#customer complaints software

[servitiumcrm]

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[onlinereputationmanagementtools]

Streamline Your Business with Customer Multiple Messaging Platforms

Explore how using customer multiple messaging platforms can enhance your business operations. Discover the benefits of integrating customer management services, ticket management software, and handling customer complaint feedback efficiently.

In today's fast-paced digital world, businesses need to stay connected with their customers through various communication channels. Integrating customer multiple messaging platforms can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and streamline business operations. By leveraging customer management services, ticket management software, and effectively handling customer complaint feedback, businesses can create a seamless and responsive customer experience. Let's explore how these elements come together to boost your business.

The Importance of Customer Multiple Messaging Platforms

Customers expect to communicate with businesses through their preferred channels, whether it's email, social media, live chat, or messaging apps. By using multiple messaging platforms, businesses can meet these expectations and ensure they are always accessible. This approach not only improves customer satisfaction but also helps in retaining customers and building loyalty.

Integrating Customer Management Services

Customer management services are essential for keeping track of interactions across different messaging platforms. These services consolidate customer data, making it easy to access and manage information from a single interface. This unified view helps businesses understand their customers better, personalize communication, and provide consistent service across all channels.

Key Benefits:

Centralized Data: Customer management services gather all customer interactions in one place, providing a comprehensive view of each customer's history and preferences.

Personalized Communication: With detailed customer profiles, businesses can tailor their messages and offers to meet individual needs, enhancing the customer experience.

Efficient Operations: By streamlining customer data management, businesses can improve operational efficiency and reduce the time spent on administrative tasks.

Streamlining Support with Ticket Management Software

Ticket management software is crucial for managing customer inquiries and issues effectively. This software organizes and tracks customer requests, ensuring that no query goes unanswered. By integrating ticket management software with multiple messaging platforms, businesses can provide faster and more efficient support.

Key Benefits:

Organized Workflow: Ticket management software helps in categorizing and prioritizing customer issues, making it easier for support teams to address them promptly.

Improved Response Times: With an organized system, support teams can respond to customer inquiries faster, enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

Performance Tracking: Businesses can track key metrics such as response times and resolution rates, helping to identify areas for improvement and optimize support processes.

Handling Customer Complaint Feedback

Effective handling of customer complaint feedback is essential for maintaining a positive reputation and improving services. By integrating customer complaint feedback mechanisms into your messaging platforms, businesses can address issues promptly and demonstrate a commitment to customer satisfaction.

Key Benefits:

Immediate Resolution: Quickly addressing complaints through multiple messaging platforms shows customers that their feedback is valued and that the business is dedicated to resolving issues.

Continuous Improvement: Customer complaint feedback provides valuable insights into areas where the business can improve, helping to enhance products, services, and customer interactions.

Building Trust: Proactively handling complaints builds trust and loyalty, as customers appreciate businesses that listen to their concerns and take action to resolve them.

Conclusion

Incorporating customer multiple messaging platforms into your business strategy is a smart move to enhance communication, support, and overall customer experience. By leveraging customer management services, ticket management software, and efficiently handling customer complaint feedback, businesses can create a responsive and customer-centric environment. Embrace these tools to streamline operations, build stronger customer relationships, and drive long-term success.

[antrika]

What is Feedback Loop? Tips to Optimize Feedbacks

There is no better way to evaluate your product than asking it right from your existing customers. If businesses don't listen to the customers, they will end up offering something customers do not need or they didn’t ask for. To avoid such scenarios, seek to collect feedback from customers- positive or negative, it is your job to make it accessible to them. How? Through a streamlined feedback management system. 

If your priority goal remains to serve your customers with quality solutions, you must know their choices and demands, and then turn them into actionable. We know it’s easier said than done. However, it isn’t impossible, by automating your feedback loop you can improve your product or services to ensure you meet a higher level of customer satisfaction. 

A complete feedback loop will allow you to constantly collect customer feedback , learn, prioritize, and apply actionable solutions to serve your customers what they are looking for. Sounds interesting, isn’t it? If you want to learn more about how feedback management systems can help bridge the gap between business offerings and customer demands, stay tuned with us. 

What is a Feedback Loop?

A feedback loop is a system catered to capturing, analyzing, and implementing collected customer feedback to optimize products, services, or business procedures. In simpler words, the feedback loop system utilized through customer feedback software is a constant cycle for businesses as customers are your go-to guides with relevant feedback and opinions.

However, a feedback loop does not end by just collecting feedback, responding to customers whenever they leave suggestions is equally important to make them feel valued. In short, the feedback is closed when brands reach out to the customers and update them on whether they have implemented their suggestions or you can update them that their feedback is stored and will be utilized in the future, or it is in progress. 

For instance, customers of airlines request suggestions or communicate concerns regarding safety measures. In such scenarios, as an airline company, your focus should be prioritizing introducing relevant additional safety measures for travelers to improve offerings and trust among customers. 

Why does Feedback Loop matter?

As per the research, customer-centric companies that optimize business procedures with feedback management systems are more likely to be profitable, as they get insights on what customers want to be offered. 

In addition, customers are ready to maximize their spending by up to 16% when they are satisfied with the business offerings and trust the brand. Whereas your loyal customers are likely to switch brands over repetitive bad experiences, this can lead to increased negative feedback and disrupted brand image. 

