the eternity you seek

id in alt

The Art of Inversion

Neil x Reader 

Chapter 5 - A Question of Trust 

Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 

Summary: First day in New York brings new challenges and fears. But one thing is certain, your relationship with Neil is changing.

Warnings: Minor cursing.

Author’s Notes: So this is sort of an unplanned early update because I loved what I wrote and had to share it with you. Hope you enjoy this quieter chapter before things kick off very soon...

Also this has been severely inspired by ‘A Question of Lust’ by Depeche Mode so I’ll post the link in another post!

Despite being severely jet-lagged, the next two days, you did not get much rest. You and Neil were thoroughly briefed by the TP on Saturday, and the plan seemed simple: arrive in New York; check into the hotel; research the target (a weapons dealer named Steiner); set up a meeting with Mr. Steiner; rehearse the cover; get intel; leave New York unscathed but with valuable information.

You have received a Glock (just in case), a burner phone with emergency contacts, and a dossier filled with the information about your cover. As far as you have managed to learn so far, you and Neil were supposed to pose as ‘partners in crime’ hoping to get your hands on the mysterious nuclear material. It did seem easy. But that did not help the stress you felt the closer you got to the departure.

Monday morning, you stepped onto the Amtrak train to New York Penn Station and followed Neil to the First-Class compartment. You had two seats with a large table and a window in a relatively quiet carriage. This time, sadly, you have not taken your notes with you and have been desperately looking for a distraction. Neither of you has mentioned the moment on the terrace, and you felt like it was a cause of mild tension. But instead of addressing it in any way, you decided to stare out of the window. After going through the same onboard magazine for the third time, you heard Neil clear his voice deliberately. You looked at him with a raised eyebrow:

“I’m bored” he shrugged and grinned at your eye roll “Want to talk?”

You searched his face for any signs of wicked intents. But he seemed genuinely interested.

“As long as you won’t make me drink again and embarrass myself” you turned towards him with a pointed look.

“I promise” he smiled and leaned onto the table separating your seats 

“However I must correct you and say that you haven’t embarrassed yourself on the plane” when you glared at him with disbelief, he added “At all”

“If you say so”

His piercing blue eyes were fixed on you with fondness that made you want to turn away. But you held his gaze until he grinned and asked:

“Excited to go on your first mission?”

“If by excited you mean scared then yeah” he laughed, and you beamed back “Though I suppose if my first outing is with you I should consider myself lucky”

“Oh you’re certainly lucky in that regard” he winked, grinning smugly “I’ll keep you entertained”

The smirk and look in his eyes were far from innocent and you felt your face heat up at the sight. But you did not want to let him win easily.

“I’ve no doubts about that” you stared back defiantly.

Your staring contest finished when he smiled and reached out for your hands that were folded on the table. He squeezed them.

“We’ll manage just fine together, I’m sure. It’s a simple mission” he reassured you softly.

“Can’t say I’m convinced” you looked back sceptically and frowned “I’m a bit surprised you’re willing to go into the field with a rookie”

“TP said it has to be us” he shrugged and leaned back into his seat.

Your hands felt cold without his touch.

“You do trust him enough to do anything he says?” you asked with curiosity.

All that you have learned during the meeting with the Protagonist was still fresh on your mind. You struggled to understand how on earth you could be important to the story. But it was made quite clear that you would have to wait for any answers.

“Yes” Neil’s tone was quite serious “I’ve learnt from past mistakes that he really does know how things will go”

You haven’t missed the distant look of sadness in his eyes. You made a mental note to one day learn the story. He must have noticed your scrutiny as he schooled his features and added:

“And it’s better to listen to him. No matter how difficult it might be” he looked at you with a faint smile.

You did wonder if he thought about the moment on the terrace in that instant. But before you could dare ask, he closed the subject with a definite statement:

“I know for a fact that you’ll be much better than a random rookie” he grinned, and despite feeling conflicted, you smiled back.

Then he quickly changed the topic to New York itself, and you rather enjoyed talking to him about your travels and experiences with other cities. While you were still stressed, when you arrived at Penn Station, you were much less tense. The conversation has distracted you enough to forget about the worries. You wondered if that was why Neil wanted to talk in the first place.

*** You took a taxi to the hotel, which was situated far off from the main city centre. It was a comfortable and stylish four-star establishment with a booking system that did not mind fake identities. Your rooms were on the sixth floor and were joined by a set of locked doors, as you were informed by the receptionist (with a wink). You were not sure what to do with this information but, as usual, Neil’s charm saved you.

“Thank you, miss” he smiled at the clerk and snatched your keys from the counter “It’s good to know” he smirked and walked away.

You followed him to the lift, where you could finally ask:

“What was that about?”

“I suppose she thought that we’re not here for…” he took a moment to think about the right word “Strictly business reasons” he enunciated every syllable “But rather for fun while keeping up the appearances”

Your eyes widened at the implication.

“Right” you didn’t dare think why she got that impression.

Neil chuckled as he led you to the rooms, pausing to hand you the key. Only once you saw him open the door to his room you sobered up:

“Wait, what do we do now?”

“Come to my room once you’re ready. I won’t lock the door” he winked and disappeared into his room.

You stared at the closing door before shaking your head and entering your own room.

He can be impossible sometimes, you thought with fondness and disbelief.

The room was quite big, with a queen-sized bed, a sofa with a coffee table, and a large bathroom. The view came out onto the maze of skyscrapers that you associated with New York. The barely visible sky was grey and threatening with rain. You decided to quickly shower, change into more comfortable clothes, and fix your make-up. All that took twenty minutes and you were quite proud of yourself. You opened the door leading to Neil’s room and hesitated at the second set. Trying the handle you found it unlocked and tentatively came in.

“Finally” he gave out a theatrical sigh from his place on the sofa.

He changed into yet another shirt and dress trousers. You did sometimes wonder how many sets of those he had.

The next thing you noticed was that while you were getting ready Neil has ordered quite a big selection of food from the room service. It has taken the whole space on the coffee table, along with water and teapot.

“Wow” you grinned at the sight, feeling your stomach rumble.

“Thought we might need it” he shrugged and motioned for you to join him on the sofa.

“I know I did” you quickly dove for the toasties before he could snatch them.

He laughed at your enthusiasm for food, but you could not care less at the moment. You felt his fond gaze for a little longer before he too started the feast. After you ate, Neil cleared the table and spread out the dossier along with any files you received.

“So…” you both looked down at the mess of papers and photos “Today we need to get to that bar” you squinted at the name “Benny’s and set up a meeting with Steiner?” you looked up at Neil for clarification.

“Yeah, that’s it” he nodded and picked up one of the documents “We’re a pair of weapon dealers who want to know a bit more about that mysterious piece of plutonium” he explained.

“That’s a manageable cover” you mused while trying to memorise your new identity.

“Well, I was hoping they’d make us fake married or something” Neil retorted innocently, and you glared at him sharply.

“What? Wouldn’t you want to be married to me?” the wounded look on his face made you laugh.

“Sounds horrible” you swatted his arm playfully and reached for another document.

But before you got that far, he grabbed your hand and squeezed it. You met his soft gaze and smiled back, admiring the sparks in his blue eyes. After a beat, he let go of your hand.

“I think we’d be a perfect match” he sent you one last smug smile and got up “We should get going if we want to catch Raul and establish contact” he added.

A perfect match? You observed as Neil put on the tie and suit jacket and considered his words with curiosity. You did like him, there was no denying that. And you felt like he enjoyed your company too. But before you could dwell on it too long, you felt his intense gaze. Caught in the act of staring, you felt yourself blush. But he only grinned and offered you a hand to get up from the sofa.

“C’mon, we need to get going” he ushered you towards your room.

Right, first mission. You took a deep breath and started to get ready. The time has come.

*** The first part of the plan went without any major fuck-ups. You and Neil met Raul at the bar, and he gave you all the information you could need about Steiner. It was clear that you both had to learn your roles perfectly as he tended to be suspicious. After that Neil went away to set up the meeting with the weapons dealer for tomorrow’s evening. All you could do was entertain Raul with random stories from your training which proved rather easy.

Once Neil came back, you both decided to go back to the hotel to get much-needed rest and prepare. The fact that so far everything seemed to go along the plan, made you feel a tiny bit more confident. But nerves were still there, and you could barely contain them when you made it back to the hotel. You lied to Neil that you were tired and shut the door before you could even look at him again.

But after showering, changing into sleeping clothes, and having a cup of herbal tea, nothing got better. You tried lying down in the darkened room only to quickly get up with a pain in your chest and shallow breath. After sitting in the dark and trying to calm down your racing thoughts for close to an hour, you gave up. You put on a cardigan and looked at the door leading to Neil’s room. It was past 1 AM but you had the feeling he was not sleeping. You knew there was no way you were able to rest now. Oh, why the hell…

You tried the handle of the connecting doors and found it unlocked. Of course. 

Neil’s room was covered in darkness, save for a bedside table lamp casting a warm glow. You were struck by how neat everything looked, with his suitcase in one corner and clothes folded on the chair. Only the bed was in disarray with papers thrown on it and Neil himself sat in the middle. He glanced up as you came in, surprised:

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“I tried but…” you shrugged helplessly “Just couldn’t get my brain to shut up”

The worry in his gaze made you freeze. He was sat on the bed with ruffled hair and a wrinkled shirt. He was probably very tired. And you were weak and overreacting again. Suddenly you realised what a mistake it was to come here:

“Sorry, I shouldn’t… I’ll go now” you blurted and started to turn away.

You heard the rush of papers falling onto the floor and then Neil’s voice.

“No, stay” he sounded concerned.

Slowly you turned around to face him again, trying to put on a brave face. It was pointless though because he saw right through you. He got up from the bed, scattering all the documents onto the floor. Seeing you hesitate, he crossed the distance and took your hand in his, guiding you towards the bed. That only increased your panic.

“What are you doing?” you tried not to step on all the papers “Don’t we need those?”

He looked down at the pile with a surprised look, almost as though he forgot about them. Then he quickly made up his mind and looked up at you with determination.

“We do. But more so I need you to calm down so get in” he gestured towards the bed.

Your mind was blank. There was so much that could go wrong. But he noticed your uncertainty and unceremoniously pushed you onto the bed. You stared in shock before recovering enough to retort:

“You know I’m pretty sure there are better ways to make a lady sleep with you” You heard him laugh as he collected the pages.

“Certainly” finally he got up and dumped the pile onto the coffee table “But it worked” he shrugged.

Neil watched as you clumsily shifted to sit up with your back against the headboard and then joined you. After a few minutes of awkward silence, you asked:

“Sure you don’t want me to leave so you can go back to work?”

You felt extremely self-conscious in your sleeping clothes, with uncombed hair and tear-streaked cheeks. Neil’s intense gaze did not help it either but before you could even think about getting up, he replied:

“Perfectly sure” he smiled at you softly “Now tell me what’s wrong”

You sighed and let yourself relax slightly, leaning on the pillows. Staring straight ahead at the wall, you explained:

“I felt very anxious and hoped that maybe the shower and tea will help. Nothing changed so I tried to go to sleep but… my chest started aching and I couldn’t breathe” you finished while feeling the tears well up at the recollection.

You felt the bed shift as Neil moved closer and took one of your hands. You watched with curiosity as he traced the lines of your veins to the pulse point on the wrist and held his pointer finger there, checking your heart rate. You felt a nervous flutter at the gentle way he cradled your hand. You were pretty positive he will detect a pulse of 100bmp. After thirty seconds of intense focus, Neil released his hold on your hand and smiled:

“Apart from a very fast heart rate, you’ll be fine” he winked, and you looked down flustered.

