications are practically necessary for you if picking this organization course. There are different choices in certifications from Red Hat, VMware, and Solaris.

system administration is all around considered a normal pay getting profile, however, yes there are lots of special cases to it and the individuals who hold 4-year graduation in software engineering are at a preferred position to draw greater pay scales. Similarly, non-IT competitors should be somewhat patient and spotlight on picking up the underlying 4-5 years of experience.

7.   Statistical Analysis System (SAS):-

 Data Analytics is presently a quickly developing field thus this Business Intelligence area has risen as the most worthwhile choice among its present type graduates.

SAS means statistical analysis system is a coordinated arrangement of programming items gave by SAS Institute, to perform information passage, recovery, the executives, mining, report composing, and illustrations.

Some unequivocal advantages are as under:

·         Generally used for business arranging, gauging, and choice help for its exact outcomes.

·         Widely used for activities research and task the board.

·         The best device for quality improvement and applications advancement.

·         Gives Data warehousing (separate, change, and burden)

·         Extra advantages of platform license, and remote computing capacity.

·         SAS business arrangements aid regions, for example, human asset the executives, money related administration, business knowledge, client relationship the board and the sky is the limit from there.

·         Used in the examination of results and report generation in clinical paths in the pharmaceutical business SAS contains multi-motor engineering for a better data management and publishing.

  SAS preparing gets ready students for fulfilling, and very well paying professions as SAS examiner, software engineer, designer or consultant. Anybody can get familiar with this course and show up for the confirmation tests, yet for the most part, the ones who hold substantial graduation in Computers/IT Courses, are liked. The SAS Certified Professional Program was propelled by SAS Institute, Inc. in 1999 to observe clients who can exhibit an inside and out comprehension of SAS programming. The program consists of five confirmations crosswise over various areas. A few SAS courses get ready clients for the certification exams.

To date numerous developers have taken these courses, some accomplished clients simply take the tests, and numerous SAS experts are experienced however not SAS certified. According to some ongoing reviews, around 60,000 SAS Analysts and developers will be required in the following couple of years. Also, SAS consultants are paid with a good package when differentiated with other software engineers.

8.   Blockchain Technology:-

 Many people consider Blockchain innovation in connection to digital forms of money, for example, Bitcoin, Blockchain offers security that is helpful from numerous points of view. In the least difficult of terms, Blockchain can be represented as data you can just add to, not divert from or change. Consequently, the expression, “chain” since you’re making a chain of data. Not having the option to change the past intersections is the thing that makes it so secure.

Moreover, Blockchain is agreement driven, so nobody substance can assume responsibility for the data. With Blockchain, you needn’t bother with a trusted in an outsider to control or approve exchanges. A few enterprises are including and actualizing Blockchain, and as the utilization of Blockchain innovation gains, so too does the interest in gifted experts. In such a manner, we are as of now behind.

As per the survey, Blockchain-related jobs are the second-quickest developing classification of employments, with 12 employment opportunities for each one Blockchain designer. A Blockchain designer spends significant time in creating and executing engineering and designs using Blockchain innovation. The normal yearly compensation of a Blockchain engineer is $145,000.

In the event that you are captivated by Blockchain and its applications, and need to make your career in this quickly developed industry, at that point this is the perfect time to learn Blockchain and apparatus up for an energizing future.

Just go for Blockchain demo you can know more:  https://itcources.com/blockchain-training/

9.   Artificial Intelligence (AI):-

 Artificial intelligence or AI, has just gotten a great deal of buzz as of late, yet, it keeps on being a pattern to watch since its impacts on how do we live, work and play are just in the beginning periods. Moreover, different parts of AI has created, including Machine Learning, which we will go into beneath.

AI relates to computer systems worked to copy human insight, and perform undertakings, for example, acknowledgment of pictures, discourse or example, and basic leadership. AI can carry out these responsibilities quicker and more precisely than people. Five out of six Americans use AI benefits in some structures each day, including navigation applications, streaming services, cell phone individual assistance, ride-sharing applications, home individual assistance, etc.

Notwithstanding customer use, AI is used to plan trains, survey business hazards, divine maintenance, and improve vitality productivity, among numerous other cash saving undertakings. Artificial intelligence is one part of what we allude to comprehensively as automation, and automation is an interesting issue due to potential work loss.

Specialists state that automation will wipe out 73 million additional employments by 2030. In any case, automation is making occupations just as disposing of them, particularly in the field of AI. Employments will be made being developed, programming, testing, backing, and support, to give some examples. AI architect is one such work. Some say it will quickly challenge data scientists in demand of experienced specialists.

Just go for AI demo you know more: https://itcources.com/artificial-intelligence-training/

 10. Internet of Things (IoT):-

Many “things” are presently being worked with Wi-Fi availability, which means they can be associated with the Internet and to one another. Henceforth, the Internet of Things, or IoT.