This is the reason why your product development strategy should concentrate on the feedback and voices of your existing customers.

Furthermore, with a continuous streamlined customer feedback management system, you can get an advantage over your competition by accessing insights directly from your customers. Lastly, focus on creating a customer-centric culture in your organization, and offer a high-quality experience to your customers, that will make customers motivated to be connected with your brand. 

You May Also Like: A Complete Guide to Collect Customer Feedback With Simplified Steps

How does a Feedback Loop work?

A well-planned feedback loop through customer feedback software can completely improve your product or services. Since you know what your customers like and dislike, you can easily offer what they want and estimate future demand based on the data received through collected product feedback.

A feedback loop is not just to collect customer feedback, but utilizing the data from the feedback management system to execute the plan. To simplify the procedure for you, we will break down the steps to help you elevate your customer experience in the simplest method. 

Collect Product Feedback - Gather feedback from different sources

Analyze - Breakdown the feedback, with the insightful reports and categories of analyze customer feedback software to pinpoint potential actionable factors. 

Action - Collaborate with your internal team, discuss, and experiment to plan out the action for your product development journey. 

Communication - By using feedback management systems like Antrika, you can update your customers on the changes through a centralized platform. 

Review: It's time to track the changes implemented and their effect on customer experience, and revenue - which is feasible through the customer feedback software.

Detailed steps on optimizing the feedback loop effortlessly

Let's have a closer look at the steps discussed above and understand how we can implement these factors with a feedback management system.

1. Collect customer feedback

The voice of customers is more accessible and important to be heard. Collecting product feedback phase focuses on gaining insights directly from the customers to understand different perspectives, as only market research would not give you answers to improving products or services that customers may like. 

Whether you collect feedback through online, or centralized platforms like customer feedback software it is important for organizations to consistently capture the reviews and suggestions from existing customers. Remember, even if you have a centralized platform, wherein customers visit to place feedback, it is important to gather a wide range of opinions that includes customers from different demographics and personalities. 

In addition, you can categorize your collecting feedback stage based on the information you gather. For instance, music apps or video streaming platforms use features like likes or dislikes below the video or playlist to understand the preferences of the customers. Likely, you can blend a few methods to understand what your customers are looking for. 

Tips to optimize collecting feedback

You can utilize online surveys, and post purchases if you have an e-commerce website. By this method, you can easily gather customer data by connecting these short surveys to your mail. 

Encourage your customers to upload reviews on their experience with your product or services. Along with centralized feedback software, having positive reviews on certain platforms can help you pull more customers over your competitors by just providing high-quality offerings. 

2. Analyze Feedback

Analyzing feedback is filtering out the suggestions that are not relevant to your current business goals. To do so, it is important to dive deeper into feedback and highlight actionable suggestions to proceed with product development. 

It is obvious to get overwhelmed by seeing multiple feedbacks, to simplify the analyzing process Antrika offers a centralized platform wherein you can categorize feedback based on your preferred sub-topics. Or you can prioritize feedback based on the votes and likes per feedback, which indicates the demand for certain feedback. It can be launching new features, fixing particular bugs, and more. 

Furthermore, regular analysis of collected feedback will ensure that companies have an insight into emerging market trends, and potential issues that customers may face, and be active in response to keep the customers attached to the brand. 

A systematic approach like data-driven reports for varied factors simplifies analyzing feedback and makes sure that no single aspect is being missed. Lastly, analyzing feedback is important as it becomes a roadmap for your next step. 

Tips to analyze customer feedback systematically

Utilize the sentiment analysis method (part of the NLP technique used to identify the emotional voice behind the text). This will help in identifying specific factors of wherein customers are happy with your product/services, or not. 

The next step must include categorizing themes to categorize common factors - positive or negative to identify potential actionable improvements. Make sure, these categorizations must be clear and concise. 

Lastly, conduct regular meetings with your internal team to understand feedback and plan out a strategy with an actionable plan. 

3. Actionable plan

Turning insightful data into action is where most find it challenging. Implementing customer feedback may feel overwhelming as a company you cannot prioritize feedback from all the spectrum. However, you must seek to maintain a balance. 

Remember, the action phase is not about addressing only negative feedback but companies can leverage positive and happy feedback to improve the customer experience. 

Tips to plan out actionable solutions

As an initial step, create a priority list of changes that are possible and have a potential impact. Consider resources required to make changes and prioritize actions that promise higher customer satisfaction and maximized revenue. 

Focus on getting insights from different departments, like customer services, product development, sales team, and more to make sure your actionable strategy is aligned with customer expectations and business goals. 

Lastly, pinpoint metrics to track like customer satisfaction scores, rates of diverted customers, and more. Identify these data and evaluate the impact of changes made. 

4. Communication

Once you implement the changes, it is time to close the feedback loop. Consider reaching out to your customers, and updating them with the recent changes. 

Effective communication makes customers feel valued and connected to the brand. However, make sure communication is clear and concise. Avoid industry jargon, and focus on maintaining transparency with your customers for a positive change. 

Tips to maintain clear communication with customers

Include email newsletters or in-app notifications to seamlessly update the changes. Email newsletters provide direct updates, and in-app notifications make sure that active users are aware of new updates. 