But you were not allowed to get lost in shame for too long as he scooted even closer, leaving no space between you, and gingerly placed his arm around your shoulders.

“Is this okay?” he asked, looking at you with genuine concern.

Your breath hitched at the closeness of him, but you quickly suppressed the feeling and nodded. After a few more tense breaths, you relaxed into the embrace, feeling him trace circles on your shoulder.

“What made you so scared?” his voice broke the comfortable silence.

“Think it’s just the idea of the first mission” you admitted “And ever since you and TP told me about the plan and the algorithm, I felt this tension rise and I guess it just hit the fan” sighing helplessly, you let your head rest on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, I probably would have been more concerned if you took all this without questions”

“I guess I reacted that way because I never expected to be important… Definitely not in something of that scale” once you started talking the honesty did not seem to stop “I’ve spent so much time looking for my place in the world and now when I think I’ve found it, I’m not sure I’m good enough” 

After your admission, you felt Neil’s embrace tighten. You propped your head on his shoulder, so it was resting in the crook of his neck again, enjoying the warmth and safety.

“You are more than good enough” when he finally spoke you were almost surprised “And I’m not only saying that because I believe in what TP says”

You looked up at Neil and met his earnest gaze.

“Since the day we met and I showed you how inversion works, I knew that you will be amazing at it” he smiled at you softly.

“Even though I nearly passed out in the training zone?”

“Yeah” he grinned at the memory fondly “I just had the feeling that you’re supposed to work with us, with me”

You would swear that his eyes briefly glanced at your lips. But as quickly as the thought entered your mind, he reached out to brush away a stray hair from your forehead and you lost the ability to think entirely. He tucked the strand with care and brushed your jawline with his thumb.

“TP was right, you know” he was looking at you with a tenderness that made your heart ache.

“About?”

“Me taking care of you” he smiled and admired your dazed expression. You could only stare, too overwhelmed with feelings to say anything. And you probably would have kept on staring if it was not for the extreme tiredness that begun to catch up. Before you could say anything, a wide yawn made you cover your face with your hands. The spell was broken.

“Think you’re tiny bit tired” Neil grinned at your sheepish expression.

“No shit” you mumbled and moved to get up, but he kept his grip steady.

“You can stay here” he answered your surprised glance.

You quickly considered the options, admitting that it was tempting. You felt safe with Neil and his presence definitely made you calmer. But it did feel like crossing some lines.

He was still looking at you with that hopeful eyes and that sealed the deal.

“Thanks… for everything” you smiled at him, hoping to convey even a quarter of what you felt through it.

“Always” he grinned back.

You both quietly shifted so that you were lying down with a small gap between you, both staring at the ceiling. After a few quiet moments, he turned off the bedside lamp and turned to face you.

“Good night” you heard him whisper and turned to look at him too.

“Sweet dreams, Neil” you replied while trying to make out his features in the darkness of the room.

“Oh I know they will be sweet” you could picture the sly grin.

And with that, he turned onto the other side. No longer than five minutes later you heard his breath level off and make way for quiet snores. You could not help but smile at the adorable sound. Maybe this night wasn’t so bad in the end.

*** You have not slept so soundly in days. When you woke up, the first thought that came to your mind was that you were being cuddled. An arm was thrown over your waist and you felt warm breath near your ear. Then as the morning fog slowly ascended, you remembered it all clearly. Neil. As though he was reading your mind, a second later you felt him stir and mumble:

“Morning sunshine” he sounded cheery.

Before you could react you felt him brush his lips over your temple. You froze, feeling the flutters in your stomach return with tripled force. Taking a deep breath to calm down you slowly squeezed the hand that was draped over your waist and sat up.

“Hi” you glanced at him only to be astounded by how unkempt and yet adorable he looked.

His hair was completely ruffled, with strands sticking out in every direction. And the shirt and trousers were crumpled to the point of needing starch treatment to ever be wearable again. And yet he still looked good. Especially with that boyish smile and sparkling eyes. One could suppose that you were not immune to him. At all.

“Do you always sleep in that?” you gestured towards his outfit, trying to divert your thoughts.

“No, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you last night” it was that shit-eating grin again “Did you sleep well?” he sat up now too but kept his distance.

“Very well” you admitted with a blush “But it’s late and we should probably prepare” you used the most sensible excuse to get up.

Before you could do that, Neil reached out and took your hand in his, intertwining your fingers.

“Just don’t you dare feel sorry for this” you knew he was serious from the look in his eyes.

“I’ll try” you smiled slightly and used this chance to leave his room in haste.

While you did indeed try not to feel embarrassed about what happened, it was difficult. You were not used to people seeing you as vulnerable as you were last night. But at the same time, he did not seem to mind and that took you by surprise. His kindness and thoughtfulness were certainly not helping in trying to be more objective about him.

You managed to get changed and prepare yourself for the day relatively fast, considering what a mess your thoughts were. Once you were done you grabbed the needed documents from the coffee table and made beeline for Neil’s room without thinking too much. As usual, the door was unlocked.

The moment you stepped into his room you knew you have fucked up. He was there, just in front of where you entered, in a new pair of trousers and no shirt. Your eyes widened when you registered that last detail.

“Shit, sorry! I shouldn’t just come in…”

“No worries, darling” Neil drawled out the nickname expressively.

He looked at you with a grin, clearly enjoying it more than you were. It seemed as though he slowed down the process of putting on a new shirt just to tease you. It worked. You stared at his rather fit body and felt your cheeks grow warmer. He caught your wandering gaze with a wink and held it with an expression that was far from innocent. The knowing smirk told you that he was aware of what he was doing. But still, you held your ground, letting yourself openly look at his toned arms and chest. If he didn’t mind then there was no harm in looking, right?

Finally, he finished the process of buttoning up the shirt, while still keeping his gaze fixed on you. He assessed your expression with one last look and grinned:

“Let’s get to work, sunshine”

You wanted to punch him in that perfect jaw.

what you gave me (1/1)

Fandom: Fate: The Winx Saga

Pairing: Farah and Aisha

Aisha feels as though she's falling behind her peers. Farah goes out of her way to show her the power she possesses. 

Read it here on AO3, or below.

~

A loving thank you to my girl @alexusonfire for always making me feel like the best writer in the world ❤️

On her way back to her office from lunch, Farah looked over her recently completed file of paperwork, triple checking that everything was in order. Budget forms were her least favorite, there were too many places to make mistakes, too many people to get upset with them, and she always found herself pouring over them for much longer than any other paperwork that crossed her desk.

She reached the entrance of her office, opening the door while making one last check to the numbers proposed for next year’s operational cost. “Aisha, will you file—”

There was a squeak and the sound of splashing water, and Farah looked up in surprise to see a stunned Aisha, hands still raised over a copper bowl as she stared at the now soaked desk in front of her, obviously having lost her concentration at Farah’s sudden appearance.

“Headmistress, I’m— I didn’t— I’m so sorry, I—” Aisha stuttered. She grabbed at the files on the desk, realizing they were all soaked, and bent her head, looking as though she was trying to curl up and disappear.

Farah waved her hand, the water disappearing and leaving the files as good as new. Aisha tried to look busy, straightening the stacks and avoiding Farah’s eye as she spoke. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have— there was ten minutes until you’d return, and I’d finished everything, so I thought I’d practice— I should have waited until later but—”

“Aisha,” Farah interrupted, though not unkindly. “It’s alright, nothing was damaged.” The girl was still looking anywhere but her, so Farah continued. “I respect those who work hard and make the most of their time.”

Aisha huffed. “It’s not really hard work if I’m not making any progress,” she muttered, mostly to herself, but Farah heard, and furrowed her brows in concern.

“Hard work isn’t measured by the amount of success. Besides, you’re doing well in class.”

Aisha finally looked up at her, looking surprised that Farah had heard and remarked on her comment. “I—” she sighed and looked back down, toying with the corner of a file. “I don’t feel like I am. I feel like I’m falling behind. It’s getting easier for everyone to control their magic, but I feel like I have to work just as hard as the first day.”

Farah let out a small sigh, biting the inside of her cheek. She’d had students like Aisha before, and her heart always ached for them, wishing she could show them the power they possessed that they couldn’t see.

Though perhaps…

Mind made up, Farah set the budget file on the bookcase next to her and grabbed her coat from the rack, swinging it over her shoulders. “Come with me.”

Aisha looked up, brow furrowed in confusion. “Ma’am?”

Farah gave her a small smile, and gestured towards the door with a nod of her head. “Come.”

She lagged a moment while Aisha grabbed her jacket, and then she strode out of the office and made her way towards the grounds of Alfea.

Farah could feel Aisha’s confusion and trepidation as they walked across the lawn, and her shocked realization as Farah led them towards the dirt path that curved towards the river.

“Ma’am, why…” Aisha trailed off.

“There’s no better water to practice on then a source of it, yes?” Farah answered, continuing on even as the girl lagged behind a moment before jogging to catch up again.

She led them deeper into the forest, the smell of the pine and the damp earth nearly overwhelming, and Farah relished in its smell and taste as she took a deep breath. They were walking along the river now, but still she went on, aiming for a spot she knew by heart.

Finally they came to a low part of the bank, a spot Farah came to often when she needed solitude. She stepped onto the worn shore, mindful of her heels, and then motioned for Aisha to join her.

She shoved her hands in her coat pockets as Aisha came to stand next to her, looking at her expectantly before following her lead and staring out over the water. They stood there a minute before Aisha glanced over at Farah again, her confusion evident. “What am I supposed to do?”

Farah shrugged, giving the girl a fond smile before looking back out to the water. “Any sort of magic you’d like. The point of this exercise isn’t about the result of the magic, it’s about feeling the magic itself, connecting to it. So do what you’re most comfortable with.”

Aisha took a deep breath and then raised her hands, and Farah watched as a large ball of water rose out of the river, hovering. It grew, and then shrunk, and then lowered back into the water as Aisha gave a small sigh and dropped her hands.

“Miss Dowling, I don’t mean any disrespect when I say this, but my problem isn’t with doing magic, it’s… it’s the control of it. Big magic, like this, is okay because it’s stable and easy to get my mind around. But when I have to do smaller, more detailed magic, or I have to maintain it for a long time, I just… can’t. Not like the others can.”

Farah looked at Aisha, her heart aching for the girl’s dismay. “I understand why you might feel that way. But right now, I want you to forget about that. Don’t think of this as an attempt to fix your troubles with magic, or push yourself to do magic you struggle with. I want you to do something you’re comfortable with, because I want to focus on the connection you feel with the magic all around you. Let your imagination run wild — do anything you’d like.”

Aisha nodded slowly, then raised her hands again. Again, Farah watched as a large ball of water rose out of the river, this time accompanied by several smaller ones. They rotated around each other a bit, not unlike planets, before one wobbled and dropped back into the river. Aisha sighed again, this time tinged with frustration, and lowered the other orbs back into the water.

“I’m sorry, Miss Dowling, I know you’re trying to help. If I had more time to practice, maybe—”

Farah shook her head. “This isn’t about practice, Aisha,” she said gently. “This is about feeling that connection.”

Farah studied the girl, and a sudden pang of sympathy pulled at her chest. She remembered what it was like, being tested on the spot by her Headmistress, and all the anxiety and doubts that came with it. Not to mention with the embarrassment of the accident in the office, she couldn’t blame Aisha for struggling in front of her.

However, Farah was more stubborn than any student’s struggle.

