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lsvdw-blog · 3 years

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Not a Minute More: Part 2

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x f!MC

Word Count: 1.8k

Warnings; Rating: Mentions of a cyberattack, Angst; Teen+

Premise: MC's perspective on the day that rocks Ethan to his core and threatens to change his life.

Author’s Note: I was going to wait to post this, but I'm loving the flood of content we're getting rn, so I thought I'd hop on too. I cried writing this... I'm so sorry 😭. Part 1 here. I hope you enjoy and thank you for reading 💖

~ Monday, 8:20am ~

"Good morning, Mike!" Serena greets the security guard right inside the door.

"Hey! How are ya? How's that Dr. Ramsey?"

"We're both doing well, thanks! How about you and the family?" She asks as she puts her phone in a cubby and unplugs the Wi-Fi enabler from her laptop.

"It was the wife and I's anniversary this weekend! We went to Martha's vineyard and saw the most beautiful proposal! You and Dr. R gonna get going on that soon? Aly has been talking about going to y'alls wedding since she met ya!" Mike gives a playful wink.

"Oh, congratulations! That's wonderful and send Aly my best wishes. But you'll have to talk to E on that one," she laughs before opening the door to a stairwell that leads to a classified area.

After keying in her pin, the door clicks open. She grabs a static protection lab coat, walks through the entrance, and is met with a plethora of state-of-the-art equipment. Floor-to-ceiling grey switch panels, curved monitors as far as the eye can see, and countless probes, clips, and wires.

She walks over to a few familiar faces. “Good morning! How’s it going?”

“Nice of you to finally join us! Dr. Ramsey keep you this morning?” Isla, one of the engineers, jests.

“I saw your check-in on the monitor — you walked in two minutes before me!”

“Those diagnostic skills at work, I see,” Isla retorts and they both laugh.

Isla had become a fast and faithful friend since Serena joined the project. They bonded quickly over both being minorities in the world of science and supported each other in every work facet. They had lunch together everyday and gradually, their work bond grew into a personal friendship as well. They’ve become so close that Isla now also regularly spends time with the original Edenbrook gang.

“Alright, enough chit chat. Let’s get this show on the road.”

The team nods and responds, “Yes, Doctor.”

~ 12:00pm ~

Serena exits the classified area with some colleagues and they all make their way to retrieve their phones.

"No new patients. Stuck in meetings and doing paperwork. I miss you and wish you were here."

She immediately breaks out into a large grin after reading Ethan's text and hits the dial button.

"Hey, ready for lunch?" Carmen, one of the lead scientists, asks.

Serena nods and moves her phone slightly away from her ear. "Be there in a minute. You guys go ahead."

She waits for a few more rings. He’s probably busy, I’ll call again later. She hangs up and makes her way to the cafeteria.

~ 12:40pm ~

"We did all the necessary prep work this morning to begin testing after lunch. Everything is looking good. We can begin running our tests since everyone is here. Are we all ready to begin?"

"Yes."

The system engineers are sitting at connected computer stations, inputting the required credentials to start. The rest of the team is standing behind them, waiting and nervously watching the screens. After a couple minutes of tense silence with nothing but the clack clack clack of keyboard keys, Vincenzo, one of the lead engineers, speaks up.

"This is weird… we're having some trouble accessing the necessary data. Did someone put up a firewall?"

Everybody looks around at each other, shaking their heads and muttering "no."

"Isla, are you seeing this? Can you get through?"

Isla continues to type, not saying anything. After a few more seconds, she turns to look at Vincenzo with a concerned expression. "I don't recognize some of the items in our system."

Just as she finishes her sentence, everyone's attention is pulled abruptly to a wall monitor on the right as it starts showing nonsensical images and patterns. Two seconds later, an alarm goes off and a red warning light begins flashing within the building. Everyone's eyes go wide as realization dawns on them: they've been compromised and shelter-in-place has been activated.

~ 12:55pm ~

Everyone begins to evacuate the classified lab area, grabbing their phones on the way out, and peering through the one-way windows. They can occasionally hear Mike speaking rapidly into the phone with a 911 dispatcher, when he's not being drowned out by shouts from colleagues.

On the descent to the bunker, the tension is palpable. Individuals clutch onto each other, others try frantically to reach loved ones, and some are in complete disbelief and shock. As they all descend the five flights of the winding staircase to the basement, windows are no longer available, but the ceiling bulbs keep flickering on and off. Each time it happens, everyone stops in their tracks, ducks down on instinct, and picks up the pace when the lights come back on.

~ 1:15pm ~

The entrance to the Harvard labs bunker is protected by a vault door that has a counter system. When the system is in place, the door can be opened once for people to get in. Once it's been closed, it can only be opened when there's one person on either side working together — it's futile with only one person. The only other way it can be opened is by shutting down the counter system from the outside, with the correct override pin, which only a handful of the most trusted team members know.*

As the vault door comes into sight, the wheel on the outside is turned, and the door opens with a whoosh. People slowly start filing in and head towards the back. However, not everyone can stay in the safety of the bunker. In case of an emergency, the project they’re working on must be erased, to protect it from falling into the wrong hands. Certain people have been assigned particular instructions to delete specific portions.

Serena is one of them.

She's walking next to Isla and their arms are looped together. As Isla enters the bunker, Serena lets go of her arm, stopping at the threshold. Isla whips her head around.

"What are you doing?! Get in here!" She reaches for Serena’s arm.

Serena shakes her head. "I'm the only one currently here who knows the medical codes."

Isla's eyes are frantic in realization. "I'll go back with you! I'll be your lookout! You're not going alone!"

"You'll be safe here. This is my responsibility."

Serena reaches behind her neck and unclasps her gold necklace for the first time in 7 years. She grabs Isla's hand and places the jewelry into her palm, closing Isla's fingers around it.

Serena stares at their clasped hands. "In case anything happens," they both flinch at another flickering of lights. "Promise me that you'll get this to E."

Their eyes are locked now, having a silent battle: Isla begging her to stay and Serena finding the strength not to.

"Isla, promise me. Please." Serena squeezes Isla’s hand that much tighter.

Isla realizes that there's no use in fighting Serena. Risking her life to delete the project is part of the job. They all made a commitment and if the roles were reversed, Isla would be the one fighting to go back.

Isla slowly nods. "I promise, Serena. I promise. But do your best to keep yourself safe. Try and stay near the corners, away from any large equipment that could have aftershock effects, and—"

Serena shakes her slightly. "I know, Isla. We did take the same training," she smiles, trying to make a joke to lighten the mood, but Isla just stares gravely at her.

A booming sound rattles the building and Serena knows it's time to go. She gives Isla a quick hug, before pushing her backwards into the bunker. Before Isla has regained her footing, Serena has closed the bunker door with a resounding thud.

~ 1:30pm ~

On the way back to the classified area, Serena takes out her phone. Ethan hasn't returned her earlier call. Her heart is pounding and with trembling hands, she hits the call button on Ethan's contact card for the second time in less than two hours. After a few rings, his voice comes through.

"You've reached Dr. Ethan Ramsey. I apologize for missing your call. Leave a message and I'll get back to you."

Just as she’s about to start speaking, the lights go down for good. "Hey E," she tries her best to keep her voice from shaking. She puts the call on speaker, places the phone out in front of her, and turns the flashlight on. "I don't know when this will hit the news, but we're currently under cyberattack. I don't know from who or what, but they’ve already gotten into our mainframe and power supply. Everyone has sheltered-in-place and is awaiting further instructions." She takes a deep breath as she inches down a corridor.

"Everyone except me, Vincenzo, and Carmen. We’re the only three here right now trained to completely delete the project in the event something like this happened. I'm walking back to the lab as I speak."

Serena rounds a corner and the lab comes into view. Thinking about what she has to say next, silent tears stream down her face.

"Ethan, sweetheart, I need you to know that the last eight months by your side have been the absolute best eight months of my entire life. You are the light of my existence and mean everything to me." She lets out a deep breath. "I wish I could hear your voice right now… I'm really scared. But I made a commitment, so I need to go back in and finish the job. If something happens, know that you are unequivocally the love of my life and the one for me. I know we haven't talked about it yet, but know that I want to spend forever with you as your wife and have you be the father of my children." She sniffs and continues, "you would be a fantastic husband and dad."

She comes to a stop in front of the keypad located right outside the lab and swallows past the lump in her throat. "But if the universe has other plans for me, I'll be waiting for you and I can't wait to spend forever with you in the next life. This isn't how I wanted to tell you, but until next time, whenever that is, I love you so much, Ethan Jonah Ramsey, more than words could ever properly convey."