Gratitude should be your second language. Acknowledgment can help in building positive bonds with customers.

5. Review the impact

The review phase is the connecting bridge from one feedback loop to another. Did the changes lead to improved customer experience? Are there any potential issues? These are the factors you need to identify in this stage. 

However, regular feedback during this stage can help businesses understand whether certain changes are relevant to customers or not. This helps in creating dynamic relationships with customers and promoting long-term loyalty. 

Tips to review the product effectiveness

Integrate KPIs that are relevant to your changes. Monitoring these metrics will help gain insights into the direct impact on customer experience. 

Actively seek opinions and responses catered to the changes you recently focused on. This step will help you get direct feedback to understand if the changes align with your customer's expectations and identify potential loopholes. 

Optimize your feedback loop with Antrika

Customer feedback is an essential asset for your business. It can help you identify bottlenecks beforehand and make data-driven decisions at the right time. By optimizing a continuous system for a feedback loop, you can identify any distractions and automate the process with effective actions. 

If you want to know more about the streamlining process of collecting feedback or managing the feedback loop stress-free, get in touch with us today !

[sreehari28]

The most frequent complaints HRMS (Human Resources Management Systems) vendors receive from customers revolve around usability and user interface issues. Customers often express frustration with complex and unintuitive software interfaces that make it challenging to navigate and perform tasks efficiently. Another common complaint is system integration problems, where the HRMS software fails to seamlessly integrate with other essential systems, leading to data inconsistencies and manual workarounds. Lack of customization options is another frequent complaint, as customers desire the ability to tailor the software to their unique HR processes and requirements. Inadequate customer support, including slow response times and lack of assistance, is also a significant concern.

[servicecrmindia]

Best Customer Complaint Management Software - Service CRM

In today's world, where customer satisfaction is key to business success, managing complaints effectively is more important than ever. Whether your business is large or small, you need to be able to handle complaints in a way that keeps your customers happy and your reputation intact. That's where Service CRM comes in - a top-rated complaint management software that helps companies of all sizes streamline their complaint-handling processes and keep their customers satisfied.

[askagamedev]

So how much $ (in general) does it cost to produce a fully animated/rigged, fully voiced 1-3 minute cutscene in a game that’s in ongoing development (something like SWTOR, where they have a lot of prebuilt assets)? Like just a general low range and high range?

I’m seeing a lot of people complaining about prioritizing content they want, and don’t know enough about the behind the scenes costs to properly communicate they’re being unrealistic with their complaints.

The cost of any content in game dev is directly proportional to how much new stuff needs to be created for that content. In order to create a basic conversation cutscene to put into a game, we would need:

A narrative designer to write the script for the cutscene

A cinematic designer to script out the cinematic - which characters speak, in which order, with what timing, in which location, and what other actions they would take over the course of the cutscene

Animations for the characters to play in those positions

A rig for those characters to play those animations

Character models for the characters involved

Voice recordings for the characters to speak

A tool with which to set all of these parameters and organize the cutscene

A game system that can parse the tool data and assets and construct the cutscene from them

A script system to start playing the cutscene when the proper conditions are met

This doesn't include extra stuff like VFX, music, lighting, environments, props, etc. that might need to be created for certain specific cutscenes. In an ongoing game like SWTOR, element numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 were already built long ago and already exist. As long as the designers can create the characters with the in-game character creator and reuse the existing rigs, no new resources need be expended to create them. If you need a completely new custom character model, that takes time from a character artist and a texture artist. If the character needs to animate differently than everyone else (i.e. needs its own rig), that's time from a rigger to create. If the cutscene needs new animations we need to bring on an animator to spend time building the new animations needed for the cutscene.

Using some napkin math, let's consider costs. We usually use the $10,000 per month figure to pay for a developer (salary, benefits, rent, utilities, software licenses, etc.) or approximately $2,500 per development week per person. Let's assume that each task takes a developer a week to complete.

Write the script (Narrative designer)

Script the cinematic (Cinematic Designer)

Record audio (Sound Designer + Voice Actor + studio time)

Rig one new character (Rigger) x however many new characters

Animate one animation (Animator) x however many new animations

Model one new character (Character Artist + Texture Artist) x however many new characters

Track all tasks and keep everyone on schedule (Production)

Test and validate that the cutscene works (QA)

At the very minimum, we need the script, the cinematic, production, and the QA tester, so a very bare bones cutscene that reuses all assets and has no new VO (say it only reuses the alien language) would cost 4x$2,500 = $10,000. If we add voice recording and keep it to one voice actor (let's say she voices both characters in the cutscene), then the cost jumps to 7x$2,500 = $17,500 because we need the sound designer, the voice actor, and the recording studio time. Adding in two new animations (e.g. one character throwing a punch and the second character reacting to getting punched) would add another two weeks of animator time, raising the cost to 9x$2,500 = $22,500. And so on and so forth. Those costs add up very quickly.

There are ways to get a "bulk" discount of course - we hire voice actors for blocks of four or eight hours, so we can record multiple cutscenes during that session and share some of those costs. We can create one new character and reuse her across multiple cutscenes so that we get more value out of her. Things get cheaper if we reuse stuff more, but they still cost a lot up front. The bulk discounts only really work if the things we're paying for can be reused multiple times though - the more specific an asset is (e.g. a kissing animation), the harder it is to reuse and the more expensive it tends to be relative to other assets.