The Internet of Things is the future and has just empowered gadgets, home devices, vehicles and substantially more to be associated with and trade information over the Internet. What’s more, we’re just in the first place phases of IoT: the quantity of IoT gadgets arrived at 7.4 billion in 2017 is relied upon to arrive at 33 billion gadgets by 2020. As purchasers, we’re now using and profiting by IoT. We can bolt our doors remotely on the off chance that we neglect to when we leave for work and preheat our stoves on our route home from work, all while following our wellness on our Fit bits, and hailing a ride with Lyft. In any case, organizations additionally have a lot to pick up now, and sooner rather than later.

The IoT can empower better security, effectiveness and basic leadership for organizations as information is gathered and investigated. It can empower cautious support, accelerate healthful consideration, improve client assistance, and offer advantages we haven’t thought at this point. Be that as it may, in spite of this shelter in the advancement and selection of IoT, specialists state insufficient IT experts are landing prepared for IoT positions.

For somebody keens on a profession in IoT, that implies simple passage into the field in case you’re encouraged, with a scope of choices for the beginning. Abilities required to include IoT security, cloud computing information, data analytics, automation, knowledge of embedded systems, device information to give some examples. All things considered, it’s the Internet of Things, and those things are numerous and differed, which means the abilities required are too.

Just go for IOT Demo you can know more: https://itcources.com/iot-training/

DevOps:

DevOps certification online training provided by ITcources.com will aid you to become a master in DevOps and its latest methodologies. In this training class, you’ll be able to implement DevOps software development lifecycle. The training is being provided by Industry professionals to make you understand the real-time IT scenarios and problems.

Just go for DevOps Demo you can know more: https://itcources.com/devops-training/

Data Science:

A Data Analyst, as a rule, clarifies what is happening by preparing a history of the information. Then again, Data Scientist not exclusively does the exploratory examination to find experiences from it, yet in addition, utilizes different propelled AI calculations to recognize the event of a specific occasion later on. A Data Scientist will take a gander at the information from numerous edges, once in a while edges not known before. Information Science is a mixture of various devices, calculations, and AI standards with the objective to find concealed examples from the crude data. How is this not the same as what analysts have been getting along for a particular amount of time? The appropriate response lies in the contrast among clarifying and anticipating. ITcources.com provides you the best Data Science online training or online classes in the Bangalore for the certification.

Just go for Data Science Demo you can know more: https://itcources.com/data-science-training/

Final Conclusion:-

The interest for IT Courses expert’s methods higher remunerations and wages expanded speculations by corporations to pay more for qualified and certified IT Courses experts, and more motivations to enlist contract or temporary experts to fill those IT jobs.

Note:-

Adding to your abilities, having a training certification from one of the main innovation training platforms like “ITcources” is an additional preferred advantage. Don’t hesitate to view leading technology courses and get certified to promote your profession or career in your attracted and on-demand IT field at our website “www.itcources.com”

[poipoipoi-2016]

Since Google Plus is going away,  I’m going to back up Steve Yegge’s platform rant.  And confirm the opening paragraph.  

One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right.  Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one.  It's pretty crazy.  There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies, and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly.