She ends the phone call with tear-filled eyes, stashes her phone on a nearby workbench, punches in her key, and enters the classified area one more time.

~~~~~~

*Disclaimer: I have no idea if Harvard labs has a bunker and if they do, what kind of door/system they utilize. This is all purely AU!

#ethan ramsey #ethan x mc #ethan ramsey x mc #open heart #choices open heart #playchoices #ethan ramsey fanfiction #ethan ramsey fic #open heart fanfiction #open heart fic #choices stories you play

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tired-college-student-writing · 5 years

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Tim’s Secret Weapon Pt.9

I’ve been slightly obsessed with @ozmav ‘s Damian Wayne/Marinette Dupain-Cheng pairing as of late, and just saw a post that has inspired me more than anything else has in months, so I felt the need to write it

Summary- Tim has always seen the numbers floating above people’s heads, been able to perceive their threat levels with a single glance. After being a hero for so long he thought he was desensitized to seeing high numbers above people’s heads until Damian brings a new friend home.

Part 1

Part 8

Part 9 (HERE)

Part 10

This will probably be the last update for awhile, I start student teaching this coming week and I’m nervous as all hell right now

____________________________________________

It took a good twenty minutes to calm down the Miraculous Team, during which Max had changed back and needed to feed his Kwami, Kaalki, before changing back.

Tim mentally edited his profile for the Horse hero, while his brother's teased the teenagers.

Max ????- Baskerville Font Deep Golden 13, Codenamed- Pegasus. Kwami- Kaalki, the Horse. Main Power- Voyage. Time limit of Ten Minutes after using Voyage before Forced Detransformation.

He’d need to ask later if this time limit existed for the other heroes as well. He was also going to have to hack Collège Françoise Dupont’s register to complete these kid’s profiles apparently.

The other heroes offered to detransform as well, but Ladybug suggested they wait until after the meeting Bruce had set up as they only had minutes before he told the other heroes to connect.

“Ready?” Bruce asked as he pulled on his cowl, the domino masks quickly being tossed to the correct brother as the Paris heroes exchanged looks.

“Nope,” Bunnyx answered as she flopped down into her seat next to Viperion, “let’s get this started,”

The Heros of Paris all held hands as they sat on the side of the Conference table that the active camera couldn't see. The Batfamily sat across from them with Batman at the head of the table as he opened the video call.

“Hey Bats,” Flash greets as the founders all joined the video chat, “What’s with the emergency meeting?”

“This is highly unusual for you, Batman,” Superman added, “Should we be heading for the Zeta tubes?”

“While urgent,” Batman answered, eyes narrowed, “What I’m about to say isn’t exactly time-sensitive, but it is dire that we come up with a plan to assist soon.”

Green Lantern raised an eyebrow, “That doesn’t sound good.”

Marinette could feel her team growing restless around her from beyond the view of the camera. After so long trying and failing to reach out, this was their chance to end things. Seeing Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter so close nearly made her heartbeat straight out of her chest.

It was unreal…How much had her world view shifted in the last twelve hours? The blunder of a Billionaire that more closely resembled a zombie gorilla then human if woken up before 8 am was THE Batman, The nearly thirty-year-old police officer that still thought Captain Crunch was a suitable dinner was Nightwing, the man who tried to sneak in and steal macarons out of the oven only to pout when he burned himself was Red Hood, the much too young CEO who routinely did his paperwork in green crayon to anger those filing it was Red Robin, and oh not to mention her boyfriend who had sworn her into secrecy after crying during Tangled was the latest Boy Wonder.

“Paris has been under attack for nearly four years,” Dick answered from where he sat directly to Bruce’s right, “They’ve been fighting the threat alone, despite the villains' potential. to destroy the world.”

The seasoned heroes all stiffened.

Martian Manhunter was the first to speak, “What is the threat and who are these heroes?”

“A villain known as Hawkmoth rose to power almost four years ago,” Batman told them, “He has the power to control those that express intense negative emotions and give them powers of varying intensity. Ladybug and Chat Noir have been fighting him back since he first-”

“Did you just say Ladybug and Chat Noir?” Wonder Woman cut him off, “Do you perchance mean the Ladybug of Creation and the Black Cat of Destruction?”

All eyes were on the princess as she stared down Batman. He didn’t move but Marinette could feel his eyes flickering past the camera and towards her, letting her make a move if she wanted to.

She hesitated before clicking the button Red Robin had given her to enter into the video call, “Yes. That is exactly what he meant.”

Wonder Woman’s eyes flew open wide as she saw the bright red outfit, arms snapping in front of her, crossed at the wrists, head bowed, “My Lady!”

Marinette cocked her head to the side, confused, “There’s no reason to call me my lady, honestly you just sound like Chat. I’m surprised that any of the League knew of the miraculous.”

Diane lowered her hands, looking up once more, “As you wish Ladybug, and every Amazon know the tales of Ladybug. After all, my mother once wore your earrings and held your mantle with Herakles as her Μαύρη γάτα.”

Ladybug broke into a smile, “Hippolyta… Tikki has told me stories of past users, Πασχαλίτσα was one of my favorites to learn about.”

“Woah, Woah, Woah!” Flash waved his hands frantically, “Are we saying that she’s on par with your mother?!”

“Now I won’t-”

Diane cut her off, “Yes. All of Themyscira would follow a ladybug into battle as willingly as they follow my mother, their Queen.”

The young heroine blushed as Chat, Bunnyx, King Monkey and Abeille laughed, Viperion Pegasus and Ryuko smiling at the shocked faces on the League’s faces.

“ Good to know my Lady is so highly respected,” Chat finally spoke up leaning into frame from her right. Marinette sighed, honestly surprised he remained quiet this long. Silently she clicked the button that made the camera pan out to bring her entire side of the conference table into view.

“As I’m sure you guessed,” She said to the gathered heroes, “I am Ladybug, and this is my partner Chat Noir. The other members of our permanent team are Abeille, the Bee of Subjection, Ryuko, the Dragon of Power, and Viperion, the Snake of Chance. On our reserve team is Pegasus, the Horse of Teleportation, King Monkey, the Monkey of Jubilation, and Bunnyx, the Rabbit of Time.”

Wonder Woman looked worried, “So many active, your war must be devastating.”

Abeille scowled, “Paris would have been nothing but bloody rubble within a month had Ladybug not had her Miraculous cure. Hawkmoth, Butterfly of Transmission, and Mayura, Peacock of Emotion, have been attacking us for almost four years at this point trying to take Ladybug’s and Chat Noir’s miraculous, and our requests for help from the League have been ignored up until this point.”

“Requests?” Superman questioned as the elder heroes all stiffened, “What requests?”

The Paris team gave them skeptical looks.

“You’re kidding right?” Chat Noir asked slowly, “My Lady and I sent probably two dozen requests for aid since we were given our miraculous before being sent what might as well have been a cease and desist request that was just signed from the league because it was thought that everything that had leaked out of the city had just been fancy video editing and CGI. How could you guys not know?”

“As one of the main reviewers of requests,” Manhunter replied monotoned even as his jaw clenched, “I never saw any of these messages.”

“Yeah man,” Green Lantern added, “Neither did I, and I help out a lot up in communications when I’m not out on business. Plus we’ve never sent out a ‘stop calling us’ message before.”

“Well someone had to reject us,” Pegasus argued, “Logically speaking it has to be someone from the League as the other option is an unknown individual hacked into the League’s database and the only detectable thing they did was delete the messages from Paris.”

“I don’t care who it was, Find them,” Robin growled, white knuckles clutching his katana hilt, “I wish to disembowel them.”

“You will not.” Ladybug’s voice was low and pointed, “Not only have we handled ourselves well, but I won’t condone infighting just because someone messed up. I don’t care who rejected us at this point, Paris has a strong team protecting it and the League is lending us their help now, something that might have been detrimental a few years ago.”

“Detrimental?” Wonder Woman questioned, a twinge of hurt in her voice, “How would the League of been detrimental?”

Flash scratched the back of his head, “Yeah, how would The League being in Paris be bad, kid?"

“Pfft,” Bunnyx just laughed, “Geez, Kids? Could you guys be more condescending? It’s not like we’re seasoned heroes in our own right by now or anything.”

Ryuko's gaze flicked over all of them, “Your trust in us is lacking because of our age, but you want to give us a chance to show you how we operate since we have been taking care of our city. During our battle today the entirety of the Batfamily was watching us from the shadows and yet never felt like they needed to intervene with a team that already works efficiently with each other, yet you still question us.”

“You saw us?” Jason asked a little startled, “Damn Onna-bugeisha, you’re sharp,”

The girl smiled softly, “I appreciate the praise, however, I would suggest not wearing a large bright red bucket on your head next stealth mission. I was already on the lookout for red so it made spotting you and your family easy.”

Dick snorted, “Told you your helmet wasn’t slick,”

Jason just glared and shot back, “Discowing,”

“We’re not speaking of that atrocity. I’m going to need eye bleach to forget it already,” Marinette shuttered before becoming serious again, “The point we were trying to make is that I and my team have your trust. With Wonder Woman, Batman and his team speaking for us, you respect our claim to protecting Paris and the fact that we are the most knowledgeable people when it comes to Miraculous and our villains. Would we hold that same respect in your eyes if you arrived when Chat and I only held our miraculous for a few months? When we were inexperienced and improvising? Or would you have swooped in here with promises to fix things while shoving us to the side, upsetting us to the point where we might have been akumatized because of how little say we were given in protecting our city and stopping the villain that threatened our friends and families?”

The league heroes all shifted a little uneasy. The girl had a point.

Inexperienced heroes had to earn the League’s respect through hard work and proving their worth, something that could have left them open to akumatiation, giving the villain exactly what he wanted.

“Another thing,” Ladybug added eyes scanning over their faces with a serious glare, “This is our city and we have experience with the villains here and what to avoid. With that said, I believe the only members of the Founding Justice League I would trust to be in Paris before Hawkmoth and Mayra are relieved of their miraculous are Batman, Martian Manhunter, and The Flash.”

“What!” Green Lantern yelped, but the Paris team all nodded in understanding.

“Ooh Yeah,” King Monkey cringed, “The last thing I want to do is face an akumatized Wonder Woman.”

“Dude, you’d be the only one safe from an evil Green Lantern,” Bunnyx groaned, “Can you imagine the damage? It’d be like Mr. Mime on Steroids!”

Viperion turned to Pegasus and asked, “If Superman got akumatized what is the likelihood that Luck Charm would just give us a chuck of Kryptonite?”

“Considering she’s dating a Bat,” The younger man started ignoring the bugging eyes of the League, “There is a higher chance that it will just give her an indication to use Voyage to retrieve him and the kryptonite he no doubt possesses. On the 17.85% chance, it gives us Kryptonite, I’d be worried about using it as all of the Lucky Charms are red and black. Red Kryptonite usually causes a bloodlust, or uncontrollable rage in Kryptonians, while Black causes the being to be split into a good and an evil version of themselves.”

“Soooo,” Bunnyx draws out, “Use Uproar to take their powers away, then the kryptonite so that we just have too really angry dudes fist fighting each other in the middle of Paris?”

Pegasus nods, “Yes that plan holds an 85% chance of working should we be put into that situation.”

Batman just rubbed the bridge of his nose, “Should I ask where you learned so much about Kryptonite?”

“No.” The Paris team chorused.

The Martian looked intrigued, “Back to the original statement, May I acquire what sets us apart from the others so much that you’d be willing to accept our help but not theirs?”

“Easy,” Chat answered, smirking slightly at the flustered looks that still remained on the rejected heroes faces, “Hawkmoth and Mayra prey on negative emotions, whether that’s anger, frustration, fear, sadness, or disgust. The more powerful the emotion the stronger the Akuma or Amok is that we have to face is. Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern are known for using their emotions as strength during a fight.”

“What about Flash?” Green Lantern barked, looking miffed, “The dude isn't exactly Mister Stoic."

"Oh Oh!” King Monkey had his hand raised above his head, “I’ll take this one!”

“Go ahead King,” Ladybug offered with a bemused look.

The Burly teen grinned up at the monitor, “We’ve found there are two great ways to keep from falling into Hawkmoth’s hands, thought considering everyone but Ladybug has been akumatized at least once this is mostly through trial and error. We’ve come to realize that either you need to be like Ladybug, Pegasus, and Ryuko, confident and professional to the point you don’t have time to let negative emotions, and how Chat and I deal with it and it’s probably the same way Flash deals with the horrors I’m betting all of you deal with on a biweekly basis, if not more.”

The speedster gave a tired smile, “An over cheerful, bantering mask?”

Chat clicked his tongue and shot duel finger guns at the monitors, “Bingo Bongo,”

Abeille rolled her eyes, as Ladybug smacked him lightly over the head, “Nerd.”

King just smiled wider, “Yup! We flirt, we banter, we joke around with our partners and the villains, cause it makes it easier for us to deal with after we're out of danger.”

Superman’s eyes grew a little far away, “You pretend not to take things seriously?”

Chat shrugged, “I mean kinda? It’s more like knowing that if everyone was serious then it would start wearing on us. We’re all people, we can’t stay serious 100% of the time, plus I know that when I crack puns the other may groan but their attacks are a little less sloppy, My lady may say she hates it when I call her Bugaboo, but it pulls her away from a bad headspace and helps her focus. It’s just our way of dealing with the dangers we face.”

“The Heart of the Team,” Batman spoke with a heavy reverence that had each of the seasoned heroes looking over the Paris group with understanding.

“Alright,” Green Lantern sighed, “Supes, Wonder Woman and I will stay out, but why don’t you explain what’s happening exactly in Paris. What is this Hawkmoth guy after anyways? What’s his end goal?”

Ladybug’s eyes grew hard as her team straightened around us, “His goal is to obtain the Ladybug of Creation’s earrings, and the Black Cat of Destruction's ring. Whoever possesses both shall have unimaginable power, and the ability to grant one wish by rewriting the very essence of reality.”

Flash let out a low whistle, “Wow, and his wish is lovely I’m sure.”

Chat’s voice was soft, but held immense weight, “His wish could be of pure intentions and goodwill, but it doesn’t matter, because the balance must be maintained and the price is always much more destructive then one can ever imagine.”

Ladybug nodded in agreement to her partner before taking over, “An Italian father wished for his family to never know sickness like that that took his sister from him when he was young, to live long happy lives free of sickness. The wish came true and nothing worse then a cold touched the family, even today, but three days after the wish was made the first ship that was contaminated with the Black Plague landed in Italy.”

“A teenager, whose homeland was riddled with war and bloodshed,” Chat chimed in again, even as the surrounding group looked sick, “He wanted for the fighting to stop, for his parents to not have to risk themselves anymore to keep their city safe, for him not to have to take up the blade in only a few short years. His wish was granted the fighting stopped and he no longer had to worry about his family dying to senseless war… because his entire city, the city of Atlantis had sunk into the sea, almost two-thirds of the population perishing as the last third realized they had an unknown ability to breathe underwater and survive the harsh conditions of the sea.”

Aquaman looked uneasy, “So much damage for such simple wishes?”

Chat just nodded, “Balance needs to be maintained, and each wish is a lesson in human’s foolish nature to try and fix the universe for their own needs and wants. The simple truth of the matter is no lesson is painless. Even the Kwamis can’t change that.”

____________________________________________

“Why don’t we head to my hotel?” Abeille asked as she stretched. The call to the League had drawn to a close leaving the teens mentally exhausted but giddy, “That way we don’t need to transform again, and we can just tell our parents that we were hanging out in my room instead of each coming up with a cover story. The fact that the Waynes are also staying there just makes it easier for us.”

“Good idea,” Ladybug agreed, “But I want to remind all of you are under no obligation to share your identity if you don’t want to, Red Robin won’t share it with the others even if they ask.”

“I knew Bruce’s identity for like 6 years before I broke into the cave and asked to be Robin. I think I can manage not to spill your secrets” He revealed with a little laugh as his family gave him strained looks.

The Paris heroes laughed before Pegasus, asked for the room they were staying at, quickly opening a portal.

Alfred simply raised an eyebrow, “Well, I expect the meeting went well then?”

Marinette flopped onto the couch with a groan as her transformation fell away, “You guys were not exaggerating with how much of a boy scout Superman is!”

Jason snorted as the other Paris heroes agreed, “Yeah Supes always had a stick up his rear, but J’onn is looking forward to meeting you guys, the dude doesn’t get off the Watchtower much.”

“Maybe he’ll bring M’gann,” Dick suggested, “She always loves meeting new heroes, and I’m sure she and Supey would love to talk magic.”

“Change first,” Bruce ordered, ushering his children back towards the main bedroom, “Then we can hash out anything else we wish tonight.”

____________________________________________

Tim felt himself relax more as the transformations fell around the teens, one by one, each taking time to introduce themselves and their Kwamis to the Bats. Profiles gradually began to fill further in his mind.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng- Cursive Soft Pink 15, Codenamed- Ladybug. Kwami- Tikki, the Ladybug of Creation. Main Power(s)- Lucky Charm and Miraculous Ladybug. Possible time limit, estimated to be 20 minutes after use of Lucky Charm

Chloe Bourgeois- Delicate Canary Yellow 14, Codenamed- Abeille. Kwami- Pollen, the Bee of Subjugation. Main Power- Venom. Possible time limit estimated to be 15 minutes after the use of Venom.

Kagami Tsurugi- Calligraphed Burgundy 13, Codenamed- Ryuko. Kwami- Longg, the Dragon of Power. Main Power- Elemental Transformations. Possible time limit estimated to be 15 minutes after the use of all three elemental transformations.

Adrian Agreste- Bubble lettered Neon Green 15, Codenamed- Chat Noir. Kwami- Plagg, the Black Cat of Destruction. Main Power- Cataclysm. Possible time limit, estimated to be 20 minutes after use of Cataclysm

Max Kanté- Baskerville Font Deep Golden 13, Codenamed- Pegasus. Kwami- Kaalki, the Horse of Teleportation. Main Power- Voyage. Time limit of Ten Minutes after using Voyage before Forced Detransformation.

Lê Chiến Kim - Buffon Font Grayish Brown 13, Codenamed- King Monkey. Kwami- Xuppu, the Monkey of Jubilation. Main Power- Uproar. Information points towards some type of time limit, but currently unknown

Alix Kubdel- Thin decorative font, Norwolk probably, Icy Blue 13, Codenamed- Bunnyx. Kwami- Fluff, the Rabbit of Time. Main Power- Burrow. Information points towards some type of time limit, but currently unknown.

Finally, he turned to the snake-themed hero, the only one who hadn’t changed back yet only to have considering aqua eyes peering back.

????- ?????, Codenamed- Viperion. Kwami- ?????, the Snake of Chance. Main Power- Second Chance. Possible time limit estimated to be 15 minutes after the use of Second chance (in a single time stream).

The only puzzle left on the Paris team.

“So I’m the only one you haven’t figured out yet,” He asked, a considering look flashing over his face.

Tim shrugged, “The miraculous mess with my power so I can’t see your number while you’re transformed so yes. I haven’t figured out a thing about you yet.”

“Well,” Viperion hummed a sly grin as he leaned into The older hero’s space, “I’m not going to give you an easy answer then, Bird boy.”

Tim couldn’t help the indignant huff, “Bird Boy? I’m older than you!”

“Hmmm,” The smirking snake just served to make the other Bat’s share a look at the display, “Well, Bird Boy. Let’s see how fast you can find me,”

“It’s Red Robin-”

“Yumm~”

Tim’s cheeks burned as his brothers, Chat Noir, Bunnyx, and King Monkey cackled behind him, the other heroes hiding smiles. The younger hero finally pulled back and leaped out of the window and disappearing into the night with a final wink at the stunned hero.

"Looks like you're following in B's footsteps," Dick teased clapping his shoulder, causing the others to laugh harder as Tim tried desperately to find his tongue.

____________________________________________

Taglist: @vixen-uchiha @iggy-of-fans @mewwitch @roseinbloom02 @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @mochinek0 @royalchaoticfangirl @09shell-sea09 @mystery-5-5 @derpingrainbow @aloha-posts-stuff @hauntedfreakdeputyhero @maribat-archive @blue-peach14 @kae690 @zazzlejazzle @vincentvangoose @be-happy-every-day-please @xxmadamjinxx @celestiacq @peculiarlylostdreamer @dani-ari @melicmusicmagic @themcclan @nyctamaximoff @nataladriana9 @drama-queen-supreme @miraculousbelladonna @urbanpineapplefarmer @graduatedmelon @lexysama @hecate-hallow @ki117h3dr4g0n @vinerlover @interobanginyourmom @bluefiredemon @imanerddealwith @tinybrie @clumsy-owl-4178 @shizukiryuu @whogavemeaninternet @schrodingers25 @lunar-wolf-warrior @urbanpineapplefarmer @xxmadamjinxx @crazylittlemunchkin @littleredrobinhoodlum @rougemme @dur55 @phantommeow12 @kand-roo @silvergold-swirl @officiallyathiana @completelypeccable @redhoodsdoll @nataladriana9 @mariae2900 @northernbluetongue @sturchling @thesunanditsangel @reyna-avila-ramirez-alreanaldo @bobothyross @taoiichii @magnitude101999 @magicalfirebird @nataladriana9 @panda3506 @aquariusrunes @woodland-queer @sayarock121 @mindfulmagics @magic-miraculous @my-name-is-michell @naoryllis @slytherinqueen2432 @ilovefluffbutsmutisalsogreat @captainartsypants @nanakeid @legendaryneckjudgestudent @smolplantmum @the-real-ginakid @nyaabinch @elmokingkong @gentlemanoftimetravel @whitennerdiest@imbrium-mare @tired-butterfly @corabeth11 @aestheticnpoetic @amirahevens

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soarcodes · 7 years

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Backup Tumblr Blogs - 2017

There are a lot of methods here. I’ve used the wordpress method but with that you get EVERYTHING after days of waiting with not much control. The method that gives the most control (and is so far the fastest) is tumblr-utils by bbolli on github. It can be daunting for those who aren’t familiar with command line, however. They do have a Windows guide (tumblr_backup_for_beginners) which walks you through step by step on setting it up and getting it started.

Below is my version of the guide with some helpful tips not mentioned in the original guide. Under read more for length.

1. Install Python

Key step do NOT skip, even if you already have python you may be using an outdated version and it requires 2.6 or 2.7 to run.) If you are using Windows, download the x86 MSI installer (unless you KNOW you have a x64 system that can handle that version. If you’re unsure, stick with x86)..

You may need to check “Copy Python” when installing in Windows or step 4 will not work.

Note: there are downloads for Mac OS. I don’t have a Mac to test this on, but it should work just as well as on Windows.

2. Download tumblr-utils.zip

Extract it somewhere safe that you know will not accidentally delete it. Do NOT extract it to Desktop or Downloads as directed in the original guide, especially if you like to clean your download folder every now and then. I installed it on my D:/ drive but you can probably get away with putting it in your Documents somewhere. Just remember where you put it.

3. Set up the PATH variable (optional but recommended)

The reason we set up the PATH is to make it more convenient to run the backup code in command line. If the path isn’t set, you have to type in the full address to the script file every time you run it. With the path, all you need to do is specify the file itself and your computer will know where it’s at.

If you’re running this on a Mac, you don’t need to specify PATH (although you can) All you need to do is drop tumblr_backup.py into /usr/local/bin using Finder and it should do the same thing.

For Windows 10, use the taskbar search “environment” and click on “Edit the system environment variables”. Click on “Path” and click “Edit...” add a New variable and type in the path to wherever you extracted tumblr-utils.

Note: You can easily grab the url path from windows explorer by clicking on the address bar and copy/pasting.

If you’re not running Windows 8 or 10, there’s a guide here for getting to the PATH environment variable. For Windows 7 / Vista / XP, make sure you separate existing information in the PATH from your new address with a semicolon. (see the first window in the screenshot above).

4. Create Your Backup Folder

I would suggest making a new folder called “Tumblr Backups” on a separate drive from C (D, etc, or even better on a flashdrive or external), but feel free to put it somewhere you have easy access to or will remember well (such as in your My Document’s folder). Again you’ll want to remember the address to it and how to get there from windows explorer. You can always move or copy this folder somewhere else after you’ve backed it up.

5. Navigate to Tumblr Backups in Command Line

For the next step we need to use Command Prompt (or Terminal on Mac/Linux). To open up Command Prompt in Windows 10 you can simply hit the Windows button + X and then C for Command prompt or search for it via taskbar (Here is a guide for opening it on other Windows versions). On a Mac, you open Terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T. You shouldn’t need admin privileges for what you’re about to do. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t.

When you open command prompt in Windows it will be set to C:\Users\[your username] (the same place Windows Explorer automatically opens to). We want to navigate to where you want to store your backup. If it’s in Documents, then type:

cd Documents/Tumblr Backups

hit enter and the prompt (the text in front of your cursor) will change to that directory. If you want to go up a folder type:

cd ../

If you set it up on a different drive in Windows, type the drive letter (capitalized), followed by a colon and hit enter and then change directory using cd

On a Mac, you also use the cd command to change directory in Terminal, but to change drives, all you need to do is type:

cd /Volumes/

The ls command (LS lowercase) lists all the files and folders within the directory you’ve currently navigated to. The /Volumes/ directory is where all your drives are located and you can navigate from there to your Tumblr Backups folder. NOTE use quotation marks around files/folders that have spaces!

cd ‘Tumblr Backups’

6. Run tumblr_backup.py

Once you’re in your Tumblr Backups directory, you’re ready to backup your posts!

If you want a complete backup of your blog as-is, type the following (replacing yourblog with the blog you want to backup) and hit enter:

tumblr_backup.py yourblog

It may take some time, but even for 18,000+ posts it should take no longer than 30 minutes depending on connection speed. On the next line it will give you a real-time update of how far it is to completing the backup. If it is interrupted, it will process what it’s pulled so far and generate a backup folder anyway. Note that you can backup multiple blogs at the same time by adding more than one blog name at the end, separated by spaces.

Don’t worry about pulling posts twice or accidentally doing the same command. It won’t add any duplicates.

This also works for side blogs and for backing up blogs run by others that you wish to keep in case it gets purged or leaves Tumblr.

If you only want your own content:

tumblr_backup.py --no-reblog yourblog

--no-reblog (that’s two dashes in front) tells it to only backup posts that you’ve made yourself, including reblogs where you’ve added new content.

If you’re only interested in backing up photo posts:

tumblr_backup.py -T photo yourblog

-T photo tells the script to only backup photo posts. Make sure to capitalize the T!

If you only want to backup posts with specific tags:

tumblr_backup.py -t tag1,another_tag_with_spaces yourblog

Separate each tag with a comma. Tags with spaces use underscores instead. Make sure the -t is lowercase!

If you have an unstable internet connection, break it up into multiple requests.

tumblr_backup.py -n 100 yourblog

tumblr_backup.py -n 100 -s 100 yourblog

tumblr_backup.py -n 100 -s 200 yourblog

-n 100 tells it to only count 100 posts, starting from the last post you made. -s 100 tells it to skip the first 100 posts or checks (which are the last posts you made).

You can find many more flag filters in the documentation that can help you fine tune your backup depending on what you want to keep and how you want the backup to be displayed. You can also get information on these options by running tumblr_backup.py --help (with two dashes).

If you are getting image missing errors, don’t worry. It’s usually just avatar images of deleted blogs that are no longer accessible.

If you get 503 messages and aren’t pulling posts, it could be you’re requesting too frequently and the server locked you out. I’ve had that happen with my stats project while testing. In that case you just have to walk away for a bit and wait it out Double-check that you spelled the blog name you want to pull from right and maybe try again in a couple hours or so.

7. Profit

