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#linkedin training services
brunbutt11 · 3 months
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Krannich Solar South-africa: Solar One Hundred And One Training
By constructing a powerful on-line presence and actively networking with professionals in their area of interest, learners can uncover hidden job opportunities, acquire insights into trade tendencies, and showcase their abilities and qualifications to potential employers. One of the first steps grade 12 learners can take in their job search journey is to leverage career steering and counseling services offered by their faculties or external organizations. In South Africa, many excessive colleges provide career guidance packages aimed at serving to college students discover numerous career paths, perceive their interests and strengths, and determine potential job opportunities. Note that if you connect your LinkedIn profile, UCT won’t have entry to all of your profile info. Popular on-line job portals in South Africa include platforms corresponding to Careers24, Indeed, PNet, Jobso.co.za, and Gumtree Jobs. These websites permit learners to search for job vacancies based on their location, industry preference, and desired job title. Additionally, learners can upload their resumes, create profiles, and arrange job alerts to obtain notifications about new job postings that match their criteria. Another avenue for grade 12 learners to think about when seeking job opportunities is to explore vocational training and apprenticeship packages. In South Africa, there's a rising demand for expert employees in various sectors, together with manufacturing, construction, automotive, and data technology. Not only might choosing candidates primarily based on their expertise yield more beneficial employment outcomes, in comparability with choosing based mostly on their degree of qualification and levels, however they may be capable of ‘hit the bottom running’. However, when looking at areas similar to know-how, traditional instructional establishments have merely not been in a position to keep up with the rate of change – or produce the number of skilled graduates wanted. The mining setting and dealing on a quarry site is so wonderful and insightful. Working inside Unitrans has shown me a sense of firm loyalty and job satisfaction. linkedin marketing Please remember that this might heavily cut back the functionality and appearance of our website. TP-Link may even showcase a unified Wi-Fi resolution for multi-dwelling items, masking indoor and outside connectivity wants and that includes seamless coverage, enhanced safety, and simple administration via cutting-edge Wi-Fi technology and SDN integration. By removing the requirement for necessary larger diploma skills from job ads, recruiters can tap right into a wider range of candidates who possess related skills and experience. Departments are also instructed to establish graduate recruitment schemes to draw young individuals leaving greater schooling institutions into the basic public service. The directive, for example, requires that an individual can only qualify to be appointed to senior administration within the public service if they've successfully completed the pre-entry programme often recognized as Nyukela. The course, which is supplied by the National School of Government and takes about 120 hours to complete, aims to make sure that all candidates to senior management have the information and capabilities they should succeed. The course aims to make sure that prospective senior managers are grounded within the values of good citizenship, ethical management and developmental public administration. We are trying to grasp the variety of supervisors that require access to the app on Huawei. YES is investigating the use case for the platform and necessary info wanted to make the app obtainable on Huawei working system. Yes, even when it is your first time logging into the platform or you're participating for the primary time. This platform transforms the work seeking expertise of young South Africans from being difficult and dear to one which is accessible and cheaper.
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teaguekronborg56 · 4 months
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Well-liked Courses By Linkedin Studying For February 2024 It Services Trinity School Dublin
Even so there will be area of interest services that are not on the listing, so at present there isn't a class for LinkedIn Coach which is why I had to use the nearest relevant ones. LinkedIn has simply announced the official launch of its Services Marketplace. An online assembly place for consumers and suppliers which is geared toward freelancers and small businesses. Strikes have additionally been held since June 2022 by members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union. The Department for Transport (DfT) units performance benchmarks for rail firms that are then monitored by the Office for Rail and Road (ORR), the watchdog. LinkedIn Learning (previously Lynda courses) is a website that offers video courses. You can use this website to access as a lot as 15,000 programs in additional than seven languages. You can use this website to entry as a lot as 15,000 courses in additional than seven languages available each free of charge and with a subscription. While all that is fast to record, the time and experience required to truly do it can be daunting – especially when you could have a business to run. Despite all the benefits provided by LinkedIn, if you do not use the platform successfully and strategically, then your searches, messages, and further activities can be a considerable waste of time. I was wondering the same thing - why there isn't a LinkedIn coach or trainer on the services listing  🤷♀️. Aslef’s pay dispute has gone on since the first ballots have been issued in June 2022, and the union has accused the Government of failing to have interaction to end the row. However, Aslef has reacted to this by warning such legislation may worsen any industrial action. RMT union members on the London Overground will take industrial action during February and March. More than 300 staff will take industrial motion which incorporates strikes and action in want of strike. Transport ministers have eased targets for areas including hygiene, employees helpfulness and graffiti after some railway companies struggled to meet them. Measure ROI to achieve higher insights into the true influence of your LinkedIn ads whereas creating alternatives to additional optimize. Gain insights to find the best audience, allocate spend extra precisely, and increase conversions and ROI. Find our contact details and address below if you want to contact us or use the contact kind provided. Include a hi-res head-and-shoulder photo that is indicative of the position you aspire to. Over the final 24 years in the training and training house, we now have developed a deep understanding of the challenges and needs impacting this sector in South Africa. Linkedin; by now you realize the importance of this business social media platform and what it might possibly mean for your company and your small business development plan. However, not all business have the best Linkedin training to completely leverage Linkedin. This truth can hinder their general aspirations for the business as a whole. A invoice for minimum requirements for passenger rail services, ambulance services and fireplace and rescue services was passed in July, to ensure important services stay in place. Target the proper individuals at the right time with attributes like trade, seniority, and job perform. With offices in the UK, United States and Europe, our services equip over 2,500 businesses and 50,000 enterprise professionals around the world on a month-to-month foundation. Maverrik has been training, consulting and training businesses since 2014. My comprehensive on-line course provides you the possibility to expertise my LinkedIn teaching at a time, place, and tempo to suit you. linkedin training The training is fun with plenty of workout routines, giving you plenty of concepts and perception into the means to connect with your prospects and create relevant content material. The difference between “can” and “can’t” may impact the greatest way customers really feel following an interplay. Even when delivering unhealthy news, it’s important to give attention to the optimistic and discover solutions. But in some cases, there will be complicated issues that require endurance to get via. With the best training any enterprise can grasp their Linkedin enterprise web page, even creating a quantity of showcase pages for every product/services. Just think about having every little thing that your small business sells in one place, for any industry professional to search out and enquire about. So lengthy as Linkedin consultancy recommendation of sustaining a proactive method is adhered to then the only means is up in your sales. Every enterprise needs to advertise and market what they wish to promote be it products or services to their target market. However, not all sales professionals know the place on Linkedin they'll leverage their gross sales marketing strategies so as to herald new income. A Linkedin premium account for gross sales is called the Linkedin Sales Navigator for varied obvious causes. It may help your sales staff focus on the right prospects, stay informed with insights and even build trusted relationships whilst you navigate your means through your selling methods. As good as your newly upgraded account is, you may not know the method to leverage it to improve your sales in the greatest way possible. The enterprise world is one huge battle, combating to shut that one deal, create that one necessary connection may mean everything to your corporation. This is where Linkedin can take some of the trouble away out of your aggressive place. Though I hear these sales personals crying out that Linkedin just isn't for them, they don’t see the method it can benefit them to use it.
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lady-raziel · 2 months
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and alright, here's my last (let's hope) and boldest take yet. lots of people have been talking about the level of staff (around 25-ish people) at watcher, and whether downsizing that number could have been a potential avenue of reducing costs before just jumping to a subscription model. at first i was like yeah, i'm not sure that there needs to be 18 people involved in making a lets play. i was in the fucking trenches in the unus annus days and i'm still amazed how markiplier and ethan nestor managed to put out pretty well edited videos every day for a whole year with only a handful of editors and a couple people filming. what unus annus was trying to do and what watcher is trying to do are obviously pretty different, but the point is that you really don't need a whole crew of people to make lots of different types of content and do it well.
i still think there probably doesn't need to be a whole production crew involved with the creation of some of the simpler types of content watcher puts out. however, i don't think the size of the staff is the real problem. in fact, i think the staff of watcher probably should have been larger.
let me explain. if i begrudgingly go to one of my most detested websites (linkedin. *bleeegh*) and look up watcher, i can see that pretty much every person on staff is in a creative role of some sort by their own admission. at first glance, its like, oh, that makes sense. they're making creative products, it's natural that they should all be in creative roles. however, once you think about it for a little longer from a business perspective, that fact is really concerning.
after all, by watcher's own definition, this is a production studio. this is a company. So in this sea of creative roles, who's doing corporate planning? Who's managing finance? Who's doing payroll? Or brand outreach? Or human-freaking-resources??? you can hire outside groups for all this. i'm aware. but those services cost a lot of money to contract too. i'm just finding it concerning that there is pretty much no one on full time staff that is there to at least do some of this stuff. if watcher wants to be a big-boy company, that's fine, but that means you have to pay some people to be part of your company to do the not-fun business stuff like accounting. or resource management.
if they want to be a real company, they should actually have a lot more people on staff to deal with all the non-creative parts of running a company. even if they contract out most of it, you want at least a few people that are your people and don't actually work for someone else. that's how you don't get screwed over or end up in a contract you can't get out of.
which leads me to my last train of thought. like, as i go through the staff of watcher and look at what they do, it really seems like one of the ONLY people who's job it was to look at the business side of things WAS steven lim in his role as CEO. and thinking about that, i'm like god, can you imagine?? here's a guy who just wants to create cool stuff too but as one of the few people who has to think about the realities of Brand and the Business, HE has to be the one to burst the bubble. He as CEO has to say no to people and make decisions to make sure the company survives. In a group of creative people who just want to make things they're interested in, no expense spared, he was probably the guy who had to stay at least a little tethered to reality.