Looooooong text below the cut

Stevey's Google Platforms Rant I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long.  One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right.  Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one.  It's pretty crazy.  There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies, and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly.  I actually did a spreadsheet at one point but Legal wouldn't let me show it to anyone, even though recruiting loved it. I mean, just to give you a very brief taste:  Amazon's recruiting process is fundamentally flawed by having teams hire for themselves, so their hiring bar is incredibly inconsistent across teams, despite various efforts they've made to level it out.  And their operations are a mess; they don't really have SREs and they make engineers pretty much do everything, which leaves almost no time for coding - though again this varies by group, so it's luck of the draw.  They don't give a single shit about charity or helping the needy or community contributions or anything like that.  Never comes up there, except maybe to laugh about it.  Their facilities are dirt-smeared cube farms without a dime spent on decor or common meeting areas.  Their pay and benefits suck, although much less so lately due to local competition from Google and Facebook.  But they don't have any of our perks or extras -- they just try to match the offer-letter numbers, and that's the end of it.  Their code base is a disaster, with no engineering standards whatsoever except what individual teams choose to put in place. To be fair, they do have a nice versioned-library system that we really ought to emulate, and a nice publish-subscribe system that we also have no equivalent for.  But for the most part they just have a bunch of crappy tools that read and write state machine information into relational databases.  We wouldn't take most of it even if it were free. I think the pubsub system and their library-shelf system were two out of the grand total of three things Amazon does better than google. I guess you could make an argument that their bias for launching early and iterating like mad is also something they do well, but you can argue it either way.  They prioritize launching early over everything else, including retention and engineering discipline and a bunch of other stuff that turns out to matter in the long run.  So even though it's given them some competitive advantages in the marketplace, it's created enough other problems to make it something less than a slam-dunk. But there's one thing they do really really well that pretty much makes up for ALL of their political, philosophical and technical screw-ups. Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager.  He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site.  He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- left the company.  Larry would do these big usability studies and demonstrate beyond any shred of doubt that nobody can understand that frigging website, but Bezos just couldn't let go of those pixels, all those millions of semantics-packed pixels on the landing page.  They were like millions of his own precious children.  So they're all still there, and Larry is not. Micro-managing isn't that third thing that Amazon does better than us, by the way.  I mean, yeah, they micro-manage really well, but I wouldn't list it as a strength or anything.  I'm just trying to set the context here, to help you understand what happened.  We're talking about a guy who in all seriousness has said on many public occasions that people should be paying him to work at Amazon.  He hands out little yellow stickies with his name on them, reminding people "who runs the company" when they disagree with him.  The guy is a regular... well, Steve Jobs, I guess.  Except without the fashion or design sense.  Bezos is super smart; don't get me wrong.  He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies. So one day Jeff Bezos issued a mandate.  He's doing that all the time, of course, and people scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet whenever it happens. But on one occasion -- back around 2002 I think, plus or minus a year -- he issued a mandate that was so out there, so huge and eye-bulgingly ponderous, that it made all of his other mandates look like unsolicited peer bonuses. His Big Mandate went something along these lines:  1) All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.  2) Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.  3) There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed:  no direct linking, no direct reads of another team's data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever.  The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network.  4) It doesn't matter what technology they use.  HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols -- doesn't matter.  Bezos doesn't care.  5) All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable.  That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world.  No exceptions.  6) Anyone who doesn't do this will be fired.  7) Thank you; have a nice day! Ha, ha!  You 150-odd ex-Amazon folks here will of course realize immediately that #7 was a little joke I threw in, because Bezos most definitely does not give a shit about your day. #6, however, was quite real, so people went to work.  Bezos assigned a couple of Chief Bulldogs to oversee the effort and ensure forward progress, headed up by Uber-Chief Bear Bulldog Rick Dalzell.  Rick is an ex-Armgy Ranger, West Point Academy graduate, ex-boxer, ex-Chief Torturer slash CIO at Wal*Mart, and is a big genial scary man who used the word "hardened interface" a lot.  Rick was a walking, talking hardened interface himself, so needless to say, everyone made LOTS of forward progress and made sure Rick knew about it. Over the next couple of years, Amazon transformed internally into a service-oriented architecture.  They learned a tremendous amount while effecting this transformation.  There was lots of existing documentation and lore about SOAs, but at Amazon's vast scale it was about as useful as telling Indiana Jones to look both ways before crossing the street.  Amazon's dev staff made a lot of discoveries along the way.  A teeny tiny sampling of these discoveries included:  - pager escalation gets way harder, because a ticket might bounce through 20 service calls before the real owner is identified.  If each bounce goes through a team with a 15-minute response time, it can be hours before the right team finally finds out, unless you build a lot of scaffolding and metrics and reporting.  - every single one of your peer teams suddenly becomes a potential DOS attacker.  Nobody can make any real forward progress until very serious quotas and throttling are put in place in every single service.  - monitoring and QA are the same thing.  You'd never think so until you try doing a big SOA.  But when your service says "oh yes, I'm fine", it may well be the case that the only thing still functioning in the server is the little component that knows how to say "I'm fine, roger roger, over and out" in a cheery droid voice.  In order to tell whether the service is actually responding, you have to make individual calls.  The problem continues recursively until your monitoring is doing comprehensive semantics checking of your entire range of services and data, at which point it's indistinguishable from automated QA.  So they're a continuum.  - if you have hundreds of services, and your code MUST communicate with other groups' code via these services, then you won't be able to find any of them without a service-discovery mechanism.  And you can't have that without a service registration mechanism, which itself is another service.  So Amazon has a universal service registry where you can find out reflectively (programmatically) about every service, what its APIs are, and also whether it is currently up, and where.  - debugging problems with someone else's code gets a LOT harder, and is basically impossible unless there is a universal standard way to run every service in a debuggable sandbox. That's just a very small sample.  There are dozens, maybe hundreds of individual learnings like these that Amazon had to discover organically.  There were a lot of wacky ones around externalizing services, but not as many as you might think.  Organizing into services taught teams not to trust each other in most of the same ways they're not supposed to trust external developers. This effort was still underway when I left to join Google in mid-2005, but it was pretty far advanced.  