If you look into Tumblr Backups afterwards, you should find a folder with your blog name. In it is a website hierarchy with each post in the posts folder modified by the originally posted date with all of your tags included. Images are in media, monthly archives in archive, and there is an index.html that allows you to navigate and view everything via your favorite browser.

If you want to use a custom CSS file, call it custom.css, put it in the backup folder and do a complete backup. This forces the pages to all use the new styling.

The CSS of your blog’s original theme css and avatar is always saved in theme/style.css.. Note that it does not save any javascript you may have had on your theme and you should back that up separately. This also does NOT backup pages.

#tumblr backup #backup your blog #backup guide

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cloudhunter25 · 3 years

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Descargar Gta 5 Mac Epic Games

The Grand Theft Auto V: Premium Edition includes the complete GTAV story, Grand Theft Auto Online and all existing gameplay upgrades and content. You’ll also get the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack, the fastest way to jumpstart your criminal empire in GTA Online. The hunt is on in Fortnite Chapter 2 - Season 5: Zero Point. Join Agent Jones as he enlists the greatest Hunters across Realities like The Mandalorian to stop others from escaping the loop. How to install Menyoo Epic Games 2020 GTA 5 MODS👚For 124Clothing and Merch: ME REACH 1K SUBSCRIBERS!!!!!📺Subscribe to Game. Epic, Epic Games, the Epic Games logo, Fortnite, the Fortnite logo, Unreal, Unreal Engine, the Unreal Engine logo, Unreal Tournament, and the Unreal Tournament logo.

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Until 2 years ago, I used to be a PC person. I had a giant tower desktop computer with fans with flashing lights. I replaced that with a maxed-out MacBook Pro so that I could start traveling and work from anywhere. The problem is, since then I’ve missed PC gaming. All that startup stuff gets so incredibly boring after awhile, and we need to destress. Why even leave your computer screen to destress when you can do it ON YOUR COMPUTER? YES! YES! FREEDOM OF REALITY!

So let’s browse the games in Apple’s App Store, well, they’re not so great. It’s kind of the iOS type stuff but then for OSX. Pretty very very shit.

But that’s stupid, because the MacBook Pro 15″ has two graphic cards, and they’re actually pretty powerful. And the MacBook Pro 13″ and MacBook Air have on-board graphic cards, but they’re fine to play PC games from a few years ago (like Skyrim). So it’s a bit of a shame, we can’t play games on it. And well, destress.

How about GTA V? It’s come out for PC a few months ago, so I wanted to see if I could get it working on my MacBook Pro. I was pretty sure I couldn’t, but I still wanted to try. I mean I’ve been wanting to play this for years, but never had a device for it. I mean, YOU NEED TO PLAY THIS, RIGHT?

I know you can run Windows on Mac with Parallels. But it’s a virtualization app, so it’d never run it with any high performance as the graphics drivers are virtual (software emulated) and not native (hardware). Try it with any game, it’ll probably crash even before playing it, or it’ll be extremely slow.

But then there’s Boot Camp, which lets you run Windows natively (without virtualization) and with high performance on your Mac. After it’s installed you’ll have to reboot to switch to Windows, but that only takes half a minute each time.

**Since Apple doesn’t like Windows, it makes it REALLY EXTRA SUPER hard to get Boot Camp to work. Obviously cause they hate Windows and never want you to use it. I get it. But that means it’s full of stupid bugs that you have to figure out yourself how to fix. It took me 10 days. Yes. 10 days of tears. Maybe that’s why I don’t know anybody using Boot Camp. So to save you all the PAIN and time, here is my tutorial with all the tricks to get it working. **

What you’ll need

16GB USB stick (not an SD card!), I tried a 8GB one as Apple recommends it, but it wasn’t big enough, yup WHATEVER!

Windows 8 ISO file, in a perfect world you’d buy this from Microsoft, but they make it really hard and want to ship you a physical CD (what the fuck, it’s 2015, let me buy an ISO), so just find an ISO file of Windows somewhere (okay fine, Microsoft, I guess you don’t WANT my money)

Steam account to buy GTA V PC (it’s about $50 I think, worth it because you can play it online if you buy it legally)

Prepare Boot Camp

First search for Boot Camp Assistant on your Mac. Click Continue and you’ll see this:

If this is your first time, select ALL boxes. The first one makes your USB stick loaded with Windows and OSX’s boot camp loader, the second one is the Boot Camp drivers it adds, the third one sounds weird but means it’ll partition your drive to set up Windows.

So now click Continue:

Select your Windows ISO file and continue.

It’ll take some time to copy the Windows ISO to your USB stick, and then download the drivers from Apple that are compatible to your Windows version.

When it finishes, you’ll see this partition window. This means it’ll divide your hard drive up in two pieces, one drive for Windows, one for Mac’s OSX. Here it gets really dodgy, because it actually doesn’t work properly EVER.

You need to choose how big your Windows drive should be. To calculate the size: Windows needs about 20 GB to function, then you need some space for your game. GTA V takes 65 GB, so that is 65+20=85 GB. To make it performant I rounded it up to 100 GB. But it depends on how big your games are etc. Skyrim e.g. is less than 10 GB. So you’d need only 30 to 40 GB probably.

But then it doesn’t work

The reason I said this is dodgy is because it’ll probably fail. You’ll see this amazingly descript error probably like me and my friends did:

It took me days to figure out how to fix it. But it comes down to this: (1) free up space on your drive and (2) if it has disk errors or not. Aim to get about 50% free space. For me that was insane because I have a 1TB drive, with 100 GB free, so I had to free up another 400 GB. It helps to just put stuff on an external hard drive while you’re setting up Boot Camp, you can put it back after.

The non-blue stuff on Macintosh HD is my free space, not enough obviously. Make sure you get about 50% free space on your drive. So if you have 256 GB drive, get 125 GB free. At 500 GB, 250 GB free. At 1 TB, 500 GB free. You get it.

Now fix those errors

Even after clearing all that space, Boot Camp will probably still whine and fail again, like it did for me.

That’s because it’ll run into some weird errors on your drive. Those weird errors are because off, well, I have no fucking clue. But they’re there. How to fix this? Well you open Disk Utility.

Click “Verify Disk” and it’ll check your disk. This might take awhile. I got this crazy scary error. If you didn’t get that and it’s verified, then just skip this part.

I was like “wait WHAT? NO!”. My SSD drive was broken? Why did nobody tell me! I rebooted into Recovery Mode (reboot and hold CMD+R). There I opened Disk Utility in there to verify my disk. If your disk is encrypted like mine, you need to unlock it first by right-clicking the disk, selecting Unlock and entering your password.

Then I verified it again, repaired everything and it worked fine. There were no errors. Odd right? Who cares! Because after this it worked. I rebooted into normal OSX mode and started Boot Camp Assistant again. This time I only selected the last checkbox:

Let’s try again

There we go, partition it:

After partitioning, Boot Camp Assistant automatically restarts. And then BAM!

Now Windows doesn’t like our partitions

Yay! It’s Windows! On a Mac! Don’t celebrate too early, because this is where hell starts.

See what that says? “Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition 3”. Wait WHAT? WHY! Boot Camp was supposed to fix this shit, right? I was supposed to not do anything and Boot Camp would put all the files in the right place, to make it work on Mac, right?

NOPE!

Then you press Format on that partition. And it seems to work but no it doesn’t because it says:

“The selected disk of the GPT partition style”

COME ON!

What does it take for a (wo)man to get a Windows around here?

Well, a lot. After hours of Googling, I figured it out.

You need to reboot back into OSX. Exit the installation. Then hold ALT/OPTION and select Macintosh HD to boot to. Then go back to Disk Utility:

Select your BOOTCAMP partition and go to the Erase tab, then under Format select ExFAT and click Erase. Make sure you’re erasing the correct partition (BOOTCAMP not Macintosh HD).

After that reboot your MacBook into Windows by rebooting and holding the ALT/OPTION key and selecting your USB stick (I think it’s called EFI). It’ll load the Windows install again.

Try selecting the BOOTCAMP partition in the Windows installation again, you can recognize it by the size you made it. For me that was 100 GB (it showed as I think 86 GB). If it still gives an error, go last resort. Remove the BOOTCAMP partition within the Windows installation by clicking Delete.

Then add a new partition by clicking New:

Try installing it on that partition. If that still doesn’t work, you’re out of luck, cause I have no idea either.

And then…it works

You’ll see this.

The problem is that there’s a good chance the Boot Camp drivers for Windows to understand your MacBook (e.g. use WiFi, sound, etc.) aren’t installed. Luckily they’re on your USB stick. In the Start Screen go to search and type File Explorer. Then try to fin your USB stick. Open the Boot Camp folder and find an Install app, open it and let it run. It’ll probably reboot.

Now with all your drivers installed, most of the stuff on your MacBook will work on Windows now. My friend has some problems with the Bluetooth keyboard, but that was an unofficial keyboard. My Apple one worked perfectly. As did my Logitech wireless mouse.

Now let’s make Windows suck less

Okay, so Windows 8 is obviously the worst interface any person has come across. Like Windows 8 itself actually feels pretty solid, if you get out of that insane box square maze mayhem they call the Start Menu now. It’s insane. Who runs this company? So incredibly stupid to do this. My dad just switched to OSX because he couldn’t understand this Start Screen. Biggest fail of the century.

We have no choice though. We want to play games! So to get your start menu (from old times) back, install Classic Shell.

Then set this image as the start button in preferences:

Yay! Now to disable that stupid Start Screen, right-click on the Task Bar, then click Properties, then click the Navigation tab, then check “When I sign in or close all apps on a screen, go to the desktop instead of Start”, uncheck “When I point to the upper-right corner, show the charms”.

Now install Steam

I’ll let you do this as it’s pretty easy. Go to Steam and the top right click Install Steam.

Then search for GTA V. Click Download.

Here’s the problem, GTA V is 65 GB and that will take awhile. You obviously don’t want to be stuck for hours in Windows. The trick here is to install Parallels in OSX (if you haven’t already). Reboot to OSX (hold ALT/OPTION and select Macintosh HD) and set Parallels up so it uses the Boot Camp partition. Open Parallels, select Boot Camp on the right and follow the instructions:

After installing, try playing GTA V. Customize the graphic settings a bit. You can’t play it on super high settings, but you can go pretty far on a MacBook Pro 15″. Like I said, it has an actually really powerful graphics card, so it can run GTA V fine.

Yay!

Now you can use your Boot Camp partition within OSX with Parallels to download games/software and continue working. Then when it’s finished, reboot to Windows and play your PC games.

It took me awhile to get back into playing games when I did all of this. I mean, it’s like it has to compete with reality, which is already insane for me, and so GTA V felt somewhat “fake” to me for days, until I accepted it was a game, and nothing I did in there would be an actual accomplishment. See, that’s what startup life psychology does to you. And on a serious note, that’s why we should all play more games. Because it helps you get out of your filter bubble.

Going outside to walk your dog? Naaaaaah, why would you! There’s GTA V!

P.S. I wrote a book on building indie startups called MAKE. And I'm on Twitter too if you'd like to follow more of my stories. I don't use email so tweet me your questions. Or you can see my list of posts. To get an alert when I write a new blog post, you can subscribe below:

Furthermore, the version of the game that is put up for free is the GTA 5’s Premium Edition – this includes the full storyline from the game plus Grand Theft Auto Online in addition to all currently existing in-game upgrades and bonus content. To top it all, users would also get the “Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack” that comes with even more content as well as 1,000,000 $ bonus in-game money for online play.

All you need in order to grab the GTA V for free is a working PC or Mac (of course, one that could run this rather resource-intensive game), an Epic Games Launcher, and an Epic Games account. However, one thing we must note here is that users would have to have enabled two-factor authentication on their accounts in order to be permitted to get the game for free.

Can you run GTA V on Mac?

The short answer is yes. If you have already set up you Mac to play PC games then just go ahead and take advantage of the Full free Version of GTA V. If not, you will need to install Boot Camp, create a virtual Machine and afterwards install the game.

How to play gta v on mac without bootcamp?

Performance wise it would be unpractical using other methods. The performance decrease would make the game unplayable. However if you are using one of the latest high performance macs on the market you can give Wineskin a shot. Setting up a Virtual machine would make much sense either.

Install GTA 5 on Mac with bootcamp

Before attempting to install boot camp we recommend checking your macs specifications and cross referencing them with those recommend to run GTA 5. Next, you will need a program called Boot Camp. With Boot Camp, you can install a version of Windows 10 which is compatible with GTA 5. Here are the steps for installing Windows 10 on a Mac using Boot Camp:

Download Windows 10 ISO onto your mac

Configure Boot Camp Assistant

Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Boot Camp Assistant

Open the program and click continue

Select the Windows 10 ISO

Choose somewhere around 100GB of space

Install the Windows 10 ISO and configure Windows

Install recommended drivers after booting up the Windows partition

If you are running Mac OS Cataline 10.15 we recommend watching this YouTube video to make sure you are not missing out on any of the steps.

Playing GTA V on Mac

Although ac computers aren’t specifically designed as gaming machines, it is still possible to play games in them. However, if you want to run GTA V on a Mac, you will first need to install Windows 7 or higher. We highly recommend installing windows 10 on your Mac even with the latest version of Mac OS 10.15.5 via something called Windows Boot Camp (official instructions from Apple on how to set this up) using the instructions above. Also, note that, in order to run the game on your Mac, you will also need at least 65 GB of free space and your machine would have to meet/exceed the minimum system requirements for the game.

Downloading GTA V for mac

Please remember to download the game on the windows version via Boot Camp. The Epic game launcher itself is not compatible with Mac OS.

Gta 5 Mac Free Download

Recommended Specs To run GTA V On Mac

Processor

Intel Core i5 3470 @ 3.2GHZ (4 CPUs) / AMD X8 FX-8350 @ 4GHZ (8 CPUs)

Memory

8 GB RAM

Video Card

NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB / AMD HD7870 2GB

HDD

Space90 GB available space

Use Geforce Now to play GTA on Mac

A number of users on the Geforce forums have been reporting that Grand Theft Auto 5 has been removed from the NVIDIA Geforce Now library of games. Many people used to play GTA on Geforce Now but the game isn’t available anymore. Initially, the rumors were that the reason for the game’s take-down was an update or some problem with the contract, but it seems that Rockstar has got a deal with Google for Stadia and Geforce Now yanked GTA because of that.

Use Stadia to play GTA on Mac

The good news is that the fans of Grand Theft Auto 5 might be able to see it arriving soon in Stadia Edition. A Rockstar Mag tweet indicated that the game can be released earlier than expected. According to the leak, players using Google Stadia seem to be shortly able to enjoy the game. However, the tweet did not have a source or any timeline for the game’s release. That’s why many fans already anticipate an update that will reveal when they should be able to play the ported title.

Descargar Gta 5 Mac Epic Games To Play

At the moment, the game persists in gaming charts, and, hence, bringing it to more playing platforms is financially meaningful for all interested parties.

Grand Theft Auto 5 also gives fans a lot of content and the players in Stadia would surely enjoy the well-regarded title in their gaming collection. It remains to be seen if this game would contribute to improving Stadia’s revenue, although this depends a lot on the continuing success and popularity of GTA 5.

Grand Theft Auto 5 can currently be played on PCs, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X scheduled to be launched in late 2021.

Running GTA on Apple silicon

For the time being m1 chips cannot run windows with Boot Camp. The fundamental reason is that the two operating systems now run on totally different architecture. Where as intel chips on Mac were capable of running Windows 10 this would be nearly impossible to achieve with all new Macs with apple silicon

Massive Epic Game Store crash due to a traffic spikeon release date

Descargar Gta 5 Mac Epic Games To Play

As soon as Epic Games Store’s official Twitter account announced that the game they will be made available for free would indeed be GTA V, understandably, a huge number of users seem to have rushed to the Store in anticipation of the free release of the title. This, however, seems to have caused a massive crash on the Epic Games servers that lasted for hours. The Epic Games team addressed this issue on their Twitter page, expressing their apologies and assuring their customers that they are working on resolving the issue. At the moment of writing this post, the server problems at Epic Games Store seem to have been resolved and people could now once again log in with their accounts and claim the Premium Edition of the acclaimed Rockstar game.

This is not the first time Epic Games Store has made such free game giveaways. Ever since the store was launched in December 2018, they have been occasionally making games free for a temporary amount of time and according to a statement from the company made in January, they intend to keep doing throughout the whole 2020.

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jackrgaines · 4 years

Text

What Legal Requirements Apply to Your Small Business Website and Online Store?

The post What Legal Requirements Apply to Your Small Business Website and Online Store? appeared first on HostGator Blog.

Are you ready to set up your online store or small business website? Make sure you’re clear on the laws you’ll need to follow.

We’ve written before about the permits or licenses your business may need to operate online. In this post, we focus on website-specific legal issues.

First, our disclaimer: I’m not an attorney, and you should check in with a business lawyer if you have questions.

The Fine Print: Terms of Services

Make sure your site complies with your web host’s terms of service (TOS) and acceptable use policy. For example, HostGator’s TOS requires—among other things–that site owners be at least 18 years old and not be in a country under sanction by the US government. The acceptable use policy, meanwhile, prohibits using the service for gambling, bitcoin mining, live sporting event broadcasts, and other heavily regulated or resource-intensive businesses.

Next, it’s time to create some fine print of your own. Display your business terms and conditions about pricing, returns, shipping, and billing so customers know what to expect. This is especially important if you’re selling products or digital goods directly from your site.

Security and Data Privacy

Your customers want to know they can trust you with their information. Data breaches can wreck your business with financial losses, lost trust, and legal penalties. And with the EU’s far-reaching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) now in effect, even the smallest businesses need to step up their security compliance.

GDPR applies to all businesses that offer goods and services to people in the EU, no matter where those businesses are located or how many people they employ. GDPR is a huge law, but the basics for small business owners are:

You must have clear consent to collect consumer data. For example, you can add a GDPR-compliant cookie consent banner to your site.

You must delete customer data on request.

You need to keep customer data safe or face fines. HostGator’s SSL certificates encrypt data to and from your site, making it compliant with privacy laws and PCI-DSS security standards. HostGator’s Security and Privacy Bundle protects your website from viruses, malware, hackers, and spam by automatically scanning your website to detect and remove threats.

You must report serious data breaches to law enforcement within 72 hours of discovery.

Anti-Spam Laws

No one likes spam emails, and lawmakers around the world are serious about stopping it. How serious depends on the region—US anti-spam laws have looser restrictions and lower penalties than those in Canada and the EU. If your new company will do cross-border business with Canadian and European customers, or if there’s a chance you will do so in the future, your best move is to follow the strictest anti-spam protocols.

In the US

The CAN-SPAM law, which stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing, only deals with business-to-consumer marketing emails. CAN-SPAM requires recipients to opt out of messages they don’t want to get, and the unsubscribe process can be a multi-step hassle. CAN-SPAM violations can result in fines of as much as $40,000 per incident. This law doesn’t clearly address marketing emails sent to US residents from outside the country.

In Canada

Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL) created an opt-in system, which means people must sign up to get your marketing emails (or texts, voicemails, and other direct marketing digital communications) unless they already have a recent business relationship with you. CASL applies to emails sent to Canadians from outside Canada. Unsubscribing must be easy and fast. CASL violations can result in fines up to $10 million.

One more potential penalty for CASL violations hasn’t taken effect yet: the right of individuals to sue companies that spam them for as much as $1 million per day. That part of the law is under review.

In the EU

GDPR covers spam, and its provisions are stricter than the US and Canadian laws. Not only does GDPR require recipients to opt in to marketing messages, there’s no implied consent by people who are already your customers. To add people, you need to make a separate, specific request, with no pre-checked boxes, and parental consent for anyone under the age of 16. GPDR fines are roughly $11 million per incident.

In Brazil

Brazil passed its own privacy law in August 2020. The law, which is called Lei Geral de Protecao de Dados (or the LGPD), is similar in scope and effect to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Like the GDPR, the LGPD requires businesses handling personal data to be accountable for collecting, using and managing that information appropriately. It also provides individuals with new rights. You can learn more about the basics of the LGPD here.

Anti-Spam Best Practices to Follow

For your existing list, only send marketing messages to people you’ve done business with within the past two years.

For all new sign-ups, create a separate opt-in form that includes a tick box for recipients to indicate whether they’re age 16 or older.

Identify your business clearly in all your marketing messages.

Include an easy-to-use opt-out tool with every message you send.

Comply with opt-out requests quickly.

Your Intellectual Property

Technically speaking, you hold the copyright to the stuff you create as soon as you create it, but a copyright notice on your site is always a good idea. It accomplishes the obvious goal of letting visitors know that the content on your site belongs to you.

If you have registered trademarks for your business name, products, or services, include a trademark notice on your site. We talk about trademarks in our article on small business permits and licenses.

Your Website’s Accessibility

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that most businesses make their websites accessible for people with vision, hearing, and other impairments. The ADA requirement may not apply to your business if you’re very small or just getting started. Businesses that operate at least 20 weeks each year *and* have 15 or more full-time employees must maintain accessible web sites. “Public accommodation” businesses like transportation and hotels must also comply.

Even if you’re not required to make your website accessible, it’s a good idea, because more than 12% of Americans have some form of disability. Not only that, accessible features like larger fonts, clear contrast between fonts and backgrounds, transcripts of videos, and written descriptions of images can be useful to everyone—think about how many people watch videos with the sound off and you’ll see why captions or transcripts are a smart move. UC Berkeley has a great guide to making your site accessible.

Make Your Small Business Website Legally Compliant

Creating a compliant site takes some work, but the payoff is a safer business web site, stronger customer trust, and a lower risk of privacy and security related fines and losses later on. If you’re a HostGator customer, contact us to add the Privacy and Security Bundle to your website now.

Find the post on the HostGator Blog

from HostGator Blog https://www.hostgator.com/blog/legal-requirements-small-business-websites/

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globalmediacampaign · 5 years

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How realtor.com® maximized data upload from Amazon S3 into Amazon DynamoDB

This is a customer post by Arup Ray, VP Data Technology at realtor.com ®, and Daniel Whitehead, AWS Solutions Architect. Arup Ray would like to acknowledge Anil Pillai, Software Development Engineer at Amazon, for his pioneering contributions to this project during his former tenure at realtor.com ® as Senior Principal Data Engineer. realtor.com ®, operated by Move, Inc., is in their own words, “a trusted resource for home buyers, sellers, and dreamers. It offers a robust database of for-sale properties across the U.S. and the information, tools, and professional expertise to help people move confidently through every step of their home journey.” At realtor.com®, data and analytics are an important part of making the process of buying a home easier and more rewarding. As our customers search for properties, we identify the attributes of most interest to our customers and use that data to generate more tailored recommendations for similar houses within the area, to help our customers find their ideal new home. Personalized home suggestions are of critical importance to finding a customer’s dream home. This is why realtor.com® utilizes Amazon DynamoDB, a NoSQL database that allows for a flexible schema to house the customer analytics data sets, the basis for realtor.com’s recommendation engine. These data sets are created and updated by aggregating data from multiple upstream services, which are ingested into realtor.com’s analytics engine. There are tens of millions of nightly updates, which would take multiple hours to process if realtor.com® uploaded each item serially to DynamoDB using the PutItem API. Instead, realtor.com® created a system that segments the data set and takes advantage of the BatchWrite API, which allows us to concurrently upload 10-MB files across 25 concurrent data streams, accelerating realtor.com’s data ingestion from hours to minutes. This post shows how realtor.com® uploaded hundreds of GB data sets in parallel from Amazon S3 into DynamoDB using Amazon Athena and AWS Glue. This system increased the speed-to-market for realtor.com’s recommendation and personalization services API from hours to minutes. Solution overview At a high level, the solution includes the following steps: Data is gathered from upstream sources that produces a file. This file contains millions of records and is then stored on S3 via the output of a batch job every night. When the file lands in an S3 bucket, an Athena query is triggered by the object landing in the bucket to partition the large file into 25 smaller chunks with each line having 16 MB of data utilizing Athena’s Create Table As Function. Once the Athena queries are finished running, an AWS Glue job is initiated with multiple spark workers that uploads the data in parallel into DynamoDB. Once the process is complete, the files in the staging bucket are deleted. The following diagram illustrates this workflow: This solution uses AWS CLI, S3, Athena, AWS Glue, and DynamoDB. There is a cost associated with building out this pipeline. Preparing the data store The first step is to create the DynamoDB table to be the target destination for your data. Complete the following steps: From the DynamoDB console, choose Create Table. For Table name, enter target_table. For Primary key, enter pk. Select Use default settings and select Create Table. The following screenshot demonstrates steps 1–4. Choose Create table. Choose the table you created as seen in the screenshot below. Choose Capacity. Under Write capacity, for Minimum provisioned capacity, enter 5000 as shown in the screenshot below. Choose Save. This post uses DynamoDB’s automatic scaling feature to scale up the entries into the table. You must initially set this at 5000 minimum to provide ample throughput for the BatchWrite operations and mimic the writes that occur on the table as part of daily operation. This allows your table to scale to a maximum throughput that increases the amount of writes until all the items are in the DynamoDB table. Creating the data set To simulate the pipeline, this post uses a subset of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) Trip Record Data. You need an S3 bucket in the same Region as your DynamoDB table. For more information, see Create a Bucket. The first step is to copy a file of the data set to your bucket. You must set up permissions and access controls that allow you to upload a file to your bucket. After you have a secret key and access key configured into your CLI, complete the following steps: Enter the following command into your terminal configured with the AWS Command Line Interface: aws s3 cp s3://nyc-tlc/trip data/yellow_tripdata_2009-01.csv s3:// After the data is in S3, open the Athena console. Choose Create a table. Choose From S3 bucket data. For Database, enter