I'm not about to say that steven lim isn't to blame here. everyone involved in making the decisions that have led up to this point is part of this. but shit, it absolutely sucks to have to be the person at the end of the brainstorm session when everyone is coming up with their best ideas and to have to say "guys, i don't think any of these things are possible unless we make some big decisions."
is that what happened at watcher HQ? i don't know. at this point, with radio silence from everyone, speculation is all we've got. but if you follow the thread of a bunch of creatives striking out on their own to make their own business after being burned by their former employer, despite not knowing really how to run a business, and then only hiring fellow creative people and not other people who actually run business things... well, all of this starts to make slightly more sense in WHY none of watcher's actions make sense. everybody wants to stick it to the man and be their own boss with their own business, until it actually comes to the hard parts of doing that. at that point people start to realize, "oh, maybe some of the things that existed at my old job were there for a reason, actually."
all this is why lots of creatives striking out and starting their own businesses don't work in the end. they're thinking about in terms of creative products still, when they really need to be focusing more on the "business" part of the "creative business." it's sad. it sucks. it destroys a lot of good ideas and good people, because one person in every company like that has to be the one who thinks practically. could this have been avoided if watcher had been hiring people all along to manage this business and not just adding people to add to the creative output? maybe. even then it might not have been enough to curb other predictable impulses that led us down this path.
i feel bad for watcher, and i feel bad for the fandom. but i can't help but wonder if this was always the kind of situation we were going to end up in, and we just missed some of the warning signs because ALL of us were thinking, "well, that could never happen to us. we're different. not the Ghoul Boys."
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slocumjoe · 1 year
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Companions on social media
Cait; Posts gym thirst traps and videos of her working out or getting into fistfights. Can be found in the comments and DMs of women, gay or otherwise. Lots of activity in sobriety and self-help communities. Doesn’t have a lot of followers, but does fundraiser streams for a week every three months she's sober. The money goes to child abuse prevention foundations. Her most recent charity streams had her trying to get all achievements on Just Dance after someone donated 10k requesting it.
Codsworth; self-help videos for people struggling to take care of themselves. How to tidy up, how to take effective breaks, what needs to be cleaned in a house and what supplies you need...very useful, very popular with college students and teens. Once posted a video of him going at wasps with a chainsaw and gained a million subs overnight.
Curie; children's educational YouTube channel that's, somehow, more popular with young adults. Science experiments gone wrong. Think Jackass and Mythbusters hosted by a tiny French woman who approaches everything with the joy and whimsy of My Little Pony. Her most popular videos are her 100k subscriber specials, a series where she goes ghost and cryptid hunting to disprove them and demonstrate the fraudulence you can find behind such things.
Danse; has a Facebook for work purposes. It has a profile photo only because Haylen insisted. Fears the internet deeply, thinks its the closest humanity can get to staring into the void and seeing something blink. Unbeknownst to him, there's a viral video of him teaching a workout regimen to trainees. The comment sections are pure thirst. All of his coworkers know and made an oath to never speak of it.
Deacon; Is the one who snuck into training and got that video. Posted it to r/NextFuckingLevel with 🥵🥵🥵 for a caption. Owns several large meme accounts, all with distinct personalities and lives. Someone tried to dox him after suspicions, but found all accounts had different IPs and info. He's just that good. His Facebook changes profile photo every. Single. Day. He consumes an absurd amount of audio books. Drops CRAZY money on charity streams to make the host do weird shit, like 100% Just Dance. Probably sells feet pics.
Dogmeat; The internet's darling. Nick Valentine's dog who doesn't help with catching bad guys, but with far more important things; Dogmeat cuddles and plays with victims at the scene or in court. Also trained in search and rescue. Much of Dogmeat's page is just Nick sharing important information (hotlines, self-defense, survival tips, et cetera) while petting or playing with Dogmeat. Kind of a McGruff the Crime Dog vibe.
Gage; Facebook that he uses to cyberbully cop pages and Craigslist to offer his...unconventional services (pretending to be your boyfriend at family gatherings to cause drama). His pet lizard, an Argentine Tegu, has an Instagram with 3k followers. The Tegu often wins pet competitions and Gage posts the awards captioned with 🖕🏻💚🦎💚🖕🏻. Works at an amusement park, posts tell-all confessions on Reddit.
MacCready; Facebook with friends and family, posts a lot of Duncan. His YouTube history is videos for Duncan. Lots of Curie's videos. Mac has a Craigslist and LinkedIn, does odd jobs when he isn't working as a security guard at a shooting range. Activite in communities about comics, shows, and video games. Sometimes he'll post a theory about a show or comic and he's usually right. Really enjoys the meltdowns of fandoms when the media takes a nasty turn, even if he's also betrayed.
Nick; Ellie runs Dogmeat's page, Nick just does the talking. As for Nick himself, has some pages for his work (that Ellie also manages) and a Facebook profile to stay in touch with friends and family. Much like Danse, consumes media offline—except for poetry. Most of his screen time is spent on Poetry.com, one of those people that leave comments. He likes how the internet makes information and art accessible. Very peaceful and wholesome internet time.
Hancock; The void that Danse is scared of. Also does streams, but not only for fundraisers. Streams high. Streams himself trying to find his way back to his apartment late at night. Always end up in a fast food joint, trying to convince the workers to unionize. Twitter shitposter until a politician needs cyberbullying. Organizes protests. Extremely active in Massachusetts' political scene, his fans are a force to be reckoned with. Has fistfought his own fans before. Occasionally cancels himself to prove a point. Makes mock apology videos whenever another celeb/influencer fucks up.
Preston; Park ranger and community organizer. Uses Facebook and TikTok to appeal to all ages. Is unfairly good at TikTok dances. Posts safety tips, upcoming event information, etc. Does a lot of work with Dogmeat and Nick. Posts bodycam footage of him arresting people, like shutting down fire-themed gender reveal parties, or poachers. Not a lot of followers, but the bodycam footage goes viral on subreddits like r/Instant_Karma.
Piper; a journalist and blogger. Posts videos of her political rants and makeup/hair routine. Joins Hancock in politician cyberbullying. Makes commentary essays and videos, sometimes book reviews. Appears on podcasts. Her media presence is decently known, but mild. She tries to keep herself distant from it. Despite this, has a good-sized following who appreciate the lack of parasociality. Her most famous video is her trying to find the best coffee spots in Boston.
X6-88; security guard for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who got stuck running the Twitter when the last guy got arrested on weed charges. Piper keeps DMing for an interview and he keeps blocking her accounts. He has LinkedIn for work. Half of it is redacted and involves NDAs. No other media presence except for one thing; he's an infamous esports cryptid. Across a few different shooter games, a high-rank player called X6-88 (its just his first initial and the numbers on his security badge) fucking curbstomps everyone in the match. He has never died or missed a shot. Never speaks in chat, never in team chat. He's a legend among gamers. For him, he's just relaxing on a Friday night, keeping his senses sharp. Doesn't realize there are compilation videos of streamers raging at him.
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infernomicia · 1 month
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'Well, maybe she was chosen because I think that an independent and self-respecting woman will not submit to him.' //
I think this pretty much sums it up. She's basically an off the shelf trad wife that they are trying to sell us as a powerful film exec/couple.
With the added bonus that the powerful exec persona is not only false but ALSO in service of Henry and Henry only. It's very likely it was Dany Garcia who introduced them, as it ties in with her modus operandi, and absolute incompetence in the business.
Had they had an ounce of smarts, they would, at the very least, have scrubbed her internet presence before launching her to the world, deleting her escort profile, as well as the damning cultural appropriation water photo. This resulted in her getting fired from Legendary and deleting her LinkedIn because everyone would have seen the gap between her end date there and her start date as an elusive exec at Vertigo.
For those who don't know, Dany Garcia is a bodybuilder, ex wife and manager of The Rock. Henry used to be her only other actor client. A number of things happened during that time, namely:
Henry was clearly trying to shape his career around the blueprint of The Rock's. He talked about now wanting to bring his own gym on set, not wanting to do sex scenes anymore and always looking for franchises to join as they are lucrative.
Dany is responsible for the MuscleTech deal, which, together with the arrival of N, was part of that abrupt change of image most of his fanbase did not take on well.
Dany and The Rock are also responsible for the absolute train wreck that was Black Adam's ploy to oust Walter Hamada from DC Comics and have Seven Buck Productions, owned by them, take over DC Comics. Henry, blinded by his obsession to get Superman back, joined that ploy with his ill fated cameo, which ended up with the very public loss of Superman.