From the time Bezos issued his edict through the time I left, Amazon had transformed culturally into a company that thinks about everything in a services-first fashion.  It is now fundamental to how they approach all designs, including internal designs for stuff that might never see the light of day externally. At this point they don't even do it out of fear of being fired.  I mean, they're still afraid of that; it's pretty much part of daily life there, working for the Dread Pirate Bezos and all.  But they do services because they've come to understand that it's the Right Thing.  There are without question pros and cons to the SOA approach, and some of the cons are pretty long.  But overall it's the right thing because SOA-driven design enables Platforms. That's what Bezos was up to with his edict, of course.  He didn't (and doesn't) care even a tiny bit about the well-being of the teams, nor about what technologies they use, nor in fact any detail whatsoever about how they go about their business unless they happen to be screwing up.  But Bezos realized long before the vast majority of Amazonians that Amazon needs to be a platform. You wouldn't really think that an online bookstore needs to be an extensible, programmable platform.  Would you? Well, the first big thing Bezos realized is that the infrastructure they'd built for selling and shipping books and sundry could be transformed an excellent repurposable computing platform.  So now they have the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, and the Amazon Elastic MapReduce, and the Amazon Relational Database Service, and a whole passel' o' other services browsable at aws.amazon.com.  These services host the backends for some pretty successful companies, reddit being my personal favorite of the bunch. The other big realization he had was that he can't always build the right thing.  I think Larry Tesler might have struck some kind of chord in Bezos when he said his mom couldn't use the goddamn website.  It's not even super clear whose mom he was talking about, and doesn't really matter, because nobody's mom can use the goddamn website.  In fact I myself find the website disturbingly daunting, and I worked there for over half a decade.  I've just learned to kinda defocus my eyes and concentrate on the million or so pixels near the center of the page above the fold. I'm not really sure how Bezos came to this realization -- the insight that he can't build one product and have it be right for everyone.  But it doesn't matter, because he gets it.  There's actually a formal name for this phenomenon.  It's called Accessibility, and it's the most important thing in the computing world. The. Most. Important. Thing. If you're sorta thinking, "huh?  You mean like, blind and deaf people Accessibility?" then you're not alone, because I've come to understand that there are lots and LOTS of people just like you:  people for whom this idea does not have the right Accessibility, so it hasn't been able to get through to you yet.  It's not your fault for not understanding, any more than it would be your fault for being blind or deaf or motion-restricted or living with any other disability.  When software -- or idea-ware for that matter -- fails to be accessible to anyone for any reason, it is the fault of the software or of the messaging of the idea.  It is an Accessibility failure. Like anything else big and important in life, Accessibility has an evil twin who, jilted by the unbalanced affection displayed by their parents in their youth, has grown into an equally powerful Arch-Nemesis (yes, there's more than one nemesis to accessibility) named Security.  And boy howdy are the two ever at odds. But I'll argue that Accessibility is actually more important than Security because dialing Accessibility to zero means you have no product at all, whereas dialing Security to zero can still get you a reasonably successful product such as the Playstation Network. So yeah.  In case you hadn't noticed, I could actually write a book on this topic.  A fat one, filled with amusing anecdotes about ants and rubber mallets at companies I've worked at.  But I will never get this little rant published, and you'll never get it read, unless I start to wrap up. That one last thing that Google doesn't do well is Platforms.  We don't understand platforms.  We don't "get" platforms.  Some of you do, but you are the minority.  This has become painfully clear to me over the past six years.  I was kind of hoping that competitive pressure from Microsoft and Amazon and more recently Facebook would make us wake up collectively and start doing universal services.  Not in some sort of ad-hoc, half-assed way, but in more or less the same way Amazon did it:  all at once, for real, no cheating, and treating it as our top priority from now on. But no.  No, it's like our tenth or eleventh priority.  Or fifteenth, I don't know.  It's pretty low.  There are a few teams who treat the idea very seriously, but most teams either don't think about it all, ever, or only a small percentage of them think about it in a very small way. It's a big stretch even to get most teams to offer a stubby service to get programmatic access to their data and computations.  Most of them think they're building products.  And a stubby service is a pretty pathetic service.  Go back and look at that partial list of learnings from Amazon, and tell me which ones Stubby gives you out of the box.  As far as I'm concerned, it's none of them.  Stubby's great, but it's like parts when you need a car. A product is useless without a platform, or more precisely and accurately, a platform-less product will always be replaced by an equivalent platform-ized product. Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo).  We all don't get it.  The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood.  The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought.  We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call.  One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked:  "So is it the Stalker API?"  She got all glum and said "Yeah."  I mean, I was joking, but no... the only API call we offer is to get someone's stream.  So I guess the joke was on me. Microsoft has known about the Dogfood rule for at least twenty years.  It's been part of their culture for a whole generation now.  You don't eat People Food and give your developers Dog Food.  Doing that is simply robbing your long-term platform value for short-term successes.  Platforms are all about long-term thinking. Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.  But that's not why they are successful.  Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work.  So Facebook is different for everyone.  Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars.  Some spend all their time on Farmville.  There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there's something there for everyone. Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said:  "Gosh, it looks like we need some games.  Let's go contract someone to, um, write some games for us."  Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now?  The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them. You can't do that.  Not really.  Not reliably.  There have been precious few people in the world, over the entire history of computing, who have been able to do it reliably.  Steve Jobs was one of them.  We don't have a Steve Jobs here.  I'm sorry, but we don't. Larry Tesler may have convinced Bezos that he was no Steve Jobs, but Bezos realized that he didn't need to be a Steve Jobs in order to provide everyone with the right products:  interfaces and workflows that they liked and felt at ease with.  He just needed to enable third-party developers to do it, and it would happen automatically. I apologize to those (many) of you for whom all this stuff I'm saying is incredibly obvious, because yeah.  It's incredibly frigging obvious.  Except we're not doing it.  We don't get Platforms, and we don't get Accessibility.  The two are basically the same thing, because platforms solve accessibility.  A platform is accessibility. So yeah, Microsoft gets it.  And you know as well as I do how surprising that is, because they don't "get" much of anything, really.  But they understand platforms as a purely accidental outgrowth of having started life in the business of providing platforms.  