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[andmaybegayer]

Hello it's me with another very naive computer question!

One of the really common complaints you see about modern software (from Adobe, Microsoft, etc.) is the move from the single-purchase model to a subscription-based model. While I understand that people are upset about paying more money over time, this also feels like the only viable option for shipping products that work with modern OSes, especially Windows (I don't have any experience with MacOS). Windows pretty regularly updates, and if you want your product to continue to work, you have to continue paying your engineers to maintain compatibility through time.

Obviously I understand that there are lots of FOSS options out there, but for the companies that are built on making money from these sorts of software products, I don't see another way. Am I way off the mark here?

This is a really good question. I don't have a great answer, but the model I have in my head is that "traditional software distribution" is partially an artifact of an era where companies were starting to use computers but internet use was still spotty so providing support for software was just a very different ballgame. A lot of what I'm saying here is not like. Fact as much as it is my understanding of The Software Business from the side of someone who is a little involved in that but mostly not in that.

(This is mostly about "business software", that is to say, accounting packages, creative suites, design packages, modelling tools, etc. This model does not explain like. Spotify. But that's much easier to explain.)

You're not wrong that the subscription model really make sense given modern software development, where patches come out continuously and you get upgraded to the latest version every time something changes, but there has been a significant change in how software is developed and sold that makes it noticeably different. I think that the cause of this is mostly because it's finally practical to do contract-style deals with hundreds of thousands of customers instead of doing one-off sales like we used to do.

In the Traditional model you charge a pretty sizeable upfront cost for a specific version of the software, you buy Windows XP or Jasc Paint Shop 7 or whatever and then you get That Version until we release The Next Version, plus a couple years of security and support. When the next version hits, we stop adding any new features to your version, and when that hits end of life, you maybe get offered a discount to buy licensing for the latest version, or you drop out of support.

Traditional software with robust support typically costs an awful lot, Photoshop CS2 was $600 new in 2005, or $150 to upgrade from CS, because you're paying for support and engineering time in advance. A current subscription for just Photoshop is $20/mo, and that's after twenty years of inflation. Photoshop is also cheap, a seat for something like SolidWorks 2003 could probably have run you $3000-4000 easy. I can't even give you a better guess there because SolidWorks still doesn't sell single commercial licenses online, you have to talk to their salespeople.

The interesting thing to me about Traditional pricing was that I think it was typically offered to medium to small businesses or individuals, because it's an easy way to sell to smaller customers, especially if it's the 90's and you're maybe selling your software through an intermediary reseller who works with local businesses or just a store shelf.

Independent software resellers were a big business back in the day, they served as a go-between for the software company and smaller businesses, they sold prepared packages in a few sizes and handled the personal relationship of phoning you up and saying "Hey there's a patch for your accounting software so that it doesn't crash when someone's surname is Zero, we'll send you a floppy disk in the mail with some instructions on how to install it." Versioned standard releases are a thing you can put in a box and give to resellers along with a spec sheet and sales talking points. This business still exists but it's much smaller than it once was, it's largely gone upmarket.

If you were bigger, say, if you were a publishing house that needed fifty seats of editing software you'd probably call the sales department of Jasc or whoever and get a volume deal along with a support contract.

Nowadays why would you bother going through resellers and making this whole complicated pricing model when you could just sell subscriptions with well-established e-commerce tools. You can make contract support deals with individuals at scale, all online, without hiring thousands of salespeople. You can even provide varying support levels at multiple cost brackets directly, so you don't need to cultivate a direct business relationship with all your customers in order to meet their needs. Your salespeople handle the really big megacorp and government deals and you let everyone else administer themselves.

It also makes development easier. You can also deploy patches over the net, you just do it in software. You can obsolete older versions faster, since you can make sure most people are using the latest version, and significantly cut down on engineering time spent backporting fixes to older versions. I think a lot of this is straightforwardly desirable on most software.

Now, there are still packages sold by the version, and there are even companies selling eternal licenses.

Fruity Loops Studio is still a "Buy once forever" type deal.

MatLab can be purchased as a subscription or as a perpetual one-version license.

Windows is still sold like this, but also direct to customer sales of Windows are minimal, Windows is primarily sold to OEM's who preinstall it on everything.

But it's a dying breed, your bigger customers are going to want current support and while there are industries where people want to hang around on older versions, for a lot of software your customer wants the latest thing with all the features and patches, and they'd rather hold on to their money until later using a subscription rather than spend it all upfront. Businesses love subscriptions, they make accounts books balance well, they're the opposite of debt.

Personal/private users who might just want the features of Photoshop CS2 and that's fine forever don't matter to you. They're not your major customers. This kind of person is not a person who your business cares to service, so you don't really care if you annoy them.

Even in the Open Source business world, subscriptions are how the money is made, just on support rather than for the software itself. You can jump through relatively few hoops to run Ubuntu Enterprise or SUSE Enterprise Linux on your own systems for free, but really there's not much benefit to that unless you pay for the dedicated support subscription.