Admittedly, Henry fired Dany after all this (ya think!), but if you read the expose on The Rock that came out a few days ago, you'll see the kind of crooked punks he got in business with - and you'll see a trend in how this group of people are responsible for pushing producers with no actual talent or credentials up the ladder and causing great havoc in the process.
https://www.thewrap.com/dwayne-johnson-red-one-late-budget-problems/
I think Henry is very fortunate that Guy Ritchie took him under his wing (in exchange for some publicity for his outdoor cooking tent lol) and rebooted his career. Now we'll have to wait and see how long it's gonna take for a big-a** expose on Henry's ways to reach the general public. It'll be a while I am sure, but from what we've seen so far, something is clearly rotten in Elsinore.
Yeah, I’ve always found it odd that Natalie’s only real confirmed Vertigo project as a VP is just Warhammer. Henry’s project. Everything she is, has and does is for and from him.
Job. Home. Career. Luxury. Acquaintances. Connections. Friends - And the friends in LA she always comments on and vice versa are all linked the Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia projects.
It’s VERY clear she was introduced by Dany Garcia.
And he said it himself that who you align yourself with are reflections of you. And DG and DJ are being revealed as using nepotism, fake producers that are only loyal to them, swindling numbers on projects and extorting working class people out of money. So, what does that make Henry?
At the moment Guy Ritchie is his only advocate to a career. No others seem interested. Sad but his own doing as an adult man. Reap what you sow.
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opencommunion · 4 months
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"On 7 October and after, ZAKA served as a front for the Israeli army to launder false Hamas atrocity propaganda. The Haaretz investigation revealed that during the first days of the war – when the Israeli narrative concerning the nature of the Hamas operation was crucial to establish – uniformed soldiers from the Israeli army’s Home Front Command made many media appearances. 'But over their uniforms, they wore non-IDF vests on which the name ZAKA was emblazoned. Military officers who were informed about this blaring detail could not account for it,' the paper found. This gave the impression that claims coming from the Israeli army, an obviously biased source of information, were coming from a neutral third-party source. While even Israeli journalists were skeptical of claims by army commanders, including the false storyline that Hamas hung seven dead babies from a clothesline, the equally implausible claims made by Yossi Landau and other allegedly selfless ZAKA volunteers were largely reported uncritically in the US, UK, and Israeli press. The close relationship between ZAKA and the Israeli army is further illustrated by Haim Outmezgine, who is the head of ZAKA's 'special forces' and also a reservist in the Home Front Command's rescue unit. Outmezgine was one of several senior officials who made frequent press appearances wearing the yellow ZAKA vest. But he didn’t only play a media role; Haaretz notes further that according to some sources, 'he also played a central role in the association' between ZAKA and the Israeli army. He was 'in command of several sites starting from the evening of the attacks,' including the site of the Nova music festival in Re'im and the settlements (kibbutzim) of Kfar Aza and Be'eri. Outmezgine’s dual role in the army’s Home Front Command and ZAKA apparently led to the decision to deploy untrained, amateur ZAKA volunteers to collect bodies at these sensitive sites rather than army soldiers already well-trained for this purpose. The only soldiers the Home Front Command chose to use alongside ZAKA were from the Military Rabbinate's southern search unit, stationed at the Shura military base. Several army officers involved in the operation at the Shura base told Haaretz they had 'no explanation' for why the additional soldiers were not allowed to assist in the mission. One officer at Shura said that the inexpert way ZAKA volunteers collected the bodies 'made the identification process very difficult.' A volunteer who worked at Shura said: 'There were bags with two skulls, bags with two hands, with no way to know which was whose.'
But why were amateurs from ZAKA deployed to the most sensitive sites with the most bodies on 7 October, rather than highly trained soldiers from the army? One possibility is corruption. As both a member of ZAKA and the Home Front Command, Haim Outmezgine may have arranged for ZAKA to be deployed to Nova, Be’eri, and Kfar Azza to ensure the organization was at the center of events, and able to gain media attention and millions in donations. However, another possibility is that higher-level officials in the army, intelligence services, or Netanyahu’s cabinet wanted ZAKA deployed to these sensitive sites to make any investigation into the hundreds of Israeli deaths there as difficult as possible. This was crucial because it was the Israeli army itself that killed large numbers of its own civilians.
... This raises questions of whether ZAKA ... is a cut-out used by the Israeli army and intelligence services to justify Tel Aviv's massive military campaign in Gaza that many view as genocide, rather than an authentic volunteer rescue organization. Such a view is strengthened by the fact that, as Brad Pearce notes, ZAKA’s long-time Chief Operating Officer, Mati Goldstein, says on his LinkedIn profile that he is a 25-year veteran of the Israeli army, a current commander in the reserves, and someone who 'took part in many major undercover missions,' meaning he has been a trained spy. This connection could explain the praise ZAKA receives – despite its past controversies – from top levels of Israel’s military and political class, which positions it strategically in obscuring the truth of the 7 October events."
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mariacallous · 9 months
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(JTA) – The Biden Administration’s new point person for combating book bans at school districts and public libraries across the country is a gay, Jewish progressive activist who has served as a government liaison to the Jewish and LGBTQ communities.
The appointment of Matt Nosanchuk comes as the thousands of book challenges nationwide have focused on books with LGBTQ as well as Jewish themes, in addition to works about race. Nosanchuk was named a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Education’s civil rights office earlier this month. In that role, he will lead training sessions for schools and libraries on how to deal with book bans — and warn districts that the department believes book bans can violate civil rights laws.
An Education Department official recently told the 74, an education news site, that the bans “are a threat to students’ rights and freedoms.”
“I am excited to return to public service to work on behalf of the American people,” Nosanchuk posted to LinkedIn earlier this month. “There is a lot of important work to do!”
The Education Department declined to make Nosanchuk available for an interview. He has already taken heat from conservative outlets, which have pushed the narrative that the books being removed from schools and libraries are too sexually explicit for children. Kayleigh McEnany, the Fox News host who served as Donald Trump’s press secretary, called him a “porn enforcer” on-air.
But his appointment has been celebrated by librarians and book access activists. “This is a step forward for the Biden Administration, who has heard the concerns of parents and taken action, but it is just the beginning,” the National Parents Union, a progressive parental education activist group, said in a statement.
Nosanchuk’s career has largely focused on working with the LGBTQ and Jewish communities. In 2009, after serving in a number of roles in Washington, D.C., Nosanchuk was appointed as the Department of Justice’s liaison to the LGBTQ community — a position he held while Obama was still publicly opposed to same-sex marriage. He later worked on the Obama administration’s opposition to a law barring same-sex couples from receiving federal benefits.
He subsequently served as the White House liaison to the Jewish community during Obama’s second term, and in 2020 was the Democratic National Committee’s political organizer for Jewish outreach and LGBTQ engagement. That same year, he cofounded the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive policy group that he led until earlier this year.
Nosanchuk’s first webinar in his new role was held Tuesday in partnership with the American Library Association, an organization with which a number of Republican-led states have recently cut ties. He begins his work after a year that has seen several school districts take aim at books focused on Jewish experiences or the Holocaust.
Two weeks ago, a Texas school district fired a middle school teacher reportedly for reading a passage from an illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary to eighth-grade students. Other schools’ removals of “The Fixer,” a Jodi Picoult novel about the Holocaust and other texts have been likened to Nazi and Stalinist book burnings —  comparisons that proponents of the book restrictions reject.
Democratic politicians, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have accused Republicans of wanting “to ban books on the Holocaust.” A recent Senate hearing on book bans included testimony from Cameron Samuels, a Jewish advocate for access to books, along with numerous references to “Maus,” a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman about the Holocaust that was pulled from a Tennessee middle school curriculum last year.
PEN America, a literary free-speech advocacy group, welcomed Nosanchuk’s appointment.
“Book removals and restrictions continue apace across the country, as the tactics to silence certain voices and identities are sharpened,” the group said in a statement. “Empowering the coordinator to address this ongoing movement is critical.”
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slayingfiction · 10 months
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Beta Readers
What is a beta reader and beta reading?
Beta readers are a test audience for authors’ new books. This could include friends, family, or someone in the book community. It does not require any type of training or professional education. Beta readers receive book copies before they get released in order to give feedback to the author about their novel. Beta reading is typically the stage after proofreading and right before publishing. 
How do authors benefit from beta readers
Beta reading helps an author by getting feedback from their future audience before publishing so they can make desired changes to improve the reception of their novel. This can save them time and money by fixing problems prior to publishing that have been missed. It also helps build readership for when the book releases, because beta reader will be able to post reviews, enticing others to read the novel. 
How can you benefit from beta reading?
There are many ways to benefit from being a beta reader. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest reasons:
Free books: First and foremost, you get free books! To be a beta reader, you must love reading, so this is typically the biggest reason people want to become beta readers. You can get a small reprieve from buying books and just get them for free! All you need to give in return is your opinion.
Sense of accomplishment: Beta reading is a very important job and can determine the failure or success of a novel. You get to be a part of the team that can make a difference in peoples’ lives. One book can make all the difference to both authors and readers alike. You get a sense of joy, pride and accomplishment by helping. 