So they have thirty-plus years of learning in this space.  And if you go to msdn.com, and spend some time browsing, and you've never seen it before, prepare to be amazed.  Because it's staggeringly huge.  They have thousands, and thousands, and THOUSANDS of API calls.  They have a HUGE platform.  Too big in fact, because they can't design for squat, but at least they're doing it. Amazon gets it.  Amazon's AWS (aws.amazon.com) is incredible.  Just go look at it.  Click around.  It's embarrassing.  We don't have any of that stuff. Apple gets it, obviously.  They've made some fundamentally non-open choices, particularly around their mobile platform.  But they understand accessibility and they understand the power of third-party development and they eat their dogfood.  And you know what?  They make pretty good dogfood.  Their APIs are a hell of a lot cleaner than Microsoft's, and have been since time immemorial. Facebook gets it.  That's what really worries me.  That's what got me off my lazy butt to write this thing.  I hate blogging.  I hate... plussing, or whatever it's called when you do a massive rant in Google+ even though it's a terrible venue for it but you do it anyway because in the end you really do want Google to be successful.  And I do!  I mean, Facebook wants me there, and it'd be pretty easy to just go.  But Google is home, so I'm insisting that we have this little family intervention, uncomfortable as it might be. After you've marveled at the platform offerings of Microsoft and Amazon, and Facebook I guess (I didn't look because I didn't want to get too depressed), head over to developers.google.com and browse a little.  Pretty big difference, eh?  It's like what your fifth-grade nephew might mock up if he were doing an assignment to demonstrate what a big powerful platform company might be building if all they had, resource-wise, was one fifth grader. Please don't get me wrong here -- I know for a fact that the dev-rel team has had to FIGHT to get even this much available externally.  They're kicking ass as far as I'm concerned, because they DO get platforms, and they are struggling heroically to try to create one in an environment that is at best platform-apathetic, and at worst often openly hostile to the idea. I'm just frankly describing what developers.google.com looks like to an outsider.  It looks childish.  Where's the Maps APIs in there for Christ's sake?  Some of the things in there are labs projects.  And the APIs for everything I clicked were... they were paltry.  They were obviously dog food.  Not even good organic stuff.  Compared to our internal APIs it's all snouts and horse hooves. And also don't get me wrong about Google+.  They're far from the only offenders.  This is a cultural thing.  What we have going on internally is basically a war, with the underdog minority Platformers fighting a more or less losing battle against the Mighty Funded Confident Producters. Any teams that have successfully internalized the notion that they should be externally programmable platforms from the ground up are underdogs -- Maps and Docs come to mind, and I know GMail is making overtures in that direction.  But it's hard for them to get funding for it because it's not part of our culture.  Maestro's funding is a feeble thing compared to the gargantuan Microsoft Office programming platform:  it's a fluffy rabbit versus a T-Rex.  The Docs team knows they'll never be competitive with Office until they can match its scripting facilities, but they're not getting any resource love.  I mean, I assume they're not, given that Apps Script only works in Spreadsheet right now, and it doesn't even have keyboard shortcuts as part of its API.  That team looks pretty unloved to me. Ironically enough, Wave was a great platform, may they rest in peace.  But making something a platform is not going to make you an instant success.  A platform needs a killer app.  Facebook -- that is, the stock service they offer with walls and friends and such -- is the killer app for the Facebook Platform.  And it is a very serious mistake to conclude that the Facebook App could have been anywhere near as successful without the Facebook Platform. You know how people are always saying Google is arrogant?  I'm a Googler, so I get as irritated as you do when people say that.  We're not arrogant, by and large.  We're, like, 99% Arrogance-Free.  I did start this post -- if you'll reach back into distant memory -- by describing Google as "doing everything right".  We do mean well, and for the most part when people say we're arrogant it's because we didn't hire them, or they're unhappy with our policies, or something along those lines.  They're inferring arrogance because it makes them feel better. But when we take the stance that we know how to design the perfect product for everyone, and believe you me, I hear that a lot, then we're being fools.  You can attribute it to arrogance, or naivete, or whatever -- it doesn't matter in the end, because it's foolishness.  There IS no perfect product for everyone. And so we wind up with a browser that doesn't let you set the default font size.  Talk about an affront to Accessibility.  I mean, as I get older I'm actually going blind.  For real.  I've been nearsighted all my life, and once you hit 40 years old you stop being able to see things up close.  So font selection becomes this life-or-death thing:  it can lock you out of the product completely.  But the Chrome team is flat-out arrogant here:  they want to build a zero-configuration product, and they're quite brazen about it, and Fuck You if you're blind or deaf or whatever.  Hit Ctrl-+ on every single page visit for the rest of your life. It's not just them.  It's everyone.  The problem is that we're a Product Company through and through.  We built a successful product with broad appeal -- our search, that is -- and that wild success has biased us. Amazon was a product company too, so it took an out-of-band force to make Bezos understand the need for a platform.  That force was their evaporating margins; he was cornered and had to think of a way out.  But all he had was a bunch of engineers and all these computers... if only they could be monetized somehow... you can see how he arrived at AWS, in hindsight. Microsoft started out as a platform, so they've just had lots of practice at it. Facebook, though:  they worry me.  I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure they started off as a Product and they rode that success pretty far.  So I'm not sure exactly how they made the transition to a platform.  It was a relatively long time ago, since they had to be a platform before (now very old) things like Mafia Wars could come along. Maybe they just looked at us and asked:  "How can we beat Google?  What are they missing?" The problem we face is pretty huge, because it will take a dramatic cultural change in order for us to start catching up.  We don't do internal service-oriented platforms, and we just as equally don't do external ones.  This means that the "not getting it" is endemic across the company:  the PMs don't get it, the engineers don't get it, the product teams don't get it, nobody gets it.  Even if individuals do, even if YOU do, it doesn't matter one bit unless we're treating it as an all-hands-on-deck emergency.  We can't keep launching products and pretending we'll turn them into magical beautiful extensible platforms later.  We've tried that and it's not working. The Golden Rule of Platforms, "Eat Your Own Dogfood", can be rephrased as "Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything."  You can't just bolt it on later.  Certainly not easily at any rate -- ask anyone who worked on platformizing MS Office.  Or anyone who worked on platformizing Amazon.  If you delay it, it'll be ten times as much work as just doing it correctly up front.  You can't cheat.  You can't have secret back doors for internal apps to get special priority access, not for ANY reason.  You need to solve the hard problems up front. I'm not saying it's too late for us, but the longer we wait, the closer we get to being Too Late. I honestly don't know how to wrap this up.  I've said pretty much everything I came here to say today.  This post has been six years in the making.  I'm sorry if I wasn't gentle enough, or if I misrepresented some product or team or person, or if we're actually doing LOTS of platform stuff and it just so happens that I and everyone I ever talk to has just never heard about it.  I'm sorry. But we've gotta start doing this right.