A few steps away was a large, flat rock that jutted out into the deeper part of the river, and Farah moved towards it, motioning for Aisha to follow. Carefully stepping out of her heels, Farah climbed onto the rock and sat on the edge. She slipped her feet into the water, grateful she’d worn a dress that day, and again motioned for Aisha to join her.

Farah rolled her ankles in slow circles as Aisha pulled off her shoes and socks, marvelling at the way the water slipped by her so smoothly, barely a ripple as it moved past. The hypnosis of the water was broken when Aisha sat down, feet dangling next to hers, and Farah looked over at the girl, smiling.

“You’re a water fairy, so undoubtedly you have a connection to water, especially when you’re surrounded by it, yes?”

Aisha nodded. “It’s why I swim. That connection feels… comforting.”

Farah nodded. “Good. Now, focus on that connection.” She watched as Aisha’s eyes closed, feet slowly swaying in the water. “Feel it. Allow it to grow and surround you.”

She paused a minute, allowing Aisha to relax and find comfort in the river. The girl nodded, and Farah continued softly.

“Now use that connection to channel your magic. Don’t think about what you want the magic to do. Just allow it to flow from the water, into you, and back out again.”

All was still for a moment. And then ripples began to form on the water’s surface, little swirls and eddies bubbling up. They grew in number and strength, beginning to rise out of the river, and then, all at once, the water was dancing. Ribbons of water twirled out of the water, spiraling around each other in intricate, mesmerizing patterns. Waves formed along the top of the river, making little figures that ran, skipped, and jumped around in a playful manner that made Farah grin as she watched.

She looked over at Aisha, pride warming her chest at such a beautiful display of magic. “Open your eyes.”

Aisha did, the shock evident on her face as she saw the magic, her magic. The waves and ribbons wavered a little, a couple dropping back into the river, but Aisha took a breath and they resolidified, resuming their playful dance across the surface.

They watched the water for a while, listening to the gentle sounds of the figures dipping in and out of the river, before Aisha slowly brought them to a stop, then gently lowered them back into the water.

They sat quiet for a moment, Farah looking to see Aisha staring out at the water in awe, and she smiled to herself, knowing the girl was just starting to realize the power and discipline she possessed.

“That spark you feel in your chest, that connection with magic that is amplified through positive emotions — that is where control comes from. It’s not something you can force, but rather a relationship that you must carefully foster and grow. No amount of practice will do you any good if you first don’t find that connection and use it to steady yourself and the magic inside you.”

Aisha was nodding, still staring out at the water, and Farah laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. The girl looked at it in surprise, but Farah continued on. “You have great potential, Aisha. Do not squander yourself in self doubt.”

Aisha slowly looked up to meet her eyes, and nodded slowly. “I won’t, Headmistress.”

Farah smiled at her. “Good,” she said, and lifted her feet from the water. “Solaria would lose a powerful fairy if you did.”

She stood then, Aisha following suit, and Farah had just smoothed the skirt of her dress when suddenly strong arms were wrapped around her in a fierce hug, Aisha’s cheek pressed to her shoulder. “Thank you, Miss Dowling,” she said, voice slightly muffled. “For showing me what I can do.”

Farah smiled to herself, heart swelling in her chest, and she wrapped her arms around Aisha, returning the warm hug. “We all need a little encouragement from time to time.”

Aisha slowly let go after a minute, taking a step back, and Farah looked her over, noting the subtle changes in her posture, her eyes, the line of her mouth — the assurance there that wasn’t present before, and pride warmed Farah’s body, tingling in the tips of her fingers.

Taking a breath, Farah smiled at Aisha, then stepped off of the rock and into her shoes before turning to the girl. “Good work today.”

Aisha beamed at her, sitting to put on her shoes, and Farah watched as her gaze drifted back towards the water, obviously remembering the magic she’d done.

“Come,” Farah said lightly, turning to step up onto the path. “You can come back later. I still have a few things for you to file.”

Panic's Nova text editor (a review)

Review: Panic’s Nova text editor

Panic, the long-established makers of Mac utility software, seems fully aware that introducing a new, commercial code editor in 2020 is a quixotic proposition. Is there enough of an advantage to a native editor over both old school cross-platform editors like Emacs and explosively popular new editors like Visual Studio Code to persuade people to switch?

I’m an unusual case as far as text editor users go: my primary job is technical writing, and the last three jobs that I’ve worked at have a “docs as code” approach, where we write documentation in Markdown and manage it under version control just like source code. The editor that works best for me in tech writing is the venerable BBEdit. When it comes to editing code, though, BBEdit lags behind. My suspicion is that BBEdit’s lack of an integrated package manager has hurt it here. Also, BBEdit’s language modules don’t support extending one another, making it effectively impossible to do full highlighting for a templating language like JSX or Jinja.

When I was a web programmer, I was one of many who moved to TextMate, and used it for everything for a while. When the Godot-like wait for TextMate 2.0 became unbearable, I wandered the text editing wilderness, eventually splitting my loyalties between BBEdit, Sublime Text, and more recently VS Code. At this point, I suspect nothing will pull me away from BBEdit for technical writing, but for programming I’m open to persuasion.

So: meet Nova.

I’ve been using Nova off and on in beta for months. I’ve reported some bugs, although I may mention a couple here that I didn’t catch until after 1.0’s release. And, I’m going to compare it to the GUI editors that I’ve been using recently: BBEdit, Sublime Text, and VS Code.

Nova is a pretty editor, as far as such things go, and with files of relatively reasonable size it’s fast. With stupid huge files its performance drops noticeably, though. This isn’t just the ridiculous 109MB, nearly 450,000-line SQL file I threw at it once, it’s also with a merely 2MB, 50,000-line SQL file, and Nova’s offer to turn off syntax highlighting in both files didn’t help it much. This may sound like a silly test, but in my day job I’m occasionally stuck editing an 80,000-line JSON file by hand (don’t ask). This is something BBEdit and VS Code can do without complaint. Panic wrote their own text editing engine for Nova, which is brave, but it needs more tuning for pathological cases like these. They may not come up often, but almost every programmer has one stupid huge file to deal with.

Nova has an integrated terminal and an integrated SSH client, and even an integrated file transfer system based on Panic’s Transmit. In fact, if you have Transmit and use Panic Sync, it knows all of those servers out of the box. Nova has a task workflow system for automating building and running. You can associated servers, tasks, and more with individual projects; Nova’s project settings are considerably more comprehensive than I’ve seen in other editors. You can even set up remote tasks. Nova has a serviceable Git client built in, too. Like VS Code, Nova uses JavaScript for its extension API, and it has built-in Language Server Protocol support—it’s a superbly solid foundation.

Beyond that, some smaller features have become table stakes for modern GUI editors, and Nova handles them with aplomb. “Open Quickly” can jump to any file in the open project, as well as search by symbols or just symbols in currently open files; it has a command palette; you can comprehensively edit keybindings. It has multiple cursor support for those of us who like that, and a “mini map” view for those of you who like that, although know that you are wrong. Nova’s selection features include “Select all in scope” and “Select all between brackets,” a command I often use in BBEdit and miss dearly in Code. (Both Nova and BBEdit select between brackets and braces, although BBEdit also selects between parentheses.) This effectively becomes “Select between tags” in HTML, a nice touch. There are a few other commands like “Select all in function” and “Select all in scope” that I didn’t have any luck in making work at all; a little more documentation would be nice.

That’s worth an aside. Panic has created a “library” of tech note-style articles about Nova sorted by publication date rather than an actual manual, and it’s not always easy to find the information you want in it. I know this is just what a technical writer would say, but I’d dearly like to see a human-organized table of contents starting with the editor basics and moving to advanced topics like version control, server publishing and extension authoring.

The Zen of Language Servers

A lot of Visual Studio Code’s smarts depend on the implementation of a “language server” behind the scenes: language servers offer almost spookily intelligent completion. For instance, take this PHP snippet:

if ($allowed) { $response = new Response(405); $response->

If you have the Intelephense PHP language server plugin, Code understands that $response is an instance of Response and, after you type the > above, offers completions of method names from the Response class.

Right now, Nova’s mostly limited to the language servers Panic provides, and they’re… not always so smart. In that snippet above, Nova starts by offering completions of, apparently, everything in the open project, starting with the variables. If I type “s,” it narrows things down to methods that begin with “s,” but it’s all methods that start with “s” rather than just the methods from Response. The “Jump to Definition” command shows a similar lack of context; if I highlight a method name that’s defined in multiple places, Nova shows me a popup menu and prompts me to choose which one to jump to, rather than introspecting the code to make that decision itself.

But, this is a solvable problem: there’s (I think) no reason someone couldn’t write an Inteliphense plugin for Nova. If Nova’s ecosystem takes off, it could be pretty formidable pretty quickly.

Walk like a Mac

Even so, LSP support isn’t Panic’s biggest selling point. Unlike Sublime Text or VS Code, Nova isn’t cross-platform: it’s a Mac-only program written to core platform APIs. Is that still a huge draw in 2020? (Is it instead a drawback?)

You can definitely see a difference between Nova and BBEdit on one side and Sublime and Code on the other in terms of resource usage. With the two Ruby files shown in the screenshot above loaded, I get:

VS Code: 355 MB, 6 processes

Sublime Text: 338 MB, 2 processes

Nova: 101 MB, 2 processes

BBEdit: 97 MB, 1 process

Code is an Electron-based program, although Microsoft famously puts a lot of effort into making it not feel like the black hole a lot of Electron-based apps are. Sublime uses its own proprietary cross-platform framework. In fairness, while us nerds like to harp on research usage a lot, if your computer’s got 16G or more of RAM in it, this probably isn’t a big deal.

You notice Nova’s essential Mac-ness in other ways. Its preference pane is, like BBEdit’s, an actual preference pane, instead of opening in another tab like Code or just opening a JSON file in a new tab (!) like Sublime. And while all editors better have first-class keyboard support—and Nova does—a good Mac editor should have first-class mouse support, too, and it does. You notice that in the drag-and-drop support for creating new tabs and splits. Nova’s sidebar is also highly customizable, possibly more so than any editor I’ve regularly used. (Yes, Emacs fans, I know you can write all of Nova in Lisp if you want. When one of you does that, please get back to me.)

Unlike BBEdit, though, Nova doesn’t have a Mac-like title bar, or a Mac-like outline view of the project files, or Mac-like tabs. (Well, BBEdit doesn’t have tabs at all, which turns out to be a great UI decision once you have a dozen or more files open, but never mind.) This isn’t necessarily bad; people often say BBEdit “looks old,” and it’s hard not to suspect that what people mean by that—whether or not they know it—is that it looks like the long-established Mac program it is. Nova is relying less on “we have a Mac UI and the other guys don’t” than on “we have Panic’s designers and the other guys don’t.” Make no mistake, having Panic’s designers counts for a lot.

What may be more disappointing to old school Mac nerds is AppleScript support: none whatsoever. It doesn’t even have a vestigial script dictionary. Again, this may not be something most people care much about; personally, I hate having to write AppleScript. But I love being able to write AppleScript. BBEdit’s extensive scriptability is one of its hidden strengths. Nova’s Node-based JavaScript engine is probably more powerful for its own extensions and certainly more accessible to anyone under the age of 50, but it may be hard to call it from external programs.

So is it worth it?

That probably depends on where you’re coming from.

If you loved—or still use—Panic’s older editor, Coda, this is a no-brainer upgrade. If you used Espresso, a Coda-ish editor that always seemed to be on the verge of greatness without ever reaching it, Nova may also be a no-brainer for you.