Compensation: Most beta readers will never make money from this, most taking on this responsibility for the two aforementioned reasons. However, that doesn’t mean sometimes you can’t receive financial compensation for your feedback. Those with a reputation for strong book reviews or have lots of experience in reading and giving feedback can certainly make a profit for this service. Making money from beta reading could be done with some of the following options:
Freelancing: Using freelance websites such as Upwork or Fiverr, you can market yourself as a beta reader and get jobs from people and companies offering compensation to beta readers. 
Websites: Work with companies such as OnlineBookClub to get paid for your reviews of new upcoming books. 
Market yourself in communities: You can market yourself as a beta reader for compensation when joining writing communities and establishing yourself as a prominent and professional beta reader within communities such as BookTok, Bookstagram, Goodreads, LinkedIn, and more. If you’re willing to put the effort in, this can come with some great rewards.
Your Brand: Being a beta reader for authors and companies can greatly enhance your brand or recognition in the book and writing communities if you decide you want to do this for a long time, want to add it to other services you offer, or become a novelist yourself in the future. Working in the community can do great things if you want to become established in the future. 
How do I become an amazing beta reader?
Beta reading isn’t the most complicated of jobs, but it does take talent, skills, and knowledge to be a superstar beta reader. Here’s some ways to stand out against the crowd. 
Read. Simple enough, right? It almost seems like common sense, but the truth is, the more you read, the better you get at understanding novel structures and elements. It also gives you great practice to work on your critical thinking and analyzing skills. 
Choose books only from your favourite genres. Authors are looking for people who are in their targeted audience, because they are the ones who will have the best knowledge of that genre and relate it to other readings they have done. So don’t beta read a mystery novel if you mostly read romance novels. 
Be knowledgeable of how books work. Plots, characters, world building, and more can all differ based on genre, so you want to know how these elements may be missing or lacking for this specific novel in order to give your best feedback. 
Understand the author’s desired target audience so you can tailor your feedback to help them write for their readers. You will then be capable of analyzing the reading level and explicit scenes to determine if they should be fixed or left as-is. 
Understand what kind of answers will best help the author perfect their novel. Try reviewing questions such as this: Questions to ask your alpha/beta readers. Understanding what authors are looking for will give you a better idea of how to be most useful and become critical to your community. 
Don’t give your personal opinions. What you may like, or prefer, can greatly differ from what is useful to the author. Instead of saying you don’t like it, or how you would like to see it written or played out, tell them what elements are causing you to not enjoy the novel. Learn to understand your dislike of something due to problems in the work versus personal preference. 
Be completely honest, but honesty never needs to be brutal. The novel you read in a day could have taken that author months or years to write, and it would be their whole life. Be gentle in your feedback, and always assure you tell them what they are doing well, not only the mistakes.
I am sorry for not posting anything lately. Recently I have been been working very hard at creating my own blog website that will include blog posts, mini writing courses, manuscript services, author of the month, and current read with a book review. I’m so excited for you all to see it when it gets up and running!
I hope everyone has a great week,
Happy Writing!
@cheerfulmelancholies Sorry it took so long to answer your question, I hope this helps at least a little! :)
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odinsblog · 11 months
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Andrew was entering his third month of unemployment when he sat down at his computer and opened the inbox of his LinkedIn account. He’d received a response to a query he’d sent off four days after his friend-turned-manager walked him into a conference room swimming with sunlight, smelling of cologne and the faintest hint of perfume left behind by a group of attorneys who’d recently vacated the space after a five-hour meeting.
“I’m sorry, man,” Colin Perkins had said. Andrew’s eyes glided to the glass conference table, landing on the silver tray holding a molehill of bagels. He imagined they must be stale by now, having been left there uncovered in the icy office air.
Someone had planted the pointed end of a white plastic knife in an open container of chive-and-jalapeño cream cheese. It brought to mind the moon landing; all that was missing was a tiny American flag. A laugh trudged up his throat, but he disguised it as a cough.
“I told you,” Colin continued, raking his hands over his manicured Afro, “that the last to hire would be the first to go.”
A month earlier, seventeen women and two men had accused the CEO of the company of sexual misconduct. That news had plummeted the stock. The layoffs followed. Andrew had witnessed dozens of employees being escorted by security from the building like criminals. Now it was his turn.
Andrew nodded, placed a comforting hand on Daniel’s shoulder, and squeezed. The crisp cotton of Daniel’s shirt felt cool beneath his palm. “It’s okay, man, I understand. Don’t sweat it.”
He’d spent that first week revamping his résumé, calling friends and old colleagues, people who might know of a job opportunity at their own place of employment or elsewhere. He’d never had a LinkedIn account, but took the time to set one up. To conserve the little bit of savings he had, Andrew dropped his gym membership and went back to drinking tap water instead of the bottled Evian he loved. He gave up Starbucks coffee and the expensive cabernet sauvignon he purchased by the case.
By week three, he was spending his days on the couch, dressed in boxer shorts and sweat socks. He’d stopped opening the blinds and only went outside to empty the garbage. He whiled away the hours playing video games, and watching Netflix and Pornhub. Oftentimes, he went days without brushing his teeth.
When his mother called to check on him, Andrew lied, claiming he had several interviews lined up. When his father took the phone into another room to ask if he needed money, Andrew assured him that he was fine on the financial front, even though he wasn’t. He’d made up his mind to sell his Shelby Mustang before he took a dime from his parents. That was a big decision because he loved that car more than he’d ever loved any woman.
The day he opened the e-mail, the panic had just started to set in. He could feel it creeping along the back of his neck, like the soft scuttle of caterpillar legs.
From: OBF, INC.
To: Andrew Jamison
Dear Mr. Jamison,
We found your resume to be very interesting and believe that you would be the perfect addition to our dynamic team of Client Liaisons.
PAID TRAINING!
Affordable benefits for you, your spouse, and/or children after 90 days!
Opportunities to advance within!
Hourly, overtime, and tremendous bonus opportunities!
If you love helping others, then you will love working for OBF, INC.
OBF, INC. wants to talk to you now! To set up an interview TEXT OBF51893.
Liaison was just a fancy French word for customer service agent. Well, that was his skill set. Andrew was an expert at assisting people.
He texted the number and received an instant response that directed him to call a telephone number and enter his personal code: 1032.
An automated voice offered him two available interview dates. He was instructed to press 1 for the first date and 2 for the second. The mechanical voice told him that he would receive a call advising him where the interview would take place.
It all seemed very clandestine. Andrew was cynical, but his desperation outweighed his skepticism.
A day later, he received a call from a woman with a Southern drawl . . . Georgia, Alabama, Texas? He couldn’t quite pinpoint where she hailed from, but listening to her speak conjured visions of sweet tea and fireflies. She asked for his full government name and the code he’d received via text message. There was a pause, two clicks, and then the syrupy voice asked if he had a pen available. He did. After she’d rattled off the address, she wished him good luck. There were a few more clicks and then the line went dead.
He walked into the lobby of the forty-story office building and was struck by the contemporary opulence of the space. Marble floors, potted palms that towered eight feet into the air, white leather sofas, and a slick-looking Louboutin-red reception desk.
Andrew presented his license to the security guard and was given a name tag, which he clipped to the lapel of his ash-gray jacket. He was told to go to the eighteenth floor.
While waiting for the elevator, he perused the list of companies listed on a plaque mounted to the wall. OBF, Inc. was nowhere to be found.
He smirked, shrugged his shoulders, and stepped into the elevator. On the eighteenth floor, smack outside of the elevator door, was a sheet of lined legal paper taped haphazardly to the wall. Scrawled on its face in black marker was: This Way to OBF, INC. Below that was an arrow.
He started down the hall. A man the color of cedar and as tall as an NBA player speed-walked past him, mumbling to himself. Andrew thought he looked dazed, as if he’d just received news that a loved one had passed away.
“Good morning,” Andrew murmured.
The man turned eyes as wide as saucers on Andrew. He opened his mouth and muttered something that Andrew wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. The elevator doors slid open just as Andrew leaned in and asked, “Uhm, sorry, brother, but did you say run?”
The man leaped into the elevator, pressed his spine against the back wall, and fixed his eyes on the glass numbers above the closing doors.
Andrew stood blinking at his reflection in the chrome elevator doors. After a moment, he shrugged and continued down the hallway where he came upon a second handwritten sign directing him to turn left at the women’s bathroom. He rounded a corner and found himself staring at eleven men seated in folding chairs. They all looked up from their iPhones and Androids. Andrew nodded and headed toward the pretty blonde seated behind a metal desk.
“Good morning,” she smiled. “Name?”
“Andrew Jamison.”
“Okay, Mr. Jamison, please take a seat. Mrs. Americus will be with you shortly.”
He scrutinized his fellow applicants. They were all black men save for the one white guy with a man-bun who was called in as soon as Andrew sat down. Man-bun wasn’t in there long. In less than five minutes, cheeks flushed and cursing under his breath, he stormed across the reception area and out of sight.
Andrew clenched his jaw and made eye contact with another man across the room from him. He imagined the unease in the man’s eyes mirrored his own uncertainty.
“Andrew Jamison, Mrs. Americus will see you now. Just through that door.”
The door opened to a large office filled with cubicles and desks, manned by women tapping away on typewriters or murmuring into the handsets of—
Andrew slowed his gait.