[racingtoaredlight]

Acoustics and Electronics

I’ve said this over and over and over again, but it’s the most essential part of music it cannot be emphasized enough.  Music...sound...is a physical being.  It is not something that just gets translated magically from someone’s hands or mouth to your ears.

The biggest impact on the development of modern music...from say the late 40′s to today...hasn’t been anything intellectual, theoretical or artistic.  It’s been the evolution of amplification technology.

Why does an orchestra have 80+ members?  To project that sound from the stage to the farthest reaches of the venue.  But what happens when technological advances allow a single musician to project sound waves with mass and force of an entire orchestra?  What happens when you can broadcast a recording over radio waves or the internet?

All of the sudden, things contract.  And over the past 2/3-century, we’ve seen that contraction come with outrageous velocity.  No longer are we reliant on giant groups of musicians to project sound...and no longer are we reliant on teams of sound and recording engineers to maintain and operate the equipment necessary to project sound.

But as a musician, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to understand the relation between the electric amplification and how it impacts sound waves.

***

TOP AMP (guitar):  Fender Deluxe Reverb, 22w (watts), 1 12″ speaker, 8 ohms.

BOTTOM AMP (bass):  Aguilar Tone Hammer 500, 500w, 1 12″ speaker, 8 ohms.

Which of these two amplifiers would you think is louder in a real-life setting?

***

Lets try an imagination exercise...

I’m sure most of you have at some point fucked around on a musical instrument.  And I’m sure that one of the first things you discovered was that the harder you played, the louder the instrument became.

One of the most fundamental laws in physics is FORCE = MASS X ACCELERATION.  Applied to your hands on a bass, if you just brush the string with your fingertip it will sound much quieter than if you really dug in with all the flesh in your fingertip, yanking the string away from the instrument.

Applied to soundwaves, think of them as boats.

What requires more force to move forward in calm water...a tiny kayak or a giant cargo ship?  Don’t say the kayak because you have to row because I know you want to so bad.  Dicks.  Conversely...what ship would you rather be in when waters get choppy?

The answer isn’t really easy because it’s not an apples to apples comparison.  You’re not asking a kayak to ship multiple containers across an ocean, just like you’re not asking a cargo ship to go white water rafting.  Like the physical world we live in, instruments are designed to fit a specific purpose dictated by the job they’re required to do...

***

Which brings us to our real-life application acoustics...

In earlier posts that touched on acoustics, I mentioned how different types of sound waves react differently when interacting with other sound waves.  It’s the reason why four trumpets can be heard as well as 18 violins.  Horn sound waves are like bulldozers, violins are like serrated knives.  It would take you a lot more effort to cut down a tree with a serrated knife than a bulldozer.

When looking at the guitar and bass though, the sound waves are similar enough that we can focus more on the physical aspect of amplification.  I.e. the force needed to project those sound waves...

Lets suppose that a guitar and bass’ sound waves are sustained for the exact same amount of time.  Now let me ask you an insultingly simple question...which instrument is bigger?

The bass, right?  Yes.  The bass.  And as we know from our study of physics, as the mass of something grows, it’s frequency decreases...you will never find a cargo ship that can accelerate as quickly as a cigarette boat.  It’s not physically possible.