In many ways I think a lot of things have changed in this way, I have a whole thing about the way medium-scale industrial manufacturing has changed in the past thirty years somewhere around here.

While there are valid reasons you might want to buy a single snapshot of some software and run that forever, the reality is that that's a pretty rare desire, or at least that desire is rarely backed by money. If you want to do that you either need access to the source code so that you can maintain it yourself, or you need to strike a deal with someone who will, or it needs to be software so limited that it (and the system it runs on!) never need updates. Very few useful programs are this simple. As a result subscription models make sense, but until recently you couldn't really sell a subscription to small businesses and individuals. Changes in e-commerce and banking have enabled such contracts to be made, and hey presto, it's subscription world.

[zvaigzdelasas]

and what was your formal title during your job at [REDACTED]

fullstack software engineer

no i said the *formal* title

*audibly sighing* fullstack software engineer, lord of front's end and the five cloud providers, third of his name, banisher of customer complaints and bringer o-

[fnafwritings]

Okay that’s it time for some headcanons to get these blorbos under control, and also bc it might help with writing them in the future:

Sun

Sun is the featured personality when the ambient light around him is over a certain threshold for at least a few seconds. He is very aware of Moon, and while management often categorizes them as one animatronic, most employees and customers instead refer to them as two distinct characters. Sun also shares a memory with Moon, though he describes it less as being out of control of his body and more like watching a summary of events when he eventually takes control back, sometimes forcibly.

Though Sun adores kids, he can and does get severely anxious and overstimulated by them; this happens rarely, though multiple animatronic software engineers have yet to find a reason why—if he’s programmed to be a caretaker, how can he get overwhelmed by his primary duty? Regardless, Sun is often able to get through a full day of glitter glue and screaming by retreating to his room above the daycare, or if he’s particularly desperate he will try to let Moon take control, though this is even rarer still.

Sun is extremely expressive and bouncy, and several people have joked that if he was tied to a chair then he wouldn’t be able to talk at all; he makes large gestures with his hands almost constantly, though nobody is certain if that’s simply a happy accident of his childcare programming or if he’s just like that—the kids love him regardless. He’ll often jump about or the sunray spines on his head will spin about when he’s excited about something. Because of this, Sun is an atrocious liar (not that he likes lying in the first place)

Both Sun and Moon are incredibly flexible and acrobatic, but Sun does his best to keep any ‘unnatural’ motion or twisting around to a minimum—it frightens the children, or so he has decided, so most of his body language is relatively natural.

Moon

Similar to Sun, Moon is given control over their body when the ambient light is very low for at least several seconds, though the shift can sometimes take up to a full minute. Single points of light—such as a flashlight—does not inherently make him change back into Sun. It is painful however, as his eyes are carefully attuned to seeing in the darkness when he is physically switched over, perhaps even having a form of heat-sensitive vision that his maintenance workers have alluded to a few times.

In very rare circumstances Moon can be out when the space around him is fully lit; this however requires Sun to willingly allow him control and for Moon to focus very hard on not letting his body automatically shift back. This has only occurred on one occasion and is considered a bug in their system.

While often characterized as ‘evil’ or ‘mean’, Moon genuinely cares for his wards and for Sun as well—he is simply less bright and outspoken than his sunny counterpart. He loves to play jokes and cause various sorts of trouble that rarely bring harm to anyone. His most favorite activity is chasing the children around the daycare like a monster, but recent complaints by parents have restricted the time that the daycare isn’t lit during business hours. (The kids themselves love him though, several calling him endearing nicknames despite Moon’s grumbling)

Hilariously, Moon is incredibly good with neurodivergent children. Whether this is a purposeful part of his subroutines or not is anyone’s guess, but he does know when to draw a line with his shenanigans and is often a huge comfort to kids who are overstimulated, overwhelmed or needing comfort some someone who isn’t as high-energy as Sun is.

Moon, just like Sun, has the flexibility to contort his animatronic body into very unnatural angles, and he often uses this to his delight when scaring the kids (or the daycare employees on occasion). He is quite fond of scaling the jungle gyms like a spider, and is more than capable of twisting his body through openings that seem way too small for a seven-odd foot tall animatronic like himself.

Eclipse

Technically, Eclipse is not normally supposed to be encountered in day-to-day activities. He is first and foremost a subsystem safe mode, either in times of extreme danger towards himself or his wards in the daycare, or if he is suffering a system meltdown in some way and needs to do a hard reboot to fix it. He is so internalized in fact that Sun and Moon aren’t even aware that he is part of them—maybe deep down they can guess that there’s something else between their two personality matrices, but they wouldn’t be able to say much for sure.

On the flip side, Eclipse is aware of Sun and Moon’s presence, but he doesn’t share their memories or knowledge outside what is strictly allowed in his coding.

Since he is a designated safe mode and the combination of Sun and Moon’s code playing out in tandem, Eclipse is very sweet and soft-spoken; this is reportedly to help with keeping those around him calm, namely the children that would be nearby in the case of a crisis. But do not for a moment mistake that gentle demeanor as weakness—if he registers a threat within a certain range, he can and will remove it by any means necessary.

Any. Means. Necessary. There is a reason why most employees consider the daycare to be one of the safest places within the Pizzaplex, though management won’t comment either way in order to avoid misunderstood fear from parents that use the childcare service.