Are those rotary telephones and, wait, Royal typewriters?
As Andrew gawked, a large man with a mustache as thick has a shoe brush appeared before him. Andrew glanced up and then quickly shifted his gaze away from the brawny man’s left eyelid, which was weighed down with a sty the size of a dime.
“In there,” the man huffed, aiming a chubby finger at a closed door not more than five feet from where they stood.
The office was as small as a janitor’s closet. And dark.
The lone window on the far left wall faced the shadowy back of a department store. Metal file cabinets lined the walls; some of the drawers were open, revealing manila folders bulging with papers. He could see, even in the muddy darkness of the room, a layer of dust atop the cabinets. Hanging on the walls were at least twenty framed photographs of people, all of whom were black.
The air was rife with the scent of cigarette smoke.
Andrew remembered people smoking at their desks when he went to visit his mother at her office job when he was young. Once, on a flight to Detroit with his grandmother, he stood at the back of the plane waiting to use the bathroom, and found himself engulfed in a cloud of smoke billowing from the cigarettes of three passengers.
He couldn’t recall the exact year cities around the country began banning smoking in bars and restaurants, but he was supremely aware that smokers had to be at least four hundred feet away from the entrance of any building if they wanted to light up.
Yet here was this woman, puffing away like it was 1975. Andrew eyed the near-empty box of Winstons and then the woman. She was robust—a meat-and-potatoes sort of gal, with doughy cheeks and large blue eyes. Her sun-bleached blond hair fanned back from her face—a style made famous by the eighties icon Farrah Fawcett. Her lips were slathered in tangerine-colored lipstick. The same color rung the filters of a dozen long-dead Winston butts heaped in the black ceramic ashtray. Andrew thought, If she’s going for clown instead of glamour, well, bull’s-eye!
Ornate rings twinkled on seven of her ten fingers, the rose-gold chain she wore around her neck dribbled down her chest and disappeared into her cleavage. She looked to be in her midfifties.
“Good morning, Mr. Jamison. Please have a seat.” Her eyes remained glued to the sheet of paper clutched in her hands. Andrew assumed it was his résumé.
He sat down.
“You graduated from Brown University?”
“Y-yes, I did. I graduated summa cum laude in 1990.”
Her desk was cluttered with newspaper clippings; stacks of aging yellowed papers, and dated fashion magazines. Andrew’s eyebrows climbed. Was that Marcia from the seventies sitcom The Brady Bunch on the cover of that Glamour magazine?
Andrew chuckled to himself. This had to be an elaborate joke. Someone was putting him on. His eyes ranged around the office in search of a concealed camera.
“Impressive,” she said finally, looking him directly in the eye. “Do you have a wife?”
“S-sorry?”
“Are you married, Mr. Jamison?”
“No, I’m not.”
She searched his face. “Are you gay?”
Andrew bristled. “Mrs. Americus, I don’t think you’re legally allowed to ask me that question.”
She smirked.
“It’s a yes-or-no question, Mr. Jamison. I know it’s unusual, but believe me, for this position I would need to know.”
His rent was due tomorrow and then again in thirty more days. His savings were dwindling. “No, I’m not gay.”
“Do you have children?”
“One daughter, she’s twenty-two years old.”
“Do you have a good relationship with your daughter? With the mother?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Americus glanced at his résumé. “Perfect.” She reached for the dying cigarette and brought it to her lips. “And according to your application, you’ve never been arrested. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we will be doing a background check.”
“Understood.”
“Do you have any bad habits? Do you use narcotics?”
“No ma’am.”
“Any . . . um . . . undesirable recreational activities?”
“Undesirable?”
“Porn? Well, not just porn. Kiddie porn.”
Andrew’s mouth fell open.
“No judgment, Mr. Jamison. Again, I just need to know.”
“No, I do not watch kiddie porn,” Andrew spat.
“Good!” she exclaimed, drumming her fingers on the desk. “Let me tell you the specifics of the job . . .”
Some of the faces behind the glass frames looked familiar. Again Andrew found himself squinting. Was that Omarosa? He pitched forward in his chair.
Mrs. Americus stopped talking and followed his gaze. “Um, yes,” she spouted. “That is who you think it is. She’s been one of our best recruits.”
Andrew swallowed.
Mrs. Americus stubbed out her cigarette and laced her fingers under her chin. “Some of our liaisons work directly with government agencies. That’s a promotion of sorts. Of course, before you can be assigned to the big house—I mean the White House—you’d first have to prove yourself out in the field.” She giggled. “In the field. You get it? It’s a double entendre.”
Andrew’s mouth went dry.
She twisted around in the chair and pointed to a photograph of a pair of middle-aged women standing shoulder to shoulder, each holding a red MAGA baseball cap. “Those ladies are Diamond and Silk. Do you know them?”
Andrew shot out up from the chair. For a moment, he thought his knees would buckle. “What does OBF stand for?”
Mrs. Americus reached for the pack of cigarettes. “OBF stands for One Black Friend.”
“One Black Friend?”
“Yes. You see, in these troubling times, times where so many people are labeling white people as racist, we need black people to stand up for us—to have our backs, as your people are fond of saying. Sometimes, Mr. Jamison, a God-fearing, good white person may be accused of a crime or some other offense perpetrated against a person of color, and when the accused does not have a person of color in his circle, it looks bad. The public may see him . . . or her, as a racist simply because their circle is . . . white. Lily.
“And that’s wrong. Not having black friends does not make a white person racist by default. Anyway,” she waved her hand, “that’s where OBF comes in. We provide that one black friend. That one black friend introduces doubt, and more often than not, that doubt diminishes a large percentage of the negative impact our clients might face.”
Andrew just stared.
“Oh, Mr. Jamison, don’t look so shocked. This practice has been around for centuries.” She pointed to the far wall near the window. “You see that guy there? He was actually the inspiration for this company.”
Andrew peered at the photograph. “Who is he?”
“Joe Oliver.”
“Joe Oliver?”
“Yeah, Joe Oliver. You don’t remember him? Joe Oliver, George Zimmerman’s one black friend.” Mrs. Americus raised a black ceramic coffee mug to her lips and sipped. The red decal on the side of the mug read: Black Tears.
Andrew’s stomach lurched, perspiration beading across his forehead. “This is some kind of joke, right?”
“Oh, I assure you this is not a joke and I am very serious. As serious as a heart attack. Is that how the saying goes? As serious as a heart attack?”
Andrew started toward the door.
“Wait, Mr. Jamison. Look here.” She pointed at a photograph hanging above the row of filing cabinets. “This is another one of our liaisons. Since he’s been working for us, he’s paid off his student loans and I understand that he’s just recently purchased a Cadillac.”
Andrew followed her index finger to the photo of a grinning black man holding a Blacks for Trump sign above his head like a trophy.
“Shall we talk about salary?”
The lights flickered.
He thought, Maybe I’m still asleep. Maybe this is a nightmare.
“Andrew? I can see you’re having a hard time processing all of this. But really, it’s not as uncommon as you might think. We live in America, this is a capitalist country, and we monetize everything. Everything.”
Andrew couldn’t remember reaching for the doorknob, but suddenly he was stumbling through the reception area.
He fled down the corridor, rounded the first corner and then the next. A slight man the color of honeyed milk stepped from the elevator. He wore a yellow dress shirt with a red bow tie. His dark-blue khakis were flooded just enough to offer a wink of his orange-and-navy argyle socks.
Upon Andrew’s frantic approach, the startled stranger stepped swiftly out of his path. Andrew didn’t make eye contact. He jabbed at the elevator button until the doors slid open.
Weeks later, Andrew was seated in a truck-stop diner with his fork poised over a plate of scrambled eggs and corned beef hash.
The mounted television was tuned to Fox News. The anchor reported that yet another young black man had been gunned down by a vigilante, another Good Samaritan, named Christopher Parks.
Christopher Parks was heading home from his job as a sanitation man when he spotted young Daniel Latham sitting in Starbucks, dozing over his law textbooks. Parks entered the establishment, woke Latham with a tap to his shoulder, and asked if he lived in the area. According to eyewitnesses, Latham replied that he did in fact live in the neighborhood. Parks demanded to see Latham’s ID and was met with laughter. The law student gathered his belongings and stood to leave—rather menacingly, one eyewitness reported.
That was when Christopher Parks pulled his weapon and fired. The stunned Latham, still laughing, crumpled into his chair and pressed his hand over the whole in his heart. It wasn’t until he saw the blood that the smile slipped from his lips and he began to cry.
The cops were called, but not an ambulance. Well, not immediately.
The police shackled Latham to the chair and took Parks to the police station for questioning. The woman behind the counter gave Parks a high five and a tall Caffè Mocha to go.
By the time an ambulance arrived, Daniel Latham was dead, having bled out all over his take-home final exam.
In the days that followed, it was revealed that Daniel Latham had several unpaid parking tickets and was thrice fined for not scooping his dog’s poop. Not only that—he was also a practicing Buddhist who supported a woman’s right to choose.
A search of Latham’s apartment unearthed a well-worn copy of Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was on his nightstand alongside Jay-Z’s Decoded. This discovery was further evidence that Latham was no angel.