input_db. For Table Name, enter input_raw. For Location of Input Data Set, enter the location of your S3 bucket where you copied your data. The following screenshot demonstrates steps 5–7. Choose Next. On the data format screen, select Text File with Custom Delimiters as shown in the screenshot below. Choose Next. On the Columns screen, for Column Name, enter s3_data as shown below. Choose Next. Keep the defaults for your partition and choose Create Table. The query editor is updated with a query that looks similar to the following code: CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS input_db.input_raw ( s3_data string ) ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.serde2.lazy.LazySimpleSerDe' WITH SERDEPROPERTIES ( 'serialization.format' = ' ', 'field.delim' = ' ', 'collection.delim' = '', 'mapkey.delim' = '' ) LOCATION 's3:///' TBLPROPERTIES ('has_encrypted_data'='false'); Choose Run Query. The resulting table pulls in two values for the Vendor Name and the Pickup Date over the 14 million rows in the data set. The raw data for this pipeline has now been created and the next step is to prepare this data to upload into DynamoDB. Because this data set doesn’t have a unique identifier, you must create a unique partition key from the data. To create the primary key, take your raw data from Athena and make an md5 hash and covert that into hex to grant a unique identifier for your rows. You can make sure that you don’t have any duplicates within your data by using the distinct operator. You do not need to apply this process to your data set if you have clean data with unique records (it is also not part of the realtor.com® pipeline). On the Athena console, navigate to the query editor and enter the following code: CREATE table input_for_ddb AS SELECT DISTINCT to_hex(md5(to_utf8(s3_data))) AS primary_key, replace(substring(trim(s3_data), 1, 20), '', '') AS attribute FROM input_raw WHERE length(trim(s3_data)) > 5 This creates a new table with the prepared data. The next step is to shard the data using ntile, which is a window function to distribute rows of an ordered partition into equal groups. This splits a data set into smaller chunks and maximizes your ability to upload into DynamoDB. Enter the following code: CREATE table dynamodb_shards AS SELECT primary_key, ntile(1000) OVER (order by primary_key) ntile_value FROM input_for_ddb The last step for preparing the data is to run a query that joins the data from the two previous tables you created and creates the final data set that is pushed to DynamoDB. CREATE table push_to_ddb_data AS SELECT dynamo_shards_table.ntile_value, ARRAY['primary_key','attribute' ] AS meta_array, array_agg(ARRAY[ coalesce(case WHEN length(trim(cast(input_for_ddb_table.primary_key AS varchar)))=0 THEN NULL ELSE cast(input_for_ddb_table.primary_key AS varchar) END ,'NULL'), coalesce(case WHEN length(trim(cast(attribute AS varchar)))=0 THEN NULL ELSE cast(attribute AS varchar) END ,'NULL') ]) AS data_array FROM input_for_ddb AS input_for_ddb_table JOIN dynamodb_shards dynamo_shards_table on(input_for_ddb_table.primary_key = dynamo_shards_table.primary_key) GROUP BY 1 Running the process After this query is finished, complete the following steps: On the AWS Glue console, under ETL, choose Jobs. Choose Add Job. In the AWS Glue Job configuration screen, name your job S3toDynamoDB. Choose Create IAM role. Choose Roles. Choose Create a Role. On the Create role screen, select Glue. Choose Next: Permissions. Choose Create a policy. A new window opens. Choose JSON. Enter the following policy (make sure you enter in your AWS account number): { "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Sid": "GlueScriptPermissions", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "athena:BatchGetQueryExecution", "athena:GetQueryExecution", "athena:GetQueryResults", "athena:GetQueryResultsStream", "athena:GetWorkGroup", "dynamodb:BatchWriteItem", "glue:GetTable", "s3:GetObject", "s3:ListBucket", "s3:PutObject" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:athena:*::workgroup/*", "arn:aws:dynamodb:*::table/target_table", "arn:aws:glue:*::catalog", "arn:aws:glue:*::database/input_db", "arn:aws:glue:*::table/input_db/push_to_ddb_data", "arn:aws:s3:::/*" ] }, { "Sid": "Logs", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "athena:GetCatalogs", "logs:Create*", "logs:Put*" ], "Resource": "*" }, { "Sid": "Passrole", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": "iam:PassRole", "Resource": "arn:aws:iam:::role/AWSGlueServiceRole" } ] } Choose Next: Tags. Choose Next: Review. Name your policy AWSGlueServicePolicy. Choose Create. In the Role window, find your newly created policy. Choose Next: Tags. Choose Next: Review. Name your role AWSGlueServiceRole. Find this new role in the dropdown for your AWS Glue job. For Type, choose Spark. For Glue version, select Spark 2.2 Python 2. For This job runs, select A new script to be authored by you. Under Security configuration, script libraries, and job parameters, for Maximum capacity, enter 30. Leave everything else as default. Choose Next. On the next screen, choose Save job and edit script. On the next screen, enter the following code (make sure to change to the region you are operating in): #---- Glue PySpark script from __future__ import print_function import boto3 import time import sys from awsglue.transforms import * from awsglue.utils import getResolvedOptions from pyspark.context import SparkContext from awsglue.context import GlueContext from awsglue.job import Job #------------ Input section ----- args = getResolvedOptions(sys.argv, ['JOB_NAME']) DYNAMO_TABLE_NAME = 'target_table' athena_db_name = 'input_db' athena_table_name = 'push_to_ddb_data' def generate_data(meta_list, data_list): for data in data_list: yield dict(zip(meta_list, data)) def push2ddb_batch_put(meta_list, data_list): try: dynamodb = boto3.resource('dynamodb', region_name=) table = dynamodb.Table(DYNAMO_TABLE_NAME) with table.batch_writer() as batch: for data in generate_data(meta_list, data_list): ndata = {k: v for k, v in data.items() if v != "NULL"} batch.put_item( Item=ndata ) return len(data_list) except Exception as err: print("Error: while inserting data to DynamoDB...{err}".format(err=err)) raise err def insert_into_ddb(line): return push2ddb_batch_put(line['meta_array'], line['data_array']) if __name__ == "__main__": try: # ---- Create the Glue Context and using Glue Context create a data frame glueContext = GlueContext(SparkContext.getOrCreate()) src_data = glueContext.create_dynamic_frame.from_catalog(database=athena_db_name, table_name=athena_table_name) print("Count: ", src_data.count()) src_data.printSchema() df1 = src_data.toDF() df1.cache() df1.show(10) start_time = time.time() print(df1.rdd.map(insert_into_ddb).collect()) print(time.time() - start_time) except Exception as err: print("There is an error while inserting data to DDB...{err}".format(err=err)) raise err Choose Save. In this script, you are reading the prepared data that you previously created with Athena. The chunks that were created are loaded into DynamoDB using the parallel processing capability of AWS Glue Spark workers in addition to the DynamoDB BatchWriteItem API. Choose Run job. The AWS Glue job takes some time to provision but after it is running, you can see the logs from the AWS Glue cluster. Throughput should be maximized and scale up dynamically as time goes on until the AWS Glue job has finished. The metrics in the DynamoDB Metrics tab should look similar to the following screenshot. DynamoDB’s autoscaling feature began scaling based upon the number of writes the AWS Glue job was uploading into the DynamoDB table. At certain thresholds, the table increased the amount of write capacity to accommodate for the target of 70% utilization on the table. AWS Glue had multiple concurrent writers that used the retry logic of the BatchWrite call within the AWS SDK, which made it so that even if there were a throttled request, it would eventually get written to the DynamoDB table by successful completion of the job. The preceding screenshot shows that you uploaded 14 million items into DynamoDB in less than half an hour. In realtor.com’s case, this is a batch job that runs at one time during the day. With AWS Glue and DynamoDB, realtor.com® has a system that scales up dynamically with the amount of data that must be written to DynamoDB and scales down after the completion of the job without having to manage infrastructure. Conclusion This post demonstrated how to do the following: Set up a DynamoDB table to land your data into. Run multiple queries using Athena to prepare ingested raw data into a format that AWS Glue can parallelize. Set up an AWS Glue job that you can invoke on demand, either triggered by an event or on a schedule to parallelly upload into DynamoDB. realtor.com® built out the Athena and AWS Glue to DynamoDB pipeline to lower overall management while allowing the system to scale dynamically. This decreases the amount of time it takes to update realtor.com’s analytic profiles, which further help users find the house of their dreams. About the Author Arup Ray is the VP of Engineering at realtor.com and heads the Data Technology team. The data team at realtor.com has been using AWS technologies to make data actionable for home buyers and real estate professionals. Daniel Whitehead is a Solutions Architect with Amazon Web Services. https://probdm.com/site/ODgwNg

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ariibees · 5 years

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A Short Review and Analysis of Cybersecurity Themes and Examples Presented in the Emoji Movie

Please realize that I wrote this in 30 minutes as a class assignment. It is a pure, messy, unedited stream-of-consciousness. :D

The plot of this movie is well-described as a combination of the The Lego Movie and Inside Out. The main character is an emoji who, instead of performing his task of acting as the emoji type he appears as, switches between multiple emoji types. After destroying part of a necessary operating console to use the emoji bar in text messages, he and another emoji sneak into other app to visit a hacker to reprogram him to conform to societal norms. They then spend most of the movie attempting to move to Dropbox for plot purposes while anti-virus bots chase after them and the phone is at an increased risk of being factory reset. The main character is then captured and sent for a public execution, just before which the antagonist is stopped and the risk of a phone reset remedied. There is also a side-plot which involves two emojis dealing with marital problems under the stress of their son becoming a criminal and running from the board’s ruling and another side-plot in which two children must face communication issues in resolving their own emotions in regards to the other.

The most important takeaway from this specific movie is the unfortunate prevalence of marketing in the media created as cheap and blatant cash-grabs, seen commonly in a number of studios. These films may be based around a specific pre-existing toy or product to sell (an example of this would be The Lego Movie, or many video game movies such as the Angry Birds movie) or cash in on a pre-existing franchise (such as in many of the newer animated adaptations of Dr. Seuss stories). This movie’s plot and major themes may be tied back into the topics discussed in class through the major point of cybermarketing, as this movie (which features several prominent games and online services) was heavily advertised online using its appeal of a common object (emojis), popular music, bright coloration, and well-known games and services to draw in viewers.

This movie also, albeit briefly and somewhat inconsistently, touches on problems with online anonymity, communication issues arising in young teenagers, and the unreliability and poor education on the increased prevalence of interconnectivity, the internet of things, and the internet as a whole. One example of the problems with online anonymity and communication is in an earlier scene in which two of the main characters discuss how social media such as Facebook has led to an oversharing of personal details and a degradation of genuine reactions and real-life interactions. Other scenes include those with “troll” characters who deliberately use their perceived untouchability to verbally harass other characters. It also shows how the internet can often provide entertainment without much value, in which several characters are trapped by the draw of cat videos on Youtube. More directly related to the real-life effects, the human character who owns the phone that the film mostly takes place within has proportionately little screen time and is shown to be constantly hampered by his phone while still being unable to exist without it (having it on his desk during class, being unable to express his emotions without the use of emojis, the teacher being forced to relate to emojis to explain the concept of hieroglyphics, several students being so distracted by their phones that they walk right into each other, and malfunctions in phones having tangible real-world associated negative social effects). One app is also disguised as another out of distrust for authority figures who may look through the phone. Further communication (and privacy) issues can also be seen when the main characters are attempting to guess a password. In order to guess the password, they read over the main character’s email trash, finding what is framed as a romantic letter that was never sent (but was really just copied song lyrics instead of original writing) and using the intended recipient of the email as the password, showing the need for better education supporting secure passwords. (On a related note, the following scene shows the characters walking into the supposedly secure Dropbox but an “anti-virus bot” is then later able to break through the firewall and directly steal content out of the cloud.) another scene earlier on in the film similarly touches on how quickly common objects can be made irrelevant or mostly lacking value as emoticons are seen as frail and incapable of properly communicating in the same way that emojis can, with emoticons barely able to express words at all. Better education could also be used in scenes which attempt to draw upon existing concepts but are incorrectly executed (such as in which a character unplugs his phone during a factory reset but everything magically reappears; another character sees during this scene an odd emoji and is immediately infatuated and does not question its unordinary nature or pursue how it was created).

As a final note, this movie shows the inescapability and concern associated with illegal activities on the internet, mostly surrounding hacking, the usage of “bots”, and other concerns. Firstly, one of the main protagonists is considered a “hacker,” one of a presumably illegal group who uses a wristband to remain constantly connected to information on the phone. She is shown to supposedly have the ability to access anything unsecured, using this information to gain access to secured areas (she lists off a large amount of data she has already collected on the person whose accounts they are attempting to infiltrate) while also having supposedly removed an emoji from the phone’s system itself. This can show the amount of access that hackers can gain over nearby systems they can connect to and how unprotected but seemingly unconcerning information (such as -- as was given in the film -- preferences for food, animals, and people) can be used to profile a potential victim of hacking. Next, the usage of “bots” (formally considered anti-virus bots by the main antagonist) shows the unreliability of automation, remote work, and the ability to remove harmful content. In a fairly early scene, these bots appear to deliberately ignore a number of viruses in the area, instead focusing on a differing assigned target, showing how even normally-functional systems can be manipulated to ignore their original function. Later, one of these bots is given an “illegal upgrade” by the system supervisor in order to extend its capabilities, appearing much less concerned towards data damage or deletion and instead only attempting to destroy its target with increased ability, representing mistrust and concern in how seemingly “beneficial” but shady add-ons can oftentimes corrupt or further damage a system (earlier anti-virus bots deleted viruses and spam, while the illegally-upgraded bot was considered to be particularly ruthless and harm the continued psyche and job-mentality of other vital working emojis). In addition, the illegal upgrade is presented as being a part of the phone already, with a custom storage pedestal built into the texting app, showing how oftentimes harmful or illegal add-ons can appear to be normal and a part of the system on first glance. As for the last note on other internet concerns, a number of other anthropomorphized concepts are seen in various scenes, including viruses, trojan horses, people who pirate content (music is one example given in the film), spam emails, and internet trolls. The most prominent case of this is spam, in which one of the main characters is almost immediately roped into signing up for an offered service; additionally, internet trolls are seen to have a damaging effect on another character’s feelings of self-worth in regards to how their friends treat them.

Altogether, this made me more aware by seeing how this film highlights several problems with the internet and how we use it in modern society, as well as the general issue of how marketing is aimed to maximize profits.

A few additional thoughts from about an hour after writing:

The hacker character’s design includes a black hat, possibly a nod to her being a black hat hacker (while a “good guy,” she is first found in a shy bar and her main goal is to hack her way past a firewall to access the cloud.) Her name, Jailbreak, also refers to her actions in regards to the phone. Part of her character arc also includes a reveal of her “true” and previously unknown identity, relating to the anonymity of a hacker attacking a system and how the person behind the screen is oftentimes unknown.

Pirates, viruses, internet trolls, spam, and trojan horses all exist on the same plane of existence in the movie, being a possible nod to the clear lasting impacts that each of these may have on the websites they are present on, whether they are a portion of code or a person affecting someone else.

In fact, the entire scene with the bar is made to reinforce the dangers of certain areas online, characters even pointing out how it is hidden from authority figures and parents because they would not want their child to be using it. It shows how easy it is to be sucked into problems dealing with online threats and how viruses can easily avoid anti-virus software that is comprehensive and secure.

The bar also has each of these character using similar models or character designs to reinforce the fact that while torrenting and such may seem to lack much danger, many of these files could be hiding viruses within them.

Bonus reply after I posted this on our class forum:

“Great analysis (10/10); you explored many of the movie's implications and allusions in detail. I have not seen the movie, but from your discussion the movie seems to be somewhat humorous and full of references to modern technology, but without much psychological or philosophical depth. Some of the movie's scenes, as you described, can have benefit; the scene with the individual that was able to find a user's password by looking at a love letter both emphasizes the importance of creating a hard-to-guess password, and also relates to the forum post a few weeks ago about the data that can be gleaned by going through someone's trash (PII in trash cans may lead to the discovery of passwords). Overall, the movie sounds like it could be superficially interesting and possibly funny, but without real significance, so I would give it a 6/10.”

#text post #ariibees #cybersecurity

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terabitweb · 5 years

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Original Post from Amazon Security Author: Umesh Ramesh

Traditionally, analyzing data logs required you to extract, transform, and load your data before using a number of data warehouse and business intelligence tools to derive business intelligence from that data—on top of maintaining the servers that ran behind these tools.

This blog post will show you how to analyze AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF) logs and quickly build multiple dashboards, without booting up any servers. With the new AWS WAF full logs feature, you can now log all traffic inspected by AWS WAF into Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets by configuring Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose. In this walkthrough, you’ll create an Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream to which AWS WAF full logs can be sent, and you’ll enable AWS WAF logging for a specific web ACL. Then you’ll set up an AWS Glue crawler job and an Amazon Athena table. Finally, you’ll set up Amazon QuickSight dashboards to help you visualize your web application security. You can use these same steps to build additional visualizations to draw insights from AWS WAF rules and the web traffic traversing the AWS WAF layer. Security and operations teams can monitor these dashboards directly, without needing to depend on other teams to analyze the logs.

The following architecture diagram highlights the AWS services used in the solution:

Figure 1: Architecture diagram

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that lets you monitor HTTP and HTTPS requests that are forwarded to an Amazon API Gateway API, to Amazon CloudFront or to an Application Load Balancer. AWS WAF also lets you control access to your content. Based on conditions that you specify—such as the IP addresses from which requests originate, or the values of query strings—API Gateway, CloudFront, or the Application Load Balancer responds to requests either with the requested content or with an HTTP 403 status code (Forbidden). You can also configure CloudFront to return a custom error page when a request is blocked.

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed service for delivering real-time streaming data to destinations such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Elasticsearch Service, and Splunk. With Kinesis Data Firehose, you don’t need to write applications or manage resources. You configure your data producers to send data to Kinesis Data Firehose, and it automatically delivers the data to the destination that you specified. You can also configure Kinesis Data Firehose to transform your data before delivering it.

AWS Glue can be used to run serverless queries against your Amazon S3 data lake. AWS Glue can catalog your S3 data, making it available for querying with Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift Spectrum. With crawlers, your metadata stays in sync with the underlying data (more details about crawlers later in this post). Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift Spectrum can directly query your Amazon S3 data lake by using the AWS Glue Data Catalog. With AWS Glue, you access and analyze data through one unified interface without loading it into multiple data silos.

Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data directly in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to manage, and you pay only for the queries that you run.

Amazon QuickSight is a business analytics service you can use to build visualizations, perform one-off analysis, and get business insights from your data. It can automatically discover AWS data sources and also works with your data sources. Amazon QuickSight enables organizations to scale to hundreds of thousands of users and delivers responsive performance by using a robust in-memory engine called SPICE.

SPICE stands for Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine. SPICE supports rich calculations to help you derive insights from your analysis without worrying about provisioning or managing infrastructure. Data in SPICE is persisted until it is explicitly deleted by the user. SPICE also automatically replicates data for high availability and enables Amazon QuickSight to scale to hundreds of thousands of users who can all simultaneously perform fast interactive analysis across a wide variety of AWS data sources.

Step one: Set up a new Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream

In the AWS Management Console, open the Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose service and choose the button to create a new stream.

In the Delivery stream name field, enter a name for your new stream that starts with aws-waf-logs- as shown in the screenshot below. AWS WAF filters all streams starting with the keyword aws-waf-logs when it displays the delivery streams. Note the name of your stream since you’ll need it again later in the walkthrough.

For Source, choose Direct PUT, since AWS WAF logs will be the source in this walkthrough.

Figure 2: Select the delivery stream name and source

Next, you have the option to enable AWS Lambda if you need to transform your data before transferring it to your destination. (You can learn more about data transformation in the Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose documentation.) In this walkthrough, there are no transformations that need to be performed, so for Record transformation, choose Disabled.

Figure 3: Select “Disabled” for record transformations

You’ll have the option to convert the JSON object to Apache Parquet or Apache ORC format for better query performance. In this example, you’ll be reading the AWS WAF logs in JSON format, so for Record format conversion, choose Disabled.

Figure 4: Choose “Disabled” to not convert the JSON object

On the Select destination screen, for Destination, choose Amazon S3.

Figure 5: Choose the destination

For the S3 destination, you can either enter the name of an existing S3 bucket or create a new S3 bucket. Note the name of the S3 bucket since you’ll need the bucket name in a later step in this walkthrough.

For Source record S3 backup, choose Disabled, because the destination in this walkthrough is an S3 bucket.

Figure 6: Enter the S3 bucket name, and select “Disabled” for the source record S3 backup

On the next screen, leave the default conditions for Buffer size, Buffer interval, S3 compression and S3 encryption as they are. However, we recommend that you set Error logging to Enabled initially, for troubleshooting purposes.

For IAM role, select Create new or choose. This opens up a new window that will prompt you to create firehose_delivery_role, as shown in the following screenshot. Choose Allow in this window to accept the role creation. This grants the Kinesis Data Firehose service access to the S3 bucket.

Figure 7: Select “Allow” to create the IAM role “firehose_delivery_role”

On the last step of configuration, review all the options you’ve chosen, and then select Create delivery stream. This will cause the delivery stream to display as “Creating” under Status. In a couple of minutes, the status will change to “Active,” as shown in the below screenshot.

Figure 8: Review the options you selected

Step two: Enable AWS WAF logging for a specific Web ACL

From the AWS Management Console, open the AWS WAF service and choose Web ACLs. Open your Web ACL resource, which can either be deployed on a CloudFront distribution or on an Application Load Balancer.

Choose the Web ACL for which you want to enable logging. (In the below screenshot, we’ve selected a Web ACL in the US East Region.)

On the Logging tab, choose Enable Logging.

Figure 9: Choose “Enable Logging”

The next page displays all the delivery streams that start with aws-waf-logs. Choose the Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream that you created for AWS WAF logs at the start of this walkthrough. (In the screenshot below, our example stream name is “aws-waf-logs-us-east-1)

You can also choose to redact certain fields that you wish to exclude from being captured in the logs. In this walkthrough, you don’t need to choose any fields to redact.

Select Create.

Figure 10: Choose your delivery stream, and select “Create”

After a couple of minutes, you’ll be able to inspect the S3 bucket that you defined in the Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream. The log files are created in directories by year, month, day, and hour.

Step three: Set up an AWS Glue crawler job and Amazon Athena table

The purpose of a crawler within your Data Catalog is to traverse your data stores (such as S3) and extract the metadata fields of the files. The output of the crawler consists of one or more metadata tables that are defined in your Data Catalog. When the crawler runs, the first classifier in your list to successfully recognize your data store is used to create a schema for your table. AWS Glue provides built-in classifiers to infer schemas from common files with formats that include JSON, CSV, and Apache Avro.

In the AWS Management Console, open the AWS Glue service and choose Crawler to setup a crawler job.

Choose Add crawler to launch a wizard to setup the crawler job. For Crawler name, enter a relevant name. Then select Next.

Figure 11: Enter “Crawler name,” and select “Next”

For Choose a data store, select S3 and include the path of the S3 bucket that stores your AWS WAF logs, which you made note of in step 1.3. Then choose Next.

Figure 12: Choose a data store

When you’re given the option to add another data store, choose No.

Then, choose Create an IAM role and enter a name. The role grants access to the S3 bucket for the AWS Glue service to access the log files.

Figure 13: Choose “Create an IAM role,” and enter a name

Next, set the frequency to Run on demand. You can also schedule the crawler to run periodically to make sure any changes in the file structure are reflected in your data catalog.

Figure 14: Set the “Frequency” to “Run on demand”

For output, choose the database in which the Athena table is to be created and add a prefix to identify your table name easily. Select Next.

Figure 15: Choose the database, and enter a prefix

Review all the options you’ve selected for the crawler job and complete the wizard by selecting the Finish button.

Now that the crawler job parameters are set up, on the left panel of the console, choose Crawlers to select your job and then choose Run crawler. The job creates an Amazon Athena table. The duration depends on the size of the log files.

Figure 16: Choose “Run crawler” to create an Amazon Athena table

To see the Amazon Athena table created by the AWS Glue crawler job, from the AWS Management Console, open the Amazon Athena service. You can filter by your table name prefix.

To view the data, choose Preview table. This displays the table data with certain fields showing data in JSON object structure.

Figure 17: Choose “Preview table” to view the data

Step four: Create visualizations using Amazon QuickSight

From the AWS Management Console, open Amazon QuickSight.

In the Amazon QuickSight window, in the top left, choose New Analysis. Choose New Data set, and for the data source choose Athena. Enter an appropriate name for the data source name and choose Create data source.

Figure 18: Enter the “Data source name,” and choose “Create data source”

Next, choose Use custom SQL to extract all the fields in the JSON object using the following SQL query:

``` with d as (select waf.timestamp, waf.formatversion, waf.webaclid, waf.terminatingruleid, waf.terminatingruletype, waf.action, waf.httpsourcename, waf.httpsourceid, waf.HTTPREQUEST.clientip as clientip, waf.HTTPREQUEST.country as country, waf.HTTPREQUEST.httpMethod as httpMethod, map_agg(f.name,f.value) as kv from sampledb.jsonwaflogs_useast1 waf, UNNEST(waf.httprequest.headers) as t(f) group by 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11) select d.timestamp, d.formatversion, d.webaclid, d.terminatingruleid, d.terminatingruletype, d.action, d.httpsourcename, d.httpsourceid, d.clientip, d.country, d.httpMethod, d.kv['Host'] as host, d.kv['User-Agent'] as UA, d.kv['Accept'] as Acc, d.kv['Accept-Language'] as AccL, d.kv['Accept-Encoding'] as AccE, d.kv['Upgrade-Insecure-Requests'] as UIR, d.kv['Cookie'] as Cookie, d.kv['X-IMForwards'] as XIMF, d.kv['Referer'] as Referer from d; ```

To extract individual fields, copy the previous SQL query and paste it in the New custom SQL box, then choose Edit/Preview data.

Figure 19: Paste the SQL query in “New custom SQL query”

In the Edit/Preview data view, for Data source, choose SPICE, then choose Finish.

Figure 20: Choose “Spice” and then “Finish”

Back in the Amazon Quicksight console, under the Fields section, select the drop-down menu and change the data type to Date.

Figure 21: In the Amazon Quicksight console, change the data type to “Date”

After you see the Date column appear, enter an appropriate name for the visualizations at the top of the page, then choose Save.

Figure 22: Enter the name for the visualizations, and choose “Save”

You can now create various visualization dashboards with multiple visual types by using the drag-and-drop feature. You can drag and drop combinations of fields such as Action, Client IP, Country, Httpmethod, and User Agents. You can also add filters on Date to view dashboards for a specific timeline. Here are some sample screenshots:

Figure 23a: Visualization dashboard samples

Figure 23b: Visualization dashboard samples

Figure 23c: Visualization dashboard samples

Figure 23d: Visualization dashboard samples

Conclusion

You can enable AWS WAF logs to Amazon S3 buckets and analyze the logs while they are being streamed by configuring Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose. You can further enhance this solution by automating the streaming of data and using AWS Lambda for any data transformations based on your specific requirements. Using Amazon Athena and Amazon QuickSight makes it easy to analyze logs and build visualizations and dashboards for executive leadership teams. Using these solutions, you can go serverless and let AWS do the heavy lifting for you.

Umesh Kumar Ramesh

Umesh is a Cloud Infrastructure Architect with Amazon Web Services. He delivers proof-of-concept projects, topical workshops, and lead implementation projects to various AWS customers. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science & Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur (India). Outside of work, Umesh enjoys watching documentaries, biking, and practicing meditation.

Muralidhar Ramarao

Muralidhar is a Data Engineer with the Amazon Payment Products Machine Learning Team. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Production Engineering from the National Institute of Engineering, Mysore, India. Outside of work, he loves to hike. You will find him with his camera or snapping pictures with his phone, and always looking for his next travel destination.

#gallery-0-5 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-5 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Go to Source Author: Umesh Ramesh Enabling serverless security analytics using AWS WAF full logs, Amazon Athena, and Amazon QuickSight Original Post from Amazon Security Author: Umesh Ramesh Traditionally, analyzing data logs required you to extract, transform, and load your data before using a number of data warehouse and business intelligence tools to derive business intelligence from that data—on top of maintaining the servers that ran behind these tools.

#Amazon Security

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kennethmjoyner · 6 years

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Announcing the Winners of the 2019 ABA TECHSHOW Startup Alley Competition

Drum roll please. We’ve been counting readers’ votes to select the 15 legal technology startups that will get to participate in the third-annual Startup Alley at the American Bar Association’s TECHSHOW conference, which is Feb. 27 to March 2, 2019, in Chicago. Voting ended Friday night and now we are pleased to announce the winners.

These 15 startups will be provided space at a steeply discounted cost to exhibit their product or service in the special Startup Alley located within TECHSHOW’s exhibit hall. In addition, each startup will face off in an opening night pitch competition judged by an audience of TECHSHOW attendees. The winner of the pitch competition wins a package of marketing and advertising prizes, as described here.

Here are the winners in order of their vote tallies. The descriptions were provided by each company. The full ballot with more-detailed descriptions is here.

Lawble. Lawble is legal triage that works. Many access-to-justice experts have called for a legal triage that would assess clients’ needs and route them to the right resources efficiently, helping pro bono clinics and courts more effectively deal with the overwhelming number of legal clients in need. Lawble is that legal triage. We use natural language processing AI, algorithmic and OCR income verification, and multi-organizational distribution logic to provide access to justice for all.

DataNovo. DataNovo offers a patented SaaS platform powered by AI to provide patent-specific solutions that include: (1) licensing analytics that map patents to commercial products to identify potential patent infringers and infringing products, and (2) prior art analytics to identify unique prior art to every U.S. patent. These AI solutions help patent owners secure licensing opportunities and obtain stronger patents, and patent infringers design better products and defeat frivolous patent lawsuits.

dealWIP. dealWIP is a cloud-based software application offering a secure, multi-party workspace, and a suite of diligence collaboration tools, designed to increase transparency during the due diligence process, slash the total amount time spent on project management tasks, and significantly reduce the risk that a critical issue or document gets lost in the shuffle.

DocStyle LLC. Have you ever received a PDF file and needed to turn it into a properly formatted Word document, only to realize that you’re facing a lengthy manual process? DocStyle automates and professionally structures both Word and PDF files by interpreting formatting and applying proper Word styles in a single process. Intelligent paragraph recognition has been engineered for a highly accurate reproduction of the original content. Recapture those lost billable hours and expedite document drafting today!

Connective Counsel. Connective Counsel is a legal technology platform that eliminates friction between clients and law firms. In 2015, our founders went to the market to find a client portal that focused on client needs. We couldn’t find anything that fit our clients’ needs, so we built it ourselves. Our mission is to create the platform where law and innovation connect clients to their law firms and to build the platform you need to become the law firm of the future.