When in Eclipse mode, light and darkness don’t really have an effect on him, though he has described that there is a slight internal shifting within his chassis that is vaguely uncomfortable, though he doesn’t quite know why.

[netscapenavigator-official]

How do u like jellyfin? I've been using kodi since i've been looking for something more featured than VLC for browsing media but it feels bloated and makes wayyy to many internet connections automatically for me to really enjoy it or feel safe running it on any device that seeds torrents. I'm strongly considering jellyfin since I despise plex and ember is proprietary.

It’s the only media server software I’ve ever used, so I don’t have any points of comparison. Also, a transparency preface, the device my server is hosted on is an M1 Apple iMac that's running up-to-date macOS (as of the time of writing, that’s macOS Sonoma 14.1), so as always, your mileage could always vary on other operating systems and chipset architectures.

I also view content exclusively via the iOS app, Apple TV app, and Firefox for Linux x86-64, all of which I’ve never had a problem with.

For the most part, however, I haven’t had any complaints. I keep all of my content on a 2TB USB External HDD that I bought from Walmart. It stays plugged into the computer 24/7, and all I had to do was tell Jellyfin where the files were, which you have to do regardless of where they are.

I’m not an advanced user by any means. I’d love to get outside network support going, but even that is proving too intimidating for me. I probably don’t take advantage of most of the advanced features, either. From my experience with Jellyfin, though, it does what I wanted it to: allow me to view my videos and photos without having to download them onto my phone. I have three users set up (including the one mandatory admin profile), and that’s probably the most non-out-of-the-box thing I’ve done.

The only issue I’ve had is that if your host device loses power (or somehow force shutsdown or crashes without first properly quitting the Jellyfin app) during a library sync (which can take a long time if you’ve added a lot of data at once and are running it off an external HDD), the on-device database file seems to corrupt easily. When this database file gets corrupted, it makes the Jellyfin app panic and shutdown without actually closing the app. As a result, the app looks like it’s running properly, but when you try to access it from anywhere, it’ll fail to load. You have to check the .txt file logs to actually see the panic code and shutdown command. I’ve had that happen twice, and it isn’t very pleasant. Luckily, I also use macOS’s Time Machine feature, so I had plenty of backups. However, it is annoying to have to sort that out, and if you didn’t have backups, you’d basically have to restart the server from scratch. Your content would be fine, but all of your manual IMDb data, custom thumbnails, reported file locations, etc. would be factory reset.

Of course, if you’re running the server on something with a backup power supply or a built-in battery, that eliminates a lot of the risk. The iMac I run my server on also acts as a secondary computer, for me. So I'm also at a heightened risk of crashing and whatnot. If you had a dedicated server computer that did nothing but act as your Jellyfin server, that'd also probably help alleviate some risk.

The extent of my daily use of Jellyfin is constantly playing ambient music from an old iPad next to my stereo, and occasionally viewing images and videos from my phone or laptop. I’m certainly not a power user, but for me, I’ve never had any reason to dislike Jellyfin, so I don’t exactly have a desire to go looking for an alternative. It does what I need it to do, and it does it smoothly, simply, and reliably.

If you're looking for a more advanced user's opinion, however, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong blog.

[indelicateink]

“For years, the antivirus software company harvested information from users’ web browsers without their consent.

“Avast, the cybersecurity software company, is facing a $16.5 million fine after it was caught storing and selling customer information without their consent. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the fine on Thursday and said that it’s banning Avast from selling user data for advertising purposes.

“From at least 2014 to 2020, Avast harvested user web browsing information through its antivirus software and browser extension, according to the FTC’s complaint. This allowed it to collect data on religious beliefs, health concerns, political views, locations, and financial status. The company then stored this information “indefinitely” and sold it to over 100 third parties without the knowledge of customers, the complaint says.”

[engineeringwork]

Maximizing Efficiency with Pareto Analysis

Source: https://rambox.app/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/The-power-of-Pareto-analysis.png

In the fast-paced world of business and problem-solving, prioritizing actions can make the difference between success and failure. Enter Pareto Analysis, a powerful tool rooted in the 80/20 rule, which helps identify the most significant factors affecting outcomes. This principle, named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, asserts that 80% of effects often come from 20% of causes. Here’s why and how Pareto Analysis can transform your approach to tackling challenges.

The Power of the 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule is both simple and profound. It suggests that a small number of causes (20%) are responsible for the majority of effects (80%). In business, this might mean that 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers, or 80% of your problems stem from 20% of the underlying causes. Recognizing this disproportionate distribution allows you to focus your efforts on the areas that will yield the most significant improvements.

Implementing Pareto Analysis

Identify Key Issues: Begin by listing all the problems or causes related to the situation at hand. This could be defects in a product, customer complaints, or sources of inefficiency.

Quantify the Impact: Measure the frequency or severity of each issue. This data-driven approach ensures your analysis is based on facts, not assumptions.

Rank and Prioritize: Arrange the issues from most significant to least significant. This ranking helps in visualizing which problems are the most critical.

Create a Pareto Chart: Construct a bar graph with causes on the x-axis and their impact on the y-axis. Add a cumulative percentage line to see how quickly the issues add up to 80% of the problem.