Laura Ingraham looked directly into the camera and told her viewers that Christopher Parks was a hero, a polite and well-spoken man who had been raised by his father after his mother died from breast cancer when he was just three years old. Yes, as a youth, Christopher had been suspended from school for fighting, and as a young man he’d beaten a girlfriend with a pipe. Later, when he was in his early thirties, he’d threatened to castrate his boss—a black man old enough to be his grandfather. All of that behavior, Laura Ingraham said, was directly connected to the trauma of losing a mother at such a tender age.
She paused, and in that moment her entire face pulsed with empathy. “That said,” she continued, “Al Sharpton, along with the Black Lives Matter terrorist organization, have labeled Christopher Parks a racist and are calling for his arrest.” She shook her head and chuckled. “Earlier today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Christopher’s longtime best friend, Andrew Jamison . . .”
Andrew lowered his fork, reached for his shades, and slipped them onto his face.
—OBF, Inc., a short story by Bernice L. McFadden
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optimizacijasajta · 8 months
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RankBrain is a machine learning algorithm that Google uses to help rank websites in search results. It is one of the most important factors in Google's ranking algorithm, and it is constantly evolving.
To effectively rank in the future, you need to understand how RankBrain works and how you can optimize your website for it. Here are some tips:
Create high-quality content. RankBrain is trained on a massive dataset of text and code, so it is able to understand the quality of your content. Create high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience and that is well-written and informative.
Optimize your website for search engines. This includes using relevant keywords in your title tags, meta descriptions, and throughout your content. You should also make sure that your website is mobile-friendly.
Build backlinks to your website. Backlinks are links from other websites to your own. Backlinks are a signal to Google that your website is authoritative and trustworthy. You can build backlinks by creating high-quality content that other websites will want to link to, and by guest blogging on other websites in your industry.
Promote your content. Once you have created high-quality content, you need to promote it so that people can find it. You can promote your content on social media, through email marketing, and by guest blogging on other websites. You can also promote your content by submitting it to directories and by running paid advertising campaigns.
In addition to the above tips, there are a few other things you can do to effectively rank in the future:
Keep up with the latest SEO trends. The SEO landscape is constantly changing, so it is important to keep up with the latest trends. You can do this by reading industry blogs, attending industry events, and following SEO experts on social media.
Use data to inform your SEO strategy. You can use data from analytics tools to see what content is performing well and what content is not performing well. This data can help you to create more of the content that your audience wants to see.
Be patient. It takes time to rank in search results, especially for competitive keywords. Don't expect to see results overnight. Just keep creating high-quality content, building backlinks, and promoting your content, and you will eventually see results.
By following the tips above, you can improve your chances of ranking effectively in the future.
Here are some additional tips specifically for RankBrain:
Focus on long-tail keywords. RankBrain is better at understanding long-tail keywords than short-tail keywords. This is because long-tail keywords are more specific and informative.
Create content that is relevant to your target audience. RankBrain is able to understand the context of your content and the intent of your target audience. This means that you need to create content that is relevant to your target audience and that meets their needs.
Use a variety of content formats. RankBrain is able to understand a variety of content formats, including text, images, videos, and audio. This means that you can create content in a variety of formats to reach your target audience and improve your ranking.
Keep your website up-to-date. RankBrain favors websites that are fresh and up-to-date. This means that you need to update your website on a regular basis with new content.
By following these tips, you can optimize your website for RankBrain and improve your chances of ranking effectively in the future.
Mapiranje ključnih reči
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monisha1199 · 8 months
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Journey to AWS Proficiency: Unveiling Core Services and Certification Paths
Amazon Web Services, often referred to as AWS, stands at the forefront of cloud technology and has revolutionized the way businesses and individuals leverage the power of the cloud. This blog serves as your comprehensive guide to understanding AWS, exploring its core services, and learning how to master this dynamic platform. From the fundamentals of cloud computing to the hands-on experience of AWS services, we'll cover it all. Additionally, we'll discuss the role of education and training, specifically highlighting the value of ACTE Technologies in nurturing your AWS skills, concluding with a mention of their AWS courses.
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The Journey to AWS Proficiency:
1. Basics of Cloud Computing:
Getting Started: Before diving into AWS, it's crucial to understand the fundamentals of cloud computing. Begin by exploring the three primary service models: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Gain a clear understanding of what cloud computing is and how it's transforming the IT landscape.
Key Concepts: Delve into the key concepts and advantages of cloud computing, such as scalability, flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and disaster recovery. Simultaneously, explore the potential challenges and drawbacks to get a comprehensive view of cloud technology.
2. AWS Core Services:
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): Start your AWS journey with Amazon EC2, which provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Learn how to create virtual servers, known as instances, and configure them to your specifications. Gain an understanding of the different instance types and how to deploy applications on EC2.
Simple Storage Service (S3): Explore Amazon S3, a secure and scalable storage service. Discover how to create buckets to store data and objects, configure permissions, and access data using a web interface or APIs.
Relational Database Service (RDS): Understand the importance of databases in cloud applications. Amazon RDS simplifies database management and maintenance. Learn how to set up, manage, and optimize RDS instances for your applications. Dive into database engines like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and more.
3. AWS Certification:
Certification Paths: AWS offers a range of certifications for cloud professionals, from foundational to professional levels. Consider enrolling in certification courses to validate your knowledge and expertise in AWS. AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, and AWS Certified DevOps Engineer are some of the popular certifications to pursue.
Preparation: To prepare for AWS certifications, explore recommended study materials, practice exams, and official AWS training. ACTE Technologies, a reputable training institution, offers AWS certification training programs that can boost your confidence and readiness for the exams.
4. Hands-on Experience:
AWS Free Tier: Register for an AWS account and take advantage of the AWS Free Tier, which offers limited free access to various AWS services for 12 months. Practice creating instances, setting up S3 buckets, and exploring other services within the free tier. This hands-on experience is invaluable in gaining practical skills.
5. Online Courses and Tutorials:
Learning Platforms: Explore online learning platforms like Coursera, edX, Udemy, and LinkedIn Learning. These platforms offer a wide range of AWS courses taught by industry experts. They cover various AWS services, architecture, security, and best practices.
Official AWS Resources: AWS provides extensive online documentation, whitepapers, and tutorials. Their website is a goldmine of information for those looking to learn more about specific AWS services and how to use them effectively.
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) represents an exciting frontier in the realm of cloud computing. As businesses and individuals increasingly rely on the cloud for innovation and scalability, AWS stands as a pivotal platform. The journey to AWS proficiency involves grasping fundamental cloud concepts, exploring core services, obtaining certifications, and acquiring practical experience. To expedite this process, online courses, tutorials, and structured training from renowned institutions like ACTE Technologies can be invaluable. ACTE Technologies' comprehensive AWS training programs provide hands-on experience, making your quest to master AWS more efficient and positioning you for a successful career in cloud technology.
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xtruss · 3 months
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Pro-Palestine demonstrators gather during a vigil for U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Aaron Bushnell, Who Self-Immolated For Palestine 🇵🇸, Had Grown Deeply Disillusioned With The Military! “I have Been Complicit in The Violent Domination of The World And I Will Never Get The Blood 🩸 🩸🩸 Off My Hands.”
— By Nikita Mazurov | February 28 2024
Aaron Bushnell, the active-duty U.S. Air Force Airman who set himself on fire Sunday to protest Israel’s war on Gaza, appears to have grown disillusioned with the U.S. military and his own role as a service member, according to posts on the online forum Reddit under a handle matching one used by Bushnell.
Bushnell, 25, made international news when he professed that he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and recorded himself shouting “Free Palestine!” as he burned to death in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on Sunday. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” Bushnell had announced on a livestream before his self-immolation, “but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers is not extreme at all.”
The Reddit posts, by a user named acebush1 and mostly from the past four years, chronicle a young person’s experience struggling with money as the pandemic took hold. The Reddit poster turned to the military and was initially enamored with the Air Force, but quickly came to denounce it.
In the months leading up to Bushnell’s act of self-immolation, several of acebush1’s posts showed how sharply their view of the military had shifted. On the r/Airforce subreddit, a user asked veterans whether, in hindsight, they would still choose to join the military. Acebush1 answered, “Absolutely not.”
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“I have been complicit in the violent domination of the world,” they said, “and I will never get the blood off my hands.”
The Intercept analysis linked the acebush1 Reddit account to Bushnell by analyzing his social media activity. In a post on Facebook the same day as his self-immolation, Bushnell had posted a link to the video streaming platform Twitch with the username LillyAnarKitty. Using a Twitch username history tool that identifies a user’s prior account names, The Intercept found that the same Twitch User ID number used by LillyAnarKitty previously employed the handle acebush1.
A Reddit user with the same username — acebush1 — posted over a thousand times since 2014. The Reddit posts mention details that align closely with Bushnell’s life, including being in the Air Force, having a friend who was a conscientious objector, and studying computer science.
As this story was being drafted, acebush1’s posts started to be removed from Reddit. The posts were archived and, though Reddit instantly deletes posts from their new interface, visiting the old-style Reddit user profile page reveals their recently deleted posts.
