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aedleader · 4 months ago

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Top-Rated AEDs for Sale: A Comprehensive Guide

In the field of emergency medical response, Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) have become an indispensable tool in the fight against sudden cardiac arrest. These life-saving devices have been deployed in a wide range of settings, from schools and workplaces to public venues and community centers, empowering individuals to take immediate action and increase the chances of survival for those experiencing a cardiac emergency.

As the demand for price AED continues to grow, the market has become saturated with a wide range of options, each claiming to be the best solution. Navigating this landscape can be a daunting task, particularly for those new to the world of emergency medical equipment. In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the top-rated AEDs for sale, examining their features, capabilities, and suitability for different environments and applications.

price aed

Before diving into the specific top-rated AEDs, it's essential to understand the key factors that should guide your decision-making process. These considerations will help you identify the device that best aligns with your needs and ensures the highest level of effectiveness in a cardiac emergency.

Ease of Use and Accessibility

One of the primary factors to consider is the ease of use and accessibility of the AED. During a cardiac emergency, every second counts, and the ability to quickly and confidently operate the device can mean the difference between life and death. Look for AEDs with clear, intuitive user interfaces, simple step-by-step instructions, and voice and visual prompts that guide the user through the entire process. Accessibility is also crucial, so consider factors such as the device's size, weight, and portability, ensuring that it can be easily located and transported to the emergency scene.

Technological Capabilities

The technological capabilities of an AED are critical in determining its effectiveness and reliability. Prioritize devices that utilize the latest advancements in defibrillation technology, such as biphasic waveform technology, which has been proven to be more efficient and effective than traditional monophasic waveforms. Additionally, consider features like advanced rhythm analysis algorithms, which can accurately detect and respond to a wide range of cardiac rhythms, and the availability of real-time feedback and guidance to the user.

Durability and Reliability

AEDs are often stored in public spaces or transported to various locations, which means they need to be durable and reliable. Look for devices that are designed to withstand the rigors of emergency situations, including exposure to dust, water, and impact. Ensure that the AED you choose has a robust construction and is backed by a strong warranty and ongoing maintenance support from the manufacturer.

Compatibility with Emergency Response Systems

In many cases, the effectiveness of an AED can be greatly enhanced by its integration with existing emergency response systems. Look for AEDs that can seamlessly communicate with emergency dispatch centers, allowing for real-time data sharing and the coordination of emergency response efforts. This integration can provide critical information to incoming first responders, improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the emergency care.

Comprehensive Training and Support

Choosing an AED is not just about the device itself; it's also about the support and training resources available to the users. Look for manufacturers that offer comprehensive training programs, educational materials, and ongoing technical assistance to ensure that your organization or community is well-equipped to maintain and operate the AED effectively. This level of support can be invaluable in building confidence and competence among potential rescuers, ultimately improving the chances of successful resuscitation.

Top-Rated AEDs for Sale

With these key considerations in mind, let's explore some of the top-rated AEDs for sale, highlighting their unique features and suitability for different applications.

Philips HeartStart OnSite Defibrillator

The Philips HeartStart OnSite Defibrillator is a highly acclaimed AED that has been widely deployed in various settings. Its user-friendly design, featuring clear voice instructions and intuitive visual prompts, makes it an excellent choice for both trained and untrained rescuers. The device's advanced technology, including biphasic waveform defibrillation and adaptive shock delivery, ensures reliable and effective cardiac rhythm analysis and treatment. Additionally, the HeartStart OnSite is compact, lightweight, and durable, making it easy to transport and maintain.

ZOLL AED Plus

The ZOLL AED Plus is a feature-rich AED that combines cutting-edge technology with exceptional ease of use. Its unique "Real CPR Help" feature provides real-time feedback on the depth and rate of chest compressions, ensuring that rescuers perform high-quality CPR. The device's clear, step-by-step voice and visual instructions guide users through the entire resuscitation process, even for those with limited medical training. The ZOLL AED Plus is also renowned for its rugged construction and water-resistant design, making it suitable for use in a wide range of environments.

Cardiac Science Powerheart G5 AED

The Cardiac Science Powerheart G5 AED is a reliable and versatile device that has gained widespread recognition in the emergency medical community. Its advanced features include intelligent cardiac rhythm analysis, automated shock delivery, and a rugged, durable design that can withstand the rigors of emergency situations. The Powerheart G5 also boasts a long battery life and the ability to provide real-time feedback on the quality of CPR, helping rescuers optimize their efforts during a cardiac emergency.

HeartSine samaritan PAD 360P AED

The HeartSine samaritan PAD 360P AED is a compact and lightweight device that is ideal for use in public spaces and community settings. Its intuitive user interface, featuring clear voice prompts and visual cues, ensures that even untrained individuals can confidently operate the device during a cardiac emergency. The samaritan PAD 360P is also designed to withstand environmental challenges, such as dust, water, and impact, making it a reliable choice for a wide range of applications.

Physio-Control LIFEPAK CR2 Defibrillator

The Physio-Control LIFEPAK CR2 Defibrillator is a cutting-edge AED that combines advanced technology with exceptional user-friendliness. Its unique "Metronome" feature provides real-time guidance on the optimal rate and depth of chest compressions, helping rescuers deliver high-quality CPR. The LIFEPAK CR2 also features built-in connectivity, allowing it to seamlessly integrate with emergency response systems and provide critical data to first responders. This integration, coupled with the device's durable and portable design, makes it an excellent choice for use in a variety of settings.

Conclusion

Choosing the right AED for your needs is a crucial decision that can have a profound impact on the outcome of a cardiac emergency. By considering the key factors outlined in this guide, including ease of use, technological capabilities, durability, compatibility, and comprehensive support, you can select the top-rated AED that best meets the unique requirements of your organization or community.

Remember, the selection of an AED is not a one-size-fits-all proposition; it's a decision that should be based on a deep understanding of your specific needs and the environment in which the device will be used. By taking the time to carefully evaluate your options and make an informed choice, you can invest in an AED that will serve as a reliable and invaluable asset in your efforts to save lives and protect the health and safety of those around you.

#price aed #used aed defibrillator #aed heartstart

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swarupkumarnath07 · 2 years ago

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Basic Understanding of 8051 Microcontroller

8051 Microcontroller

Hello, and welcome to my blog! Today I’m going to talk about one of my favorite topics: the 8051 microcontroller. If you are interested in embedded systems, you might have heard of this amazing device that can do wonders with just a few pins and bytes of memory. But what exactly is a 8051 microcontroller, and how does it work? Let’s find out!

A 8051 microcontroller is a small computer that can be programmed to perform various tasks. It has a central processing unit (CPU) that executes instructions, a random access memory (RAM) that stores data, a read-only memory (ROM) that stores the program code, and input/output (I/O) ports that connect to external devices. The 8051 microcontroller belongs to the family of 8-bit microcontrollers, which means that each instruction and data is 8 bits long (one byte).

The 8051 microcontroller has some special features that make it suitable for embedded applications. For example, it has four register banks that can be switched quickly to optimize performance. It also has two 16-bit timers/counters that can be used for timing and counting events. It has a serial port that can communicate with other devices using serial communication protocols. It has five interrupt sources that can respond to external or internal events. And it has four I/O ports that can be configured as input or output pins.

One of the advantages of the 8051 microcontroller is that it is easy to program and debug. There are many development tools available for the 8051 microcontroller, such as compilers, assemblers, simulators, emulators, and programmers. You can write your code in assembly language or in a high-level language such as C or BASIC. You can test your code on a simulator or on a real device using an emulator or a programmer.

Another advantage of the 8051 microcontroller is that it is widely used and supported. There are many variants and derivatives of the 8051 microcontroller from different manufacturers, such as Intel, Atmel, Philips, and Microchip. You can find many resources and tutorials online to learn more about the 8051 microcontroller and its applications. You can also find many projects and examples that use the 8051 microcontroller for various purposes, such as robotics, home automation, security systems, and games.

If you are interested to understand more about the 8051 microcontroller, then you can go through the PiEmbSysTech 8051 microcontroller Tutorial Blog. If you have any questions or query, that you need to get answer or you have any idea to share it with the community, you can use Piest Forum.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and learned something new about the 8051 microcontroller. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below. And don’t forget to subscribe to my blog for more interesting posts about embedded systems.

Thanks for reading!

#embedded systems

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logelitepvtltd · 2 years ago

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Best Chatbot Software in the USA

What is a Chatbot Software?

A Chat-Bot, at its most basic, is computer software that mimics and interprets human interaction (spoken or typed), enabling users to converse with digital gadgets as if they were speaking to real people. Chatbots may be as basic as one-line programs that respond to straightforward questions, or they can be as complex as digital assistants that learn and develop over time to provide ever more individualized service as they acquire and analyze more data.

Unknowingly or not, you have undoubtedly communicated with a chatbot. A popup may appear on your screen while you are conducting product research at your computer and ask if you need any assistance. Or perhaps you use your smartphone to chat for a ride when you're on your way to a performance. Or perhaps you've used voice commands to place a coffee order at a nearby café and heard a response letting you know when it would be available and how much it will cost. These are all illustrations of situations in which you could run into a chatbot.

What are the workings of chatbots?

Chatbots process data to provide answers to all types of questions and are powered by artificial intelligence (AI), automated rules, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML).

The two primary categories of chatbots are.

Task-oriented (declarative) chatbots are specialized applications that concentrate on carrying out a specific task. They provide automated yet conversational replies to user inquiries by using rules, NLP, and very little ML. These chatbots' interactions are quite organized and precise, and they are best suited for support and service tasks. Think of them as strong interactive FAQs. Task-oriented chatbots may manage frequent inquiries, such as inquiries regarding company hours or straightforward transactions without a lot of variables. Although they employ NLP to provide conversational user experiences, their powers are somewhat limited. These chatbots are presently the most popular ones.

Data-driven and predictive (conversational) chatbots They are significantly more intelligent, interactive, and individualized than task-focused chatbots, and are sometimes referred to as virtual assistants or digital assistants. These chatbots use natural language understanding (NLU), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML) to learn as they go. In order to offer personalization based on user profiles and previous user behavior, they utilize predictive intelligence and analytics. Digital assistants may gradually learn a user's preferences, provide suggestions, and even foresee requirements. They can start dialogues in addition to monitoring data and intent. A few examples of consumer-focused, data-driven, predictive chatbots are Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa.

Advanced digital assistants may also link many single-purpose chatbots together, gather data from each one separately, and then integrate this data to carry out a job while retaining context—keeping the Chat-Bot from being "confused."

The value chatbots bring to businesses and customers

Chatbots increase operational effectiveness and save costs for organizations while providing convenience and extra services to both internal staff and external clients. They lessen the need for human engagement while enabling businesses to quickly address a wide range of client inquiries and difficulties.

A Chat-Bot allows a firm to expand, customize, and be proactive all at once—a key differentiation. For instance, a company can only serve a certain number of customers at once while using just human labor. Human-powered firms are constrained in their capacity for proactive and individualized outreach since they must concentrate on standardized models in order to be cost-effective.

Chatbots, on the other hand, enable businesses to interact personally with an endless number of consumers and may be scaled up or down in response to demand and organizational requirements. A company may simultaneously provide millions of customers with proactive, human-like support by deploying chatbots.

According to consumer research, messaging apps are quickly taking over as people's go-to means of contacting companies to do specific kinds of business. Chatbots allow a degree of service and convenience through messaging systems that, in many circumstances, go beyond what people can offer. For instance, compared to traditional contact centers, banking chatbots save customers an average of four minutes for every query. The same capabilities that boost productivity and cut costs for organizations can benefit customers by enhancing their shopping experiences. It is a win-win situation.

Why did Chatbots come into being?

A "mobile-first" society is emerging as a result of digitization. Chatbots are becoming an increasingly significant part of this mobility-driven change as messaging services gain in popularity. Intelligent conversational chatbots, which are frequently used as mobile application interfaces, are revolutionizing how companies and customers communicate.

Businesses may interact personally with consumers with chatbots without incurring the cost of hiring human agents. For instance, a lot of the queries or problems that clients have simple solutions to. For this reason, businesses provide FAQs and troubleshooting manuals. In place of traditional FAQs or guides, chatbots provide a more personalized option. They can even triage queries and refer customers with difficult problems to real people. As a time and money saver for businesses and a convenience for customers, chatbots have gained popularity.

Evolution of Chatbots

It is possible that Alan Turing's idea of intelligent robots from the 1950s is where the Chat-Bot got its start. Since then, advances in artificial intelligence—the technology underpinning chatbots—have led to the development of superintelligent supercomputers like IBM Watson.

The phone tree, which guided consumers who called in on a sometimes tedious and irritating route of picking one option after another to wound their way through an automated customer service model, was the first chatbot. This concept developed into pop-up, live, onscreen discussions as a result of technological advancements and the increasing sophistication of AI, ML, and NLP. The process of evolution has proceeded.

With the help of today's digital assistants, businesses can expand AI to offer far more practical and efficient interactions with customers—right from their digital devices.

Frequently used Chatbots

Chatbots are widely employed to enhance the self-service and automated internal staff operations offered by IT service management. Common activities like password updates, system status, outage notifications, and knowledge management may easily be automated and made available round-the-clock with the help of an intelligent chatbot, expanding access to popular speech and text-based conversational interfaces.

To manage incoming interactions and steer clients to the right resource, chatbots are most frequently utilized in customer contact centers on the business side. They are typically employed for internal functions as well, including assisting all workers with regular tasks like organizing vacation time, completing training, obtaining computers and office supplies, and other self-service tasks that don't require human assistance.

Chatbots are providing a range of customer services for consumers, including purchasing event tickets, booking and checking into hotels, and comparing goods and services. Additionally, chatbots are frequently utilized in the banking, retail, and food and beverage industries to handle standard consumer tasks. Chatbots may also do a variety of public sector tasks, including filing requests for city services, answering questions about utilities, and resolving billing difficulties.

Why AI and data are important for Chatbots

The AI and data that power chatbots have both their advantages and disadvantages.

AI considerations: AI is excellent at automating tedious and repetitive tasks. The majority of the time, a Chat-Bot performs effectively when AI is used for these kinds of jobs. A Chat-Bot may suffer if a request is made of it that goes beyond what it can do or makes the work more difficult, which is bad for both businesses and customers. Chatbots may not always be able to respond to or handle certain inquiries or problems, such as complicated service problems with several variables.