WarRoom. WarRoom helps lawyers better prepare for trial. Lawyers use WarRoom to highlight and tag deposition testimony – just like you would highlight a book on your Kindle. Key testimony is automatically organized by witness and issue into trial-ready summaries. WarRoom also allows lawyers to collaborate on testimony in real time without any additional software to install.

JurisBytes. Have you ever secretly wished your clients would stop nagging you over all the little details of their cases? Of course you have! JurisMS helps relieve that burden by providing a simplified and secure text-messaging platform that encourages communication and client care while making your life easier.

OurChildInfo.com. OCI is a permanent, non-deletable messaging system for parents to communicate after separation. Only the two parents. No ability to delete, manipulate, alter, or backdate any posts. Memorialize agreements, exchange documents, bills, school records and events, medical appointments, eliminate the he said/she said. No cost to judges, clerks, mediators, or attorneys. Permanent confirmed repository of communication between parents to preserve the record.

TrialLine. TrialLine is a cloud-based mediation, trial presentation and storytelling legal timeline tool for law firms and attorneys that want maximum insight into their cases. Create customized legal timelines that clearly and convincingly communicate the important details of your case, and display them in easy-to-understand, event-by-event detail. Attach supporting documents directly to each event on the timeline, and collaborate with anyone, anywhere there is an internet connection.

Kinnami Software Corporation. Kinnami is a cloud software company that tackles the problem of lack of trust in the digital world. Our blockhain-based platform safeguards data provenance by enhancing data verification and auditability. AmiStamp provides an easy way to create fingerprints of digital assets that cannot be falsified. It can be used to establish ownership (IP, copyrights, trade secrets) as well as to authenticate that data has not be altered in subsequent stages of collaboration (e.g. contracts, research).

Fixi Subscription Plans. Fixi Subscription Plans helps law firms offer and service subscription-based legal services to the clients they serve. Our software integrates with your existing website and allows customers to sign up online, access a customer portal to utilize the services you offer them and manages payments so that you can focus on growing your subscriber base. This allows you to create recurring revenue in turn facilitating exponential growth.

WyzeWaze. WyzeWaze streamlines data from contract to closing. Once the data is automatically extracted into our system, we can seamlessly push the data to the necessary documents needed to facilitate a real estate closing. Read emails, manage your calendar and events, run activity reports, populate templates, add contacts to your CRM, order title and task manage files and more all under one roof for pennies a day. Don’t ever leave WyzeWaze we have robust integrations. Work smarter, not harder!

HelpSelf Legal. We’re B2B document automation software for complex, logic-based workflows. Essentially, if your firm wants to create a TurboTax-like workflow for anything, you use our AI-assisted platform to do so. Lawyers use our platform to automate their own expertise or to increase efficiency and automate their internal work.

dtour.life. The first SaaS platform in family law that streamlines the collection, organization and analysis of case data with secure digital collaboration. Features include digital in-take form, real-time download of bank and credit card transactions for instant cash-flow, and documents attached to assets and debts. Lawyers and clients can manage the day-to-day workflow of a case from a dashboard; lawyers value the efficiency, collaboration with their clients and meeting the demand for technology solutions.

EffortlessLegal. EffortlessLegal brings the power of AI and machine learning to law firms. Our software automates various aspects of legal work to eliminate repetitive and time-consuming processes. This includes computer-assisted billing to increase realization rates, automated LEDES coding, crowdfunding, LEDES invoice format conversions, client intake process automation and budget automation. We integrate with many billing and practice management platforms eliminating the need to migrate data or disrupt your workflow.

Note to winners: You will be receiving emails from us with more details and event logistics.

Congratulations to all!

from Law and Politics https://www.lawsitesblog.com/2018/12/announcing-winners-2019-aba-techshow-startup-alley-competition.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

#law #legal

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legit-scam-review · 6 years

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The Rumors of ‘Insolvency,’ Banking Partners’ Escape, and the Suspension of Fiat Deposits

On October 8, Hong-Kong-based exchange Bitfinex has announced that it is not under the immediate threat of insolvency and the related rumors are unsubstantiated, as well as false. According to the company’s press release, all cryptocurrency and fiat withdrawals are and have been processing as usual without the slightest interference.

After some mild clarifications, tension is rising in the crypto community – the spread between Bitcoin prices on Bitfinex and other exchanges, on October 15, reached $1,000 against the massive sale of Tether (USDT). In the meantime, Bitfinex is testing its improved solutions, it remains to be seen about the possible consequences for the crypto industry and to be confirmed that this is not a repetition of the story with Mt.Gox, which some traders draw a parallel to, but simply the implementation of a “new and increasingly robust fiat deposit system”.

Banking partner relations

The transparency of the work on one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges has been questioned as early as October 2. The reason for this was the financial problems of the Puerto Rico’s Noble Bank, which was allegedly engaged in servicing the operations of Bitfinex and Tether Ltd (Bitfinex owners are the beneficiaries of Tether). As reported, the bank has filed for bankruptcy and is now searching for a buyer.

The news about the financial problems of Noble Bank was first published on Sept. 30, 2018. The information came from an insider, who reported on the possibility of a quick liquidation of the bank if it wouldn’t receive support from the holders of large amounts of Tether. The non-publicized connection of the bank with Bitfinex accounts were revealed by the BitMEX exchange researchers.

The cryptocurrency trading platform has dismissed that notion, stating in a Medium post that “stories and allegations currently circulating, mentioning an entity called Noble Bank, have no impact on [their] operations, survivability, or solvency.”

A day before the above post, Larry Cermak, a chief analyst at The Block, tweeted that Bitfinex had engaged HSBC as its new banking partner:

Bitfinex is now banking with HSBC through a private account of Global Trading Solutions. Very good fit if you ask me. It’s also worth mentioning that all EUR, JPY and GBP deposits are paused but Bitfinex “expects the situation to normalize within a week”. Banking issues? pic.twitter.com/1pxQ13NO0m

— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) October 6, 2018

Bitfinex has faced challenges with banks before. Thus, on April 18, 2017, the exchange suspended fiat withdrawals and reported that several Taiwanese banks, with which it cooperated, had repeatedly blocked its transactions.

A cryptocurrency fund manager, Jacob Eliosoff, suggested that those withdrawal issues could create new pressures within the industry of digital money:

“This is a dynamic many of us remember from the Mt. Gox days when there were problems with fiat withdrawals. Investors responded by converting fiat they had on the exchange to Bitcoin so they could withdraw it. They buy Bitcoin to withdraw, pushing up the price on the exchange.”

A little earlier, in the second half of March, U.S. bank Wells Fargo & Co. suspended its services related to processing Bitfinex’s transactions. On April 5, the latter filed a lawsuit against the bank which was quickly dropped.

The rise of allegations

On Medium, a user called Proof of Research, wrote a detailed article titled “Bitfinex is No Longer Solvent – Remove Your Money Now” where he highlighted the difficulties in withdrawal issues that many users of the exchange have been facing.

The article is no longer available publicly, since the user’s account is now suspended. The blogger pointed out complaints, posted on Reddit, by users who were censored by Bitfinex moderators. Additionally, throughout the previous week, there were a series of complaints about poor customer service and the inability of stopping the infinite loop of currencies being loaned out on the platform. All of these reasons could have accelerated rumors that Bitfinex has become insolvent.

Tether’s in the mix

The concerns over Tether are not new. Bitfinex has been accused, by numerous media and industry representatives, of not being transparent on the audit of Tether, raising a lot of concerns over the 1:1 peg of the stablecoin. Notably, the crypto market is dependent on Tether currency, which is the eighth largest cryptocurrency, with a market cap of $2.2 billion. Furthermore, there are many crypto exchanges like OKEx, which are dependent on this cryptocurrency, as Tether is the second most traded crypto coin.

Last time Tether and Bitfinex proved the existence of real fiat money behind their tokens, after the community had repeatedly expressed scepticism with regard to banking audits and the source of funds. On June 20, Tether’s general counsel, Stuart Hoegner, stated that the number of USDT issued was equal to $2.54 billion, which almost coincided with the numbers reported by Coinmarketcap.

However, this week marked a sharp fall for the USDT price. During the Asian trading session on October 15, before the opening of trading in Europe, Bitcoin unexpectedly rose in price.

Image source: TradingView

On Bitfinex, its exchange rate jumped by 21.9 percent to $7,788. The spread between Bitmex and Bitfinex reached $970.

It was suggested, by some users of the Bitcoin community in Reddit, that the price of Bitcoin on Bitfinex was caused by the massive sales of Tether. On exchanges such as Bitfinex, Bitmex, Binance, where the USDT was trading, the highest volatility of the coin was observed.

As of October 20, the market situation gradually beginning to stabilize. On Bitfinex, the price dropped from $7,788 to $6,535 (-16 percent), on Bitmex – from $6,818 to $6,385 (-6.3 percent).

What was Bitfinex’s response?

On October 7, Bitfinex denied all of these allegations in a blog post, stating:

“Bitfinex is not insolvent, and a constant stream of Medium articles claiming otherwise is not going to change this.”

To further back its statements, the exchange representatives referred to the links leading to their key cold wallets where the main reserves are stored:

· Bitcoin cold wallet

· Ethereum cold wallet

· EOS cold wallet

Firstly, Bitfinex revealed that it held BTC valued at over $1 billion, ETH valued at over $400 million, and $200 million worth of EOS. The management pointed out that this is just a fraction of what their cold wallets contain.

Additionally, Bitfinex stated that these wallets represented only a small part of their holdings, not considering the fiat holdings of any kind. They also clarified that all deposits and withdrawals were functioning normally, although “problems in fiat transactions exist, as they do for most crypto organizations.”

In an updated press release on Oct. 15, 2018, Bitfinex has clarified the following:

All cryptocurrency and fiat withdrawals are, and have been, processing as usual without the slightest interference;

All fiat (USD, GBP, JPY, EUR) withdrawals are processing, and have been, as usual;

Fiat deposits have been temporarily paused for certain user groups.

The exchange, with this short and informal announcement, took into consideration the concerns this event has caused to the cryptocurrency industry, and promised to implement a new and increasingly robust fiat deposit system to be available in the next 24 hours. And though it has kept its word, according to a press release posted on October 16, amid upgrading their order system, other questions have arisen.

Verification process already took more than 8 weeks, compliance team never response to emails.!!!!

— Pepto (@wtyrman87) October 18, 2018

Over the last few weeks you guys have almost done everything possible to create this FUD yourself-from deleting user questions on Reddit, to running away & hiding. Why aren’t you allowing an independent audit? Why is your CEO not visible anywhere like Binance’s or Coinbase’s?

— Deniz Palo (@denlopalo) October 16, 2018

The speculators and Binance

At the same time, unconfirmed news and rumors claiming that Binance may delist USDT in the near future have spurred across Telegram groups and sent by email.

FAKE: Saw this floating around and it’s an obvious fake. Binance is VERY politically correct and will never write “Tether big scam” (it doesn’t even make grammatical sense). This is just as bad as the “Vitalik is dead” scam last year. @cz_binance @binance pic.twitter.com/bd9Anvclmt

— boxmining (@boxmining) October 15, 2018

In a tweet, Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s CEO has commented “too much FUD” regarding this situation. Two days earlier, CZ argued about USDT’s stability, while some of his followers question why CZ is risking his reputation to support Tether:

Regulated stable coin, lol pic.twitter.com/5SRMhhh32Y

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) October 13, 2018

Alex Kruger, a cryptocurrency trader and analyst, stated that the USDT price fall could be caused by three factors:

Traders opting for audited and regulated alternatives like Gemini USD and Pax;

Traders selling USDT to purchase other cryptocurrencies;

Concerns about banking services used by Tether LLC.

Fake news again?

Despite the trend of the market stabilization, it remains only to assume whether the Bitcoin price surge on Bitfinex was caused by a massive sale of USDT or more serious factors. Some analysts don’t exclude the speculative origin of Tether’s volatility caused by fake messages in various Telegram channels and forums about the possible delisting of USDT by KuCoin and Binance.

Bitfinex resumed accepting fiat deposits and upgraded its security system. The representatives pointed out that “all cryptocurrency and fiat withdrawals are, and have been, processing as usual without the slightest interference.” Nevertheless, some users still feel the fear of losing their funds due to the inappropriate functioning of the exchange’s services and other users’ complaints. According to one of them, Bitfinex tech support specialists attributed delays in processing transactions to the change of a banking partner of their payment processor.

However, any possible changes in banking partners relationships won’t affect security of users’ funds, Bitfinex communications director Kasper Rasmussen assured. He also added that the exchange is “currently working [its] way through a backlog of fiat withdrawals and a few users unfortunately continue to experience these delays.”

How quickly these problems will be solved is still unclear, but the number of users’ complaints and tickets, which can be tracked here, show that this is not a matter of “a few” accounts. Hopefully, a new banking partner and system upgrades will clear things up.

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The post The Rumors of ‘Insolvency,’ Banking Partners’ Escape, and the Suspension of Fiat Deposits appeared first on Review: Legit or Scam?.

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beyondthetemples-ooc · 6 years

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“Fanfic writer asks”: Skipping the “asks” and doing the answers!

I just saw this and I’m too excited to wait for someone to see this, decide what to ask, and I wanted to answer all of them, anyways.

Some of these are fill-in-the-blanks for askers, so I can’t answer them. But if anyone wants elaboration, or wants to know a specific something in regards to a particular story, or character: Absolutely, feel free to send me some!

Questions taken from here: http://criminal-minds-fanfiction.tumblr.com/post/172926526725

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fanfiction? Oh geez, we practically need a time machine for that. I was only 11 or 12! I started "writing" fanfics with my action figures (guest-starring other childhood toys) as far back as I can remember. Literally, from the time I was 5-8 and obsessed with Pokemon and Yoshi's Story and Powerpuff Girls, I was playing out stories and adventures, from beginning to end, imagining backstories for why they're there, what they were doing, what motivated them. They even came with continuity (from one play-session to the next)!

As for actually writing it down, though... That also started Very Early. I think I must've been 11 or 12? The earliest one I ever dated was 2005, anyway. They were descriptive, illustrating actions to display emotions, and characterization was... well, it Sure Existed (even if it varied from "So Wrong", to Definitely the Right Remark).

But ever since the moment I touched a pen to my first fanfic notebook, it was about my OCs (and Raven, because, surprise surprise, she was my favorite to write about). I've had plot since I first took those Crayola twistables to paper to illustrate the story in my head, the first story I ever Had a Solid Plot For (that is, Mystery Sickness-- which is being rewritten with Actual Explanations, re: Why Dove Made Her Feel So Shitty in the first place): that was also in 2005. (Fun fact: it was originally in Poorly-Drawn Comic Form). The actual "novelization" went through to 2007.

2) What fandoms do you write for and do you have a particular favourite if you write for more than one? As my fanfiction.net profile will tell you: "Author has written 32 stories for Teen Titans, Pokémon, and Ruby Gloom." - The Ruby Gloom fanfic was abandoned, unfortunately. (It was a direct and shameless self-insert, that got abandoned because, quite frankly, I had no idea what to do with it. Maybe I should put it up for adoption at this point...) - A Work of Magic (my Pokemon fanfic, with related bios/etc) gets written for very rarely, because the inspiration to do so is rare and sporadic, and more tied to a Specific Scene I want to write, than where I left off in the story. @w@;; - A Steven Universe fanfic is in the works, though I'm struggling to flesh it out.. due to the Aforementioned Preoccupation with The FAVE MOMENTS, moreso than the backstory and movement through those moments. @D;;

And then, you have the Teen Titans stories. You know, the ones with Dove, and Kary, and Srentha, and Leyla will eventually be there. My most precious, dearly beloved, absolutely irreplaceable OCs. My TT story folder has about 100 files, which belong to about 30 full-length stories. (And that's not counting the oneshots, like Heart to Heart, which is still one of the best things I've ever written.) There are also a few poems here and there, particularly Dove's Prophecy (of self-fulfillment, really), and stories illustrating Dove's childhood, her mother/grandmother's past, Srentha's childhood... There's just Quite A Lot! I've been doing this, writing them, for 12+ years.~ And my fandomatic obsession for Teen Titans has never dulled, quieted, or been forgotten. So yes, I definitely do have a "particular" favorite. I may prefer exploring their world through my OCs, but damn, is it more FUN than any other world to explore!

3) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer. Ah, you can probably tell it's OCs by now. At least, MY OC's. Someone else's OCs, well, I tried that once, they were going to commission me. But I never got it finished. (I just didn't have quite the same connection. And I didn't know the canon; that can't have helped.) But character I *do* get to know, like my girlfriend's OCs in our collaborations (or characters I got to know so well through playing together that I just totally shamelessly adopted, specifically: Kary), I do enjoy writing for~ There's just something so incredibly special in knowing that you, solely, are responsible for their growth, their development, and their well-being. It's a bit like having kids, without the screaming. (At least, without them screaming in your ear. Dove and Kary have both done their fair share of screaming, come to think of it...)

( (( Although, to be fair: I've never tried writing a writer insert. I doubt anyone would actually WANT to endure the stories I put my characters through... ;P )) )

4) What is your favourite genre to write for? Fantasy? Action/Adventure? It's hard to say, because I actually write for a HUGE variety of Genres. But I guess my favorite, if I can encompass all of them under this one umbrella, would have to be Hurt/Comfort.

5) If you had to choose a favourite out of all of your multi chaptered stories, which would it be and why? DAMN IT, DON'T DO THIS TO ME.

Gods, that's hard! Basically ALL of my stories are multi-chaptered... Well, it's definitely one of my Teen Titans stories. DDD has definitely been the most challenging to write, the most fulfilling to finish chapters on, and the most pivotal point in Dove's life, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. Writing for Azar in "The Final Journey" and Dove taking her first unintended steps into heroism has been so personally touching for me, and it does so much good for Dove, and especially her relationship with the team, that it's just so, so special to watch. Something Special About Srentha is probably my most epic multi-faceted story, and the narrative timeline (handling two very distinct and separate struggles in totally separate places) is really challenging me to grow as a writer. "Continuum Wars" is going to be the grandest scale of struggle and magic, so I'm really especially excited to start figuring it out. It is just so, so HARD to decide on ONE; they're all so special, and I love watching my style evolve with each story, and more than anything, watching my characters come out of these situations alive. lD;;

6) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why? you mean the Teen Titans and Pokemon crossover where Dove brings home a Misdreavus? been there, done that. Honestly though, every single one of my stories has its place in my characters' lives, and is important for continuity. And personal growth. And I've honestly never been ashamed of something I've written.