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“A Regret I Will Carry”
The acebush1 Reddit user joined the military soon after posting about their financial struggles at the beginning of the pandemic. On March 19, 2020, acebush1 inquired about becoming an Uber Eats driver. The following month they posted asking for financial help: “HELP – Can’t get stimulus or unemployment benefits, about to run out of money.”
In May, acebush1 posted a photo with the caption “My Dad getting suited up to give me a goodbye? hug before I leave for BMT” — basic military training. According to Bushnell’s LinkedIn page, he enrolled in “Basic & Technical Training” in the Air Force in May 2020.
Several months into enrollment, acebush1 appeared excited by the Air Force, reposting a video of a military aircraft in August 2020 and giving it a heading that said: “Man, the Air Force does some cool-ass shit.”
Acebush1 also regularly posted in various video game Reddit communities, including one dedicated to the video game “Valheim.” In Bushnell’s self-immolation livestream, the liquid container he is carrying has a sticker with the slogan ‘the bees are happy,’ a meme from “Valheim.”
In November 2021, acebush1 made multiple posts asking about advice in pursuing a computer science degree. Bushnell’s LinkedIn profile, which has been memorialized “as a tribute to Aaron Bushnell’s professional legacy,” lists him as having been in the process of pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer software engineering.
Nearly a year later, acebush1’s posts shifted from largely video game-based content to posts with titles like “Solidarity with Prisoners!” with a link to a Guardian article about an Alabama prison strike, and to reposting a meme image of anarchist philosopher Max Stirner. In 2023, acebush1 made a post with the title “Free Palestine!” and linked to a video of an activist takeover of UAV Tactical Systems, a drone company operated in part by the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems.
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“I Didn’t Realize What A Huge Mistake It Was Until I Was More Than Halfway Through.”
Shortly after the pro-Palestine post, in June 2023, acebush1 wrote, “I’m sticking it out to the end of my contract as I didn’t realize what a huge mistake it was until I was more than halfway through, and I only have a year left at this point. However it is a regret I will carry the rest of my life.”
The poster mentioned a friend who left the armed services on the basis of conscientious objection; Bushnell’s friend Levi Pierpont, according to the Washington Post, objected and left the military.
Acebush1’s posts became more stridently pro-Palestinian as Israel’s war in Gaza got underway. In one, they denounce Israel as a “settler colonialist apartheid state,” and exclaim that there are no Israeli “civilians” because the entire country is engaged in oppression. They refuse on several occasion to denounce armed Palestinian resistance, saying in the apartheid post that they “work for the air force and would also have no right to complain about violent resistance against my actions.”
In November 2023, acebush1 made another post describing “the moral necessity of getting out.”
In the last few months, acebush1 accelerated their posting across various anarchism-related Reddit communities, as well as on other various communities. “Piracy is always ethical,” acebush1 posted. “If you think that you’re making a difference with who you do and don’t choose to give your money to, you don’t understand how markets work.”
Acebush1’s last Reddit post was on February 24, expounding on how “whiteness erases culture” — a day before Bushnell’s self-immolating direct action. In an earlier post, acebush1 had written, “I’ve never been one for bullshit.”
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trekwiz · 10 months
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Interviewers are just some dude.
I've been doing my job well. I got promoted multiple times over the years. And I'm just suddenly the guy conducting an interview.
There's no training. "You've always exercised good judgment, we trust you."
So I took steps to learn. I spoke with HQ at two stakeholder companies. I talked to past interviewers. I reached out to the Tumblr void. And I went on LinkedIn Learning.
Did you know that all of the stupid advice you get as a job seeker, exists for interviewers, too?
Most of my time on LinkedIn Learning was spent saying, "yeah, that's dumb. Let's see if the next chapter has something usable. Nope, it doesn't."
It's a lot of the same platitudes meant to make you feel good, but have no substance. The people who couldn't get jobs and decided to sell speaking services as "networking gurus" also sell classes to interviewers. They don't know what they're talking about to either audience.
All of those really annoying questions you get asked? They're in one bad training video after another, because someone figured out they can charge money if there's an action item. Doesn't matter if it's a good one; if someone thinks they got a usable idea, the speaker gets paid.
But it's just some dude. Who's doing a job, and wants that job to suck just a bit less.
Don't overly script what you're doing. Just talk. They're a potential coworker as much as they're a potential manager. They may even be just as nervous as you are.
If you walk into the interview and expect a corporate monolith instead of just some dude who would rather be gaming, you're just going to intimidate yourself.
If you ran into that hiring manager at a community event--a networking event, even an industry conference or whatever--you'd probably have an easy time connecting. It's spontaneous; you know what your skills are and can speak like an expert in what you do; it just flows naturally, and you're not overly concerned with trying to impress.
Just...do that at the interview.
It'll be much easier for you. And the interview will go better for you. I promise.
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the-black-dragons-den · 8 months
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are any of you familiar with LinkedIn? I've only just started using it - in our class they had us each create a new LinkedIn account for ourselves so that we can use it when we start the job search portion of this training class. they had us fill in our "About" section, and post a photo of ourselves and a background image.
but now, within about 4 days of account creation, several of us in the class have had our accounts placed on "temporary restriction". I've looked at a few articles that say that this means we've broken the terms of service for LinkedIn, but I can't imagine what we would have done that would have triggered that response, especially because we've literally just followed the directions of our instructor to fill out the profile with our own information.
i've submitted my ID to them for verification but I've heard that this can take up to week to get a response, and honestly i'm just irritated as heck. my instructor suggested that I just set up a new account, but I'm kind of worried that that's just going to make the problem worse (lead to restrictions on the new account because it's the same person).
any info on this, has this happened to you before?
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luxnebula · 2 months
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A couple of years ago I attended to a course on online communication in my university studies. One of the assignments on the course was to write a blog post about a subject we chose. When I was on that course, I didn't have this blog, so I published the blog post on my Twitter and LinkedIn. These platforms do have limitations on how long the posts can be, so I had to edit my blog post a lot to get it published. But now that I have this blog, I can translate it into English and publish it as I wrote it. So here it is:
Library services for LGBTQI people
Pride month is still ahead of us this year, but LGBTQI folks exist outside pride month, too. That's why it's good to consider how libraries could be more open and comfortable for queer people. In this blog post I introduce a couple of ideas on what libraries could do to enforce the equal treatment of sexual and gender minorities.
Queer people read books like cis straight people do. That's why it's important to have current and fresh literature where queer people can see themselves. Queer fiction is still unfortunately rare, but there are recommendation lists and book reviewers who specialise in queer fiction. Libraries can use these lists and reviewers to find new material for their collections.
Of course, libraries need also nonfiction, which acts as a segue to my next point: information services. There have been studies conducted on especially trans people's information needs and information seeking in the field of information studies, because they have especially unique information needs in different stages in their lives. Especially Aira Pohjanen found in her study Transsukupuolisten identeetin rakentamiseen liittyvä informaatiokäyttäytyminen (2013) (link and study are both in Finnish, unfortunately) that transgender people need information on a huge variety of subjects. These include:
identity, words, phenomena and concepts,
other trans people's experiences,
gender reassignment surgeries and hormone treatments and how they affect the body,
how to get a referral for these treatments,
how much these treatments will cost and how long they will last,
changing one's name
and risks involved with the surgeries.
According to Pohjanen, the most important information source is peer support and other trans people, but libraries should also know where this information can be found and offer this information for various reasons. For example, there might be trans people out there who don't have a peer support network yet or if a cisgender person is just interested about the subject and wants to educate themselves. Brandon Lyttan and Bibika Laloo agree in their study Equitable Access to Information in Libraries: A Predicament for Transgender People (2020): they say that libraries can ease trans people's information seeking by making it easier to access information about trans issues and offering physical and digital material on the subject.
Libraries can do other things too: they can offer a safe space where to meet other people. A majority of queer-oriented spaces are bars or nightclubs, which excludes a lot of people, for example minors, former alcoholics, people suffering from epilepsy and those queer people who just don't like noisy clubs. It is especially crucial to offer places for queer minors so they can be themselves without fearing discrimination and where they can get peer support and the sense of community.
Library staff also has to be ready to meet queer patrons. They have to be aware of the basic terms (transgender vs cisgender, asexual, nonbinary etc) and a patron should not be cross-examined on why they want information about transition processes. Librarians should be aware of reliable information sources about queer issues and challenges their own internalised thought models. It would be great if library staff could get training against discrimination and anti-discrimination policies were used in general.
Equality can be advanced in the patron databases of the libraries also. For example, marking down the patrons' gender feels, to me personally, unnecessary as a library patron and as library staff. But if there is indeed some insurmountable reason to mark down patrons' genders, the options "other" and "prefer not to say" should also be offered. And of course, the patrons should be given free access to change their gender marker later by themselves, either from the library's website or by email. Changing your name should be just as easy.
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mariacallous · 17 days
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Two months ago, Lin Rui-siang, a young Taiwanese man wearing black-rimmed glasses and a white polo shirt, stood behind a lectern emblazoned with the crest of the St. Lucia police, giving a presentation titled “Cyber Crime and Cryptocurrency” in nearly fluent English to a roomful of cops from the tiny Caribbean country.