Even when a guitar and bass play the same notes in the same register that overlaps between the two instruments, the frequencies of those notes on the bass will be lower because of increased mass of the instrument itself.  Frequency is determined by the distance between sound waves’ peaks and valleys, not by the speed in which those sound waves oscillate.  If this were the case, that hypothetical note you played really hard above would be a different pitch entirely.

***

Back to the question above about which amplifier is louder in a real-life setting...and gets us into the discussion about electronics.

When played at their optimal volumes, the two amplifiers will be pretty much spot on.  You could quibble and get into the science at a granular level, but in terms of practical application of these amplifiers, they’re close enough for government work.

We have an audience.  The bass and guitar needs to be equalized in terms of volume.  So then how could an amp that delivers 22w of power be the same as one with 500w?

The acoustic answer is that guitar’s sound waves have less mass but more acceleration.  The bass has more mass and its sound waves need more acceleration in order to keep up with the guitar.  Simplified, those watts are accelerating the vibrations picked up by the guitar’s/bass’ magnetic pickups.

Now lets get even more confusing...

***

*DISCLAIMER:  I am not an electrician, have only a very basic, practical understanding of this shit as to how it applies to actual playing...so if I’m wrong on some stuff, feel free to correct.

Both amps had an impedance of 8 ohms.  Ohms are a measure of resistance to an electric current...meaning if your amplifier (home stereo, guitar/bass, PA, whatever) is sending out a signal to a single 8 ohm speaker, it will encounter 8 ohms of resistance.

In real-world terms, what this means is that the wattage rating on those amplifiers with 8 ohm speakers is effectively cut in half.  It would be about a 15w rating for the Fender and a 300w rating for the Aguilar.

The more speakers you add, the more resistance you should experience...but it’s not that simple.  Say we add another 12″ speaker to either amp...if we wire it in series (amp > speaker 1 > speaker 2), the resistance is doubled because that single current gets 8 ohm of impedance from the first speaker, and then 8 more ohm from the second.

But if we wire in parallel, where the amplifier sends a signal to each speaker individually, you can use the full output of the amplifier (assuming it’s rated at 4 ohm max).

Why is this important?  For one extremely simple reason...

Say you send 4 ohm of signal to an 8 ohm speaker using that bass amp rated at 500w.  Your single 12″ speaker might have a max load of 400w...at 8 ohms it’s only getting about 300w, definitely safe for the speaker.  But what happens if you send all 500 of those roided up at 4 ohm watts to an 8 ohm speaker...

It’s too much current for the speaker to handle.  It might not happen immediately (though your shitty sound would certainly be noticeable), but at some point in the very near future (i.e. that same day), your speaker will blow.  This might come as a surprise to some of you, but it’s really hard to project sound waves when your speaker is smoking.

***

This is getting really long so I’ll try to finish it up quickly...

That picture at the top of the page?  The wall of Marshall amps?  Very useful in the days of antiquated PA systems and sound engineers figuring shit out on the fly.  In today’s world?  Vanity.

I know that he’s not a favorite of many here in the comments, but look at Trey Anastasio’s setup.  Ignoring personal preferences, Phish routinely plays in front of 25,000+ people, in venues ranging from outdoor festivals to giant indoor arenas to historic clubs...and he doesn’t need anything more than a single 2x12 speaker combo.  For awhile, he only had two of those 1x12 Fender Deluxe Reverb amps...which was beyond adequate for a place the size of Madison Square Garden.

Contrast that with Yngwie Malmsteen’s wall of Marshalls playing a 5,000 seat theater.

You needed amplification like that back in the day to project sound in massive stadium or arena concerts/festivals.  But in today’s era of mega efficient PA systems and automated sound engineering software, they’re pointless.  Today’s PA systems will project equalized sound with far greater fidelity, consistency and portability than any rig a musician could haul.

I go “direct in” on every single gig we play and use my tiny amp as a stage monitor so the band can hear me.  We use the Bose Stick PA for every gig that doesn’t have a PA system, and we did an outdoor show for 500+ people with power to spare.  This whole PA system takes 3 minutes to tear down and weighs probably 40 lbs total.

More importantly it takes all the guesswork out of having to get bass amps.  Given the venues and band formats we play in, I’d need probably 3 different speaker configurations to get the same consistency that simply going directly into the Bose Stick gives me every single time.

It saves musicians money (from having to buy equipment), time (from having to set up equipment) and headaches (from having to think about equipment).  Looking at those Marshall stacks again, do you realize how expensive that would be to transport, set up and, shit, BUY?  You’d have to hire multiple people who’s job it was simply to schlep that shit around.

And why?  Not for any sound benefit.  Not for anything functional or to account for the basic laws of physics.  Simply for vanity.

***

I think my point ultimately was “know your shit” but I dunno.  I just find this shit fascinating.

[pbacklinks]

Proven Ways to Make Money through Digital Marketing

New Post has been published on https://pingbacklinks.com/?p=4673

Proven Ways to Make Money through Digital Marketing

Digital marketing termed as an online platform where one can advertise their products online on the internet or any other digital medium. Can digital marketing make you productive? Yes, it can.