By including a contingency in their Chat-Bot program that directs the user to another resource (like a live agent) or asks the user for a different inquiry or problem, developers may get past these restrictions. Some chatbots can switch between being a chatbot, a live agent, and back again without any noticeable lag. Chatbots and digital assistants will be more smoothly incorporated into our daily lives as AI technology and implementation continue to advance.

Data considerations: Each and every Chat-Bot makes use of data, which may be accessible from a number of sources. The data will be a Chat-Bot enabler as long as it is of a good caliber and the Chat-Bot is designed properly. The functionality of the Chat-Bot will be restricted if the data quality is low. Furthermore, even if the data quality is high, if the chatbot's machine learning (ML) training wasn't done correctly or was unsupervised, the Chat-Bot may behave poorly, or at the very least surprisingly.

In other words, the AI and information you incorporate into your Chat-Bot will determine how effective it is.

Why are Chatbots bad?

The phrase "chatbot" is surrounded by certain misunderstandings. A bot is just an automated software that may be used for good or bad, despite the fact that the phrases Chat-Bot and bot are occasionally used interchangeably. The word "bot" has a bad reputation since, in the past, hackers have used automated programs to disrupt the digital environment, usurp authority, and generally cause trouble.

As a result, bots and chatbots should not be confused. In general, chatbots have not historically been utilized for hacking operations. Chatbots are conversational technologies that effectively do repetitive activities. They are popular because they enable people to complete certain chores quickly, freeing up time for high-level, strategic, and interesting activities that call for human qualities that cannot be copied by robots.

Want to build Chatbots? You might be surprised to learn how simple it is.

Anyone can construct a Chat-Bot thanks to a variety of freely accessible technologies. These tools come in a variety of styles, some geared toward consumers and others for corporate applications (such as internal operations).

A messaging platform or service is needed to deploy a chatbot, which is analogous to developing a mobile application. In addition, you don't need to be an expert or even a developer to construct a Chat-Bot because there are several tools available for doing so. These kinds of technologies ought to make it possible for a product manager or business user to build a Chat-Bot in as short as an hour.

Chatbot's Potential future

Where are chatbots going in their evolution? Similar to other AI technologies, chatbots will be used to improve human capacities and liberate people to be more inventive and creative, devoting more of their time to strategic rather than tactical work.

Businesses, workers, and customers are anticipated to benefit from improved Chat-Bot capabilities in the near future when AI is paired with the development of 5G technology, such as quicker suggestions and predictions, and simple access to high-definition video conferencing from within a discussion. These and other possibilities are still under investigation, but as internet connectivity, AI, NLP, and ML develop, they will improve swiftly. In the future, everyone will be able to carry a fully functional personal assistant with them at all times, making life and work more productive and connected.

Conclusion

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tracybirds · 3 years ago

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Paper Dreams

John receives a prestigious invite and he’s not sure how to respond.

Many thanks to @gumnut-logic for the encouragement because I am nerves!!

* * *

The crisp white envelope was heavy in his hands as he hurried from the room. Paper was a formality, a mark of distinction that would surely draw his brothers’ unwanted attention. Letters didn’t just arrive unannounced in this era of high-speed data connections and quantum supercomputers. In fact, they didn’t arrive at all.

So, John was more than a little apprehensive when Grandma Tracy silently handed him the sealed envelope and walked away.

It took only a few short minutes to read through the contents and he sat back against the window in his room, the words whirling in his mind.

Mars Colonisation Project. Distinguished candidate. Invited to apply.

An opportunity of a lifetime.

A way to prove for once and for all that he was more than his father’s famous name.

John clutched at the letter, the paper crinkling in his grasp. He mouthed the words as he read them, over and over.

He looked up at the sound of a loud yell calling his name, hurriedly shoving the letter into the envelope and dropping it at his side. Snatching up a nearby tablet, his flushed ears were the only hint of the letter that remained when Gordon shoved open the door.

“John, dinner, hurry up.”

His brother tore out of the room before he could respond.

* * *

John slipped into his seat, mouthing an apology to Grandma Tracy as he did.

“Finally!” cried Alan. He wriggled back in his seat, staring hopefully at the food. “Grandma said we had to wait for you, you took forever!”

“Is Dad not eating?” asked Virgil. “I heard him come in.”

“He’s taking it in the study tonight,” said Grandma Tracy, shaking her head slightly. “Brains dropped by and they’re holing up together on that project of theirs.”

John glanced over at the conspicuously empty seat at the head of table. They all knew what ‘that project’ meant.

In the heady rush of excitement, he’d all but forgotten the silent expectation that accompanied his studies and extra-curriculars for the past five years. A pet project alone wouldn’t have been enough to deter him from his own ambitions, but the Thunderbirds, they offered something different, something more than the office politics of academia, squabbling over research grants.

He’d never known anything that could compete.

Until now.

“Hey,” said Virgil in a low tone, nudging him from his thoughts. “You okay?”

John pulled himself back into the present with a slight grimace.

“Fine. Just thinking about an assignment.”

Virgil nodded slowly, looking him up and down with a critical eye.

“Are you going to eat anything, or just push it around?”

John automatically lifted his fork, blinking as the peas fell back to the plate and landed in a pile of mushy, grey potatoes.

“Actually, I’m not that hungry.”

“Can I have yours?” asked Alan, already reaching over to grab at his plate.

“Not hungry, John?” asked Grandma Tracy. “You’re not coming down with something, are you?”

She examined the pinched look in his face and the nervous twist of one hand inside the other.

“No,” said John, wishing he hadn’t said anything. The last thing he wanted was any level of scrutiny. “I’m fine, Grandma, honest.”

He let Alan scrape his leftovers from his plate, realising with a pang than he’d had another growth spurt over the previous semester at his boarding school.

If he left for Mars, he’d return to a brother he’d hardly recognise.

Colonisation was a long-term project, the result of years in planning and decades of dreams. Countless people would put their life’s work into its development and they had every right to expect the same of their astronauts. The application process alone was heavily involved and would severely limit time with his family, to say nothing of the many years ahead for him on Mars if he made it all the way into space. He’d be travelling millions of miles from home, only to find himself living with a group of strangers that he couldn’t escape without logging an external environment report.

He didn’t even like sharing a bathroom at the university housing that much.

Still the piece of paper called to him.

“Can I be excused?”

Grandma Tracy nodded and he hurried from the room, not noticing her troubled look.

The warmth of the room followed him into the hallway and he shut the door firmly behind him. He thrust his hand into his pocket, searching for the reassuring touch of cool paper.

It was real.

It was real and if he let the opportunity pass by, he might regret it for the rest of his life.

Or he might be wasting his time, pinning his hopes on something that would only serve to distract him in the long run. He could only imagine what Scott would say, who’d never once taken his eye off a prize once he’d decided to aim for it.

He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what he wanted, and found himself climbing into the cramped space under the roof that had generously called a playroom, then a study, then an attic.

He blinked as the bare bulb overhead lit the small room, filling it with old memories and dust.

His first telescope was still standing in the corner, pointing high in the sky and he lifted the edge of his T-shirt to wipe the dust away. Surrounding it, lay stacks of books that his mom had picked up from the local thrift store, that Mrs Delaney, the owner, put them aside just for him.

John walked carefully among them, tugging the small window open and staring out into the night. The stars shone bright in the clear, crisp air.

Crouching down, he peered through the eye piece, adjusting the focus with a practiced hand. The little reflector was nothing like the giant telescopes available at the college department, and he had to hold his breath to stop the stand from wobbling. But the universe was still out there, the same as it was when he was a kid, still holding an infinite number of mysteries despite the years he had spent uncovering the rules that held it together.

He looked up, eyes darting through the familiar patterns, searching for the anomaly he knew was wandering between Gemini and Taurus.

And there it was.

Mars.

A planet with so much to offer the world they lived on. Where he could work with a team of people who loved space just like him, where he could devote his life to researching astronomy from a new perspective and developing technology for interplanetary life for generations to come.

Where he could leave his mark alongside all the heroes of his childhood. Alongside his dad.

“After all, why shouldn’t I go?” he said, scowling up at Mars.

“Go where?”

John spun around with a start.

“Kayo! When did you get in?”

She shrugged, propping up her head with her hand.

“Long enough to see you come up here,” she said. “I waited for you, but then Mrs Tracy said you hadn’t eaten. Figured something was wrong.”

She looked him up and down with a piercing eye. John tried not to squirm. He’d always felt Kayo had something of a sixth sense when it came to knowing things that should have been a secret.

“Seems like I was right,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“Everything’s fine.”

“Then where are you planning on going?”

“Nowhere. I don’t think, that is…”

He flopped down and tilted his head back with a huff.

“Not right now, at any rate.”

Kayo pulled herself up onto the floor and drew the ladder upwards.

Neither spoke as the trapdoor shut with a small ‘click’.

The dust swirled in the air, dancing in the shafts of light above them.

“Is it a graduate program?”

“No.”

“An international program?”

“No.”

“A long-term space colonisation program for specially selected candidates who have already proven themselves in the fields of communications, astrophysics and astrotechnology?”

John stared at her.

She shrugged.

“It’s my job to know.”

“So, why even ask?”

“I’m trying to get you to lower your guard.”

She smiled at the dumbfounded look on his face.

“You’ve met Brains, right? He’s got some server tracker that flags your name. They asked your advisor for academic and personal references months ago.”

“Oh God,” said John, dropping his head in his ands and staring wildly at the floor. “Does Dad already know?”

Kayo shook her head.

“Dad and I do. Security details and all. But we don’t tell him that kind of stuff, you know, he’s not spying on you.”

“You’re right, that’s a real comfort,” said John, drily.

Kayo tossed her head.

“I’m just saying.”

Her eyes softened as she watched him draw his knees close to his chest.

“He doesn’t know.” She hesitated, still watching him. “Would it be all that bad if he did though?”

John huffed a little, still staring at his knees.

“International Rescue’s all we’ve ever talked about,” he said. “I didn’t think there’d be anything else I wanted. What if I let him down?”

“He’s already proud of you, John.”

“But we’ve been working towards it for so long now. This would change everything. Delay the full scope of the project for months, or years even.”

Kayo snorted.

“You really think Jeff Tracy, resident billionaire and with access to the best tech in the world, wouldn’t be able to find another genius astrotechnician and communication expert?”

John shot her a withering look.

“Okay, so maybe he’d have to find two super geniuses.”

She easily dodged the picture book he threw in her direction.

“Leave off,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Kayo spotted the slight smile though, and grinned broadly in return.

“Can I?” she asked, nodding at the space between him and the wall.

John nodded and shuffled over as best he could, trying not to topple the book stacks around them.

Kayo wriggled into the gap, and John paid her no mind.

He hadn’t thought of who would take his place because, of course, someone must. He’d been preparing for an International Rescue without him, one where his family diverted communications for a few years and focused their efforts on establishing themselves on land and sea until Alan stepped into his role on Thunderbird Five.

He hadn’t imagined an International Rescue where he wasn’t even needed.

Kayo seemed to sense the turn in his thoughts, nudging him gently to pull him from them.

“He wouldn’t trust them half as much as you, you know.”

John shrugged.

“I don’t want to disappoint him,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “But I don’t want that to be the only reason I don’t go.”

He took a deep breath, and glanced back up at the slowly setting planet.

“And I want to go,” he admitted. “I do. I need to tell him.”

Kayo nodded, a sad look in her eyes. They sat in silence together, lost in their own thoughts. The bustle of the house downstairs filtered upwards. Muffled bangs and indistinct shouts of Gordon and Alan playing some ridiculous game, loud music from Virgil’s room – the kind he put on to drown out any interruption to his painting. Grandma Tracy seemed to be having some kind of one-sided conversation with herself, until John remembered, with a pang, that it was Saturday morning out in Guam and she was likely speaking to Scott at that very moment.

Kayo sighed and dropped her head on John’s shoulder.

“I’d miss you though.”

John swallowed carefully past the sudden lump in his throat.

“I’d miss you too.”

* * *

John was too old to be summoned to his father’s study, but somehow deliberately interrupting him felt worse. Nausea sat like a rock in his stomach, his voice box left in tatters as he knocked on the solid oak door.

“Who is it?”

He couldn’t reply.

His eyes flitted across the family photos that littered the hallway, landing finally on the image of his father and crewmates waving to the masses as they entered the Herschel-VI.

The photograph didn’t show the way his father was blind to the crowd, his farewell only for the woman who stood half a mile from the launchpad, proud, so proud, and sick with worry too. She held tight to her eldest son with one hand, and rested her other on the stroller she was rocking back and forth. She didn’t see the way he had wriggled out of his restraints nor how he was preparing to drop to the ground and run away, already intent on chasing after his father at three years old.

Jeff Tracy, first man on Mars, opened the door with a frown and a touch of impatience, and John knew there would be no escape this time.

“John.”

“Dad.”

His throat closed around his words and his hand closed around the letter in a fist.

Jeff looked down at the sound, and looked back at John, an assessing look in his eye. He stepped back wordlessly and John entered the severe room.

“What’s happened, son?” he asked, holding his hand out for the letter.

He smoothed down the crumpled edges as he read, his eyes leaping from phrase to phrase on the page.

“Well, it seems congratulations are in order. I assume you intend to accept?”

The knot in John’s chest loosened and he collapsed into the chair opposite Jeff.

“I intend to apply,” he corrected, staring down at the desk between them.

“John, they don’t reach out like this unless they want you onboard. They intend you to be on that shuttle, regardless of the formalities the bureaucrats put in place.”

“Yeah.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the blueprints, Brains’ small, neat handwriting annotating each design and his father’s looping comments scrawled liberally across them.

Jeff followed his line of sight and smiled.

“Five won’t be operational for a few more years, you know that. Don’t let her be what holds you back.”

“But this was always it, this is why I’m getting space rated. And the satellite network still needs to be launched, and the orbital mechanics calculated.”

“An opportunity like this doesn’t come your way twice, son.”

John stopped.

“You think I should accept. If they say yes.”

“Don’t you?”

There it was. His father’s blessing laid out in front of him, just waiting to be taken up like a pennant.