Benefits of Pareto Analysis

Focus on What Matters: By zeroing in on the most impactful issues, you can allocate resources more effectively and achieve quicker results.

Data-Driven Decisions: Pareto Analysis removes guesswork, allowing decisions to be based on solid data.

Improved Efficiency: Addressing the key causes first leads to significant improvements with less effort.

Real-World Example

Consider a software company facing numerous customer complaints. A Pareto Analysis might reveal that 80% of complaints come from 20% of the software bugs. By prioritizing fixes for these critical bugs, the company can significantly enhance user satisfaction and reduce the volume of complaints.

Conclusion

Pareto Analysis is a game-changer for anyone looking to optimize processes and solve problems efficiently. By focusing on the vital few causes that have the greatest impact, you can make meaningful progress without being overwhelmed by the many lesser issues. Embrace the 80/20 rule and watch your efficiency and effectiveness soar.

Maximize your impact with Pareto Analysis, and turn your biggest challenges into your most significant victories.

📊✨ #ParetoAnalysis #8020Rule #Efficiency #ProblemSolving #DataDriven #BusinessStrategy #Optimize

[thrown-away-opinions]

Artists when artists are copying & distributing art from companies for their own use and profit without paying them: 'Lol, theft removes the original, this doesn't. Copying art is not a crime! yo-ho yo-ho!' Artists when companies are copying & distribuying art from artists for their own use and profit: 'What! Collage is a crime! You wouldn't download a car!' Good to see that the God of Irony still has a job!

I was going to write something about this subject too, but I got hung up on that gofundme thing.

Up front, I think there is some legitimate complaints about artists not wanting their shit scraped and fed into an algorithm. That's not an unreasonable demand. Datamining is out of control on the internet. There needs to be way less of it.

But also... All this bitching and moaning about ethics and morality is hollow as fuck. The piracy thing right up front. How many scanlated manga or fan-subbed shows you think the average seething artist has read/watched? How many movies did they pirate? How many ads have they blocked? How many streaming service passwords shared? How many second-hand things have they purchased? How many college textbooks downloaded? How many programs have they cracked and used for years without ever paying a sub fee? How many little things have they shoplifted? How many immoral and unethical things they've done without ever making up for it?

Short version is blatant "rules for thee, but not for me!!" bullshit. It is an ethical nightmare that some programmers have in some way appropriated raw data from something made by someone else because they, the artists, deserve payment and royalties for their art being viewed in any way they don't approve of, even if it's just some ephemeral fragment of something they made once, did not license, did not copyright, did not commercialize in any way.

Every other artist and employee who worked on and produces all the shows and products and services doesn't deserve payment because... uhh.. because late stage capitalism or whatever!!

It's a double standard that doesn't hold up to a moment of scrutiny. Some of this hysterical bullshit would even be forgivable if it were just about not being happy about having their work used in a way they don't approve of. Instead, they had to go with this moronic, exaggerated ethics angle, they had to pool their money to try and get the US Government involved. All this constant wailing and gnashing about losing jobs and work when nothing has actually changed and no one is making 6 figures yearly on an AI Art patreon. No one is losing commissions to some now world famous prompt expert who charges even more money.

We've long accepted piracy as an unavoidable aspect of the digital age, but suddenly that's not okay because it might (but not actually) impact some freelancer/indie artist's ability to get work that they either aren't losing because of AI (remember that the global economy is falling apart), or they might lose jobs that they don't have, they aren't trained for and/or aren't pursuing anyways.

But you know what else is kinda fucked about all of it? Most of these artists wouldn't be where they are today without technology and software advancements. Do you have any idea how many artists would be fucking hopeless without all the custom photoshop and CSP brushes they downloaded for free (and never credited the creator)? Do you know how fucked these people would be without all the built in color correction settings and filters and gradient maps? They can't even imagine drawing in procreate without all the built-in tools for correcting their sloppy-ass linework. There's SO MANY successful and highly paid webtoon comics out there that wouldn't be where they are today without the CSP asset store allowing them to drop in 3d background assets and pre-set pose and hand guides.

These whiny fucks are up to their eyeballs in technology that props up their entire profession/hobby, but they are screaming at the top of their lungs because someone downloaded a booru or scraped pinterest to feed into an AI Training algorithm.

tl;dr - They're a bunch of immoral hypocrites who badly want to dress up their impotent outrage as some kind of meaningful, ethical catastrophe.

[cutecipher]

"However, Sylvain Cazard, president of Broadcom Software for Asia-Pacific, reportedly told The Register that complaints about higher prices are unwarranted since customers using at least two components of VMware's flagship Cloud Foundation will end up paying less and because the new pricing includes support, which VMware didn't include before."

Surely the line will go up at any moment if were scummy enough/obfuscate enough

[steamberrystudio]

Apologies if you already answered this somewhere but what software do you use to make changeling and/or gilded shadows? I was thinking about giving TyranoBuilder a go but I think I would rather use the same software as you unless its all custom built obviously? i know very little about coding but I'd really like to make a visual novel. Thanks xx

Hi!

I use Ren'py. I have heard pretty mixed things about TyranoBuilder but have never personally tried it. Here are some basic pros and cons of Ren'py.