If you’re a fan of Sublime Text, BBEdit, TextMate, or another editor that doesn’t have native Language Server Protocol support, you should definitely try Nova. Sublime and TextMate have more plugins (especially Sublime), but many extensions seem to be languishing (especially TextMate). BBEdit never had a great extension ecosystem to start with. All of these editors have strengths Nova doesn’t, but the reverse is also true, and Nova may catch up.

If you’re an Emacs or Vim power user, we both know you’re just reading this out of academic interest and you’re not going to switch. C’mon.

If you use Visual Studio Code, though, it’s way tougher to make the case for Nova. Code has a vastly larger extension library. It has the best support for LSP of any editor out there (LSP was developed for Code). Despite being Electron-based, it’s pretty high-performance. Code doesn’t have an integrated SSH or FTP client, but it does have an integrated terminal and task runner and Git client. If you don’t object to using an editor that isn’t a “perfect fit” with the Mac UI, Code is very, very good… and it’s free.

I don’t object to Nova’s pricing model—$99 up front including a year of updates, $49 for future years of updates—but I can’t help but wonder if Panic should have gone with super aggressive introductory pricing. Also, I saw more than a few suggestions on Hacker News about how there should be a Code-to-Nova extension translator; I’m not sure automatic conversion would be practical, but a guide on manual conversion seems like an excellent idea.

For my day job of technical writing, I’m going to stick to BBEdit. (One day I’ll write up an article about why I think it’s the best “documentation as code” editor on the market.) For programming and web editing, when I was working on both a Ruby and a PHP project—the former a Rails learning exercise, the latter an obstinate “I am going to write a modern PHP app without using a framework” exercise—I kept trying Nova’s betas and then switching back to Code for Inteliphense and, I swear to God, MacVim for Tim Pope’s amazing rails.vim plugin. I suspect Nova could duplicate both of those, but I’m not sure I want to be the one to do it. (Also, while Panic has decent reference documentation for writing extensions, I’d like to see a few simple end-to-end walkthroughs for those of us who look at a huge list of reference topics and don’t know where to start.)

But Nova isn’t just pretty, it’s powerful, and has a lot of promise. The editors I’ve been comparing it to have been around since 2015 for VS Code, 2008 for Sublime Text, and 1992 (!) for BBEdit; it’s not reasonable to expect Nova to blow past them in every respect right out of the starting gate. Even so, they are Nova’s competition. Catching up fast is an essential requirement.

So: yes, I’ve bought Nova, and I’m rooting for Panic here. I’ll come back in a year and report if I’m willing to stay on the update train.

Hi, I really love Betterfield. It's one of the most beautiful neighborhoods I've ever seen and I love the way you designed it. I especially love these early summer night pics, they're so gorgeous. I'm also very impressed by your graphics. What kind of graphics card or computer setup in general do you have, if I may ask? I'll need to buy a new computer soon and I'd love for my game to look like yours.

Hi dear Anon! :) Thank you very much for your kind words! 💜💜💜 Actually Betterfield is a remake of @ousmeo’s remake of @criquette-was-here​‘s Dullfield. When I first saw that neighborhood it was love at first sight, and I wanted that map to be the base of Betterfield (which already existed). I modified and redecorated it many times, this version of Betterfield is the 2020 version, but there were many before. I have to say there’s still a lot of work with this to finally be complete. Anyway I’m thankful for all of the wonderful neighborhood deco creators!

And about my graphics setup... Well, it’s interesting you asked it, because yesterday I was about to write a post dedicated to this theme, I’m just not sure about some things so there’s a lot of testing still waiting for me, but here (after a lot of useless talking) I answer your question. 😁

So, I have a Lenovo Ideapad 520, with Intel i7 7500U, 8gb RAM, and two graphics card, an NVIDIA GeForce 940MX and an integrated one, Intel HD Graphics 620. Oh and I run the sims 2 from an SSD. That’s it in general, but if you interested I explain how I manage to run the game with such a beautiful graphics these days under the cut.

Warning! It’s going to be messy and huge, and more like a long boring story than a tip, but can be useful for someone. (I’ll write it down properly someday)

------cut should be here but tumblr refuses to put it here, and put it at the top of post instead where I can’t delete, sorry------

When I bought my laptop I was really dissapointed, because I was only able to play the game with the integrated card, and it wasn’t bad but kind of annoying when I knew I have better. If I tried to enter Betterfield with nvidia, the game crashed on the neighborhood loading screen. Uptil some point I was like okay, then I’ll play with integrated card, nevermind........ but of course I’m dealing with those problems like almost everyone in the community the random crashes and purple flashing.

I’ve dedicated half of my life to solve these problems. :D Sims 2 really is an annoying game! I’ve tried every possible solution what can be found over the internet, there were always some little trick what helped, but after some time the troubles came back. The last year was intense. There are a lof of clever people out there finding new ways to get rid of the crashing and flashing issues coming with new and new solutions and I couldn’t be more grateful to them. When I say I‘ve tried everything I’m not kidding. And I was like okay, I’m going to pretend my integrated card doesn’t exist and I will fix NVIDIA. However there are those annoying issues with both of them........

I’m trying to mention everything what helps me these days to run a smooth and beautiful sims 2 with a huge CC folder (67k+ file lot of them really high poly). First the 4gb patch and the Graphics Rules Maker. These two are pretty common.

There’s one solution what seems like to help a lot of people but for me it never worked, the DXVK method. It looks really useful, and time to time I give it a shot, but somehow never works out for me, my game crashes whenever I try to use it. But the tip @episims made is one of the most useful things I’ve ever seen, and the one by @dramallamadingdang as well.

Absolutely useful, but somehow never enough. Maybe because of my huge CC folder, or some broken mod, or my computer specs, or just windows 10 or sims 2....... whoever knows....So I was messing around with nvidia profile inspector according to iCad’s tip, trying to reach beautiful garphics with low ingame settings. It was a complete failure. Maybe my expectations are too high but those looked terrible! I decided to turn everything to the best in nvidia control panel (profile inspector seems too complicated for me), and then checked the game again. It was still ugly as hell with low ingame settings. Then I thought what the heck, and I’ve turned every settings to the best and highest, and went on checking Betterfield.

It was something I’ve never seen before. A completely smooth, lag free, purple flashing free, crash free wonderful game, with beautiful textures, smooth edges. With the highest graphics setting in and out of game! I loaded my biggest lots which are always crashing or flashing, none of them did! That was the time when I first posted about Betterfield.

The next day I was really happy, started my game thinking it’s going to work... well, I was wrong, but not too surprised. It crashed when I loaded Betterfield. I took a deep breath and started to think through what have I done yesterday what helped. And after I’ve tried some method I guess I found the little trick what helps me from that day to reach that “dream state of sims 2” again.

So, I have an almost empty neighborhood which I named “stop crashing b**ch”, that I use for testing and etc... I did the graphics tests I mentioned above there as well. So my first thing when my game loads up is to load that neighborhood and a household in there. In the household I set all of the graphics settings to the lowest (expect smooth edges). Then, I load up Betterfield. I have to mention here Betterfield is really a huge city, with tons of decoration, lots, and households (which could be corrupted as well XD). So, at that point Betterfield loads up just fine, but remember the settings are on the lowest. Then I enter one of my biggest lot, which used to be nothing more than a purple flashing. And in the household I turn the garphics settings to the highest again. And that’s it. Ugly textures are refreshing, becoming high res and beautiful, Sims 2 runs like a dream, and beautiful as a blooming flower! At this point I usually test night mood and turn on and off some lights just to see everything is fine for real. After that I can enter to my other big households, lots, without any crashing or flashing. Once I look around everywhere in 360 degree it’s absolutely lag free. Same goes for the neighborhood itself. Beautiful in day and night. :)

The only reason I haven’t share this little discovery of mine, because there’s one lot (Betterfield High School) which is still causing the purple flashing (even if it’s just a huge unfurnished building...), and sometimes there are some objects here and there randomly flashing... but according to the purple game I had before it feels more like a small bug or something :’)....

Okay, what I got is Sims 2 with highest graphics settings in game and in Nvidia control panel (like 8x edge smoothing and stuff...), working beautifully, the only thing I have to do before playing my HUGE neighborhood with my HUGE and high poly CC folder is to load up an empty neighborhood, enter a family, set the graphics to the lowest, then enter my big city, enter a big lot (or whatever, I’m not sure about this part), and set the graphics to the highest again!

I’m not sure if everyone have read this or if it makes any sense (bc of my crappy english), but I promise after some more testing, if I think it’s actually useful, I’m going to share a proper, understandable tip about this. ^^”

Kingdom Hearts 3: A Review

This one is gonna be long as shit probably but since I finally finished the game on standard, proud and critical mode, and with DLC on the way I’m going to try and review the basegame for KH3 and see how it stacks up. Most of this under readmore for the sake of ur dashboards.

So I want to clarify a handful of details, KH2, its final mix especially, is my favourite game in the series. The gameplay is almost fucking perfect for an action game and is accessible to so many skill levels and did all of its difficulty modes quite well (though proud has not aged well compared to critical). Not only this but Sora’s moveset and animations, their speed and frames and iframes after actions and also interaction with abilities is almost perfect (I have eternal issues with how guard’s timing works compared to KH1′s guard it’s just slightly more delayed by enough to throw me off) and I have played KH1, CoM, BBS, DDD, Re:Coded and 0.2 so I have enough experience with the games overall.  Also as for story, KH1 was the only game that did it well, CoM is fine, and KH2 is a bit like that but still decent. After that point story has been going downhill thanks to Nomura’s writing dying a fiery death so KH3′s awful story pacing, fairly disappointing execution and dumping of things all at the end don’t bother me as much since it was doomed from the start considering it has to conclude stuff set up by BBS and DDD which were stories that don’t hold up well anyway. Plus at this point I just accept that the story of KH isn’t going to be good anymore. No I don’t play the gacha game, I keep up with the cutscenes time to time to stay in loop and that story is just long winded and cryptic. Gameplay is what I care about since that’s what makes a video game a game, funnily enough. (Though I think KH3 has a bad habit of making cutscenes either too long or stacking too many on top of each other) Also I want to state I am completely neutral on attraction flow. I neither like nor dislike them all that much. They serve a purpose and they can be ignored too. They’re more or less a matter of personal preference and I don’t feel strongly about them. Aside from the choo choo train no one can slander the train. 

Positives 

I think KH3 competes with KH1 for second most fun gameplay in the series. They took alot of things and rebalanced them and brought them all together in a way that I liked, shotlocks, flowmotion, counters, forms, magic, summons, grand magic and even a little bit of reaction commands and limits. Aside from the combos which are a given of course, as well as being able to cancel into magic and other actions being fairly competently done, though guard has some oddities to it where it doesn’t always work and it might be down to the game’s buffering system. More on that later. The keyblade transformations stand out as a real strength to the game, with a wide variety of movesets for each playstyle (my favourite is the Happy Gear and its’ transformations) and they make both horde and boss fights dynamic and fun, not to mention their interactions with guarding, dodging and magic and how they change it up as well as little bonus abilities forms give you. I do like that they brought back all sorts of enemies, Heartless, Nobodies and Unversed, with only Nightmares not returning. The variety is appreciated. On a mechanical note, I am very fond of being able to store a keyblade transformation by switching to another Keyblade, and I like being able to equip and shift between three of them. This is the first game where keyblades feel incredibly distinct from one another, and also the only game where Kingdom Key is viable from start to finish. This was something Re:Coded played with and I’m really glad to see the direction they took it in KH3. The addition of up to five party members is also appreciated, having everyone fighting at once in the larger battles KH3 has overall brings a nice sense of scale to it. Wallrunning and massive areas allow for some big levels to traverse and honestly thats’s mostly a strength since it adds greatly to immersion. There are boss fights in KH3, namely those in the Keyblade Graveyard that function perfectly for the game’s overall combat pacing, and they also amplify the strengths of the game on Critical mode.I like the little detail of magic now doing little status effects too now.The gummi ship is a nice blend of KH1 and KH2, and the open world flying around is a fun aspect that makes it feel like a real journey through the stars.The world’s are a usually of great quality, with Olympus being the best tutorial level/first level in the whole series, and the Caribbean providing a really enjoyable open ocean exploration style, Monstropolis getting the linear level style right properly, Kingdom of Corona building itself character wise very well to endear you to Rapunzel’s journey with its’ interactivity and Toy Box throwing a few decent challenges and very well put together mech combat. Also, graphically KH3 is one of the most impressive games I’ve ever seen, flexing on all the films, the older games, and real life itself, making the presentation fit the artstyle and rendering to a degree that’s frighteningly good. Game looks wonderful. The music is also good but that’s true of every game, Yoko just be like that, though 3 has some great compositions and remixes of its’ own to stand on. 