Everything they’d worked for, everything they’d sacrificed, gone. In its place, a single shining achievement, a global community on their sister planet. The first of its kind.

It had been a long time since John had allowed himself to dream his own dreams.

“Alright,” he said, a giddy rush spinning his head so that he hardly knew what he was saying. “I’m gonna do it.”

#john tracy #kayo kyrano #jeff tracy #thunderbirds are go #sometimes i fic

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goldenagewebnovel · 3 years ago

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Volume 1 Prologue

Virtual Reality.

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

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

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

And then came the Digital Mind Project.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the ads kept coming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

__________________________________

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

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

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

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

A voice from the wireframe responds.

“I’d like to customize.”

Very well.

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

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

“Human.”

Very well.

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

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

“Um, I’ll take male for me.”

Very well.

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

Please select your body type.

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

Very well.

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

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

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

Very well.

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

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

Please spell the name of your character.

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

Please pronounce how to say the name of your character.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome, to the world of Golden Age, D0n.

I felt like I could stare at that sight forever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was time to play the game.

#Volume 1 #Story

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cvid19 · 3 years ago

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COVID 19 PANDEMIC

COVID-19 Effects on the Philippines

According to Pharmaceutical Technology Philippine is one of the high-risk countries from the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. The first case of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV, now COVID-19) in the Philippines was confirmed on 30 January 2020, in a 38-year old woman who arrived from Wuhan. Two days later, the Philippines recorded the first death outside China on 01 February 2020.

The Philippines government declared a health emergency on 09 March, following a spike in new confirmed cases and local transmission. The COVID-19 Code Alert system was revised upwards to Red Sublevel 2 on 12 March.

The Philippines government announced the entire country will be placed under a state of calamity for a period of six months. The declaration will enable national and local governments to quickly access relief funds to curb the spread of the disease.

They started announcing local lock-downs (home quarantine) following the increase in global coronavirus cases. The entire Luzon island is locked-down affecting more than 50 million people. The lock-down prohibits people from going outside their homes except for getting basic necessities.

Quarantining (lock-down) will be imposed in the Philippines barangays, municipalities/cities and provinces if at least two COVID-19 coronavirus cases are recorded in two different households in the respective locations.

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/coronavirus-affected-countries-philippines-measures-impact-tourism-economy/

Economy

Covid-19 make a lot of difference on the economy of the country. Philippines witnessed a slower economic growth in the first half of 2019, compared to 2018. The country saw a sustained economic growth of 6.3% between 2010 and 2018, while the growth slowed down to 5.5% in H2 2019. The World Bank estimates Philippines to witness full-year 2019 economic growth of 5.8%.

The Central Bank of the Philippines (BSP) noted that the coronavirus outbreak could have a major impact on Philippine economy over the next few months.

Ruben Carlo Asuncion, chief economist for Union Bank of the Philippines, noted that the coronavirus outbreak could cost the Philippine economy $600m or 0.8% of economic growth if it lasts for six months, as quoted by CNN Philippines.

A series of unforeseen events caused an abrupt halt to the Philippines' strong growth momentum in early 2020. The Philippine economy carried its strong growth momentum from the second half of 2019 into early 2020 thanks to positive consumer confidence, robust macroeconomic fundamentals, and an improvement in the external sector. However, the eruption of Taal Volcano in early January, the spread of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in the region, and the rise of COVID-19 infection cases in the Philippines in March, forced the economy to a near halt in the latter part of March due to severe disruptions in manufacturing, agriculture, tourism and hospitality, construction, and trade. The economy contracted by 0.2 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020, the first contraction in over two decades, and was a sharp reversal from the 5.7 percent growth over the same period in 2019. Leading indicators that track economic activity in real time suggest that the contraction would be even more severe in the second quarter as most regions of the country entered an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in mid-March.

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/33879

Tourism

PWC Philippines indicated that given the travel restrictions and closure of businesses, 88% of the respondents expect losses of over 50% of their 2020 revenues. Sixty-three percent of the respondents also say that they expect their businesses to normalize within six months to over a year. Such findings are worrying because the tourism industry contributed 12.7% of the country’s GDP in 2019, and provided 5.71 million jobs in the same year.

Tourism industry is a major contributor, accounting for 12.7% of the Philippine economy in 2018, according to data from the Philippines Statistics Authority. More than seven million foreign tourists visited the country during the first ten months of 2019.

Globally, the World Travel and Tourism council estimated that it could take up to ten months for the industry to recover.

Nine months since the virus was first detected in China, there is still no sign that the spread is slowing down. The road to recovery can take longer than initially anticipated. Fitch forecasts that tourist arrivals and tourism receipts will not go back to pre-COVID levels even five years hence.

The tourism industry, however, is expected to witness a major impact as the country closed its borders with China and other countries due to the coronavirus infection, Philippine Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez noted. Dominguez added that the exact economic impact of the outbreak is too early to be estimated but remained optimistic that the country can sustain its economic growth.

https://www.pwc.com/ph/en/publications/tourism-pwc-philippines/tourism-covid-19.html

Business

Drawing on a survey of more than 5,800 small businesses, this paper provides insight into the economic impact of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) on small businesses. The results shed light on both the financial fragility of many small businesses, and the significant impact COVID-19 had on these businesses in the weeks after the COVID-19–related disruptions began. The results also provide evidence on businesses’ expectations about the longer-term impact of COVID-19, as well as their perceptions of relief programs offered by the government.

Firms in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region have been hit hard by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, with dramatic and widespread falls in sales and employment. Firm sales in some EAP countries were 38 to 58 percent lower in April or May 2020, compared to the same month in the previous year. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been particularly affected.

The pandemic will have a lasting impact on productivity growth as firm indebtedness and increased uncertainty inhibit investment, and firm closures and unemployment lead to a loss of valuable intangible assets. Support for firms is needed but must be based as far as possible on objective criteria, related not only to past performance or current pain but to the potential for firms, including new firms, to thrive in the future. To avoid unduly prolonging assistance, governments should build exit strategies into the design of support measures and commit to phasing support out by linking it to observable macroeconomic indicators of recovery.

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/30/17656

Lesson that We’ve learn during this Pandemic

"Not only does self-care have positive outcomes for you, but it also sets an example to younger generations as something to establish and maintain for your entire life."

CREDITS TO AARP ORG

-This pandemic thought us to become stronger or having a courage in time of crisis. We must always be on a positive side that we will strive and cope this challenges that we are facing because as the years will pass by this pandemic will be a reminder or a lesson that we must thought the next generation that no matter what happens as long as you will not give up and fight for everything that will come up you can reach your goal and strive. This also thought as about caring for others and working as one because once achievement will be more greater if there are people that help you to do great things just like our front liners we must learn how to cooperate by following the protocols that they give because if its not for them we will have more harder times that we even face before and we wont know what are we going to do.

Ø As a reminder if your experiencing the signs and effects of COVID-19 do not think of it that much just think on a positive way to feel better again. Positive mind could be a great help to cope anything that bother you even if it’s a deadly virus. We all know that we are all facing in the same situation but I believe that we can do it, we can wipe out this virus in this world for ones. Just follow the protocols that we are given and I know that we will all be better and we can do all the things that we’ve missed when the time comes.

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pearlplusau · 5 years ago

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Chapter 5- The insertion (Part 1)

Decades passed in the home world galaxy, everything was different now, as the planet slowly ripped in half, the anguish of the three diamonds remains unscathed and permanent as the infinite suns.

After the incident, White Diamond isolated herself in her giant head ship all day, carrying out duties through simple mind control and formal messages to the higher ranked gems in her court, never needing to leave, never needing to see the empty palace of her starlight or the absent of the pink ship.

Blue Diamond wept, she wept day in, day out, as her only companion to feel happy together was lost and never would she returned. She suffered greatly from losing her, the sadness got so out of hand, under her eyes were dark bags as if they came to warn her about her powers draining her life force. Every now and then, she would visit Pinks sacred planets or the Human zoo, just to mourn for her, just to be reminded how she didn’t help as much as she should, just to feel what was left of her.

Yellow Diamond showed no more than what she already feels, anger. she would be in her chambers, attempting some long forgotten experiments of retrieved gem shards from the battle on Earth. Could she recognize her own soldiers from the rebels? No, it was impossible to distinguish gems by their shards, so she decided to continue the experiment. as she examines the various shards scattered on the counter,she thought of a plan . “If I can’t make a colony out of that hideous rock, then it looks like I’ll have to destroy it. White may have yet to approve my idea, but her refusal of talking anything regarding Pink won’t stop me from wiping that planet out of existence,” she thought as bitterness and anger fueled her, but she knew she was just as heartbroken as Blue, she just couldn’t show it.

She wiped off something from her eye and called out, “Pearl!”

The yellow pearl peeked out behind the counter with her arms in salute, “Yes my Diamond?”

“I want you to seek out the Inordinate one, and get her here immediately, I have a very important mission for her.”

“Yes,right away my Diamond!” Pearl bowed and left the room.

Back on Earth,

The remains of a war was mostly scattered about, there abandon weapons, obilerated lands, and broken space ships here and there, but no gem shards were shining in the dusty bright dessert, and no real sign of battles can be seen.

A corrupted giant yam monster, the size of a giant boulder was rolling away into an abondoned kindergarden. The Crystal gems, which consisted of Garnet, Pearl and Coral panted as they chased the monster for the whole day, but it was too fast for them.

"Not that i know of, but we need a break, i dont think Coral here can withstand another hit from the monster." She pointed to the aformentioned gem as she looks like shes gonna collapsed at any moment.

Pearl was the first to recover herself and started, "That’s the third time this week it got away! Garnet! Can you see if we're able to take care of it?"

The fusion, paused and go through the multiple outcomes of the situation, but none shows a newly bubbled gem in her room.

The pink pearl was panting and wheezing as she was rather in low health, but she held her head up and assured the two gems that she's fine.

"Really! I'm fine! Let's keep goin-" She almost finished her sentence before collapsing.

Before she went unconcious, she heard Pearl mumbling and complaining, "I knew it was a bad idea! Why was she so insisting on coming along? She was the one that lost track and couldn’t keep a stable stance with it!”

“Pearl,” Garnet said, “You can’t blame her for the inevitable, besides, Rose needed sometime alone and she was the one that suggested we do it together since we can’t all just swing a sword and poof them in an instant! At least she’s trying her best.”

Pearl responded the fusion, “Well maybe, her best just isn’t-”

Coral passed out before she could comprehend her last words, and drifted into some sort of realm of the past, or rather, somewhere that’s so familiar but yet still the same.

She was standing in a dark room, but was suddenly lit up bright, she found that she was in White’s Head ship with her heels up in the air, her arms stiff and stuck in an unsual pose, and she was…greyscaled? Before her stood White Diamond herself, she looked pleased of what she’d just done.

‘Ahh yes,’ The great diamond spoke, but her voice was echoing from somewhere nearby, ‘it’s been a long time since I used my powers but looks like its doing just fine!’

She looked at Coral as if this was a fun game, and only she know how it ends.

‘Don’t be too hard on yourself pearl,’ Her voice was almost, sympathy, pitying the pearl, ‘You wouldn’t want to remember any of this now would you?’

She placed her index finger under Coral’s chin and lifted it up to her bright face, her nail was so sharp it was a miracle her skin didn’t poof on impact.

‘I’m doing you a favour,’ Her voice echoed more, it was louder this time. ‘That crack of yours will never truly heal, she can’t be seen with an old, broken pearl, you understand now don’t you? Besides, she has her new pearl now, so don’t you wory about a thing!’

Coral tried to spoke, she tried to defend herself, but she couldn’t even look away, she doesn’t know WHAT to feel. All she could remember was Pink demanding a colony from the diamonds.

“Now off you go!” A white bubble materialized around her and floated out of the White torso ship. Everything went dark.

Back at the temple, Coral was lying in her room, tossing and turning and gasped, shes awake.

She found herself on a pile of human clothing, she doesn’t wear them, but they were soft, perfect to lie on and rest when needed. The different shades of pink from ranging from Light to Deep pink to medium violet red can be seen neatly placed in piles, almost the size of a human bed.

“What was that? I don’t think I ever... dreamt before?” Coral questioned herself.

She looked around and saw all the things too familiar, surrounding the pile of clothes was running water in a pink hue, stretching out longer and wider than the sea, but no deeper than a kiddie pool. Above her, pink clouds were drifting through, they seem endless as well, going to the same direction as the sea around her.

“Wait a sec,” Coral suddenly thought, “Weren’t we on a mission or something? Where are the others?” She rose up and took a step out of the comforting pile of fabric and ballerina her way on the water’s surface.

She concentrated and a door size glow materialized in front of her. As the light dimmed, rose stems with thorns glowed and departed, leading her outside her room.

Just as she was half-way through, she heard a voice, no, two voices talking aloud and complaining.

Rose’s voice was first recognized, “-too dangerous, you need Coral on this mission!”

‘For what? All she did was getting trampled and hit by that thing! Any more damage taken would’ve poofed her! Or worse!”

Garnet’s voice joined in, ‘That I agree.”

‘Well, even if she’s not capable of catching the corrupted gem, you should’ve leave her out like this, she’ll be heartbroken if she finds out you went without her!’

‘So? It’s better than her slowing us down! There’s so much more monsters out there, we won’t be able to bubble them all with her around! Garnet and I can’t fight AND keep her safe at the same time!’

Garnet chipped in, ‘And it’s not that we dislike her, we love her, all of us, but if we’re gonna take care of the planet and avoid locals from getting harmed, we need to bubble as much as possible in the least amount of time.’

A faint sigh can be heard, the leader spoke, ‘If it means less suffering and less humans getting hurt, then I suppose it would be fine for Coral to have a time-out for a few days. You two need to rest, but you should head out before Coral wakes up, all right?’

‘Of course’ said Pearl.

‘Noted.’ said Garnet.

‘Good,” Rose ended, ‘Dismissed’

Coral slipped back into her room before any of them noticed her. She was processing what was heard while the rest of the crystal gems head back to their respective rooms.

I’ll show them, she thought, I’ll show that I’m capable of handling a gem monster AND myself!

When the coast was clear, she quietly tip-toe out of her room and went back to the last known location of the yam monster.