(If you travel far back enough in my fanfic archive, you WILL find a really old character bio for Dove, which I completely revamped, because I didn't learn until later how to frame her without comparing her to Raven, even though she's always been a very different and independently-extant character. Also, the bits I learned about Being Kept A Secret and her grandmother's exile were Nearly Learned around 2010, 2012...)

7) When is your preferred time to write? Whenever the inspiration bug bites! ASAP!! But as for general adding and editing, it's fairly late at night, usually~ Sometimes afternoons. Usually an hour or more after eating, and especially when it's cool and quiet in the room.

8) Where do you take your inspiration from? Canon, personal experience (my personal struggles, my search for my identity, and my struggle to define myself), and sometimes even my own spirituality. (Wild shit goes down when you get into astral exploration, let me TELL you!)

9) In your xxx fic, what’s your favourite scene that you wrote? Can I just... use my personal favorite? (If you have any questions about a particular fic, or universe, or point in a character's life that didn't happen in the fics, let me know and I'll gladly answer!)

- Holy GOD, the climax scene of Dove's Dark Discovery! It takes place entirely in Dove's mindscape, while Dove's power is maxed out, and you've got a very powerful telepath and a TREMENDOUSLY power empath battling within a mindscape that has been slowly devastated over the past few months, and it's just this absolute EPIC culmination of their powers and, to a degree, even the connection they'd been forging since Dove came. Dove seriously oversteps some boundaries, Raven nearly kills Dove by accident, it's seriously crazy stuff.

Bonus: Way back in, like, probably 2008 or 2009, when titansgo.net was still around: I had asked my all-time favorite fanfic author for critique on the climax. His advice, to make it "three times as long and nine times the punch", absolutely inspired me to reach WAY higher with their fight, and once I realized what kind of mind-bending maelstrom shenanigans can go down in a MINDSCAPE, the scene fairly EXPLODED with potential!

And I especially like the fact that, including the revisions after his (entirely justified) advice: This scene has gone through like nine different incarnations. And my favorite part: It was originally inspired by a battle in the Teen Titans videogame! I think my little sister was playing White Raven (who my mind always read as Being Dove, because White Cape and Magic Powers), I was playing Raven, and the battle took place in "Nevermore", Raven's mindscape. It was actually a good fight. And I was fucking AMPED... But also emotionally RAVAGED, because "holy shit, Raven fighting Dove... in a mindscape......" And the scene happened like two days later. (In middle school. Honors Spanish class. As a note in the margins of my assignment notebook!)

Gods, guys. That scene is just so incredibly important, and it has come oh, so very far~

10) In your xxx fic, why did you decide to end it like that? Did you have an alternative ending in mind? I'm gonna answer one that I really like the ending of, but feel free to ask for others. Like, maybe one I've actually published, that you've actually read? 8F But honestly: Spellbound pt. II. I haven't published it yet... but it ends in absolute tragedy. The reason is twofold: First off, I knew Dove and Srentha were end-game, so although Dove was falling pretty deep into love, I couldn't have him hanging around... 8F But also because I wanted to illustrate the strength of sacrificial redemption. (I don't want to give too much away, because... well, that's the ENDING. But it's heart-wrenching and I can only hope I've done it justice.)

Other faves include: Srentha having heart-issues at the end of Something Special (because it's the Very First Symptom that something is going to be Dreadfully Wrong with him in the sequel), DDD ending with Dove absolutely traumatized and seriously hurt (because the following story is going to be all about her learning to Take Action on her pain, instead of hiding herself away), and A Work of Magic ending with everyone thinking Mistress had died trying to save her family... but the ending is, and the epicness kind of speaks for itself in this: "You can't kill a ghost."

11) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it? You mean like the way I completely rewrote Dove's character bio 6 years later, in response to all the accusations of her being a Mary Sue? Despite literally nothing (but more specific illustration) changing in the way I wrote her? 8F Other than that, absolutely not! I mean, if someone made a valid point I would. But nobody can tell me how to write my OCs, you know?

12) Who is your favourite character to write for? Why? My OCs. But you probably mean canon characters... and that easily comes down to Raven. She's just so layered, working with very inward, introspective mechanics, before she takes her action, usually in a very well-thought out direction, or sometimes an INSANELY emotional outburst, and either way, it tends to be Very Important, Poignant, and Make a Difference in the scene. I relate to her; I idolized her for the longest time; I know exactly how to write the struggle between not being able to express your emotions, and being true to yourself, because I've lived it. I'm an empath, so writing her empathic powers is always sort of therapeutic, because outside of my mirrorbook, I'd never gotten to EXPLORE that aspect of myself before. Her wit is hard to capture sometimes, I'll admit, but, I mean, I was making the nurses at the hospital laugh all the way up to my procedure, armed with nothing but my dry remarks. I think I'm up to the challenge.

13) Who is your least favourite character to write for? Why? Beast... Boy...... I'm sorry, I really am. I've just never been able to relate to him, or understand how his mind works (if it even works at all?), or write him into any of the plots-- outside of, like, trying to cheer Dove up, which is iconic and appreciated on Dove's end. But otherwise? What do I even DO with him? His sense of humor is just... so lowkey annoying that I sincerely cannot fathom why it's So Funny, let alone make it up for him. (Thankfully, at least the comics come in handy for exploring Why he's Like That, which has honestly helped a lot more than anything the show ever did. All but ONE of his episodes, were... pretty crack-tastic. And that just doesn't mesh well with my stories that are Trying to Deal with a Serious Issue Here.)

14) How did you come up with the title for the xxx? - You can ask about multiple stories. Mostly, they're descriptive of the Most Iconic Thing, or Most Pivotal Plot Point, in the story! "Something Special About Srentha". "Dove's Dark Discovery". "Growing Up Demon: Leyla's Story". "Mystery Sickness", being renamed "Soul Sickness" for poetic value, but still keeping that iconic "Sickness" thing, while also making it More Relevant to Raven Specifically. The exception is probably "Unforeseen and Unforesaken". Yes, it's misspelled, I did that on purpose for visual balance in the title. It's weird. I know. But it's Intentional. (Still highly important things though, because it illustrates both Dove's arrival, and what happens once she's there, being unforeseen. And Dove absolutely hardcore valuing the team because they don't Forsake her.)

15) If you write OC’s, how do you decide on their names? Bold of you to assume I have this kind of CONTROL over them. Seriously, the way my writing works isn't so much "I get to decide what they do", and more like "huh, this Resonates. That must be a Thing... Let's try to seek out all the relevant details on why it happened, how they reacted, and how it ends!" It's like detective work. And this is absolutely best illustrated by trying to find Srentha's name. Because holy frick. What kinda name is that. (Turns out, it's literally in another language. 8F It means "flight", by the way! Onomatopoeia for the sound wings make.) Anyways, I literally found out one day that, "Dove tried to keep her pregnancy hidden... That must mean she had a kid. With someone." And thus began the Classic RHS Storytelling Search for "who's the guy?" And immediately I knew his name began with an "S". So I tried a bunch of names. I figured it was feminine-sounding, for some reason, thus I realized it ended in "-a". I knew it had two beats. Finding the "-ntha" was the easy part, it was figuring out how the heck to parse "Sren" into the right sounds and number of beats that was the REAL challenge. It wasn't until I remembered "Sri Lanka" exists that I figured out his entire name. (It's pronounced without the English "sh", though - it's just "Sren". As he says, "like Wren, with a Sss.")

16) How did you come up with the idea for xxx? Mostly, they came to me when I was thinking about my characters' lives. Except The Final Journey, that one was based on "the crystals" my girlfriend illustrated Dove having in her room, and I kinda just took that entire concept and made it Azarathean and RAN with it!~ (If you're curious about any particular story, let me know!)

17) Post a line from a WIP that you’re working on. "I killed six people. Do I deserve to die?" hello, this is your daily reminder that DDD absolutely Destroys Dove's self-image. But because it's So IMPORTANT and uhh, it was too Dark for me to leave that there, I also want to quote Raven's responses, which include "We all have our dark days," and "I do know that pain, that guilt. I know it better than anyone...[but] Solitary confinement won't cure it...[and] we don't want to see you leave." And also, "You won't be able to help anyone if you destroy yourself first."

18) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them? Oh, stars. Let's see... The first "wip" I abandoned was a character I named "gayla", not knowing "gay" was actually a word, first of all, but her concept turned out to actually be part of Srentha's story, and honestly I should've figured out that "heh, same name as Raven's nursemaid" wasn't a thing. {lD (Whose name was actually Galya, by the way. I didn't realize that mistake for like, five years.)

I only so very RARELY abandon an actual story, though. I know there have been a couple of Moment Concepts I've lost, due to not writing them down; that honestly hurts much worse. ;; But there's the aforementioned Pokemon+TT crossover, where Dove brings home a Misdreavus by accident. That was purely self-indulgent, and it just didn't fit with the timeline, so I decided to stop writing that AU. It was really more that I wanted to focus on The Other Stories, and only had 3 short chapters planned. (The one where the little ghost gets herself stuck in Raven's mind had so much potential! But I didn't know how to write Raven's emoticlones in without Raven becoming aware of it. And now that I think about it, that could've been what got Dove to send her back.. But, eh, I've long lost the story file for it, and long LONG lost interest.)

If anyone tells you "A Work of Magic" is abandoned, they're wRONG, I'm just really, really caught up in Dove's struggle with DDD and Srentha and Steven Universe (even if I'm not really writing that fic most of the time), so my inspiration to write that story with As Much Lighthearted Fun Silliness as it deserves is seriously impaired. =w=;;

Oh, but I did kind of abandon the story from Sieara's point of view, because honestly, I'd rather just explore her through Dove. (That little bird gets plenty of epic spotlight moments; she even channels Azar's spirit at one point. Or two. ;P ) But mostly, I abandoned it because I didn't want to write about a bird being too old to reproduce, getting close to death, and then dying, anymore? (It was going to be about her noticing Dove spending more time with Srentha, Srentha's bird dying, and Sieara meeting Dove's daughter, and dying shortly after. But I... don't know, I didn't want to write that Angst without a Resolution.) I wrote that story for Exactly 1 Day, and then decided to stick to writing about her through Dove.

19) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to? I fully intend to do sequels to all of them, thank you very much.~ (At least for the TT fics, all of them are connected in some way. A Work of Magic has both a sequel and a prequel planned. And the Steven Universe fic is really only planned for One Conflict, I really don't want to explore it much beyond that singular unit of Canon Divergence.)

20) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently? That would be akin to lying, with the way my stories and my characters go.

21) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire? thechroniclerjon, holy stars and envy batman. This is one writer who knows how to build a conflict, write magic in a way that's both Believable, and Relatable, and Awesome, and interweaves different plot threads into one rather EPIC confrontation. Obviously I couldn't take the element of religion into my stories, being so totally personally disconnected from it. (spirituality? ABSOLUTELY. Let me explore aLL the Azarathean feels!) But like. Those descriptions. The conversations. The build-up. The plot-twists. The raw emotion. I aspire, very much, to someday, in my own way, find a style that translates as much Excitement and Tension and Delight as his stories manage to convey.

Also, the author of Learning to Breathe Underwater, because that story had amazingly spot-on characterization, included so many canon elements (despite being Canon Divergent) while still having its own (very well escalated, incredibly well-executed!) plot! I write for the Teen Titans universe far more than Steven Universe, but I really admire their way of including basically every single character, giving them plenty of attention and growth, and giving a lot of them development in the process. I don't know if I could do that, but someday, I'd like to try.

22) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it? The old Mystery Sickness. Like, the first version. It was, ah... originally what I now call an "emvent", and if you know what that is, great; if not, I don't want to go into details, but it's a story that helps me process my phobia? Which, geez, poor Raven okay, but what's really "cringe" about it is the way I narrated it in first-person. XD Weird metaphors, she had a Detective Noir tone for some reason, and let's just say there's a reason I never shared any of the panels. (I kept it secret because of the phobia. Equally as horrifying, I kept it in words because of the pictures.)

23) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence? Silence, but I prefer gentle background noises I'm used to. (Like birds fluttering around, gentle aquarium filters and the water rippling, wind in the trees, etc. It's an ADD thing; lowkey background noise, if kept at a distance, helps me focus.)

24) How do you feel about writing smutty scenes? Eh. I have the Occasional Mood for it... like, once a year. 8P But generally, I'm just Not Interested. Sure, Dove and Srentha have... done some things that would entertain fans of the genre. And actually, some things that get borderline supernatural. But mostly, I'd just really rather be writing other things.

25) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story? Oh, stars. Yes... Yes. Dove's Dark Discovery. (I drew on... an awful lot of personal experiences, and none of them were good.) Plus, her guilt and self-flagellating... let's just say it's a major Depression Mood. Also noteworthy: I cried writing the Death Sequence and farewell letter in Spellbound pt. II. I've cried for Dove's loss of Azarath, and her mother. I've cried for the things Dove and Srentha tell Leyla when she's really struggling (because, dear gods, if only I'd heard those words when I was a kid)... It doesn't happen often. But sometimes, it just... gets overwhelming.

26) Which part of your xxx fic was the hardest to write? ASK ABOUT ANY OF THEm, because DEAR GODS, there are PLENTY. But the hardest of all was DDD. I struggled with describing how/why an Extremely Gentle, Timid Pacifist was suddenly Losing Herself to Internal Evil, and doing Terrible Things. I struggled to capture the IMMENSITY of the mindscape battle, both in how these two Incredibly Powerful Demi-demons were unleashing their powers, and also in how much of a personal toll it takes on BOTH of them afterwards. And now, I'm struggling to find the words for Dove in the aftermath, because... Gods, there's just so much turmoil and emotion. It echoes an awful lot of Seriously Dangerous Depression Thoughts, right down to suicide ideation and lashing out at the people she loves because she doesn't think she deserves them, and aren't they all fools for loving her. All I can say is thank god Raven's such a realistic beacon of hope, because (much like she did for me, come to think of it) she's able to help Dove battle those thoughts with reminders, wisdom, and hope.

27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow? This one depends entirely on the story. Generally, it's really quite sporadic and incidental. I write out the scenes as they come to me (usually WAY out of order), and then figure out how they all fit together. Sometimes I don't even realize two scenes are in the same story at first! Or how they're related. I tend to write the beginning, several scenes from When Things Are Very Serious, then go back to fill in the blanks. A lot of times the climax happens either before I know how to start the story, before I know what led up to it, or before I know how it ends. (DDD began with the climax scene. Heart to Heart began with realizing Srentha had a heart attack as a child.)

And then other times, it begins with a vague concept, and I start writing right at the beginning. (Something Special was first written at the beginning, with Srentha performing a spell. I didn't know what it was going to do, just that it was Relevant. A Work of Magic started with me in the Pokemon world wanting a Misdreavus, and developed into a full-team adventure from there. Unforeseen and Unforesaken, or rather "Unforeseen Surprises" in its original form, starting with the very moment Dove showed up, was written as I went along, knowing which points I wanted to hit before the story was over, but writing the scenes as they came to me.)

A Work of Magic has a lot of travel scenes, and moments that take place in specific areas, with Specific Species, so I had to plan out a timeline from region to region, to make sure they weren't in Sinnoh one day, then encountering a Unova legendary, and battling a psychic type in a Kanto forest the very next day, you know? Then there's DDD, which is such a gradually PROGRESSING story that I definitely had to outline some of the chapters, too. Making sure Dove's gradually growing powers were highlighted, and she wasn't going from Total Telekinetic Failure to Suddenly Really Strong and Breaking The Entire Gym Room in the next scene. That sort of thing.

Either way, it's usually As I'm Writing that I notice the connections, the causes rooted in previous stories or scenes, and the Effects These Incidents Have as I'm writing it out. I always start with An Incident and A Concept, because I wouldn't have a story to write without it. But where it becomes Actual Scenes, and what order I write them, depends entirely on the order I discover them.

28) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fanfiction? What a Mary Sue was supposed to be, and that Dove isn't what they claimed. That criticism that so many reviewers threw onto her bio wasn't at all helpful, I didn't know what that meant, let alone how to fix it, and I didn't know how to demonstrate that Dove wasn't, in fact, "entirely like Raven", because she had her own powerset, her own history, and her own personality. To be fair, a lot of the Highlights on Their Differences happen in later stories, and it's the initial shock of "why the frick is wearing those clothes and using that mantra", so of course on first impression, it's like. "Raven? similarities???" But... I don't know, it's just so very OBVIOUS to me that, unless we're talking about Timid!Raven (the emoticlone), their differences are so VAST. And I spent a lot of time, WASTED a lot of time, trying to kill the assumption. It really wasn't worth it.

29) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like? DOVE'S! DARK! DISCOVERY!!! I nearly BROKE myself (both of time AND emotion) writing this thing! I understand that Some Friends can't Do Sadism, but like. This story is 250k words long, I've dumped a GREAT DEAL of my heart and soul into it, and Dove's plight seriously needs to be recognized to understand her growth moving forward. But! There! Are! So! Few! People! READING IT. The story has like 20 reviews on fanfic.net, BUT THE CLIMAX HASn'T GOTTEN ANY yet? ???? Please recognize the metaphorical blood, literal sweat, and literal tears I put into this. Gods. Yes I wish it got WAY more love.

30) In contrast to 29 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at? That poem from middle school, "The Raven and the Dove"? It's a neat poem, sure. Kind, of, a unique concept? But it's not very well explored, it just goes "here are their differences. They're opposites. But they get along." No explanation of how or why. (That's all in the fanfics.) It's not nearly as rhythmic as Dove's Prophecy, it's not clever, it's not plot-twisty, and as far as poetic cred goes, I don't think it's anything special. ? ?? I mean, somebody found it online, and contacted me via email, and it nearly got PUBLISHED. (But I would've had to pay them to include it in their book, which I wasn't down with.) I just don't understand, literally at all, why so many people really LIKE it.

31) Send me a fic recommendation and I’ll post it for my followers to see! (The asker is to send the rec not the answerer) SEND ME FICS, I WILL READ.

32) Are any of your characters based on real people? Nah, they're all based on themselves.

33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten? My favorite fanfic author read, and then complimented, the (second or third version of?) the climax scene in DDD.~

34) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten? Mostly just comments on Dove's first bio that went, "She's such a Mary Sue, burn it and scrap her entirely to start fresh"? (Thank *all* the gods that I didn't take that advice, because she's incredible and deserves to exist in her own right.)

35) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest? Honestly? The first thing I do is WRITE about it. Unless I'm prompted to, or rambling about something that has me Inordinately Emotional, I don't really share them.