Negatives

One thing to preface this with is that a strength to KH2 is your options, how balanced they all are, what they all do, how they can interact with each other (such as how magic can be integrated into combos and do their own or using different buttons to change a combo altogether, or how certain moves fulfil different functions in a fight) is all very well structured and seamless. In KH3 your basic combo game doesn’t have as many modifiers to how it works outside of formchanges and even then it doesn’t quite feel as complete. Not only that but your options end up doing the same thing alot of the time, heavy damage that leads into strong AOE. The core design of the game is built around huge hordes of enemies, and that tends to mean its too easy to get hit out of nowhere or annoyed to death or sniped out of nowhere on critical, so you need to use magic and then grand magic to clear or links and attraction flow if you’re on critical to thin out hordes. While in boss fights this changes the game feels a bit too focused on large fights and has movesets less focused around smaller groups and suffers for it. Tying into this, animations are grander and longer, leaving you open to interruption. The camera in this game is also awful, and one of the worst, either not zooming in enough or too far out, or on more mobile enemies (or teleporting ones, looking at you Goatnort) it fails to keep best track of them and angle properly and you can get blindsided too easily or put in a vision style that makes depth perception for projectile blocking too iffy for my tastes.KH cameras are always a bit off but this one needs work. Base Sora’s animations tend to be very hard to work with compared to KH2′s, he’s alot slower, has more delays, less invincibility frames, attacks don’t follow together and follow up nearly as quickly, item usage is overall a slower process which can fuck you over on critical, guarding still has a delay to it, leaf bracer can be rendered useless due to cure having no iframes during the ending portion of the animation and on critical you can just wind up needing to heal again if you get hit trying to use leaf bracer to slip through an attack. There’s also a very odd way the game handles Sora’s hitstun, where he can’t do anything out of it unless he uses aerial recovery which has a rather narrow iframe window and a bit of lag on actions that can be performed out of it that means you cant do anything in some lategame boss fights once hit half the time since no button input does anything especially if you’re hit in the air. The game is far too unclear on when you can and can’t act out of a hit or a block. Also, while I like being able to retaliate once its’ unlocked after aerial recovery, the animation for the attack has a set direction and often ends up missing more mobile bosses and lacks control. The game’s overall balancing is a bit of a mess as well, with grand magic and magic being far too strong on all modes except critical, and links being too strong on critical since there is far too much of a reliance on AOE overall in the combat. As for difficulty, it has a strange Fire Emblem Awakening parallel, where standard is too easy, proud is the true normal mode but not a hard mode, and critical is a bit too hard at times though not all the time. I’d say critical eases up for a bit though it favours cheap shots and delivers its true delights right at the end, it’s weird and I’ll talk more about it later but it starts out unfairly hard with the tutorial boss two shotting you in seconds. There’s a real lack of postgame content overall, with the battlegates being alright but not grand, and only one superboss in Dark Inferno who is alright all things considered but isn’t a Sephiroth really. Speaking of which, no Final Fantasy characters in the series that’s supposed to be it crossing over with Disney. What the fuck. Also I will say that while the worlds are huge and long now, there’s still not that many of them, and while quality over quantity is a factor, quantity is nice too, and making Twilight Town that small and short feels like a kick in the dick to KH2 fans who love that place, me included. Ultima weapon is a pain to get, all the minigames in KH3 are either bad, terrible, awful, or dull and not worth playing, and you need to do some of the worst ones to get it though thankfully it’s not really all that necessary to have unless you want a trump card for critical mode which you’re better off using new game + to get from an easier save file anyway. The cooking minigames are also very odd with their timing and the controls are a bit unresponsive or too sensitive at times and discourages you from cooking. Look at what they did to 100 Acre Woods, it makes me sob salty tears at how small and gutted it is. In general enemies have difficulties telegraphing their attacks in both audio and visual style and you get cheap shotted alot. There is a particular Unversed enemy in Monstropolis I’m sure we’re all familiar with by now who is guilty of that sin the most. And finally, the game’s biggest sin of all: Armoured Xehanort (who I call Goatnort). This fight is a travesty. Teleporting, unclear telegraphs, unclear hitstun, random super armour, long combos that cannot be interrupted, wonky interactions with dodges, guards and reprisals that makes him get free hits on you sometimes even when successfully executing a block or dodge. He has a lack of clear telegraphs, acts at speeds that give KH2FM superbosses a run for their money despite you being slower than that game was, leading to things Sora’s animations aren’t equipped to deal with, as well as shifting the fight constantly to underwater combat and then forced aerial combat with very confusing controls interactions and pair that with AOE magic attacks with magnet powers, lock on wind magic with warping properties to ensure he lands his hit, alot of teleporting out of the camera’s range and warp strike sucker punches that really stretch the human reaction time when paired with the shit camera and you just get an unpleasant boss fight that while proud and standard can mitigate to just being annoying as all hell, on critical its a nightmare fight and you cant even observe the fight and learn it well either due to how much shit is going on, the camera being against you, unclear mechanical aspects, speed above what you can reliably output as base Sora who you are stuck as for most of the fight. It boils down to a spammy clusterfuck with too much going on, with so few openings to do anything, and bad interaction with Sora’s options and the animations tied to them with alot of damage that feels forced on you half the time. The Final Xehanort phase with the X-Blade is much better though.

Critical Mode

Since it didn’t launch with the game was added later as a free update and everyone made a big deal out of it and it’s exclusion seeming odd I might as well talk about it. Firstly, KH2FM has the best critical mode and is the only game to do it right really. It halves your hp and reduces the amount of mp you gain during level ups and increases to it, so you have enough to work with but never too much, enemies do the same damage as proud mode, but you do more damage than even standard mode, and you start with 50AP and a lot lategame abilities so strengthen Sora’s kit. This results in the best hard mode for the game, since fights never drag on too much and deaths are usually quick. It encourages and rewards you to use all your options and play both smart and aggressive to win. KH3 takes a somewhat similar approach. You start out with 50 AP and wide variety of boosting abilities mostly from endgame territory as well as unique critical mode ones that modify reprisals to reward proper dodge timing which is wonderful and even one to disable Attraction flow for those who hate it to build up transformations quicker. However Critical mode nerfs alot of things. Magic can’t be used as much and successive casts one after another especially rapid shots get a huge damage nerf so you have to use it sparingly making grand magic harder to get and magic de-incentivised outside of enemy weaknesses. There’s also wonky issues with damage scaling in relation to battle level and your level and all situation commands take much longer to build up to, even with the aforementioned boost to formchange buildup speed it still takes awhile and since base Sora is very hit or miss in fights this can be a very awkward change to work with. Enemy damage is also scaled very high and this could be one of the hardest critical modes earlygame, though DDD still holds the crown for hardest if we’re being honest. KH3 critical starts you out by Darkside two shotting you and most of the earlygame even regular Heartless kill you in two or three hits. Unless you use cooking to buff yourself you will die in two or three hits most of the time and some bosses can one shot you. The Gigas enemies in Toy Box are hard to deal with since magic is so nerfed and the Supreme Smasher boss can and will outright one shot you with all of its’ attacks if you don’t use a Gigas yourself. Even KH2FM critical wasn’t this unforgiving at times. The Kh3 critical mode experience boils down to a few things; most heartless bosses being easy as usual for KH3, getting randomly sniped in horde fights, boss fights that take awhile and usually 2 shot you, the mode and its’ particular challenge coming together masterfully for the Keyblade Graveyard fights to create a proper tense challenge that’s still fun, the Armours Xehanort fight being so frustrating it makes you want to launch your PS4 at Nomura, and Final Xehanort being a good but brutal fight that exposes a bit of flaws of KH3 but also plays to its’ strengths as well, unlike Goatnort who exposes all the flaws and needs to calm down. Overall I didn’t enjoy it as much as KH2FM critical mode but it was better than DDD and BBSFM critical mode. Definitely felt like it was trying too hard to be hard at times, did get me to actually use cooking though. Rage Form is king. 

Summary

Overall, Kingdom Hearts 3 is a well put together package blending together alot of the features from across the series into a very coherent combat system that oozes variety at its’ core, but is let down a bit by functional application reducing that variety to the same overall function. It’s a game with a bit of balancing issues, and ideally needs some overall core enemy fight redesigning, maybe a few more worlds and boss fights, and alot of tweaking to base Sora’s playstyle, requiring snappier animations, quicker flow between them, changes to hitstun interaction and options and iframe changes to be more fair on the player in critical mode. There’s alot to the combat overall that needs a little tweaking, and while it isn’t KH2 levels of good, it has alot of potential and is very fun to play, bringing together alot of what makes these games fun in general and pulling it off decently well. There’s alot to enjoy here, and the craft is up scratch, even if it is a bit wonky and rough around the edges on the more finer and precise aspects, it’s still up there with some of the best Kingdom Hearts games. I’m looking forward to the DLC and any future updates, and I’m hoping some more balance tweaking and a few changes might be all this game needs to be its’ best. It’s a good game through and through, and while some may find it disappointing, I’ve accepted that the series more or less peaked with KH2FM and I’m glad to see Osaka team have finally found a groove that fits them that they’ve clearly put some work into making as high a quality as they were able, considering the no doubt rocky development the game went through with all the business of engine shifts and other things going on in the company at the time. I know giving a numerical rating can devalue the qualitative aspects of a review but the quantitative is also nice to have so overall, I’d say that Kingdom Hearts 3 is a solid 8/10. KH3 competes with KH1 as second favourite in the series and even with all its’ flaws it’s a game I really do enjoy playing and putting time into.Story is still a fuckin train wreck tho lol. Good job the stupidity of it makes me laugh more than anything. Xemnas is still a better waifu than Ansem tho. MickeyRiku best ship.

We are gathered here today….

Today I write in memory of Adobe Flash (née Macromedia), something that a bunch of people are actually too young to remember. I write this with love, longing, and a palpable sense of relief that it’s all over. I have come to praise Flash, to curse it, and finally to bury it.

We’ve been hearing about the death of Flash for a long time. We know it’s coming. December 2020 has been announced as the official timeframe for removal, but let’s be real about this: it’s dead. It’s super-dead. It’s people-are-selling-Flash-game-archives-on-Steam dead.

That last bit actually makes me happy, because Flash games were a huge part of my childhood, and the archives must be preserved. Before I’d ever heard of video cards, frames per second, and “git gud”, I was whiling away many an hour on disney.com, cartoonnetwork.com, MiniClip, Kongregate, and other sites, looking for games.