(I'm a very staunch advocate of trying things and finding what works best for you personally).

Pros: Ren'py is free so there's no investment to try it out.

Ren'py has been around for a decade and has a lot of resources and communities to provide information and tutorials. Compared to some newer or less-used engines where it can be difficult to find help, you can find Ren'py devs every five feet in the indie VN community.

Ren'py comes with a really solid set of built in features. It is one of the most common indie VN engines for a reason. It even comes with an entire game UI that you can customise. One of the biggest complaints I've seen about some other engines is that they're lacking when it comes to some of the features we're really used to having in Ren'py games (such as rollback or skip).

Ren'py is really flexible once you get the hang of using it. Way more than a lot of people realise. You can do a lot of cool things with it.

Cons:

Ren'py does require learning some code. The coding is on the simple side for the most part but can get complex in regards to screens and customising the default UI. That said, I had absolutely 0 coding experience when I started out. I've had to get help multiple times but I clearly managed. I built a lot of the stuff in Gilded Shadows (customisation, flowcharts) on my own.

Ren'py ports to limited platforms. It's PC/Mac/Linux and mobile. Most people find that adequate though.

Ren'py can be intimidating at first - especially compared to other game engines more focused around a drag and drop strategy. The documentation isn't always clear on things so at first it might feel like reading an alien language.

Ren'py communities can be a bit hit or miss sometimes. Some people have been doing this a long time and can be a little unconsciously overbearing and critical toward newcomers to the engine. They often mean well but can be discouraging.

There are pros and cons to every single engine out there. I know people who are using godot or nani novel or fungus. I know people who have tried visual novel maker as well.

There is really not a perfect engine. But I know, also, people who have used Ren'py, switched to other engines, then come back to Ren'py as well. And I know people who've used other engines and never looked back.

That's why I really believe that it's not just about finding a good game engine, it's about finding the one that is best for you and your needs.

The good news is that if you ever want to try Ren'py out, I will always be willing to answer questions (if I can) or point you to places I think you can find the answer.

Hope this helps!

~Esh

[mariacallous]

If you had battery-related performance issues on an older iPhone—and you got in on a class-action lawsuit against Apple six years ago—you could soon receive some payback for your trouble.

According to a statement released by the law office involved in the suit against Apple, the tech giant will soon have to pay out up to $500 million to customers affected by its throttling of iPhones that had older batteries. The so-called Batterygate scandal affected people using iPhones in the 6, 6S, and 7 families, as well as the original SE model, and stems from complaints from users that Apple purposely slowed down the devices after they installed software updates. Apple hasn’t admitted any wrongdoing, instead positing that its practice of deliberately slowing down its phones wasn’t a technique to get people to buy a newer device but rather a safety measure to keep the phones from shutting down when the battery got too low.

The checks will be doled out to the roughly 3 million people who filed claims for the lawsuit, which works out to somewhere between $65 and $90 per person. It’s too late to make a claim now—the deadline to join the suit passed in October 2020.

Here’s some more news about the stuff on your phone.

Premium Prime 

Bad streaming music news for anyone who’s somehow not on Spotify or Apple Music: Amazon’s music streaming service is getting more expensive.

The price hike from $9 to $10 was revealed by a FAQ page on Amazon’s Music site, spotted by The Hollywood Reporter. The increase is relatively small and will apply to Amazon Prime members with Unlimited Music plans and family plans. But it’s part of a trend of streaming services putting the squeeze on their customers. The cost of a Spotify Premium subscription went up by a buck last month after 12 years without an increase. Hulu and Disney+ are getting more expensive later this year. Netflix has cracked down on password sharing and introduced a paid ad-supported tier. And don't forget that HBO Max removed gobs of content from its platform. Amazon Music doesn’t seem to be ditching any of its songs quite yet—or banning password sharing—but clearly the Amazonian overlords want to squeeze a little more out of the platform.

Muting TikTok

A recent Reuters poll shows that nearly half of Americans approve of the US banning the social media app TikTok. (Disclosure: Yes, WIRED is on TikTok.)

US lawmakers have been talking about tanking TikTok for years now, citing concerns that the app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance could share Americans’ user data with the Chinese government or that the app could serve as a software backdoor for Chinese spyware. Pundits and members of Congress have posited the TikTok ban as a push to protect privacy, even though the issue is more due to international tensions between the US and China. (Cue the I Think You Should Leave “you sure about that?” clip.)

The process of actually banning the app from US soil would be laborious and controversial. Montana is going to give it a shot in 2024, when its recently passed TikTok ban goes into effect. Enforcing a ban will be nigh impossible, since users could likely circumvent the rules by using a VPN to make it appear that they are in another location or by simply downloading the app while they are traveling to another state.

Stay Cool

It’s getting hotter here on planet Earth. Heat waves intensify, oceans warm, and wildfires worsen. And all the while, humans—and everything else living on the planet—pay the price. Human influence has undeniably altered the weather of the world, and as we hurtle along in a climate emergency, it’s only going to grow hotter and more unstable.

This week on the Gadget Lab podcast, WIRED’s resident doomsday reporter, Matt Simon, joins the show to talk about extreme heat, why it keeps getting warmer, and how we might be able to adapt.