Just outside the Earth’s orbit, various yellow spaceships can be seen in a form of a diamond, specifically, Yellow Diamond.

Inside the first spacecraft, with green and yellow glowing alien technology far advanced than anything that ever existed, and piloting each ships were handfuls of Era 1 peridots. These peridots each have a triangular gem and the same heights as pearls, but far more intelligent as they are very competent technicians. The peridots were capable of doing various tasks such as data logging, research, communication range bigger than the galaxy without external equipments.

(Art by @gemfiles, if you would like your artwork removed please dm me, as this pic here has the purpose of visual aids for the readers)

They were busy working on the coordinates and history of the planet Earth, typing required data and analyising it’s past reputation and current resources on the ships available platform and programs.

A peridot stood and walked off from her post, the others took no notice and persume their work. The peridot stood still in front of a door, and a scanner appears from the right wall. The contraption scanned her form for her gem and found it on the back of her left hand, the light scan turn from green to light yellow and beeped.

The door slid open and the peridot went through, her arms in diamond salute as she greets her superior officer.

‘My Anglesite,” She said, ‘I am here to report that we have arrived at the planet’s orbit, do I have your orders and coordinates to land ?’

‘My, my,’ The main gem-in-charge yellow Anglesite replied, wearing a white lab coat and triangular pointy shoulder pads in the colours yellow and white. She wore glasses so thin you could only notice it up front, the right side of her face was covered by her light blonde short hair.

If you think she’s the same as the other gems, she not, cuz her lower half was just hovering circle platform, so she would resemble a vase on the circular coffee table. But, the platform serves as a method of transport, as it is designed to float above any ground so she can travel as same as other gems, it’s just faster and requires her pretty much no energy to be in motion.

at the edge of the platform, robotic hands can sprout out and execute projects better and faster than a normal gem, weapons and defence systems? You dont need to worry about that.

The yellow gem continued, ‘Just as I calculated, looks like even the atmosphere is liking what will be done to that little chunk of rock, wiping it out of our starmaps will be so much faster, and then, the great Yellow Diamond will praise me for my work, promote me and i will finally have the chance to meet my glorious, shining White Diamond!’

The peridot was getting tired of hearing the “possibility” after the mission was complete, but she could only agree with her superior, ‘Of course she will my Anglesite! So, about the course-’

‘Ah yes, set the course towards north of the largest continent on the planet, that is where the final stage of the mission will commence!’ The yellow gem started giggling and laughing, but she gave one last order, ‘That will be all!’ and continued with her laughter.

‘Yes my Anglesite.’ Peridot trudged back to her position and set the course.

The ship entered the planet’s orbit and the technicians went to work.

It’s been a few hours, the sun was starting to rise, the cold nigh air was starting to warm up the atmosphere as shadows began to crept under the desert lifeforms.

Coral was walking aimlessly through the desert, mumbling and kicking the sand, just wanted to catch that gem monster and prove to them she’s not useless.

I can’t believe they didn’t want me to come along, she thought, I’ve been with Rose longer than Pearl has, and I was there when everything happened, it’s not fair!

She kicked more sand, but the impact wasn’t obvious, since the whole terrain was a desert.

She sighed and sat behind a rock to take a break, physically and mentally.

The whole trip was to catch that monster but she’s done nothing but follow her “instincts” and it led her nowhere. There was no tracks, no damaged that looks like its from a giant yam monster, and most importantly, no idea whats next.

Wait, she thought, whats that on the sky?

Is that….a homeworld spaceship? No wait, there’s more than one?

Ohnononono, she thought, they’re coming back for us!

I have to go back! I have to tell Rose and Garnet and Pe-

….

Or…

Maybe this is the chance I’ve been waiting for, to prove that I can handle myself.

Yeah, I wont be able to fight off ships of soldiers, but I can do a little sneaking around, trying to see what’s really going on, or better yet, their plan of attack so we’ll know what’s coming!

Coral summoned her trusty lance and did a quick jog to catch up with the ships.

End of Part 1.

(Heyo, so...as you finish reading this youll notice it’s pretty different from the story before.

But its not like im trying a COMPLETY different thing, its kinda like the previous chapter where we see what happens on homeworld, but in this chapter, we’re dealing with something that doesn’t really have any leads from the canon series.

Sooo, yeah, the north of the largest continent, Yellow diamonds plan, corrupted monsters, you should have a pretty huge idea of whats going on.

Also, the new gem is very different from what we usually see, but there’ll be a concept art in traditional paper, and probs no colour, just for you guys to see what she looks like, cuz the description of her isnt so...Complete?

But feel free to draw her tho, cuz i guess she kinda an OC here? If you could tell, she’s a gem under yellow’s court, but she also contains little essence from white diamond, which is why she has two diamonds on her design.

So yeah, she will be posted in a few days or smth.

Aaaannddd thats abt it for now, if youre reading this, it means you respect what i have to say, and i thank you for that.

Happy reading!

Pearlplusauchap Pearlplusauchap5

#pearlplusau #Coral #Pinkpearl #Rosequartz #yellowdiamod #bluediamond #whitediamond #stevenuniverse #fanfiction #Garnet #Pearl

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tlbodine · 5 years ago

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What Zombie Movies Teach Us About COVID-19

As I write this, it is April 20, 2020, and 42,514 Americans have died of COVID-19, the disease caused by a deadly novel coronavirus first discovered in late 2019. South Korea has just 237 deaths from the disease.

The two countries learned about the virus at roughly the same time, and had the same amount of time to respond to the disease. But the responses took wildly different paths, with vastly different outcomes -- as you can see.

But I’m not here to talk about that, not exactly. I’m here to talk about zombies.

Train to Busan (2016), directed by Yeon Sang-ho, tells the story of a zombie outbreak in Korea, with the action focused predominantly on the passengers of a train. It’s one of my favorite zombie movies, in large part because the flavor of its zombie narrative is so different from the types of zombie stories we see in America. It’s a fresh spin, driven by cultural influences and the director’s vision, and it’s a movie that’s been at the forefront of my mind since watching the vastly different responses of South Korea and the USA to the current pandemic.

Train to Busan is a film concerned with the morality of classism, a theme repeated in many South Korean exports (see 2019′s Parasite for another example). Innate in that premise is a moral statement about collectivism, cooperation and kindness that runs contrary to everything American zombie fiction holds dear.

Train to Busan’s main character, Seok Woo, is a fund manager, a white-collar businessman who operates in the financial sector. In his introduction, we see him reviewing reports of the biological leak that we the viewer already know is responsible for zombies; he advises a concerned investor not to sell his shares, as the reports could be false or the worry is premature -- and then, a moment later, hangs up the phone and sells his own shares. It's implied later that his role in financing the company may give him some moral responsibility in the disaster -- ie, he invested in a company, knew that it was harmful, and reacted not by blowing the whistle on that harm but instead by selling his ownership and thus profiting.

The film treats this as morally reprehensible. Indeed, Seok Woo's storyline is a tragedy: We will see him brought low by his flaws, struggle to overcome them, but ultimately fall short.

This is quite different from American zombie narratives, which more often than not place the hero as a working-class underdog who finds himself suddenly uniquely equipped to deal with the threat at hand. Consider police officer Rick Grimes (and, for that matter, hillbilly archer Daryl) in The Walking Dead, or retired U.N. investigator Gerry Lane in World War Z. Perhaps the best example of the type is Zombieland's Tallahassee, a quintessential "Florida Man" -- rough around the edges, crude, eccentric, socially inept but good with a gun and a willingness to adopt the role of patriarch in the post-apocalyptic found family narrative.

Implicit in American zombie fiction is a promise of role reversal, of a social upheaval in which established ruling classes will no longer matter and in which new lines of power can be drawn -- and that power rests squarely on a foundation of guns, violence, and a small but tightly knit family structure united against external threats both human and supernatural.

Of course, guns can’t serve as a currency of power or survival in Train to Busan because there are no guns. South Korea has some of the world’s strictest gun laws, and nobody riding on a passenger train would have a firearm at the ready. This makes for a much more thrilling narrative thanks to the balance of power shifting heavily in the zombie horde’s favor; it also forces characters to work together for survival, relying more on wits than strength.

Like many zombie film protagaonists before him, Seok Woo is a father -- a disengaged, overworked father, but one who’s trying his best. But unlike some horror movie kids, his daughter Su-An is more than a victim-in-waiting; she’s the moral centerpiece of the story, an external conscience who serves to gently remind her father of his misplaced priorities and call him on his bullshit.

Fleshing out the rest of the cast are more unlikely heroes: a high school baseball team, a homeless man, a pair of old ladies, and a middle-aged man, Sang-hwa, traveling with his pregnant wife. Sang-hwa is an especially important character, holding up a mirror in some ways to our protagonist: he has a successful, loving marriage where the hero's has failed; he is a doting, patient father where Seok-woo is out of touch.

It is hardly coincidental that this core group of characters is comprised almost exclusively of vulnerable people. And once the zombie disaster strikes, it becomes clear that the job of the less-vulnerable is to step up and protect the most vulnerable, even within a group where no one is especially skilled, heroic, or well-trained to deal with this.

Self-sacrifice is the recurring theme of Train to Busan, delivered with a bludgeoning regularity -- but each death is valorized, the narrative making it clear through its storytelling techniques that these sacrifices are meaningful and heroic.

It’s worth noting, too, that the self-sacrifice that drives the narrative is made necessary by the selfishness of others. Sang-hwa is bitten and stays behind to hold back hordes of zombies only because another group of survivors locked them out of their car.

Those exclusionary survivors -- a group spearheaded by a rich businessman who declares himself early on to be too important to risk his life -- receive their comeuppance soon enough. Here's the clip in all its satisfying glory:

youtube

All of which is not to say that self-sacrifice is not a trope that shows up in other zombie media as well. But I have never seen it the focus of a film with such brazen commitment before.

In Hollywood storytelling, self-sacrifice all too often comes in two flavors. The first: The only righteous path a fatally flawed anti-hero can take. The second: A heroic cop-out, where the character sacrifices him/herself but fails to actually die thanks to unexpected circumstances -- suggesting, thematically, that willingness toward self-sacrifice is all that is required, and that good things come to those who deserve them.

In a lot of zombie media -- and post-apocalyptic media in general -- storylines often flirt with the morality of sacrificing other people for the greater good. Heroes will grapple with the decision, and the one who pulls the trigger may ultimately succumb to guilt or plot karma (Shane and Otis in The Walking Dead, for example), but the discussion is given serious weight and consideration.

Train to Busan makes it clear that such cold calculations aren’t just villainous, they’re cowardly and pathetic.

Other popular zombie tropes that fail to make an appearance in the film include:

A self-appointed leader calling the shots and telling others to get in line

The asshole pragmatist arguing with the self-appointed leader

The untrustworthy outsider and/or villainous mole

The weak or cowardly idiot who gets people killed by virtue of being useless and/or careless

Utterly useless or corrupt government/military/authority

In many zombie stories, man is the real monster, and this holds true in many ways for Train to Busan. But the focus is different. Rather than the monster being the outsider who comes for your supplies, or the stranger who you trust only to be stabbed in the back, the worst humans in Train to Busan are those who act with distrust and selfishness.

Declaring yourself the leader, securing a perimeter, and making a difficult choice to turn away strangers at the gate in order to protect your own group is the action of heroes in a show like The Walking Dead. In Train to Busan, those same actions are villainous and ultimately lead to ruin.

On the flipside, soft-heartedness in American zombie films is often both foolish and disastrous. Consider, for example, Hershel’s barn in Season 2 of The Walking Dead, where walkers are corralled in dangerously high numbers out of an optimistic belief that they can be cured. Just as heroic self-sacrifice becomes a recurring theme in Train to Busan, an endless cycle of trust and betrayal is the signature of The Walking Dead, and the show routinely rewards its moral centerpieces -- like Dale and Hershel -- with deaths that are treated not as valiant but as senselessly tragic.

youtube

But let’s get back to my central thesis. What does any of this have to do with COVID-19?

When South Korea first became aware of the threat of the novel coronavirus, its government immediately launched a response called TRUST: “Transparency, Robust screening and quarantine, Unique but universally applicable testing, Strict control, and Treatment.”

The heart of the program was testing, not just of obviously sick people but of those without symptoms or known exposure -- and then carefully tracing the contacts of those found to have a positive result and isolating anyone who was infected. But the price of this widespread testing goes beyond the monetary needs of dveloping and administering tests; it comes too at the cost of certain freedoms. The South Korean government is able to track down and contain its citizens through credit card records, cellphone data, security cameras and other Orwellian security devices that would make most Americans' skin crawl. Add that to a cultural norm of wearing medical masks in public and obeying social distancing as a matter of course (less casual touch and physical contact, greater personal space) and South Korea’s spread of disease has been quite slow.

Meanwhile, in the USA, people across the country are breaking social distancing rules in order to gather in public and protest the quarantine measures that have left many without jobs and which, some say, infringe upon civil liberties. Mixed messaging about the efficacy of masks, and a long history of masks being associated with crime, have also made it hard to win Americans over to mask-wearing in public -- even though if we could get 100% of people wearing masks, the spread of disease would drop dramatically (and the economy could open sooner).

Countless political, historical, and socioeconomcic factors are at work differentiating these two nations, and the situation is infinitely more complex than any movie. But I do think viewing the coronavirus through the zombie apocalypse lens helps to make sense of these wildly different responses to the disease.

Time and again, America’s zombie media has hammered home certain essential lessons:

When times get hard, you will be called on to step up and take decisive action

Difficult decisions will need to be made, and the people who are too soft-hearted or cowardly to make those decisions will put others at risk

The safety of your own family (or found family) is paramount, and any threat to the family must be immediately destroyed

Survival will be a matter of strength, guns and resources

Institutions like the military, government and police are useless at best and often corrupt or downright murderous; you can trust only in yourself

Viewed in that context, it’s hardly surprising that the United States response to the pandemic has involved hoarding supplies, buying guns, distrusting scientific authorities, and even staging protests.

By comparison, the take-home lessons from Train to Busan are quite different:

No one person is above or more important than anyone else

If you have power, it is your duty to protect those who are more vulnerable

Selfishness invites trouble

Self-sacrifice is heroic and sometimes necessary for the greater good

All of which is not to say that there is no value in the American lessons. There are times when the values of individualism, decisive action, self-sufficiency and suspicion may well be exactly what is needed for survival.