Today, the purchasing decision-making process of consumers is influenced by the first moments following the initial input of brand reputation, blogs, reviews, and online opinions. You are leading the best companies to integrate web activities into their marketing strategies to go hand in hand with the user of the digital age. Integrating Digital Marketing will allow you to reach a targeted audience, and you interact with them, regardless of the geographical location. You will be able to track and monitor your user’s activities in real-time to improve and optimize the marketing strategies.

Here are some tips on how to earn more in digital marketing.

  Affiliate marketing

The marketing affiliate is one of the fastest and effective ways to generate money online. Affiliate marketing is a form of online marketing where leads or sales made through the blog are paid. With Affiliate Marketing, you earn through commission as agreed with the company, such as.

Pay per Sale: This method is based on commission after a consumer makes a purchase. Most companies prefer this type of marketing.

Pay per Lead: The affiliate convinces the customer to visit the site and perform an action such as filling the form, signing up, or subscribing.

Pay per Click: The affiliate is paid depending on the traffic increase towards the company site.

  E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing consists of sending e-mails and newsletters as a means of communicating directly with the leads and prospects for commercial and loyalty purposes.

A well thought out e-mail becomes the perfect bait to make your fish catch on the hook, giving priority to direct connection with the recipient on a personal and captivating touch. E-mail marketing automation tools such as Mailchimp will help segment the target and automate by sending of newsletters.

  Content Marketing

Content marketing is the creation of online content, linking it to a company’s service or product. Content marketing can be a bridge that allows people to get to know a business, regardless of whether it is new or small. What makes this practice so important? As more and more people are using the internet to search for products and services, companies attract your attention by offering relevant content to answer questions. As a consequence, readers get to know the company.

Content marketing includes all those content creation and distribution activities, such as blogs and articles. The aim is to attract qualified users to your site by prioritizing relationships over transactions. Interesting content becomes a gold mine for the growth of your business in terms of SEO, acquisition of contacts, and identifiable data. The latter, if analyzed correctly, will allow you to guide your users through the Conversion Funnel.

  Blogging

The blog for a long time was a personal page where people shared their ideas, theories, and their life. Over time, the blog has become an essential tool for companies to approach their audience indirectly and subtly.

Are you a creative writer, who is always up to date with the news, likes to write about any subject, and accepts challenges? So you can earn a lot of money by offering your service to create creative and selling blogs without being invasive.

    Digital PR

Digital PR is a tactic used by brands to increase their online presence by building relationships with bloggers, online journalists, and the public of social networks. A digital marketing PR strategy helps to grow digital marketing profit and the company’s reputation in online communities by giving brand visibility. If used properly, it has positive effects on SEO, conversion rate, and ROI.

  SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is one of the most sought after tools by companies. SEO techniques allow businesses to have greater visibility and increase the number of visitors to the site during searches.

Each search on search engines allows people to find all types of businesses. To be able to position yourself in the first place, it is necessary for detailed work that involves content and keyword optimization, images, videos, titles, and much more.

There are many niches within SEO. To earn a lot of money, the professional must specialize in one of the slots and work for his client to gain visibility and relevance online.

  Digital influencer

This type of marketing is done through the use of endorsement from a famous individual in society. Recommendation from them acts as a trust by the audience as they are seen as experts.

It is one of the cheapest means to boost digital marketing earnings through online marketing strategies. Partnering with eminent personality is a great way to recognize a brand. An influencer can trigger and transform the audience into their lifestyle. This method of marketing creates a path for a business to reach a large number of followers.

Today’s generation is always looking for ways to be entertained, and the best approach is to follow an influential personality. Influences know how to catch the attention of the audience through sex appeal and the latest trends.

    Dropshipping

This type of online selling differs from the traditional way by having a merchandise inventory—besides, no need to pack or ship the products. The products sell through websites that function as wholesale distributors, which are also in charge of packaging and shipping the products, which means that your job is only to create a website that promotes and sells the products.

Podcasts

These are recordings in audio and can be downloaded or listened via streaming on specific digital platforms such as Spotify, Youtube, or iTunes.

If you know about technology, for example, you can produce a podcast that allows you to share the knowledge with the listeners who, in turn, support financially.

  Cryptocurrencies

One of how people have generated considerable sums of money is through:

Buying and selling of currencies in Forex

Buying and selling company shares

Buying and selling of cryptocurrencies.

The methods consist of buying either currencies, business stocks or cryptocurrencies at low prices and then selling them at higher prices, and obtaining a profit margin that is equivalent to the difference in the price you sold.

This type of requires to know about the behavior of the markets and when to make the investments.

  Social media marketing

Social media are interactive platforms where content is created, distributed, and shared by individuals online. Social Media Marketing is nothing but the use of Social Media platforms to promote a business or products and services. Social media digital marketing techniques are used to lead the traffic of the audience. The method is perceived as the best marketing tool to advertise as it is cost-effective, time-efficient, and it directly appeals to the people present in any specific community.

  Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing includes the multi-channel marketing activities intended to reach the public directly on a mobile device such as smartphones and tablets. It makes use of tools such as Responsive Websites (optimized for mobile browsing), GPS location, SMS, social media, and apps. It is a fundamental practice for a successful marketing strategy.

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