I think we’ve established in my previous work that even as a missionary kid, I did not have a social life.

The Internet itself gave me a way to reach out and see beyond my house, my city, and my world, and it was wonderful. Flash was a part of that era when the Internet felt new, fresh, and loaded with potential. Flash never sent anyone abuse, or death threats. Flash was for silly animations, and games that my parent’s computer could just barely handle, after half an hour of downloading.

I even built my first animated navigation menus in Flash, because I didn’t know any better. At all. But those menus looked exactly like the ones I’d designed in Photoshop, so that’s what mattered to me, young as I was.

That was a part of Flash’s charm, really.

What Flash Got Right

Flash Brought Online Multimedia into the Mainstream

Funny story, JavaScript was only about a year old when Flash was released. While HTML5 and JS are the de-facto technologies for getting things done now, Flash was, for many, the better option at launch. JS had inconsistent support across browsers, and didn’t come with a handy application that would let you draw and animate whatever you wanted.

It was (in part) Flash that opened up a world of online business possibilities, that made people realize the Internet had potential rivalling that of television. It brought a wave of financial and social investment that wouldn’t be seen again until the advent of mainstream social networks like MySpace.

The Internet was already big business, but Flash design became an industry unto itself.

Flash Was Responsive

Yeah, Flash websites could be reliably responsive (and still fancy!) before purely HTML-based sites pulled it off. Of course, it was called by other names back then, names like “Liquid Design”, or “Flex Design”. But you could reliably build a website in Flash, and you knew it would look good on everything from 800×600 monitors, to the devastatingly huge 1024×768 screens.

You know, before those darned kids with their “wide screens” took over. Even then, Flash still looked good, even if a bunch of people suddenly had to stop making their sites with a square-ish aspect ratio.

Flash Was Browser-Agnostic

On top of being pseudo-responsive, the plugin-based Flash player was almost guaranteed to work the same in every major browser. Back in a time when Netscape and Internet Explorer didn’t have anything that remotely resembled feature parity, the ability to guarantee a consistent website experience was to be treasured. When FireFox and Chrome came out, with IE lagging further behind, that didn’t change.

While the CSS Working Group and others fought long and hard for the web to become something usable, Flash skated by on its sheer convenience. If your site was built in Flash, you didn’t have to care which browsers supported the <marquee> tag, or whatever other ill-conceived gimmick was new and trendy.

Flash Popularized Streaming Video

Remember when YouTube had a Flash-based video player? Long before YouTube, pretty much every site with video was using Flash to play videos online. It started with some sites I probably shouldn’t mention around the kids, and then everyone was doing it.

Some of my fondest memories are of watching cartoon clips as a teenager. I’d never gotten to watch Gargoyles or Batman: The Animated Series as a young kid, those experience came via the Internet, and yes… Flash. Flash video players brought me Avatar: The Last Airbender, which never ever had a live action adaptation.

Anyway, my point: Flash made online video streaming happen. If you’ve ever loved a Netflix or Prime original show (bring back The Tick!), you can thank Macromedia.

What Flash Got Wrong

Obviously, not everything was rosy and golden. If it was, we’d have never moved on to bigger, better things. Flash had problems that ultimately killed it, giving me the chance, nay, the responsibility of eulogizing one of the Internet’s most important formative technologies.

Firstly, it was buggy and insecure: This is not necessarily a deal-breaker in the tech world, and Microsoft is doing just fine, thank you. Still, as Flash matured and the code-base expanded, the bugs became more pronounced. The fact that it was prone to myriad security issues made it a hard sell to any company that wanted to make money.

Which is, you know, all of them.

Secondly, it was SEO-unfriendly: Here was a more serious problem, sales-wise. While we’re mostly past the era when everyone and their dog was running a shady SEO company, search engines are still the lifeblood of most online businesses. Having a site that Google can’t index is just a no-go. By the time Google had managed to index SWF files, it was already too late.

Thirdly, its performance steadily got worse: With an expanding set of features and code, the Flash plugin just took more and more resources to run. Pair it with Chrome during that browser’s worst RAM-devouring days, and you have a problem.

Then, while desktops were getting more and more powerful just (I assume) to keep up with Flash, Apple went and introduced the iPhone. Flash. Sucked. On. Mobile. Even the vendors that went out of their way to include a Flash implementation on their smartphones almost never did it well.

It was so much of a hassle that when Apple officially dropped Flash support, the entire world said, “Okay, yeah, that’s fair.”

Side note: Flash always sucked on Linux. I’m just saying.

Ashes To Ashes…

Flash was, for its time, a good thing for the Internet as a whole. We’ve outgrown it now, but it would be reckless of us to ignore the good things it brought to the world. Like the creativity of a million amateur animators, and especially that one cartoon called “End of Ze World”.

Goodbye Flash, you sucked. And you were great. Rest in peace. Rest in pieces. Good riddance. I’ll miss you.

In Memory of Flash: 1996-2020

We are gathered here today….

Today I write in memory of Adobe Flash (née Macromedia), something that a bunch of people are actually too young to remember. I write this with love, longing, and a palpable sense of relief that it’s all over. I have come to praise Flash, to curse it, and finally to bury it.

We’ve been hearing about the death of Flash for a long time. We know it’s coming. December 2020 has been announced as the official timeframe for removal, but let’s be real about this: it’s dead. It’s super-dead. It’s people-are-selling-Flash-game-archives-on-Steam dead.

That last bit actually makes me happy, because Flash games were a huge part of my childhood, and the archives must be preserved. Before I’d ever heard of video cards, frames per second, and “git gud”, I was whiling away many an hour on disney.com, cartoonnetwork.com, MiniClip, Kongregate, and other sites, looking for games.

I think we’ve established in my previous work that even as a missionary kid, I did not have a social life.

The Internet itself gave me a way to reach out and see beyond my house, my city, and my world, and it was wonderful. Flash was a part of that era when the Internet felt new, fresh, and loaded with potential. Flash never sent anyone abuse, or death threats. Flash was for silly animations, and games that my parent’s computer could just barely handle, after half an hour of downloading.

I even built my first animated navigation menus in Flash, because I didn’t know any better. At all. But those menus looked exactly like the ones I’d designed in Photoshop, so that’s what mattered to me, young as I was.

That was a part of Flash’s charm, really.

What Flash Got Right

Flash Brought Online Multimedia into the Mainstream

Funny story, JavaScript was only about a year old when Flash was released. While HTML5 and JS are the de-facto technologies for getting things done now, Flash was, for many, the better option at launch. JS had inconsistent support across browsers, and didn’t come with a handy application that would let you draw and animate whatever you wanted.

It was (in part) Flash that opened up a world of online business possibilities, that made people realize the Internet had potential rivalling that of television. It brought a wave of financial and social investment that wouldn’t be seen again until the advent of mainstream social networks like MySpace.

The Internet was already big business, but Flash design became an industry unto itself.

Flash Was Responsive

Yeah, Flash websites could be reliably responsive (and still fancy!) before purely HTML-based sites pulled it off. Of course, it was called by other names back then, names like “Liquid Design”, or “Flex Design”. But you could reliably build a website in Flash, and you knew it would look good on everything from 800×600 monitors, to the devastatingly huge 1024×768 screens.

You know, before those darned kids with their “wide screens” took over. Even then, Flash still looked good, even if a bunch of people suddenly had to stop making their sites with a square-ish aspect ratio.

Flash Was Browser-Agnostic

On top of being pseudo-responsive, the plugin-based Flash player was almost guaranteed to work the same in every major browser. Back in a time when Netscape and Internet Explorer didn’t have anything that remotely resembled feature parity, the ability to guarantee a consistent website experience was to be treasured. When FireFox and Chrome came out, with IE lagging further behind, that didn’t change.

While the CSS Working Group and others fought long and hard for the web to become something usable, Flash skated by on its sheer convenience. If your site was built in Flash, you didn’t have to care which browsers supported the <marquee> tag, or whatever other ill-conceived gimmick was new and trendy.

Flash Popularized Streaming Video

Remember when YouTube had a Flash-based video player? Long before YouTube, pretty much every site with video was using Flash to play videos online. It started with some sites I probably shouldn’t mention around the kids, and then everyone was doing it.

Some of my fondest memories are of watching cartoon clips as a teenager. I’d never gotten to watch Gargoyles or Batman: The Animated Series as a young kid, those experience came via the Internet, and yes… Flash. Flash video players brought me Avatar: The Last Airbender, which never ever had a live action adaptation.

Anyway, my point: Flash made online video streaming happen. If you’ve ever loved a Netflix or Prime original show (bring back The Tick!), you can thank Macromedia.

What Flash Got Wrong

Obviously, not everything was rosy and golden. If it was, we’d have never moved on to bigger, better things. Flash had problems that ultimately killed it, giving me the chance, nay, the responsibility of eulogizing one of the Internet’s most important formative technologies.

Firstly, it was buggy and insecure: This is not necessarily a deal-breaker in the tech world, and Microsoft is doing just fine, thank you. Still, as Flash matured and the code-base expanded, the bugs became more pronounced. The fact that it was prone to myriad security issues made it a hard sell to any company that wanted to make money.

Which is, you know, all of them.

Secondly, it was SEO-unfriendly: Here was a more serious problem, sales-wise. While we’re mostly past the era when everyone and their dog was running a shady SEO company, search engines are still the lifeblood of most online businesses. Having a site that Google can’t index is just a no-go. By the time Google had managed to index SWF files, it was already too late.

Thirdly, its performance steadily got worse: With an expanding set of features and code, the Flash plugin just took more and more resources to run. Pair it with Chrome during that browser’s worst RAM-devouring days, and you have a problem.

Then, while desktops were getting more and more powerful just (I assume) to keep up with Flash, Apple went and introduced the iPhone. Flash. Sucked. On. Mobile. Even the vendors that went out of their way to include a Flash implementation on their smartphones almost never did it well.

It was so much of a hassle that when Apple officially dropped Flash support, the entire world said, “Okay, yeah, that’s fair.”

Side note: Flash always sucked on Linux. I’m just saying.

Ashes to Ashes…

Flash was, for its time, a good thing for the Internet as a whole. We’ve outgrown it now, but it would be reckless of us to ignore the good things it brought to the world. Like the creativity of a million amateur animators, and especially that one cartoon called “End of Ze World”.

Goodbye Flash, you sucked. And you were great. Rest in peace. Rest in pieces. Good riddance. I’ll miss you.

    Featured image via Fabio Ballasina and Daniel Korpai.

Source from Webdesigner Depot https://ift.tt/2Ox7wlK from Blogger https://ift.tt/2Wl1Hw3

If you were the an Executive, Producer or some other kind of superior that has the authority at Capcom during the making of the Ace Attorney-series, would there be cases that you would order to be rewritten or designs of characters you would order to be changed?

Yes. Loads of things, really. Because I’m more of a writer than, say, a producer, I think of the cases from the perspective of their scenarios, rather than what churns the most bucks or what would be most time-efficient. I probably wouldn’t make a very good executive in that case, but hey, that’s makes me a writer.

For the record, I don’t find any particular case in the canon “bad”. Some may be disappointing, but “disappointment” comes in so many flavors other than “bad”.

While I could discuss every single case in detail and what I would offer that may improve on them, they would make up an entire book(let) on their own. So, I’ll just drop a few pointers on the general direction of the series and the games. Hey, they can make good writing advice too.