But during a pandemic of a disease that overwhelmingly affects the already-vulnerable -- the elderly, those with disabilities, those living in poverty -- it seems self-evident that values tied to protecting the weak and working together to protect public safety are the values that will prove most successful.

At the end of Train to Busan, the survivors of the ordeal is not the strongest, best-prepared, or cleverest of the people on the train. They are young Su-An and Seong-Kyeong, the film’s most vulnerable characters -- and also its kindest. In an ending reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead, they emerges the sole survivors to face the path of armed military men who at first mistake her for a zombie. But Train to Busan is, for all of its tragedy, a film devoid of cynicism. The soldiers stop just short of shooting when they hear Su-On singing and realize that she’s alive.

In the end, it is quite literally her humanity that saves her.

Living in a time of coronavirus means making self-sacrifices, including personal liberty and livelihood. And while none of our sacrifices are likely to be as dramatic as those made by characters in Train to Busan, they are no less heroic or necessary.

And that is, to me, a lesson worth remembering.

#long post #horror movies #train to busan #the walking dead #zombies #covid 19 #horror analysis #film analysis

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artiiiisharma · 4 years ago

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Artificial Intelligence in the MNC’s

“Everything we love about civilization is a product of intelligence, so amplifying our human intelligence with artificial intelligence has the potential of helping civilization flourish like never before – as long as we manage to keep the technology beneficial.

What is AI ??

Artificial Intelligence or AI is a section of Machine Learning. In novice words, Artificial intelligence refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think, respond, mimic like humans. Technically, may also be defined as the capability of machines to think logically and intelligently.

From SIRI to self-driven cars to the robots with humanly features it has come a long way in making the MNC big notch companies of the generation.

Why AI in headline ??

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, and many other big names in science and technology have recently expressed concern in the media and via open letters about the risks posed by AI, joined by many leading AI researchers.

Because AI has the potential to become more intelligent than any human, we have no surefire way of predicting how it will behave. We can’t use past technological developments as much of a basis because we’ve never created anything that has the ability to, wittingly or unwittingly, outsmart us. The best example of what we could face may be our own evolution. People now control the planet, not because we’re the strongest, fastest or biggest, but because we’re the smartest.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence

The applications for artificial intelligence are endless. The technology can be applied to many different sectors and industries. AI is being tested and used in the healthcare industry for dosing drugs and different treatment in patients, and for surgical procedures in the operating room.

Other examples of machines with artificial intelligence include computers that play chess and self-driving cars. Each of these machines must weigh the consequences of any action they take, as each action will impact the end result. In chess, the end result is winning the game. For self-driving cars, the computer system must account for all external data and compute it to act in a way that prevents a collision.

Google puts artificial intelligence center stage

If you plugged into Google’s launch event this week, you would have noticed how the ‘hardware’ event was actually all about ‘software’ called Google Assistant. The Assistant is voice-enabled artificial intelligence (AI) software that bundles machine learning, the Google Knowledge Graph, and voice and image recognition natural language processing (NLP) to build a “personal Google for each and every user”

“We’re at a seminal moment in computing,” CEO Sundar Pichai declared at the Made by Google event. The Indian-born stressed how technology development today is shifting from a “mobile-first” world to an “AI-first” world. And Google is making that shift by stuffing artificial intelligence in its built-from-scratch Pixel smartphones and the Google Home smart devices .

The AI revolution

The search giant wants to turn AI into a personal helpdesk agent for you by utilizing over 70 billion facts about people, places and things which are fed into its Knowledge Graph. This database is, of course, powered by years of search queries made by people like you and I.

Google’s vision for the Assistant isn’t limited to a ‘OK Google’ kind of thing. Pichai pointed out that he wants the Assistant to become as integral a part of people’s lives as the Google’s homepage has become. Based on an open-development platform, the company sees the Assistant as a chatbot connected to TVs, speakers etc., capable of holding a “two-way conversation”. Google is offering open SDKs for developers to build conversational AI experiences, like ordering groceries or playing a game .“Ask it for a brief update on your day or to play a video on YouTube, look up traffic on the way home from work, find photos or when the nearest pharmacy closes. The Assistant can also offer help with what’s on-screen in any app. So if your friend texts you to meet up at a new restaurant, you can just say ‘navigate there’,” the company said in a statement.

Google Assistant

Google Assistant is Google’s next generation way of searching with Google. Rather than providing links to websites, Google Assistant is designed to have conversations with you in order to complete tasks.

Google Assistant can come up with answers when you converse with it. For example, ask “how old is Stephen Colbert,” and it will give you his age. Ask then simply “how tall is he,” and it understands you want Colbert’s height, even though you never said his name again. But this isn’t something new or unique to Google Assistant. Google’s acted this way with spoken queries since 2013. Also, Siri is getting smarter about handling these types of conversations, too.

What can Google Assistant do?

Google Assistant offers voice commands, voice searching, and voice-activated device control, letting you complete a number of tasks after you've said the "OK Google" or "Hey Google" wake words. It is designed to give you conversational interactions.

Google Assistant will:

Control your devices and your smart home

Access information from your calendars and other personal information

Find information online, from restaurant bookings to directions, weather and news

Control your music

Play content on your Chromecast or other compatible devices

Run timers and reminders

Make appointments and send messages

Open apps on your phone

Read your notifications to you

Real-time spoken translations

Play games.

Google Influence on AI

Neill Horie , associate director of technology strategy at Edit, believes that Google’s AI improvement will be increasingly important and influential for businesses in the future .

With more than 1 billion users, Google is one of the world’s biggest brands, and arguably the biggest key driver of modern technological advancement – only recently, Google announced their ‘Quantum Supremacy’ breakthrough, in which their quantum computer managed to solve a mathematical calculation in 3 minutes and 20 seconds – something that supercomputers are unable to complete in under 10,000 years .

Accelerating industry transformation with the power of AI

AI is increasingly the new frontier in digital transformation and is well positioned to drive value and impact across all aspects of an organization when incorporated into workflows. We believe that enterprises that invest in building custom AI, as well as industry specific solutions, are better positioned to be global economic leaders of tomorrow .

Artificial intelligence software market growth forecast worldwide 2019-2025. In 2020, the global AI software market is expected to grow approximately 54 percent year-on-year, reaching a forecast size of 22.6 billion U.S dollars.

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hardiefgdg-blog · 5 years ago

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The exercise of inserting marketing messages onto transactional

statements has collected momentum inside the past year, driven by better and extra cost-powerful colour virtual printing and clients' desire or greater targeted direct advertising and marketing. Though the concept itself isn't new, the recent amassing of momentum has brought about a generic enterprise term to be coined - transpromo.

This article has been primarily based on studies performed via The Strategy Works with the United Kingdom's study masters in Data Analytics leading massive and mid-length business technique outsourcers (BPOs) plus two of the top UK banks, who've been early adopters of transpromo. Respondents document an increase in call for for transpromo over the last year, with a developing reputation of the marketing opportunity that it represents. A number feel that it offers higher returns on investment than unsolicited mail, made possible by stepped forward records- control solutions. Effectively it's far the generation 'tool kit' this is the enabler, comprising virtual shade printing, included IT and records integrity. Roger Christiansen, UK advertising supervisor of Infoprint, feels that response quotes are a critical driver: "The business vicinity lives or dies on whether or not you enhance response quotes."

A essential function is the enhanced attention span that transactional statements acquire from the customer. Research by way of Pitney Bowes within the USA has shown that transactional statements have an open price of 95 percent and a scan time of one to 3 minutes. GI Solutions reviews a similar picture within the UK. Bernard Gracey, VP of approach and business improvement at Pitney Bowes inside the USA is a international authority on transpromo: "It's almost permission-primarily based advertising and marketing due to the fact human beings are on top of things of the open moment, when they sit down down and evaluate the document. It's very valuable."

Gradually there was a developing recognition of the marketing possibility that transpromo represents, with its ability for a better go back on investment than unsolicited mail. "You can get a 15 percentage go back through sending out particular transactional promotions to the right humans, so obviously the go back on funding is enormous," reviews Pete Smith, production advertising manager at Xerox Premier Partners. Martyn Viquerat, account improvement director at direct mail issuer CDMS, sees it as an intelligent advertising device: "People are becoming more market savvy now and recognise that you may get more bang in your buck. There is extra knowledge of the value to be got out of sending the right product thru the proper channel to the proper patron, in place of general carpet bombing."

Environmental considerations - discounts in the extent of paper created through junk mail - are enormously less essential features, with respondents naming this factor as a secondary driver.

Educating the market: The deliver side of transpromo is very a great deal the call for driver. All BPO suppliers take on the mantle of promoting a better expertise of the capacity packages of the newly available software program and the need to offer help in merging customers' advertising and transactional databases. This requires liaison with some of the customer's departments, and the providers need to emerge as the catalyst that bolts together the relevant features within the customer's business. It is a quasi- consultancy function that calls for political in addition to business skills.

Jarrod Green, head of corporate income at MBA Group confirms this path to market: "We are very genuinely the ones riding it. It's something we're consulting with them on, to offer them the element this is lying beneath the skin." Elizabeth McMahon, advertising supervisor at DST International, also recognises the significance of communicating the message:

"We recognized there become an educational message we had to get out there approximately what became available and how you may use it." The total responsibility within the client will become blurred as the provider is then dealing with a number of departments.

Patience is needed as, to make the sale, the supplier may have to liaise with over six features within the business - IT, advertising and marketing, finance/billing, compliance, procurement and purchasing. There will also be different stakeholders worried, usually external providers to the consumer, which include outsourced IT, print management corporations and advertising agencies at the design aspect. This is confirmed by way of Andy Ruddle, income and advertising and marketing director at Real Digital: "Because of the nature of the communications we get involved with, we can with the aid of and massive be working with a greater numberof stakeholders. We grow to be dealing with the marketing enterprise as well as advertising, finance and IT departments."

Software consultancy: In truth some providers take the consultancy element in addition by using offering value-added analytics, correctly manipulating customer records. Through its Group 1 Software department Pitney Bowes is capable of fulfil such consumer requirements, following a sustained programme of acquisitions. Tony Edwards, trendy supervisor for Pitney Bowes' UK Document Solutions Centres, explains: "It become a clear, deliberate decision through Pitney Bowes to collect the first-class of breed in that space, in simple terms and sincerely because an included offering is a long way extra seamless and adds far more cost to an company shifting forward." Gurdev Singh, coping with director at Howitt, confirms the importance of information analytics: "It's the potential of our programmes and software program development and information analytics human beings that makes the difference. It's clearly being able to paintings with the purchaser first as a consultant."

Those that have no longer made acquisitions are seeking for strategic partnerships because it's far technically tough to deliver all the offerings required beneath one roof. Some suppliers have their own proprietary software program and others install commercially available software. Ninety-one percent of providers said that they may be presenting help to their customers in merging advertising and transactional databases, so selecting the right software is really a critical component of the mix.

There is a growing market realisation that transpromo is extra complicated than a print answer alone, integrating because it does printing, facts control, marketing and design. Mark Lee, business development manager at RR Donnelley Global Document Solutions: "The main way our print answer encourages use of transpromo is through announcing it's now not a print solution. We are a transport solution."

For a provider to hold credibility in this market it is very vital to have a totally included offer - a printing and software program answer - so that efficiently the providers are satisfying the same function an IT consultancy could in another part of the purchaser's business.

Cross selling: Because of the nature of transpromo it isn't regarded as a prospecting tool to acquire new customers, however as a manner of reinforcing present relationships main to cross-selling opportunities. "It is a much greater personal form of advertising and marketing," states Kevin Illingworth, director of K2 Group. "It's about addressing the actual desires of the purchaser - no longer simply personalisation, however individualisation."

That makes transpromo specifically appealing to banks and groups that run their personal credit score card schemes. In fact respondents document that 72 percent of the UK call for comes from just sectors - economic services and retail.

Both the banks interviewed for this article verify that transpromo has been around for some time, but it's far now assuming a greater priority in their businesses. The gain is seen as the cross-promoting possibility, the advanced go back on investment over junk mail, and the ability for enhancing consumer relationships. Terry Milward, head of record services at Lloyds TSB, summarises: "The blessings of transpromo for us are -fold. It is a low-cost manner of sending focused messages which can be in all likelihood to be more powerful than inserts, and even extra importantly it allows us to promote greater products with higher targeting." Both banks admit that it's far challenging to put in force, especially given the restrictions of legacy systems, but are attracted through improved report composition software.

Interestingly they both manipulate the operational factors in-house. Drive-time decay is another idea precise to the retail sector, where transpromo technology can calculate an individual's bodily distance from a store and are expecting their propensity to travel, in the context of precise product categories. In other words they will not be prepared to pressure 25 miles to shop for a kettle but might for a sofa. In this manner transpromo can leverage demographic knowledge to pressure consumers to outlets. Gracey is an exponent of this approach: "A crucial component in retail for making transpromo paintings is understanding and linking your merchandising approach to your customer base via distance and then knowing which provide makes feel to enter which statement."

Conclusion: Clearly providers have many capabilities they want to perform, first as advocates promoting the generation, then as consultants to put in force it internally with the client, after which as brokers to merge all of the functions collectively inside the client's business. It is simply a consultative sell over the medium to long time period, requiring a unique mixture of skills. It isn't right for all clients in all sectors, but it has the ability to enhance go back on funding and leverage statistics via building relationships and loyalty with clients - all in the context of the overall advertising and marketing mix. There is no doubt that the winners within the market might be those that could take the better ground with their customers and offer a complete solution. With the annual online advertising spend within the UK over three billion Sterlings, transpromo ought to show to be a saviour to mail and print operators alike through positioning mail as a highly targeted and personalised advertising tool.