36) Can you give us a spoiler for one of your WIP’s? Don't worry, outside of Azarath's canonical demise, I only ever write somebody ACTUALLY dying once. But she comes back, because that's what she does, apparently.

37) What’s the funniest story you’ve written? Bold of you to assume I write comedy! But seriously, probably Srentha's debut story. When he discovers pizza, he assumes pepperoni isn't edible (a fair assumption, really, but he's vegetarian anyways). When he tries the cheese, his reaction is just so DELIGHTFUL and warm; he laughs so hard he's literally crying. The things he says and does when he's sugar-high are hysterical. He's just so exuberant and energetic, absolutely positive, he really brings a load of smiles to the table, and both I and Dove irrevocably love him for it.

38) If you could collab with any other writer on here, who would it be? (Perhaps this question will inspire some collabs!) If you’re shy, don’t tag the blog, just name it. I don't know if I have an answer for this. I don't really read a lot of Tumblr fanfics. I've already collaborated with Pix in RPs, my girlfriend and I have already collaborated on stories for both Kary and Pokemon, and the author of The Chronicler Saga implemented one of my scenes into his stories. What more can I really ask for?

I mean, if anyone WANTs to collaborate, just let me know, and I'd love to work something out.

39) Do you prefer first, second or third person? Third person, multiple, and preferably omniscient (or damn close to it)! Exploring everyone's inner workings is Exactly My Style. (And just more fun for me to write.)

40) Do people know you write fanfiction? Well, I only talk about it, like, once every three hours or so. (/sarcasm)

41) What’s you favourite minor character you’ve written? Sieara? Alerina? As for actual Canon Characters, I'm having a righteously wonderful time characterizing Azar. Lapis is fun and interesting to work with, but she's so full of emotional "tides" that it's really hard for me to write for her.

42) Song fic - What made you decide to use the song xxx for xxx. (I have only ever done songfics on papers, and wound up not needing the songs after all. They were all Evanescence, of course.)

43) Has anyone ever guessed the plot twist of one of your fics before you posted it? Not that I know of! Someone once guessed Dove was Raven's cousin, on Unforeseen+Unforesaken, and I haven't written the climax (when Raven realizes Dove is Trigon's child) yet. That's about the closest anyone has come.

44) What is the last line you wrote? Oh, stars, let me check. (This is where Tracking Changes comes in handy. ;P ) In Nothing Good Lasts Forever, the story that's (possibly going to be renamed "Even in Death", when Raven takes Dove back to Azarath for closure): This may or may not be polished before publishing. But this takes place immediately after Raven pulls Dove from a flashback.

"There's a lot you have to deal with. Your mind has been seriously damaged by what you've been through. I wonder..." And she trailed off there, hesitating, considering the concept before she dared give it voice.

Dove kept looking up at her, confused and seeming entirely absorbed in her analysis. It was so true. Tearing her apart, every time she remembered... The nightmares and flashbacks wouldn't let her forget it.

45) What spurs you on during the writing process? My own excitement, curiosity, and even desperation to learn what happens next! And a general sense of lowkey affectionate "tribute", like I'm the only person with these peoples' stories in my head, and they deserve to have their stories told. And also the hope that, maybe, someone, somewhere, will read the story, and if just ONE person feels their heart soothed or their struggle validated by my writings, then I've done a good thing, and that's all I really want.

46) I really loved your xxx fic. If you were ever to do a sequel, what do you think might happen in it? (Someone ask me, because EVERYTHING has sequels, and if you want to know about it, just Ask!)

47) Here’s a fic title - insert a made up title. What would this story be about? DO IT??

48) What’s your favourite trope to write? I'm... not sure, entirely, but probably "bullshit [insert genre here] magic".

49) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about? I remember one OF the first fics I ever read, because for about 7, 8 years, I was SCOURING fanfiction.net to find it again. It was about Raven having terrible visions, Azarath being destroyed, and Robin feeling her pain through their connection, but thinking it was heartburn. And then a group of people dropped in, took Raven away (on a spaceships? Though hyperspace???). And they were going to rebuild Azarath. And I think Robin had just discovered Raven was gone, before the story ended. Oh, and they spelled Azarath like "Azerath". That's all I can remember, but I really do wish I'd known what happened, because that story had me absolutely HOOKED. (But alas, I didn't have an account at the time, and I was reading it at the computer lab.)

50) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why? Ohh, this one's hard. I'd drop smut like it's hot (haha, get it?). But seriously, I'm a 99%-sex-repulsed aroace, and I've only ever written like 5 half-done smut scenes. Imagined a Fair Few more, but they don't keep my interest for the long multi-hour process of editing that comprises my writing process.

This probably means "romantic fluff" though, right? I mean, I HAVE to write angst (because let's be real, without Angst I wouldn't have much of a story, since all of my stories are Driven By Characters Issues, WAY moreso than external events). But I really think the REAL beauty of my characters is how they go through that angst, and COME OUT with each others' support. I don't know how to write angst without someone being supported (i.e. "Hurt/Comfort", really), and I don't know how to write fluff without something Heavy bringing it on.

Secretshipping (Dove+Srentha) is equal parts angst and fluff, because honestly Angst is in Dove's Job Description, and Srentha is so light-hearted and goofy and silly that he balances it out (and Dove has some goof in her, and Srentha has some rare moments of angst, and it's how they interact and balance out and HELP each other through it that really brings them to LIFE together). Kary's whole characterization is because The Angst seriously fucked up her psyche, but scenes between her and Dove (and Yo-yo!), even her future husband, can get seriously silly and fluffy. Leyla's real growth and development comes from Realizing that the World is Not Like her Sheltered Life. (And how she doesn't want to expose her parents to Her Angst.) But it's also the fluffy deep softness and sincerity she and her parents share that gets her through these realizations. So like... Angst and fluff go hand-in-hand for me? I wouldn't be able to write one without the other.

#rhs fanfics #rhs personal writing #rhs personal art

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vidmarket32514 · 7 years

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Top 7 Mistakes That Kill Your Ads Conversion in 2017

Top 7 Mistakes That Kill Your Ads Conversion in 2017 written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Business spends huge money on sending their message to customers, but the results leave much to be desired:

For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them; besides, only 8% of users pay attention to marketing ads and click on them.

Yet, one assured method exists to generate lots of buzz about your business and advertising.

People notice marketing mistakes right along, discussing and criticizing brands for them. This is the case when advertising defeats its own object, despite allowing you to learn from mistakes, draw out a lesson, and get feet under your table.

Failures become those signposts indicating the way to effective marketing. However, some mistakes come at a price.

Here go top seven, able to create a negative attitude toward your business as well as nip your ad conversion in the bud.

1. You don’t consider human factors

The biggest mistake of small business owners would be to follow the lead of big dogs adverting to barren business language in their marketing campaigns. They forget about users on the other side of the screen, willing to communicate to people rather than brands and products names.

So build relations with humans and don’t throw information blocks into a faceless audience. Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising report confirms the effectiveness of such an approach.

Asking users about factors influencing their trust in ads, Nielsen’s experts marked those resonating most: humorous, value- and family-oriented, real-file situations are what works best.

Marketing tip: When writing texts for your ads, remember about the human factor behind your audience. Talk their language, don’t plagiarize writing style, voice, and tone of your competitors, and speak about what appeals to your consumers.

2. You take social issues in vain

Appealing to social issues or newsjacking is a constant brinkmanship. When done right, it brings your business the benefits such as:

Traffic growth

Your brand’s integration into daily news background

Link product to a high-involvement issue

Engagement rate growth

Information market leadership

But a huge mistake would be to use social issues for small business ads. It hurts reputation and may destroy your customer funnel (engagement and nurturing, in particular).

As a simple refresher, let’s take a look at this tweet from AT&T who published it on the 9/11 day:

Followers perceived it as the attempt to play on the tragedy for marketing goals. Such negative reaction made AT&T marketers delete the tweet within an hour of publication.

Marketing tip: When publishing your sales copies and ads, try to pre-estimate reactions. Appeal to psychology and enhance emotional intelligence for a better understanding of your target audience.

3. You target fans

Spending money on pay per click as well as any other ad type targeting your existing audience… well… sucks: they know you and your offer already, so don’t reach them with advertising.

When having clients-friendly perks, just create a status update for fans to see, like, and get it shared so you could sell to them. What you need for ads is a broader targeting, but don’t overdo it.

What is it with that?

For example, you decide to target new customers with Facebook ads, and your audience is newbie photographers. You launch the campaign based on interests like photography, and that’s where a mistake hides.

Why?

We all love photography: your mum, friends, and ex like it but none of them has the interest in learning about it.

Marketing tip: Be more specific about targeting the new audience. In the case with photography, you might want to attract and engage those interested in entry-level camera models as it’s something amateur photographers most likely use.

4. You forget about copywriting tricks

Rare small business owners bother about writing texts for ads. However, copywriting gizmos such as clear value propositions, words, and images influence your conversion rate per se.

The most common mistakes marketers still make:

Weak headlines. A first-rate headline doesn’t simply state what you offer but explains the benefit behind your product. It’s short, clear and easy to understand, and avoids cliches as well as business jargon.

Wrong ad image. Visual elements you choose for ads should hook users and make them want to click. For that, consider size/color/contrast combo.

Sluggish words. One word or phrase can change your conversion rate by 100%, so use power verbs that appeal to human emotions. Avoid vagueness and gobbledegook in your ads.

No CTA. Just because people see your ad doesn’t mean they want to click and learn more about your business. Most need a little push in the right direction, so make sure to add CTA to every ad you create. Give users a reason to choose you.

Marketing tip: Learn how to write ad texts and sales copy. Words are a powerful weapon allowing to influence decision-making, so make sure you don’t kill conversion by choosing wrong lexical items for your ads.

5. You wrongly use SMM tools

Time after time, social media come up with new tools to help marketers, but the latter often use them wrong.

Thus, McDonald’s once used a #McDStories hashtag to encourage sharing nostalgic stories related to the brand; but they didn’t explain it to people. As the result, followers used the hashtag to complain about poor service and low-quality food.

AmericanAir failed when used the automatic reply feature in Twitter; it showed the brand’s unwillingness to get feedback from their audience.

Marketing tip: Use new tools for advertising only after learning them inside out. Pay attention to instructing your audience about what you want from them.

6. You focus on a product

Your advertising is not about you but customers, so a huge mistake would be talking about how cool you are and what luxury features your product/service has.

No one will care.

Instead, link those features to a value. Focus on your customers’ needs, and use ads to talk about how your product solves their problems. Such an approach will help to build a steady stream of leads.

7. You don’t track

Picture this:

76% of marketers track effectiveness wrongly, considering awareness/engagement enough for success and mistaking it for conversion.

The question appears:

How do they know what advertising is most effective for their business and what they could change to make it better as well as influence their conversion rates?

The answer is… no how.

Two things work in digital marketing: testing and tracking. Once you know what works for your business, you invest into it and win more customers instead of blindly placing ads everywhere.

Marketing tip: Track your ads like crazy. Focus on metrics such as ad frequency, CTR, number of leads, relevance score, clicks by interest, and performance by placement.

Do any of the above mistakes sound familiar?

Fix your marketing strategy, if so. Put your ad campaigns into order. If you don’t know how to do that, ask experts to help you with copywriting, design, and choosing right channels for media placement. Use advertising wisely, not blindly – and you’ll be converting more than spending on it.

About the Author

Lesley J. Vos is a contributing writer to publications on content, social media, and digital marketing in general. She writes an e-book on guest blogging, creates texts on writing craft and education, and teaches the French language to high school students.

http://ift.tt/2xiEu2u

#FEED 9 MARKETING

0 notes

repmrkting17042 · 7 years

Text

Top 7 Mistakes That Kill Your Ads Conversion in 2017

Top 7 Mistakes That Kill Your Ads Conversion in 2017 written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Business spends huge money on sending their message to customers, but the results leave much to be desired:

For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them; besides, only 8% of users pay attention to marketing ads and click on them.

Yet, one assured method exists to generate lots of buzz about your business and advertising.

Failures become those signposts indicating the way to effective marketing. However, some mistakes come at a price.

Here go top seven, able to create a negative attitude toward your business as well as nip your ad conversion in the bud.

1. You don’t consider human factors

So build relations with humans and don’t throw information blocks into a faceless audience. Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising report confirms the effectiveness of such an approach.

Asking users about factors influencing their trust in ads, Nielsen’s experts marked those resonating most: humorous, value- and family-oriented, real-file situations are what works best.

2. You take social issues in vain

Appealing to social issues or newsjacking is a constant brinkmanship. When done right, it brings your business the benefits such as:

Traffic growth

Your brand’s integration into daily news background

Link product to a high-involvement issue

Engagement rate growth

Information market leadership

But a huge mistake would be to use social issues for small business ads. It hurts reputation and may destroy your customer funnel (engagement and nurturing, in particular).

As a simple refresher, let’s take a look at this tweet from AT&T who published it on the 9/11 day:

Followers perceived it as the attempt to play on the tragedy for marketing goals. Such negative reaction made AT&T marketers delete the tweet within an hour of publication.

Marketing tip: When publishing your sales copies and ads, try to pre-estimate reactions. Appeal to psychology and enhance emotional intelligence for a better understanding of your target audience.

3. You target fans

Spending money on pay per click as well as any other ad type targeting your existing audience… well… sucks: they know you and your offer already, so don’t reach them with advertising.

What is it with that?

Why?

We all love photography: your mum, friends, and ex like it but none of them has the interest in learning about it.

4. You forget about copywriting tricks

Rare small business owners bother about writing texts for ads. However, copywriting gizmos such as clear value propositions, words, and images influence your conversion rate per se.

The most common mistakes marketers still make:

Wrong ad image. Visual elements you choose for ads should hook users and make them want to click. For that, consider size/color/contrast combo.

Sluggish words. One word or phrase can change your conversion rate by 100%, so use power verbs that appeal to human emotions. Avoid vagueness and gobbledegook in your ads.

5. You wrongly use SMM tools

Time after time, social media come up with new tools to help marketers, but the latter often use them wrong.

AmericanAir failed when used the automatic reply feature in Twitter; it showed the brand’s unwillingness to get feedback from their audience.

Marketing tip: Use new tools for advertising only after learning them inside out. Pay attention to instructing your audience about what you want from them.

6. You focus on a product

Your advertising is not about you but customers, so a huge mistake would be talking about how cool you are and what luxury features your product/service has.

No one will care.

7. You don’t track

Picture this:

76% of marketers track effectiveness wrongly, considering awareness/engagement enough for success and mistaking it for conversion.

The question appears:

How do they know what advertising is most effective for their business and what they could change to make it better as well as influence their conversion rates?

The answer is… no how.

Two things work in digital marketing: testing and tracking. Once you know what works for your business, you invest into it and win more customers instead of blindly placing ads everywhere.

Marketing tip: Track your ads like crazy. Focus on metrics such as ad frequency, CTR, number of leads, relevance score, clicks by interest, and performance by placement.

Do any of the above mistakes sound familiar?

About the Author

http://ift.tt/2xiEu2u

#Top 7 Mistakes That Kill Your Ads Conversion in 2017

0 notes

repumktg61602 · 7 years

Text

Top 7 Mistakes That Kill Your Ads Conversion in 2017

Top 7 Mistakes That Kill Your Ads Conversion in 2017 written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Business spends huge money on sending their message to customers, but the results leave much to be desired:

For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them; besides, only 8% of users pay attention to marketing ads and click on them.

Yet, one assured method exists to generate lots of buzz about your business and advertising.

Failures become those signposts indicating the way to effective marketing. However, some mistakes come at a price.

Here go top seven, able to create a negative attitude toward your business as well as nip your ad conversion in the bud.

1. You don’t consider human factors

So build relations with humans and don’t throw information blocks into a faceless audience. Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising report confirms the effectiveness of such an approach.

Asking users about factors influencing their trust in ads, Nielsen’s experts marked those resonating most: humorous, value- and family-oriented, real-file situations are what works best.

2. You take social issues in vain

Appealing to social issues or newsjacking is a constant brinkmanship. When done right, it brings your business the benefits such as:

Traffic growth

Your brand’s integration into daily news background

Link product to a high-involvement issue

Engagement rate growth

Information market leadership

But a huge mistake would be to use social issues for small business ads. It hurts reputation and may destroy your customer funnel (engagement and nurturing, in particular).

As a simple refresher, let’s take a look at this tweet from AT&T who published it on the 9/11 day:

Followers perceived it as the attempt to play on the tragedy for marketing goals. Such negative reaction made AT&T marketers delete the tweet within an hour of publication.

Marketing tip: When publishing your sales copies and ads, try to pre-estimate reactions. Appeal to psychology and enhance emotional intelligence for a better understanding of your target audience.

3. You target fans

Spending money on pay per click as well as any other ad type targeting your existing audience… well… sucks: they know you and your offer already, so don’t reach them with advertising.

What is it with that?

Why?

We all love photography: your mum, friends, and ex like it but none of them has the interest in learning about it.

4. You forget about copywriting tricks

Rare small business owners bother about writing texts for ads. However, copywriting gizmos such as clear value propositions, words, and images influence your conversion rate per se.

The most common mistakes marketers still make:

Wrong ad image. Visual elements you choose for ads should hook users and make them want to click. For that, consider size/color/contrast combo.

Sluggish words. One word or phrase can change your conversion rate by 100%, so use power verbs that appeal to human emotions. Avoid vagueness and gobbledegook in your ads.

5. You wrongly use SMM tools

Time after time, social media come up with new tools to help marketers, but the latter often use them wrong.

AmericanAir failed when used the automatic reply feature in Twitter; it showed the brand’s unwillingness to get feedback from their audience.

Marketing tip: Use new tools for advertising only after learning them inside out. Pay attention to instructing your audience about what you want from them.

6. You focus on a product

Your advertising is not about you but customers, so a huge mistake would be talking about how cool you are and what luxury features your product/service has.

No one will care.

7. You don’t track

Picture this:

76% of marketers track effectiveness wrongly, considering awareness/engagement enough for success and mistaking it for conversion.

The question appears:

How do they know what advertising is most effective for their business and what they could change to make it better as well as influence their conversion rates?

The answer is… no how.

Two things work in digital marketing: testing and tracking. Once you know what works for your business, you invest into it and win more customers instead of blindly placing ads everywhere.

Marketing tip: Track your ads like crazy. Focus on metrics such as ad frequency, CTR, number of leads, relevance score, clicks by interest, and performance by placement.

Do any of the above mistakes sound familiar?

About the Author

http://ift.tt/2xiEu2u

#Top 7 Mistakes That Kill Your Ads Conversion in 2017

0 notes