The St. Lucia government would later issue a press release lauding the success of Lin's training course, which had been organized by the Taiwanese embassy, where Lin worked as a diplomatic specialist in IT. The statement boasted that 30 officers had learned “nuances of the dark web" and cryptocurrency tracing skills from Lin, who had “used his professional background and qualifications in the field" to teach them how to better combat cybercrime.
Only earlier this week did it become clear exactly what Lin's “professional background and qualifications in the field” allegedly entailed, seemingly unbeknownst to either his Taiwanese employers or his St. Lucian law enforcement trainees. For nearly four years, according to the US Justice Department, 23-year-old Lin ran a dark-web drug market called Incognito that authorities say enabled the sale of at least $100 million worth of narcotics, ranging from MDMA to heroin for cryptocurrencies including bitcoin and monero. That was before Lin's alleged theft of his own users' funds earlier this year and then his arrest last week by the FBI in New York's JFK airport.
Over his years working as a cryptocurrency-focused intern at Cathay Financial Holdings in Taipei and then as a young IT staffer at St. Lucia's Taiwanese embassy, Lin allegedly lived a double life as a dark-web figure who called himself “Pharoah" or “faro”—a persona whose track record qualifies as remarkably strange and contradictory even for the dark web, where secret lives are standard issue. In his short career, Pharoah launched Incognito, built it into a popular crypto black market with some of the dark web's better safety and security features, then abruptly stole the funds of the market's customers and drug dealers in a so-called “exit scam” and, in a particularly malicious new twist, extorted those users with threats of releasing their transaction details.
During those same busy years, Pharoah also launched a web service called Antinalysis, designed to defeat crypto money laundering countermeasures—only for Lin, who prosecutors say controlled that Pharoah persona, to later refashion himself as a crypto-focused law enforcement trainer. Finally, despite his supposed expertise in cryptocurrency tracing and digital privacy, it was Lin's own relatively sloppy money trails that, the DOJ claims, helped the FBI to trace his real identity.
Among all those incongruities, though, it's the image of Lin giving his cryptocurrency crime training in St. Lucia—which Lin proudly posted to his LinkedIn account—that shocked Tom Robinson, a cofounder of the blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, who has long tracked Lin's alleged Pharoah alter ego. “This is an alleged dark-net market admin standing in front of police officers, showing them how to use blockchain analytics tools to track down criminals online,” says Robinson. “Assuming he is who the FBI says he is, it's incredibly ironic and brazen.”
Pharoah the Kingpin—and Extortionist
Lin has been charged with not only narcotics conspiracy and money laundering but also running a “continuing criminal enterprise,” the so-called “kingpin statute” reserved for organized crime leaders who allegedly oversaw at least five employees. For that charge alone, he faces a potential life sentence.
In the DOJ's criminal complaint against Lin, it points to a handwritten document the FBI pulled from his email, which appears to sketch out a flow chart for a dark-web market's mechanics. The complaint's FBI affidavit says Lin emailed himself the sketch in March 2020 when he was at most 19 years old. It describes functionality such as how “vendors” and “buyers” would register, make purchases, and encrypt shipping addresses. Seven months later, Lin would allegedly launch Incognito Market.
According to the FBI, the market took nearly a year to catch on, with virtually no sales during that time. But by late 2021, Incognito had started to attract users, and by the middle of 2022, the market had drawn enough vendors and sellers to generate more than $1.5 million a month in sales.
A 2022 Twitter thread about Incognito posted by Eileen Ormsby, an author of several dark-web-focused books including The Darkest Web, shows how the market by that time had added features that may have helped it to catch the attention of security- and safety-conscious users. It required that new users demonstrate they could use the encryption tool PGP before entering the market, prompted them to take a security quiz, allowed buyers to spend the more privacy-focused cryptocurrency monero as well as bitcoin, encouraged dealers to post results from a fentanyl test to certify their product was “fent free,” and even experimented with democratic voting for market-wide decisions.
By the summer of 2023, Incognito had spiked in popularity and was approaching $5 million a month in sales. Then in March of this year, the site suddenly dropped offline, taking all the funds stored in buyers' and sellers' wallets with it. A few days later, the site reappeared with a new message on its homepage. “Expecting to hear the last of us yet?” it read. “We got one final little nasty surprise for y'all.”
The message explained that Incognito was now essentially blackmailing its former users: It had stored their messages and transaction records, it said, and added that it would be creating a “whitelist portal” where users could pay a fee—which for some dealers would later be set as high as $20,000—to remove their data before all the incriminating information was leaked online at the end of this month. “YES THIS IS AN EXTORTION!!!” the message added.
In retrospect, Ormsby says that the site's apparent user-friendliness and its security features were perhaps a multiyear con laying the groundwork for its endgame, a kind of user extortion never seen before in dark-web drug markets. “Maybe the whole thing was set up to create a false sense of security,” Ormsby says. “The extorting thing is completely new to me. But if you've lulled people into a sense of security, I guess it's easier to extort them.”
In total, Incognito Market promised to leak more than half a million drug transaction records if buyers and sellers didn't pay to remove them from the data dump. It's still not clear whether the market's administrator—Lin, according to prosecutors, whom they accuse of personally carrying out the extortion campaign—planned to follow through on the threat: He appears to have been arrested before the deadline set for the victims of the Incognito blackmail.
An Expert in ‘Anti Anti-Money Laundering’
At the same time the FBI says Lin was laying the groundwork for this double-cross, he also appears to have briefly tried engineering an entirely different scheme. In the summer of 2021, during Incognito Market's relatively quiet first year, Lin's alleged alter ego, Pharoah, launched a service called Antinalysis, a website designed to analyze blockchains and let users check—for a fee—whether their cryptocurrency could be connected to criminal transactions.
In a post to the dark-web market forum Dread, Pharoah made clear that Antinalysis was designed not to help anti-money-laundering investigators, but rather those who sought to evade them—presumably including his own dark-web market's users. “Our goals do not lie in aiding the surveillance autocracy of state-sponsored agencies,” Pharoah's post read. “This service is dedicated to individuals that have the need to possess complete privacy on the blockchain, offering a perspective from the opponent's point of view in order for the user to comprehend the possibility of his/her funds getting flagged down under autocratic illegal charges.”
After independent cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs wrote about the Antinalysis service in August 2021, describing it as an “anti anti-money laundering service for crooks,” Pharoah posted another message complaining that Antinalysis had lost access to its blockchain data source, which Krebs had identified as the anti-money-laundering tool AMLBot, and that it would be going offline. “Stay posted and fuck LE," Pharoah wrote, using the abbreviation LE to mean “law enforcement.” Antinalysis eventually returned, however, and pivoted last year to acting instead as a service for swapping bitcoin for monero and vice versa.
Meanwhile, Lin appears to have maintained his obsession with cryptocurrency tracing and blockchain analysis: His final LinkedIn post last week before his arrest in New York announced that he had become a certified user of Reactor, the crypto tracing tool sold by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. “I'm excited to share that I've completed Chainalysis's new qualification: Chainalysis Reactor Certification (CRC)!” Lin wrote in Mandarin. His last X post shows a Chainalysis diagram of money flows between dark-web markets and cryptocurrency exchanges.
It's not clear whether Lin obtained his Chainalysis certification to bolster a new career training law enforcement in blockchain analysis or, if US prosecutors are to be believed, to advance his previous alleged career as a dark-web criminal. But it raises the troubling possibility that a former dark-web kingpin—one who was still extorting his own users—was perhaps playing both sides of the crypto tracing game, says Elliptic's Tom Robinson.
“There’s a larger issue here about bad actors accessing blockchain analytics tools,” says Robinson. “That is a potentially risky situation, where someone who’s in the process of laundering proceeds of crime can check in commercially available tools whether they have laundered them such that they can get away with it.” Running certain checks in those tools might even allow someone to determine if they're being actively investigated by law enforcement, Robinson says.
WIRED reached out to Chainalysis to ask about Lin's Reactor certification and what sort of safeguards prevent criminals from using the company's software, but the company declined to comment.
If Lin did hope to evade law enforcement by becoming an expert in crypto tracing himself, he was far too late to avoid creating his own blockchain trail of evidence: In January of this year, the FBI says it somehow identified a central Incognito server and obtained a search warrant for its contents. That allowed investigators to identify a bitcoin wallet stored there, which the FBI says Lin had also carelessly used to pay web registrar Namecheap for four web domains—including one that tracked which dark-web markets were online or down—and register them under his own name.
Although the FBI says Lin tried to swap his bitcoins for harder-to-trace monero before cashing out the cryptocurrency at an exchange, the criminal complaint points to timing and amount correlations that nonetheless allowed the FBI to follow his funds to a crypto exchange where he allegedly liquidated the dirty funds. That exchange account, too, was registered in Lin's real name, according to the DOJ.
The operational security mistakes the FBI describes suggest that, regardless of which side of the cryptocurrency cat-and-mouse game Lin intended to end up on, he was far from a criminal mastermind. His brief, strange journey from alleged kingpin to crypto crime expert ultimately provides plenty of lessons to criminals and law enforcement alike—though probably not the ones he intended.
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