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coralind9773-blog · 5 years ago

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Hymns (Sacred Hymns) In MIDI Files

Obtain crack for Direct MIDI to MP3 Converter 6.2.2.46 or keygen : Direct MIDI to MP3 Converter is a fast audio utility that means that you can convert MIDI recordsdata to MP3, WAV, WMA and OGG formats. A cheap program called "Digital Ear" can do a fairly respectable job of translating such recordsdata right into a single MIDI track. Unlike its competitors, Digital Ear can observe and respond to not only pitch modifications, but also quantity and brightness changes, translating those into applicable MIDI occasions (e. g. volume to MIDI Expression CC#11 or Breath Controller CC#2 Steady Controller messages, and brightness to Brightness CC#74 or Harmonic Content CC#seventy one, if I keep in mind right). The resultingMID file can, after all, be imported into Melody or Harmony Assistant, or any other MIDI-compatible program. The MP3 format is a lossy format. That signifies that an MP3 file doesn't include one hundred% of the unique audio data. As a substitute, MP3 recordsdata use perceptual coding. In other words, meaning it removes the information that your ear does not discover thereby making the file smaller. The explanation lossy formats are used over RAW is that UNCOOKED audio information are too large to journey over the internet at any great velocity. Through the use of lossy formats it enables even dial up customers to download mp3 files at a reasonable pace. UNCOOKED file formats usually require 176,000 bytes per second in comparison with a lossy format which requires 17,600. The distinction is very large and so are the obtain times. Being a big fan of audio and video modifying software program, she all the time wants to share her expertise with associates such as you. That is why she is here that will help you. Don't hesitate to ask her in case you are confused with our merchandise. Make your audio and mp3 recordsdata compatible to your iPhone, iPad, Android smartphone, PSP, PS3, Blackberry and even for midi to mp3 converter linux burning DVDs. Set the trail of output file and eventually click on Run" to start to convert MIDI to MP3. After selecting the correct profile, click on on the Browse button and select your vacation spot folder and the title of the new MP3 file that can be created. The WIDI is out there both in trial and commercial version. With trial model,n you may solely convert 10 seconds long audio whereas to do the complete conversion you need a commercial version. Audio -wav,mp3,ogg &flac codecs save an audio mixture of your mission. By default, the Grasp Mixer monitor is rendered, however you possibly can export individual Mixer tracks with the ' Cut up mixer tracks ' choice. See the word beneath on including sounds from external synthesizers and audio hardware. Reaper (Windows and Mac) is a digital audio workstation with MIDI recording and modifying potential. The 60 day free trial has no feature restrictions. midi to mp3 converter linux to MP3 Online Converter. With our Midi to Mp3 Converter chances are you'll convert Midi information to Mp3 audio on-line, just by the use of a web-based browser. Our service consists of many distinctive and advanced features not simply discovered in several providers obtainable on-line, wjich you'll want to use to good tune the audio rendition and procure the right from the conversion. As a result of the stuff for free isn't all the time that easy to search out and in my experience you can have bother finding the instruments once more for those who need them. For instance, there was this tool I used for extracting music from a sport some time back however forgot to do one of the different information that had some music in it too. Went back to search out the instrument again (as a result of I did this on a VM) and the download hyperlinks have been useless. I've achieved forgot what the device was since this was like last year.

Organize songs into playlists and play them back with Notation's built-in jukebox. Convert MIDI to MP3 - Convert your file now - online and free - this web page additionally comprises information on the MIDI and MP3 file extensions. Note: If you happen to want to all the time use offline Help, go to Edit > Preferences > File > Superior in your Cakewalk software program and choose At all times Use Offline Assist. Our Free on-line audio converter allow you to convert your audio MIDI extension file to MP3 format easy and fast simply Add your MIDI file after which select MP3 from conversion listing, after the conversion is accomplished you possibly can download the converted audio file immediately or by e mail. Drag the midi file into the software program instrument track. Channel Voice messages transmit real-time efficiency knowledge over a single channel. Examples embody "word-on" messages which contain a MIDI note quantity that specifies the be aware's pitch, a velocity worth that signifies how forcefully the be aware was performed, and the channel number; "be aware-off" messages that end a word; program change messages that change a tool's patch; and management modifications that allow adjustment of an instrument's parameters. MIDI notes are numbered from zero to 127 assigned to C-1 to G9. This corresponds to a spread of 8.175798916Hz to 12543.85395Hz (assuming equal temperament and 440Hz A4) and extends past the 88 be aware piano vary from A0 to C8.

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the-awful-falafel · 6 years ago

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Ghost in the Machine - Chapter 6

Read the full story on AO3 here!

Fandom: Rick and Morty

Rating: M, Genfic (no pairings)

Chapter Wordcount: 6.4k

Chapter Summary: Time passes. A routine is established, and progress is made. Rick is getting desperate, while Morty starts getting impatient.

Rick felt like he was slowly losing his grip on reality.

It had been, what, one week? Two? Probably not more than that, although he could barely keep track anymore. He was mostly estimating based on the number of sleep cycles Morty had put him through, but even then it was increasingly difficult to tell. Time simultaneously seemed to be moving too slow and too fast.

Morty had wasted no time after they got back from the alien market. With the first drone fully operational, the teenager had uploaded a highly complex blueprint to its database, and it immediately got to work constructing new fabricators. It made sense that Morty would require more drones in order to build whatever he was planning, but since a fabricator was an extremely delicate component that needed exact precision to build correctly, each one took almost two days to fully assemble. And this wasn't even mentioning the fact that a fabricator was useless without a drone body attached to it.

So in the meantime, the two of them had fallen into a… routine of sorts. It mostly consisted of more drone construction and intensive, if varied work to advance Morty's agenda, and while they didn't always stay within the bunker or do the exact same activities each day, it still slipped into an easily recognizable pattern.

It was almost identical to the structure established before. Every morning, right after Rick woke up, he would be recalibrated. It barely seemed like a punishment anymore, and the only explanation he could come up with was that the process had become more like a general maintenance procedure. Rebooting and readjusting the mind control tech on a regular basis seemed like something that would be useful in keeping Rick securely under control. It was like restarting a computer every day in order to keep it running smoothly and prevent data overflow.

And the process still left Rick too disoriented to even attempt fighting back, so Morty was free to make him do whatever in the time it took for the dizziness to wear off. The teenager didn't always take advantage of this, but every so often he'd drag Rick over to the helmet room and hook him up again. This was always followed by Morty uploading a new program or fix, and Rick had gotten to the point where he stopped trying to figure out what they did. He later discovered one of them improved his dexterity with weapons, and another shortened the time it took for him to respond to complex orders, so it seemed like Morty was refining how he behaved on autopilot, but he didn't want to theorize about the rest. He'd never learn their purpose until it became relevant, and he already had so much other shit on his plate, so why bother?

Don't think about it, he thought, almost instinctively. A small part of him wanted to laugh. That was happening a lot more, lately.

On some days, it was limited to just the helmet, then Morty would unhook Rick and they'd leave. On others, it was followed by, well… he wasn't sure how to describe it as anything other than a “check-up”.

Morty would make Rick sit down in a chair, then he would proceed to take his vitals and evaluate his physical condition. The first few times it happened, Rick was honestly terrified the kid was going to make him strip, but it ended up being surprisingly tame, aside from the fact that it frequently involved Morty touching him. It never got weird, necessarily, especially with how clinically detached it was, but it was impossible to not feel uncomfortable with fingers pressed up against his jugular to take his pulse, or when a bright light was shined in his eyes to check pupil contraction.

Not to mention how Rick's body was unnervingly relaxed and permissive in response to being handled, no matter how vulnerable he actually felt and how much he wanted to flinch away. The whole process made him feel like a workhorse being inspected.

Following that, they'd eat breakfast. Like before, it was almost always something from a can, since Morty had a massive supply in the cabinets that vaguely reminded Rick of how one would stock a bomb shelter. He had never seen the kid prepare anything more complex than canned food, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to. When he was hungry it was easier to ignore, but it was obvious that Morty's cooking skills were… passable at best.

After that was when it got more complicated. They'd work on whatever Morty thought was most important at the time, which was usually nothing unexpected, but sometimes it seemed to be completely random and unrelated.

The first few days-- was it only a few days?-- it was nonstop drone building. Morty already had the underlying frames built, so it was more of a matter of screwing compartments together, fitting in the circuitry, and welding the external plating. With concentrated effort, they could get one finished per day, minus the fabricator. Like before, Rick was made to fetch tools and components for the most part, but Morty actually enlisted him to help out with the more complicated assembly a few times. Rick was still prevented from sticking his hands anywhere critical, but it was clear that Morty had regained some confidence in his control over the man to even risk that much. Or maybe he just wanted to get it done faster.

Eventually, however, Morty started alternating with other activities. One of the more notable ones was distilling the venom that was still stored in the fridge. This involved heating it up repeatedly until all the extraneous compounds were vaporized, leaving a rather viscous substance behind. It would then be mixed and diluted with another chemical, creating a liquid solution that was faintly tinted pink. Rick wasn't sure that he had the willpower to fully analyze what the final mixture was for, but it was clearly going to integrate the venom's sedating effect in some way. Perhaps that additional chemical worked as an amplifier?

Again, Rick was permitted a surprisingly in-depth role working with the venom, but that was also probably because resisting was far more likely to damage himself in this case, especially since it involved handling boiling chemicals. Even without his other reservations holding him back, he wouldn't want to fight when the risk was this disproportionate.

Morty also started taking them on brief trips outside the bunker, portaling to other planets rather than exploring the one they were currently on. Of the three visited, none looked the slightest bit inhabited, although their habitability in the first place was questionable. The trips took less than fifteen minutes each, as they mostly consisted of Morty looking around aimlessly. Rick seemed dragged along almost as an afterthought. It was almost like the kid was scoping out the locations for… something.

The first location was a scorching desert planet of lilac sand, with scraggly, half-dead trees scattered everywhere. It was wide and flat, with occasional stretches of sandstone. The temperature seemed like it'd get unbearable after a while, but thankfully Morty had the forethought to leave early before the risk of heatstroke became a real possibility.

The second location was a murky swamp planet with a green foggy sky. Spiky outcrops of rock and moss stood out in the terrain, and alien trees grew up out of the muddy soil. The atmosphere was breathable enough, but Rick couldn't help but be suspicious about whatever vapor was coming out of the glowing vents in the ground.

The third looked to be in a massive cavern where the ceiling was hundreds of meters above them. Bioluminescent lichen on the rocks allowed some amount of visibility, and deep ravines in the ground were bridged with giant root-like structures. The air was a little thinner than what Rick was used to, leaving him somewhat light-headed, but it didn't seem worse than what one would find in Earth's highest mountains. Aside from the enclosed and limited air circulation, admittedly.

After all that, their evenings were relatively unremarkable in comparison. They'd have a canned dinner, squeeze in a little extra work if possible, and then Morty would order Rick to sleep. Rick's personal hygiene was only addressed every other day, and it was slotted in right at the end. He was made to shave, brush, and take a five-minute shower with uncomfortably cool water at full blast. It was a miracle he didn't get hypothermia by the time he changed into a fresh set of clothes.

Rick had no idea when Morty would go to sleep after he did. He had a suspicion that the answer ranged from “much later” to “never”. Some days the kid looked downright exhausted. Once, in the middle of a work session, he straight up fell asleep on his desk, leaving Rick to stand there and slowly panic for twelve minutes until Morty finally jerked awake again. He must have been working on something well into the night, which showed some unhealthy commitment if nothing else.

Rick tried to keep track of all of the different activities as they happened, if only because he was still trying to figure out what Morty was even planning, but it was… difficult, more than it should've been. It wasn't just him losing the ability to track time effectively, either. Lately, it felt like he was losing sense of his body entirely. He was still getting complete sensory feedback and everything, but sometimes, he didn't feel like himself. And in a way, he wasn't. His body was following Morty's orders, moving without his input, which made it easy to forget that it was still technically his. His eyes and limbs would feel too weird, too alien, like he was looking out of a stranger's body. He'd be so distant and detached from his own skin that when he'd snap back, several minutes would have passed, or even a half hour, and he wouldn't remember what had happened. It was like he was… drifting. It took conscious effort to anchor himself down enough so that he could focus.

He couldn't even argue with Morty's increasing boldness in making him do important tasks, since half the time, he felt too numb and mentally exhausted to try taking advantage of it anyway. Occasionally he tried to muster up the energy to disrupt something, but then the spark of fear would hit and drain him of whatever gave him energy in the first place.

It felt like a warning sign that he should be paying more attention to. That was happening a lot more frequently. Another problem Rick was noticing was his growing inability to control his emotions, which seemed to fluctuate without warning. He'd be neutral for a while, watching his surroundings without feeling much of anything, and then there would be a sudden surge of anger blotting out all his thoughts. Other times he would find everything uncontrollably amusing, no matter how minor or stupid. And sometimes crippling despair would hit and he'd just wish for it all to end.

Each mood swing would last anywhere from a few minutes to an hour, and they were almost impossible to predict or notice while in the moment. His train of thought would stop and shift abruptly. It'd feel like an uncontrollable surge of energy in some cases, driving him to think things that he'd recognize as batshit insane or reckless any other time. Especially in his intensely angry and murderous moods-- fuck that fucking piece of shit Morty, what does that asshole think he's doing? I'm not going to sit back and take this shit no fucking way let's see how he likes it when I fucking kill him-- where for a moment, he'd almost, almost lash out again. And then he'd get the whiplash of returning to a more stable mindset just in time to stop himself. Sometimes he was too late, and he'd only snap back once the pain hit.

Rick supposed his complete isolation had something to do with it. Being unable to talk or interact with the world around him in any meaningful way was more maddening than he first realized. He had all these thoughts circulating with no real outlet, and it caused him to sink deeper and deeper into his own head until he felt like he was driving himself insane. Focusing outward on what his body was doing was a decent enough distraction, he supposed, but it wasn't enough to be a long-term coping strategy.

The problem was, the only person who he could possibly talk to in this situation was Morty. Not only was the idea ludicrous, but the teenager seemed committed to barely acknowledging Rick's existence in the first place. Several days had already went by without a single word spoken between the two of them.

It wasn't like Rick didn't try to incite anything, either. There was a point a couple days ago where he mentally cursed at and insulted Morty for nearly forty minutes, getting more and more elaborate as time went on. It was an attempt to get any sort of reaction out of the kid, because fuck it, Morty had already provoked something out of him a few times, so he might as well return the favor.

Because it wasn't like Morty was actually ignoring him, far from it. Rick could practically feel the uncomfortable sense of the teenager watching his every move, tracing his every thought. And he knew Morty was paying attention most of the time, because despite the silence he would subtly react to what Rick was thinking. If Rick was handling something important at the time his thoughts started turning mutinous, Morty would instantly make him stop his current action and switch to something lower risk. If Rick made a particularly scathing observation or comment, he sometimes saw Morty pause in whatever he was doing, if only for a second.

So it wasn't surprising that after a short while, Morty had put down the vial he was holding and looked straight at Rick. The older man hated how that emotionless stare always made his insides go cold.

“I didn't install that program because I wanted to talk with you,” Morty said, tone indifferent.

That had made Rick fall silent. Because fuck, that was really what he was doing, wasn't he? He didn't really irritate Morty as much as he intended, and yet here he was, feeling almost relieved that he got any response at all. He knew by now that Morty paying attention to him was never a good sign and never something he should be seeking out. Was he really that desperate for any kind of social interaction?

Morty turned away soon after, seemingly returning to ignoring Rick as well. But a few moments later, after Rick had already been made to resume his own work, Morty muttered something under his breath. “… Although having an audience is kind of interesting, I guess.”

Rick had paused at that, but Morty didn't say anything more. The older man wasn't sure what to make of that statement, if he even heard it correctly. Was that all Morty saw him as? A spectator?

If only Rick could get himself drunk, maybe everything would be slightly more bearable, but he hadn't been given a drop of alcohol since he first woke up. It wasn't like Morty didn't have any, either. Rick had personally seen the bastard dip into a stash of whiskey at mealtimes, although only in small quantities. It seemed to be denied to Rick purely out of spite. The sight of the substance gave him an aching feeling in his stomach that wouldn't go away, not even after he'd eaten his fill.

Rick knew all of these… symptoms were an effect of being trapped in his own head for an extended period of time, but he still couldn't help his frustration. Two weeks wasn't even long. It shouldn't be any problem for him to deal with. He could vaguely recall a memory where he was imprisoned in solitary confinement for almost a month before he managed to break out. Compared to that, this was nothing. Certainly not long enough for him to start slipping like this.

He ignored how he also remembered similar side effects appearing in the second half of that memory, enough that his recollection of that part was even fuzzier than usual. And he also ignored the difference of how occasional interrogations had broken up the monotony, meaning he didn't deal with the isolated feeling on a constant basis.

Most importantly, he had full control over himself, had an escape plan, and could take refuge in both of those facts. Even in dire situations, if he felt that he had a certain amount of control, he could push through it with a level head. But this? This was a situation of absolutely no control, of being locked in the back of his brain and not being even able to move his body to confirm that he was still real. Even his nightmares didn't normally approach this level. He couldn't do anything.

He recoiled and wanted to slap himself for that thought. That wasn't true, fuck that. He still had one sliver of control afforded to him. Even though Morty was working like hell to condition it out of him, Rick was still capable of resisting the commands. Hadn't it been Rick who damaged the drone? Hadn't it been him, working of his own free fucking will, who had interrupted the venom hunting and consequently got Morty slashed in the side? Yes, he also had gotten a deep and bloody bite wound in his shoulder, which had long since scarred over, but it had been worth it.

Rick needed to be single-mindedly focused on that. He needed to stay alert, aware, not losing his concentration like this. It didn't matter how much Morty was aware of Rick's thoughts and intentions now-- sooner or later, the bastard would slip up. When that opportunity showed itself, Rick needed to seize it without any second of hesitation.

Maybe he could actually get Morty killed this time, wouldn't that be interesting? He almost found it unsettling how much the idea satisfied him, and he vaguely wondered if it was normal to want to murder a teenager this much. There was a solid chance that it still wouldn't break the control, and Rick would be forced to stand idle until his body broke down, but… he didn't really feel like that mattered. Better than continuing to be a tool and scapegoat, at any rate. If he was going to die, it might as well be in the process of taking Morty down with him.

So Rick kept waiting. And waiting. And waiting. That's all he could even do right now. But he wasn't sure how long he could hold out. Days, weeks, months? As long as necessary, he stubbornly told himself, but it felt like a lie. There was that growing sense of hysteria that he was just barely suppressing in the back of his mind, that crawling sense of unreality like a caged animal who couldn't find an escape.

He wasn't sure if it was that more desperate mindset that led to him starting to resist again.

It had started yesterday, sometime in the afternoon, when they were out hunting. Morty had recently introduced a new, albeit familiar activity to the daily schedule-- going outside and harvesting animal parts. For better or for worse, it didn't involve any dangerous venomous aliens this time around, nor did it involve killing the creatures afterward. That wasn't to say it was done in the most clean and humane manner, though. It usually involved seizing a sample of carapace or skin or blood, without any regard to the distress of the alien in the process. Morty seemed to be harvesting genetic material, although as usual Rick didn't have the energy to try to figure out why.

They were going after a wide variety of creatures, too, spread in different areas across the planet. This desolate rock had a surprising amount of biodiversity when examined closely. They started easy, targeting slow or immobile species. There was a land-dwelling organism that resembled a sea urchin crossed with brain coral, and Rick broke a few spines off of while avoiding getting pricked. They tore a chunk of carapace from a passive multi-headed millipede-like creature, which screeched in pain and scuttled away afterward. They even snapped a branch off of a vividly purple alien tree, which curled in on itself and retracted its leaves upon being damaged.

The day afterward, they had moved on to creatures of more moderate difficulty, ones that required a bit more stealth to approach. One of them was a green lobster-looking creature with a frankly disturbing amount of teeth, scuttling around near tide pools, although it thankfully only came up to Rick's knees. The other one was an armored gecko-like alien with eight limbs and a forked tail, barely the size of a cat, and it tended to quickly disappear through cracks in the ground when it noticed danger.

They were hunting the toothy lobsters when Rick ended up resisting. It was a spontaneous, split-second decision, and in hindsight he couldn't really tell the reason behind it. One moment he was distantly watching himself sneak up on the lobster alien from behind with his weapon drawn, the next moment he felt a surge of something, and he pushed back. His legs suddenly jerked and gave out for a half second, causing him to stagger and scrape his feet against the ground. The sound alerted the alien, and it bolted away immediately, submerging itself in the local pool in the span of a second.

Rick was swiftly punished after that, familiar pain lancing through his synapses and almost making him regret everything. And despite return of the torturous pain and overwhelming fear, for the first time there was another quality paradoxically mixed into it. The pain was so viscerally real that Rick found himself clinging onto it more than he expected. It was like a shock to his system, anchoring him better to reality than anything he'd attempted previously.

Still, at least initially, the conditioned fear and exhaustion won out again, leaving Rick compliant enough to not interfere with the next few alien lobsters they sampled. Morty chose to involve himself much more closely, capturing the creatures himself sometimes, so it wasn't like Rick had much of a chance to mess things up anyway.

But that lack of opportunity didn't bother him for some reason. There was this weird intoxication rising up in his mind, clashing with his twitchiness but somehow also being accentuated by it. And before he knew it, Rick resisted again, this time causing his muscles to relax when he was holding a squirming alien gecko-thing, which nearly let it slip out of his grasp. Morty waited until after they had managed to successfully grapple the creature and slice off a part of its tail tip before inflicting punishment on Rick again.

And Rick kept resisting, and he kept getting shocked. Again, and again. He resisted four more times that day. It was a mental seesaw of being paralyzed by panic and snapping back every time the pain hit, his survival instincts desperately screaming at him to stop stop stop STOP, and then that strange overwhelming feeling that would return and make him do it again. It didn't matter how pointless it was, how little he was affecting things. He couldn't stop himself.

The pattern continued into today, where Rick had resisted twice during the morning and about three additional times so far during the midday routine. But the crippling pain was starting to get to him again, the more logical part of his brain starting to protest. The impulse fueling him was already withering away somewhat, as if he was getting more hesitant. This couldn't be worth it. It wasn't like he was even hurting Morty with this. What was he even doing?

But it was okay, really. It was fine. Everything was fine. The pain meant he was feeling something, that he existed. It shocked him out of the deadened fugue he was falling into more and more often. He was forcing the universe to acknowledge him for once in his fucking life.

He didn't care. He didn't care. He didn't care.

And then the next time Rick resisted, Morty didn't punish him.

It had been one of the few times Rick had actually caused damage, too. He had been kept away from anything critical for a while now, so this time he ended up breaking something relatively unimportant, almost by accident. He had resisted in a way that made his body lose its balance, causing him to stagger to the side and bump into a table. An empty glass flask was knocked off and shattered into pieces against the ground, the sound deafening in the silence.

And yet, even though Rick's chest tightened in anticipation, no pain came. He looked up and saw Morty staring at the mess with a completely blank expression. After a moment, the teenager gave a heavy sigh, and he got up and silently approached it. He leaned down and started cleaning up the pieces, being careful not to cut himself on the broken glass. Eventually, he gathered them up in a small pan and carried them over to the wastebin. He didn't even look at Rick.

Rick didn't expect that to be what sapped away the rest of his energy. He expected that manic impulsiveness from before to return and encourage him to resist again, especially because there wasn't any punishment this time, but he just felt... hollow. Something was very wrong here. Why wasn't Morty reacting?

And for most of the remaining day, it definitely seemed like Morty wasn't going to make any response to the incident. They continued working as usual, and it went by even faster now that Rick had unexpectedly lost his motivation to fight back. Most of the work was focused on the drones. The fabricators had finally been completed last night, so all that was left was to attach them to the drone bodies that were already built. Due to it being a rather simple operation, it didn't take any more than an hour, and all the drones added up to a small fleet of six in total, including the initial drone they had created.

Individual testing confirmed that each of the machines could construct and deconstruct without error, which already cleared the biggest hurdle. However, it was unclear how well they'd work as a synchronized unit, so Morty took the drones down to the base of the mountain for some outdoor experimenting. Rick was made to follow, although he wasn't sure for what reason. The sun was setting, casting long shadows and a violet tint over the landscape.

They walked to their destination rather than taking a portal. It was probably to save on portal gun charge, considering the relatively close distance, but it still took nearly half an hour to reach the bottom. The entire way down, Morty kept his back turned to Rick. He still hadn't acknowledged the man since earlier, and Rick couldn't help but be unsettled by the prolonged silence.

Once they reached the bottom and walked ahead for a short while, something came into view. Resting at the foot of the mountain cliff, hidden in a crater-looking alcove, was a ruined alien spacecraft. It didn't look much bigger than a small fighter jet, but it was impossible to tell its original shape since it had long since shattered into messy pieces, as though it crashed and fractured against the ground before colliding into the solid rock. It looked like it had been there for decades, with its titanium exterior being well-worn and coated in a fine layer of dust and grit, and the insignia along its side being too faded to make out. A few spindly weeds had even sprung up in cracks in the plating, like nature was reclaiming it.

It was barely surprising, then, that this was what Morty planned on testing the drones on. It wasn't like it was too big an object to take apart, after all. All construction drones utilized pocket dimension technology in order to absorb several tons of material at a time.

With a single order sent via tablet, all six of them flew forward, surrounding the ship like a swarm of wasps. With a light blue glow and a synchronized hum, they started deconstructing different parts of the wreckage, slowly and meticulously. Even with all six of them, it still looked like it would take a few minutes to completely eat away at the hull.

Morty had put away the controller and was simply standing back to watch. Rick could understand why. Watching the outer plating disintegrate was oddly hypnotic, like seeing a newspaper burn up in a fireplace, holes growing and burning at the edges. For a moment or so, there were no sounds except for the faint sizzling of the deconstruction and the whirring of the drones.

“I honestly thought you would have given up by now.”

Morty's voice was quiet, but it still gave Rick a jolt. He turned his head to look at the teenager. From this angle, the only visible part of Morty's face was his eye patch, rendering his expression unreadable.

Rick was mostly surprised that he was actually being talked to again, after… how many days had it been? Although the comment still took him off guard, as well as sending a prickling feeling down his neck. Why would Morty think that? The kid must have detected his confusion, because he continued speaking only a moment later.

“I mean, it's a reasonable assumption to make,” Morty said. “I've been trying to be patient, all things considered, but it's getting to the point where it's a little… grating. I'm not sure what you're even getting out of it anymore. Is it pride? Spite? Satisfaction? It's weird, it's like even you don't know.”

The older man felt heavy at those words, because they weren't wrong. There was really no point to casually resisting anymore, not logically anyway. But some part of Rick still wanted to do it, because… why? To prove something to himself? And he had even less of a clue why he suddenly started doing it at extreme frequency yesterday and the beginning of today. Because it wasn't like he enjoyed being shocked or anything, far from it, it was just… at the time, the alternative had felt so much worse.

There was a brief silence, and then Morty gave a small sigh. “I wish I could say I'm surprised. You've made me start considering my options, though.”

Rick's thoughts stopped at that. Wait, what?

“I could just wait a little longer,” Morty continued. “You won't admit it, but you're in a pretty poor state right now. It would probably take only, what, two weeks? Three? But that's the thing, Rick.” He finally turned to look directly at the man, and there was something resigned in his expression. “Keeping an eye on you is tiring. Entertaining, sometimes. But mostly, I'm just worn out. A few more weeks of this isn't really something I'd enjoy dealing with.”

… Morty had never come this close to admitting weakness before, especially unprompted. A cold, crawling sensation was creeping up on Rick as the seconds trickled by. Fuck, where was this going?

“I could do it, if I had to,” Morty said, in an almost matter-of-fact way. “You're hardly the worst Rick I've put up with. Still, it leaves me wondering… it would be nice to speed the process along, wouldn't it?”

Then the pain hit before Rick could react.

It immediately sent him reeling from its unexpected intensity. It was so much worse than all previous shocks, in a way that he didn't even realize was possible. It was more than simply every nerve in his body being set on fire. It was that deep nauseating sensation of his bones being cracked and broken apart from the inside out, fragments spreading out and lacerating his tissue until everything was shredded. His senses short-circuited, blinding him. There was only pain.

Rick didn't even realize that he had outright collapsed until the agony receded slightly, allowing him to somewhat regain awareness of his surroundings. The dull ache from hitting the ground was almost invisible compared to the fading shock. But something was wrong. The pain wasn't leaving. Instead of ebbing away completely, it held at a fixed level, churning across his skin like a flame.

“That's the convenient thing about simulated pain, isn't it?” Morty's voice was somewhere far away, no louder than before, and yet it cut into the haze of Rick's thoughts like a knife. “It can be exactly as strong or drawn out as it needs to be. Maybe the constant level from before was leaving you too comfortable.”

Rick wanted to protest the idea that those prior shocks could ever be considered “comfortable”, but he couldn't piece together a coherent response. Every instinct and reflex of his was screaming to get away but there was nowhere to escape to. His body was shivering violently and his breathing was coming in kind of funny, and that was a bad thing, wasn't it? Distantly, he could hear footsteps walking up to him, stopping merely a few feet away.

“But, obviously, pain by itself isn't sending the right message anymore. Really, this is just me being self-indulgent. So let's try something else.”

A wordless order constricted around Rick's mind like a strand of barbed wire. He flinched away mentally, but his thoughts blurred with that sense of have to and before he knew it his body was moving, pushing itself up. The pace was slow and staggered, hindered by the pain that flared up when he so much as shifted a limb, but eventually he managed to get himself in a kneeling position. He was slumped and breathing harshly, his vision darkening at the edges as he stared at the ground. He felt like he might faint.

Rick could tell Morty was watching him. It only took a few seconds for the teenager to speak up again. “… It was painful doing that, and yet you can't do anything else, can you? That's what you're not getting, Rick. You can resist all you want, but you never affect anything when it matters. So then--” There was suddenly a harsh pressure around Rick's collar, causing his breathing to stilt as he was dragged upward, fingers digging into his shirt with unexpected strength. His gaze was forcibly locked with Morty's as his body was yanked up and his head tilted back. “Why are you still doing it?”

Rick's stomach dropped the second he recognized the look in Morty's eye. Unblinking, intense focus, with a cold fire behind it that hinted of something just barely suppressed beneath the surface. Like there was a ticking time bomb of anger and frustration leaking out more and more as the situation progressed.

Morty had never raised his voice, never broke from his usual cadence, and yet it was chillingly obvious that he was absolutely pissed.

Too paralyzed with fear and too disoriented by pain to respond, Rick hung there with shallow breaths, desperately hoping beyond all reason that Morty wouldn't kill him. The stare held for a moment, then the teenager's expression became more guarded as he let Rick sag in his grip somewhat. “… Maybe I just haven't made myself clear,” he said, almost to himself. “I could never get through to you before, so I'm not getting my hopes up now. But it's not like you have a choice in the matter.”

Rick mentally twitched as he felt a pressure forcing itself over his brain, pushing him down, although he was far too dazed and weak to attempt actual resistance. All he could think was no no no no NO NO--

“Listen,” Morty said in a stern tone, although it sounded weirdly distant. “You're not actually stopping anything here. I'll get what I want no matter what you do to get in my way. But you continue to make things difficult, you will be replaced with another Rick who's more cooperative. Do you understand me?”

Rick couldn't think. It took a moment, like his vocal chords were sluggish from disuse, but the pressure intensified and he spoke out in a hoarse voice. “… Yes.”

“Who is the one in control here?” Morty asked.

“You are.”

“Who do you belong to?”

“You.”

The pressure around Rick's brain and neck released simultaneously, letting him fall back down to the ground. His body caught itself on his hands and knees, breathing labored. The constant pain was finally fading, too, leaving a numb feeling in its wake. He tilted his head up to see Morty's back turned to him as the teenager walked away, slipping the remote back into his pocket.

Now that he was finished with Rick, Morty seemed to be turning his attention back to the drones. They had just finished deconstructing the last of the spacecraft, and they hovered in the air on standby. All that was left of the original wreck was a large, oddly shaped indent in the ground.

But that was hard for Rick to care about, at least at the moment. He was weak and empty-feeling, and he felt disconnected from his surroundings, with everything being somewhat blurry. He was unable to do much but focus on his gradually steadying breathing and trying to hold himself together. To not crack any further than he already had.

It looked like Morty was cracking, too, but just a little bit. Just enough to suddenly snap and take out his frustration on Rick, before relaxing and then returning to business as usual. And even then, he still didn't completely lose his composure or lash out in a physically damaging way. Nothing had pushed the teenager far enough for him to lose his sense of self-restraint, it seemed.

It was like this whole thing had become an endurance match between the two of them. Each move they made, intentional or not, was systematically working to wear the other one down. To eat away at their resolve until something broke.

And, deep down, Rick knew which one of them was going to break first.

#rick and morty #evil rick #evil morty #fanfiction #rick sanchez #morty smith #prequel fic #ghost in the machine #tw: torture

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estimote · 6 years ago

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Announcing LTE Beacon for asset tracking

At Estimote we believe apps of the future won’t be downloaded to phones, computers or tablets. Developers of tomorrow will use the physical world as their canvas. Precise location of people and objects will be accessed programmatically and apps will be “installed” on places.

To make this happen we are working on an Operating System for the physical world: a software environment where developers will be able to quickly build apps for one location and run the same experience on many.

Our first product, Estimote Bluetooth Beacons launched in 2013, enabled us to locate people and their phones inside buildings. To do that, we used Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), an emerging technology at the time. Our iconic design, easy-to-use software and simple APIs made them the most popular beacons for developers. Since then, more than 150,000 innovators, startups, agencies, and Fortune 500 companies have used them to create context-aware apps. They’ve built mobile solutions to increase workplace productivity, comply with safety regulations, and deliver other magical experiences at scale, something that simply can’t be accomplished without accurate microlocation.

New product from Estimote

Today we are proud to announce another revolutionary IoT device. Once again, we chose to leverage emerging IoT technologies (LTE M1 and NB-IoT) and have designed and productized a new device we call the “Estimote LTE Beacon.”

It’s a small, wireless beacon that can compute both its precise indoor and outdoor position. It can talk directly to the cloud and last multiple years on a battery.

Estimote LTE Beacons are designed primarily to seamlessly locate assets and vehicles when they move between indoor and outdoor environments. Their secure firmware/cloud software is crafted to provide true “proof of location” and “proof of delivery.”

Since the device is fully programmable using JavaScript, it can also support other creative use-cases — for example, it can act as a remotely managed iBeacon or a gateway used to configure other Bluetooth beacons.

Smartphone without a screen

The best way to think of this new IoT device is to imagine it as a small smartphone, but without a screen. It can last years between charges and the cost is similar to a beacon. It has cellular LTE connectivity, built-in GPS, and Bluetooth radio. And it is also possible to create and download apps that run on the LTE beacon.

LTE Beacon specification

To create this new device from Estimote we have integrated the best Internet of Things components, designing the most robust beacon the industry has ever seen. Below, you can find the full specification and tech details of the radio and other IoT components we have used.

PROCESSOR AND MEMORY

It has a low-power 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 CPU with floating point unit (FPU) running at 64 MHz. There is 1MB flash with cache onboard and 256KB RAM supporting over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates. There is an additional ARM CryptoCell co-processor with a full AES 128-bit suite as well as a true random number generator for full entropy and asymmetric/symmetric hashing cryptographic services.

BLUETOOTH RADIO

We have integrated one of the newest 2.4 GHz radios. It fully supports the latest Bluetooth 5.0 standard including mesh networking, long range, and high data throughput. The radio could also support 802.15.4-based protocols such as Thread and ANT. There is an additional amplifier (+20 dB) for extended range of packet advertising (200m).

SATELLITE POSITIONING

The device has a low-power satellite signal receiver supporting American GPS, European Galileo, Russian GLONASS, Chinese BeiDou, and Japanese QZSS. It uses multi-constellation algorithms for fast and accurate fixes using all visible satellites.

LTE CONNECTIVITY

Cloud connectivity is possible using a low-power LTE IoT modem equipped with an ARM Cortex A7 (1.3 GHz) and supporting 5G-ready protocols such as LTE Cat-M1 and Cat-NB1. The peak data upload speed to the cloud is 375 KBps for LTE-M and 60 KBps for NB-IoT. The modem supports eDRX and PSM sleep cycles to reduce power consumption while enabling cloud-invoked communication with the device. The modem and the antenna support 15 bands (B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B8/B12/B13/B18/B19/B20/B26/B28/B39) that cover virtually the entire world.

OTHER COMPONENTS

Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery lasting 2 years on default settings

USB-C compatible with USB 2.0 for fast charging

NFC-A programmable tag supporting NFC Type 2 and Type 4

3-axis accelerometer

Programmable push button for specific use-cases such as alerts

Programmable RGB LEDs

Temperature sensor

Integrated ultra-strong adhesive layer

Mounting hole for industrial deployments

Durable, non-toxic silicone enclosure

How does the LTE Beacon work?

This LTE-M device can be attached to an asset, e.g. a jet engine manufactured in a factory. When it moves across the production line, the LTE Beacon scans for Bluetooth beacons installed in the factory and reports its precise indoor location to the cloud. When loaded into a truck, it continues to report its outdoor position using satellite systems. It can also report key telemetry data such as temperature, vibration, and battery status.

When the jet engine arrives at a warehouse, it switches back to beacon-tracking for precise indoor positioning. And finally, when the product gets shipped to the end-customer it can automatically report a secure “proof of delivery” signal.

The above use case is just one example of how the LTE Beacon can be programmed to work. We have designed an entirely new way of adapting the device to support many Internet of Things applications.

Programmable beacon and micro apps

Our previous generation of beacons had really only one “app” installed—our embedded firmware. It exposed some of the settings such as range, compatible packets (iBeacon or Eddystone) or other parameters. But it wasn’t possible for our customers to “upload” their own software into the device.

The new Estimote LTE Beacon is different. We created a Web IDE in Estimote Cloud where you can program it using JavaScript. We’re exposing a bunch of APIs for you to use in the process: BLE scanning & advertising, sending & receiving data via LTE-M to/from Estimote Cloud, obtaining GPS coordinates, reading from on-device sensors, responding to the button press, etc.

When you’re done, Estimote Cloud will compile the code into a “micro-app,” and send the bytecode to the LTE beacon, where it starts being executed.

For example, if we want to program the LTE Beacon to use its Bluetooth radio to advertise both iBeacon and Eddystone at the same time, we can upload the micro app code below.

// Define your iBeacon packet var iBeaconPacket = ble.build.iBeacon('DE4E12E7-7E0F-4A6B-A4DD-AA837507FB20', 2000, 18); // Define your Eddystone-URL packet var EddystonePacket = ble.build.eddystoneURL('https://estimote.com'); // Start Bluetooth LE advertising ble.advertise(iBeaconPacket); ble.advertise(EddystonePacket).interval(500).power(4); ` ` Here is another example. This one will detect if the central button on the device was pressed, read the GPS <pre>` function sendPosition() { var { latitude, longitude } = location.getLastPosition(); cloud.enqueue('position-update', { lat: latitude, lon: longitude }); } io.press(io.button.MAIN, sendPosition); `</pre> ### Lambda expressions To accelerate the back-end prototyping and enable developers to quickly process the data received from the LTE device, we have also added an element of serverless architecture. ![Estimote Web IDE](https://66.media.tumblr.com/b59b77e4fa08cedc2bba4697302f8f18/324a880156401b37-19/s540x810/e8e42e6886c1ec70202e67229a1d214982f20119.jpg) In addition to the micro app code, you can write another JavaScript snippet—this time, a function that sits in Estimote Cloud, and processes the data received from the LTE beacon. For example, if you want to create a “panic button” application which uses Twilio to send a text message whenever the button is pressed on the LTE-M device, here is an example micro app code and additional lambda expression. <pre>``io.press(io.button.MAIN, () =>; { // send an 'alert' event to Estimote Cloud cloud.enqueue('alert'); }); // Your Account Sid and Auth Token from twilio.com/console const accountSid = '…'; const authToken = '…'; const twilio = require('twilio')(accountSid, authToken); module.exports = async function(message) { // respond to the 'alert' event if (message.type === 'alert') { await twilio.messages.create({ body: 'There's been an alert…', to: '+1…', from: '+1…', }); } };

Of course our new product can be also programmed to send requests to user defined end-points in their own cloud enviroment.

IoT app templates

We call a pair of these two JavaScript snippets an “IoT Application,” and we have prepared a few templates you can choose from when adding a new IoT App in Estimote Cloud. With these templates, it will be possible to quickly turn the device into a GPS tracker, a cloud beacon, or a location-aware panic button.

There will be a separate blogpost on how the LTE Beacon can be programmed, so you can learn more about the entire process there. Stay tuned!

LTE-M device battery life

Since this LTE Beacon is fully programmable, battery life will depend on the micro app, the intensity of the radio usage, and also the external environment such as distance to base stations, type of connection (LTE Cat M1 or Narrowband IoT) and visibility of satellites.

For example, if we program the device to act as a GPS tracker and do nothing else other than send GPS coordinates to the cloud once a day, it will last approximately 2 years. However, if we want to get real-time position of an asset and receive GPS updates every few seconds, the device will last a few days at most.

The rule of thumb is that:

Bluetooth advertising (iBeacon/Eddystone) consumes the least power

Scanning for Bluetooth devices consumes significantly more energy

Processing satellite signals is even more power-hungry

And finally scanning and sending data over the LTE-M and Narrowband networks drains the battery the most. Note that it is still a fraction of the energy needed for cloud communication using classic voice or data sent over 3G

As part of our Cloud-based IDE, we are working on a battery usage profiler, so we will be able to help developers predict the battery consumption of their apps.

Estimote LTE Beacon also has a USB-C port and a rechargeable battery built-in, so it can be powered or recharged when necessary for applications that require a constant cloud connection or GPS/Bluetooth scanning.

Pricing and availability

We are shipping LTE Beacons as Developer Kits. Each box will include two devices and the total cost will be $129 + shipping. We can ship anywhere in the world.

Since the LTE Beacons have active data plans and talk to the LTE networks of our telecommunication partners as well as use our cloud services, there will be an additional subscription fee. For the beacons in the dev kit, it will be $2 per device per month, and the first 3 months are free. The devices can be still used and programmed without an active subscription, but the cloud connectivity won’t be possible.

PoC and Pilots

If you also need assistance building your first IoT apps using our Web IDE and APIs we are always more than happy to help. Shoot us a note at:

#lte-m #nb-iot #nbiot #ibeacon #estimote #5g #beacons #BLE

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