1. Innovate for the sake of innovating, not for the sake of hype.

I feel this is something that is lacking among many amateur and professional writers, alike. Sometimes these authors just want to throw in a huge twist into the drama just for shock value. It’s fair to want to hype up your story, but if you’re able to write suspense well, you don’t need a big twist. A little one that catches the reader’s attention for a bit is enough.

Since AA has a long-running history of building upon previous surprises and twists, I notice entry after entry, the devs keep trying too hard to raise the stakes and ultimately go overboard. Yes, finale cases should be more exciting and investing than the previous cases, but that doesn’t mean they have to be much longer or more complicated than the rest. 2-4 is a good example of keeping things simple throughout, yet still very suspenseful up until the very end. But then 3-5 turned the dial up a notch and made things quite convoluted, and from there, the problem only grew worse. (I can’t vouch for DGS2, since I haven’t finished it, but so far, I’m starting to see a sort of lag by case 3 and I’m not entirely sure why, since it’s supposed to be so plot-relevant.)

2. Manage the pace of the story.

In many other games that tend to separate the main plot from sidequests and substories, it can be a little difficult keeping the player on track, since it’s entirely up to the player’s choice to continue the story whenever they want. However, the central game mechanic to AA is following its single, linear story. There is the option to wander around and poke at Charley or other inanimate objects, but they amount to some extra fluff text and don’t affect the pacing that much.

As a result, I can be more critical of pacing issues in these games. As much as games like AAI2, DD, SoJ, and DGS1-2 are lauded, and I do agree they are all great, but I always have pacing issues with them. I never did with the first three games. Now, why is that? I think it may have to do with how the cases are organized.

The original trilogy keeps pace rather well by cutting the segments rather cleanly into blocks. This is very apparent in the game script files, as you know exactly when and where makes a good breakpoint for a run. The third game has a bit more bulk to it than the first two (not counting the long and dragged-out RftA), not just because it has 5 cases, but because the 5 cases are more expansive.

From there on, the way the games and their respective scripts are organized become much more convoluted. The scripts are designed to flow just as well when playing, but I more often than not pick up on segments of dialogue that seem to reiterate too much on previously given info or are just unnecessary for gags that are jammed in, rather than subtly slipped in. This setup of reiteration is good for those fans who regularly take breaks, but many others want to keep going until the checkpoints, which do make good breakpoints. Unfortunately, those checkpoints are often unevenly placed. See, even with T&T’s supposedly convoluted cases, Takumi managed to keep the pace relatively even across the whole game. Now that’s impressive.

It’s probably this reason that I don’t find RftA as impressive as the cases in T&T. There’s such a huge dissonance in structure between the first four cases of PW:AA and RftA, and the latter really drains me after a while.

3. Encourage more realistic/human-like characteristics in gag characters.

It may confound fans who don’t like Wendy Oldbag, Lotta Hart, Larry Butz, Maggey Byrde, etc., but they’re popular for a very simple reason: Despite being comedic relief that are constantly up to no good or otherwise caught up in laughable situations, they become adored for their child-like behavior and/or satire, and occasionally when they do actual good, it’s pretty memorable. These are traits that everyone has to some extent, some more so than others, so they are relatable that way. Thanks to their popularity, they get to stay as recurring characters.

In contrast, take characters like Phineas Filch or Solomon Starbuck (sorry, man, but you do fit this) or Bucky Whet, and I think you all can see the difference. They’re not nearly as commonly lauded because they’re characters that feel less human and more like gags that fill particular roles in their respective cases. While Larry, Wendy, and Lotta have been around longer, the problem is also present for the performers of Berry Big Circus, Wesley Stickler, Spark Brushel, and plenty from AAI… The list goes on.

Obviously, there are plenty of other case-exclusive characters from those same cases that don’t have this problem, or at least don’t have as much of a problem. It just goes to show how effective a character in role can be to tell a story, and sometimes, comedy-relief characters are needed to fill the gaps, but if they’re not given anything else, they’re basically stereotypes taken physical form.

4. Give your villains’ characters at least some level of complexity.

This one’s subjective, so please bear with me. I know motives involving money or fame or power are easy to use because they’re very effective motives in real life, but villains who go through such complex and twisted murders, equating those of nigh-perfect crimes, just for something so basic as filling a debt or coming out on top, are a little disappointing.

It’s why villains like White, L’Belle, Tiala, Engarde, Alba, Phantom, Blaize Debeste, and even Kristoph Gavin come off as weak, at least to me.

Engarde is, plain and simple, an egotistic, two-faced sociopath. We aren’t given anything else but the bad to his character, thus making him quite one-sided. It works in the context of the case, especially when contrasted with the likes of de Killer, but other than that, he really isn’t much of a “character”, so to speak. He’s just there as the catalyst of the incident and someone to blame for all the evil.

Meanwhile, Blaize is much better, but he still comes off as disappointing, especially since we’ve already met with an authority figure who managed to capture our attention and humor us, but still ended up as the villain: Gant. They’re both corrupt old men in high positions, and yet I find Gant so much more fascinating than Blaize. Gant has a side to him that makes him likable, at least up to when he reveals he’s not so pure-hearted, but he did return to that likable side when he accepted defeat. Blaize, on the other hand, simply hollowed out into an empty shell, and we see no form of regret from him afterward - not even an apology to his son or any instance of acting fatherly. Granted, it was done this way to give Sebastian some much-needed development, so I’m not surprised.

Kristoph is a bit different from the rest here because it’s not necessarily the writer’s fault. He’s the only one who gets to have 5 mysterious black psyche-locks over his ultimate motive for killing Zak Gramarye. Some fans theorize that he couldn’t accept that he was simply jealous of Zak; others suggest he blotted out any feeling of inferiority; even others say he honestly didn’t know why. I can lean toward the first two, but I also say it’s just poorly executed ambiguous writing that had to have an imperfect explanation retconned in by DD. Speculation over a character’s motives is good, but when it’s then forgotten into history and never mentioned or referenced ever again, I really have to wonder if the point itself was to incite speculation? If so, that sucks; we’ll never know the truth.

In short, I’m not a fan of villains who are “evil for the sake of evil”. All these characters (and then some) fit that trope one way or another, but at least the last two are well suited in the context they play.

Sorry that this answer got so long-winded, but your question was so open that I wasn’t sure how much I should cover. I hope it isn’t too verbose.

Taxpayers mature, can save or spend, says finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman - india news

Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the government’s budget for the 2020-21 financial year on Saturday, signalling a focus on reviving growth with a new income tax scheme, a push for the rural economy, and some increased spending on crucial issues such as air pollution. Edited excerpts of her interview with HT’s R Sukumar, Mint’s Anil Padmanabhan and Doordarshan’s Ajay Mishra on Saturday. Was this a tough budget to deliver looking at the current state of the economy?The current state of the economy is showing signs of improving. Since July, we held discussions with various stakeholders and made announcements on a weekly and fortnightly basis. From July to December, there has been an effort on several aspects — on December 31, the infrastructure pipeline was announced. There have been continuous and detailed discussions of the finance ministry with industries and the concerned ministries. This budget addresses issues that were left over. We have been working continuously and if these efforts help the general public, we will be satisfied with the efforts.One of the things that was expected from this budget was a stimulus to growth. If you had to pick two or three themes from the budget that you think will really give a stimulus to the economy, what would they be?According to analysis by economists and policy experts, if private investment is not picking up, where does the buck stop? The buck stops at the government’s doors. The government will have to show that it is not waiting for private investments to happen – that will happen when it has to happen. But we have to go about investing. And that’s what we made very clear, saying ‘yes, we will invest and in infrastructure’. I want to put out some things to strengthen this point. The Prime Minister announced this during his Independence Day speech that ₹100 lakh crore will be spent on infrastructure over five years. Soon after that, we had a task force and we looked into details. We consulted states and the private sector and came up with the pipeline of 6,500 projects. Within four months, we were able to come out with a complete pipeline of projects and, in this budget, we are helping that pipeline see the light of the day. I have given enough concessions for sovereign funds that want to come into India but with the added condition that you invest in infrastructure. We have already given ₹22,000 crore for companies that will handhold and direct investments towards these pipeline projects. We are also investing in inland water connectivity projects… With all this, I want to say the expectation that money should be spent in creating assets. A focus visible in the budget is the rural economy and agriculture, where you have pledged to spend ₹2.83 lakh crore. In the 16-point action plan, how will you work with the states? And in the context of agriculture, how do you see it addressing problems in backward and forward linkage?If you look at the 16 points as a continuum, you will see it has been created keeping backward and forward linkages in mind. And in it, the work that needs to be done in agriculture, and the work that needs to be done in agriculture-allied areas – all these areas involve a specific role for the youth. And to give them the requisite skills, skill development authorities have already held several discussions with multiple states. This is why I am saying that the planning for this budget did not start in the last three weeks – it began in July. So when it comes to youth, or allied industries – they follow a principled direction. When you look at the rural economy, one of the things that seem to have helped this year was the job guarantee scheme MNREGA. You originally budgeted ₹60,000 crore but ended up spending close to ₹71,000 crore. This year, the budget estimates are lower than that. Are you expecting enough of a pick-up in rural jobs and rural economy to offset this or will you step in and invest more when a need arises?The principle behind the MNREGA is that, when the need arises, we will give it. But if you notice in my budget speech, I have also mentioned the scheme will be extended for fodder creation. Because today, livestock in many of the water-distressed districts don’t even have fodder. Maintaining livestock is becoming an issue. If it is possible for us to use many of those not-so-fertile land – I wouldn’t say they are barren – to cultivate fodder, your local livestock will survive on it. And that itself can be one of the MNREGA activities. So we have tried to tie up some loose ends with the scheme.One of the other things where there has been a reduction from last year’s budget estimates, is food subsidies. The fact that you also ended up spending less than what you budgeted last year suggests a capacity, utilisation or an implementation problem.It can also be seasonal. Sometimes when people are migrating, and the interoperability that we are bringing in, it can be due to that. I don’t think I will be able to put my finger on what specifically caused it. But it is not a conscious reduction from our side.On direct taxation, what compelled you to create the new slabs for Income Tax? And now for individual tax payers, what will be a better option, in your opinion?The idea behind this move was to make tax filing easier and simpler for the people. They should be able to understand what the tax burden on them is exactly. The myriad of exemptions – 120 exemptions that have piled up over the decades – also creates a problem of revenue estimation for the tax department. Moreover, as a taxpayer, a person needs to turn to a professional to understand what exemptions they should use. Our belief was that ultimately, tax should be simpler and the burden lighter. This is why, I can say that from now, we are beginning on a path to reduce exemptions while also lowering the rate. The total saving because of reduced tax will be high in the new scheme. I have also asked the revenue secretary to issue a clarification note today itself that even in the new scheme, four new exemptions have been added because we do not want to tax the savings people already have. Justifiable, simple, straight-forward exemptions have been added to the new system.So the idea is over a period of time, all exemptions will go?Yes, we want to remove gradually everything called exemptions. I am not waiting for a golden day to do it, but have started the process by offering a new stream. I am not forcing people – you can continue to be where you want to claim exemptions. But gradually, when exemptions go, I will also give an attractive rate.Do you think the tax changes that you made will be significant enough to impact consumption?Yes, I am giving you an example. A person with a salary of ₹15 lakh per annum will save ₹78,000 and he will have to use that money – either in savings or in consumption. So what about the fear that some people have that savings are gone altogether?I don’t want to believe that a taxpayer will have to be goaded to save. A taxpayer is smart enough, intelligent enough, responsible enough to take a call on how much he wants to spend or save. We should trust him to that extent. On the tax issue, the new charter appears to be the first time a government has gone out and said that taxpayers have the right to not be harassed. Can you tell us a little bit about this?I have gone around the country talking to tax administrators and said that, ‘yes you have a target to collect revenue but please don’t overreach – we have been assuring taxpayers’. All that is on one level, but the Prime Minister himself has wondered if we really respect the taxpayer. Hence, we thought if we are clear about the intention, why should we not put into law? If my research is right, there are only three countries that have it in their law itself – Australia, USA and Canada. I am glad we have joined that league to assure taxpayers that this government’s intention is to trust wealth creators and taxpayers. You took a leeway of 0.5 percentage point to raise the fiscal deficit target from 3.3% to 3.8%, and you say you will, moving forward, return to a path of fiscal discipline. What does the budget say to domestic and international investors?You are referring to the FRBM act – and since circumstances now needs us to increase spending, this has been a deliberate decision. We have also had issues with revenue generation, since GST collections had not been up to the target for a few months this year. Given both of these circumstances, we have utilised the forbearance clause . Otherwise, we would not have been reflecting the truth. If you look at all the numbers, there is a level of pragmatism. Some of the tax receipts you are estimating this year are lower than last year. You think they are achievable?Yes, corporate tax cut will have show after a time lag. But I have to bear the brunt in showing that I lost the money today. If I am able to come back to some discipline in fiscal deficit by saying 3.5% in the budget estimate, it is because I expect revenue generation to improve.The nominal growth expectation of 10% is the lowest in a long time.It is realistic, I think. Because we don’t want to give an impression. In fact in the House when I said this, some members misunderstood so I had to repeat that it is nominal GDP growth.How will you define this budget, as a matter of a central theme?On social media, the ministry ran a hashtag – JanJanKaBudget. That was the objective, to touch every section. And also to send the larger message that this is a responsible government, it knows its limitations and its responsibilities. It is also a government that knows that only half of India’s potential is being utilised. We will do whatever it takes to encourage the utilisation of the country’s full potential.One very big strand of your budget has been this emphasis on market forces. To give you an example: normally where FMs would have used the fiscal space to spend more, you have chosen the option of cutting taxes and giving power to individuals and companies on how they spend. Is this a seminal shift in the ideological approach to budget making?It is a shift to suit, and in line with, our ideology. The government has to do only as much as is expected from a government. The PM made this clear when he said—government should have an impact but not make you feel indebted, the government’s role cannot be overwhelming. If I have to constantly spend, collect, it is never going to end. You will never be able to work out a mechanism through which the economy can drive itself at a pace at which it can move, not generate too much heat and at the same time be sustainable in the way in which it moves forward. Most of the things where we are putting our equity, we are also saying it should be in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. We are also saying that states will also have to be in it. This whole idea of only the central or state government (will spend) no longer works. It has to be all three together. Where I have land, I give you land. Where I have power generation capabilities, I give that but where others will have to come in, they will.Similarly in railways, some of the prime routes are suffering because net collection has not been improved nor is cross-subsidy any longer justifiable. You can’t leave the poor (paying) high rates. Some of these routes will be given out in PPP model. Bengaluru suburban is using railway tracks around the city; the decision between the state and us is that it should be on metro pricing model. It can’t be railway subsidising tickets and the (state) government running it. That is just not sustainable. In everything that we have announced, the directional change in which that project will have to run for itself (is made clear); eventually (it will have to) be sustainable on its own, is the plan.Even in infrastructure, this sovereign wealth fund, instead of the classic model of the government going out and investing money you have created the space for them to come in and made it very attractive for them…We have given them enough incentive. We have made sure that the money they earn over interest and other things will not be taxed, provided they spend on infrastructure, provided they lock in for a certain number of years. It is not like it’s just been given. Every single word uttered in the budget has gone through different layers and all of us will own it up. The time that the PM has given to see that they are falling in place is amazing.The other thing that we have noticed in the last five years is that the public sector is no longer what your political opponents call ‘family silver’. In this budget, you have taken it to a different level. You are trebling your disinvestment receipts. Are we seeing another big shift? Yes. If you have noticed, I have said that money from disinvestment will go to the companies which are going to be investing in long-term infrastructure. Sale of ‘family silver’ is not going for revenue expenses, it is going towards greater asset creation, responsible disinvestment, responsible sale, if at all, of family silver. That is again being put towards asset creation. That asset which you no longer can run efficiently and make profit is clearly offloaded, but here we put (the receipts) into the infrastructure pipeline. The two companies which I’ve mentioned will receive the funds. They will take the money. It is a responsible way in which public expenditure is being handled.So you are saying it won’t be used to balance the fiscal deficit or to finance it?No, I have very clearly told you that this is how it is going. Is that a general off-the-cuff remark? No. We have already given ₹22,000 crore towards pipeline projects to these two companies, which means we are putting the money where our mouth is.But is this number achievable?Absolutely, I think because to be fair, the last announcement was made in July. Again to be fair, the officials have done tremendous footwork to get it all off the table.LIC will be the key, I guess to meet the disinvestment target..The leg work was done between July and now. Because all this has its own timelines, I am not benefiting by the same this financial year, but it’s going to the next (fiscal). But ruthlessly to think you did not do it within a financial year and will you be able to do it next time is not right because this time we have done the footwork and it’s going to be ready immediately after the commencement of the next year.And what is the idea behind getting LIC to do an IPO?(To get) More money to be invested by retail investors, more money to come in from others. Why should it be only the government investing? More public, more opening up. The crowding out does not happen; crowding in should come in now.You are projecting an increase in your income tax collections despite the cut that you are pushing through right now; so, do you think it is achievable?I am keeping both the systems going, right?Or you are expecting some buoyancy?Of course. Because income tax I don’t think is suffering now. The direct tax collection is going on fine. The GST got affected and it is now restored.In fact, there is a significant increase in GST, even in these things… you are expecting a recalibration of rates? You are counting on that?Yes, that will also be a part. But there is a lot of removing the deadwood, the evasion which is happening is being plucked. Otherwise, technically, as per media assessment, nothing has changed in the overall.Going back to your statement of involving states as a stakeholder. Are we also seeing this budget signal the limits of a Union government shouldering the economic burden as it were, and is now looking to involve states?No, no I wouldn’t see it like that. Why should we involve the states more? (Because) Most of the activity happens there. The land is with them, zones are with them. If we want every district to be an export hub, the activities start from them. The economic survey has one very interesting data if you noticed. The Chief economic advisor has based it on hard data and he has taken on board nearly 480-odd districts in doing that data. Because of private entrepreneurship, the growth is unbelievable at the district level. So, why would it not have an optimism about revenue generation?The stock market seems to have reacted adversely to the budget. As an FM, does it concern you?It is not a fully open stock market today (Saturday). Not all wings of the stock market have been operational today. We will have to wait for Monday.So it doesn’t worry you as an FM?I am confident that the stock market will get the full picture of the budget by Monday. Read the full article

Download and Install Lenovo A6000 Stock Firmware Rom ( Flash File)

Download and Install Lenovo A6000 Stock Firmware Rom ( Flash File)

Download and Install Firmware File for Lenovo A6000 : In This article will tell you to roll back or re-flash the stock rom on the Lenovo A6000, also the necessary links to the software and files used in the method would be provided below. So if you are Looking for the Perfect Method to Install latest firmware on your Lenovo Device then this Guide is For you and you can easily get Lenovo A6000 Flash file. There might be a possibility that you have rooted your phone and in the process of rooting the phone gets stuck in the bootloader or in the boot loops where only the company logo flashes on the screen for the endless time . Also , sometimes there is realization that the phone's performance or battery life was better before rooting and certain apps worked only with root permission.So in order to unroot your device rolling back to stock Firmware is the only option available and you can Easily install Lenovo A6000 Flash file to Revert your device to factory State. So in order to overcome such problems a set of stock firmware files are used to flash their phones to the same default operating system which is present when you purchase the phone. So without Wasting Much time let's Start the guide on How to Download And Install Stock Firmware on Lenovo A6000.

Lenovo A6000 Flash File WHAT IS A ROM ?? Android ROM's also known as Android Read Only Memory are a few set of files which usually contains the executable instructions in the form of a system image of an Android Operating System which enables Android Device to operate Easily. There are two types of roms available for Android phones Stock Rom Stock Roms are patented to the big mobile manufacturers like Samsung (ONE UI) , Xiaomi (Miui) .They are used by the company itself and no other development authority is available to the outsiders. So once you get Lenovo A6000 Flash file you can enjoy the stock rom on your device. Custom Roms Custom Roms are generally the tweaked version of Android Open Source Project ( The basic Android Stock Rom ) which allows the users to modify itself according to their own needs and no such restrictions are available .. What is Stock Firmware ?? As explained above , it is basically the stock rom which is designed individually by each manufacturing company to cater to the needs and demands of the phone itself . Although the basics of each rom by a company is similar but due to the difference in the phone’s hardware some minute changes are made to the operating system . A company chooses Stock rom over any other day is because it is involved in the testing phases and the level of security provided by them is far above what it is provided in the custom roms because of the delegation of development and customization it offers to the third party development. Key Specifications Of Lenovo A6000 The Device was launched in 2015 and at that time it was one of the Most VFM smartphones, Coming to the specifications of the smartphone so the Device comes with 5 inch display with a resolution capacity of 720 X 1280. The Device comes with an 8 mp rear camera and a 2 mp front facing camera and a removable 2300 mah battery is also Placed under the Hood. Coming to the Processor of smartphone so the device comes with Qualcomm MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 Chipset And Adreno 306 GPU, Also the Device offers 1Gb ram and 8Gb expandable internal memory.So before you start the Guide there are Some Pre-requirements you should Know so make sure you follow all of them carefully: Pre-requisite to install The Stock Firmware Flash Files on Lenovo A6000 This is Only for Lenovo A6000, Make sure you flash this firmware only on this device. Flashing it on any other device can brick your smartphone. Uttermost attention and steps as mentioned has to be followed so that device should not end up bricking Lenovo USB Drivers should be installed on Your PC, You can Install Drivers by Following guide on Install Qualcomm Hs-USB Qdloader 9008 Driver Micro SD card for Flashing File Backup up your necessary files and mobile data Ensure that the phone is either completely charged or have at least 70% battery in order to avoid any disruption in the process.

Lenovo A6000 Flash file

Lenovo A6000 Flash file is the Stock firmware which you can install on your smartphone, So if you want to flash the Stock rom on your Lenovo A6000 you can download the File from Here and then follow the below steps to Easily install Lenovo A6000 Flash file on your Device. Firmware Details: File Name: A6000_S010_160420_16G File Size: 1GB Android Version: 5.02

How to Flash The Stock Firmware on Lenovo A6000

Step 1- In order to initiate the flashing procedure for the Lenovo A6000 make sure you have downloaded and Installed The Android USB Driver's on your Windows PC . If you have the necessary drivers already installed on your remote Pc you can skip this particular step and move towards the Step-2 . Step 2- Make sure you switch of your Lenovo Smartphone and remove the battery of the phone if it's not screwed to the body itself. Step 3- The necessary Stock Rom Firmware flash files for Lenovo A6000 should be extracted from the zip file to your PC and download the files if not present. Step 4- The Smart Phone Flash Tool on your computer. should be extracted and installed. Step 5- Out of the extracted files on the computer , choose the Flash_Tool.exe from the bundle of files present. Step 6- After opening the Smart Phone Flash Tool , Locate and Click on the download tab. Step 7- Click on the Scatter Loading Button which is present in the download tab of the flashing tool . Step 8- Now search for the Scatter File in the Stock Rom Folder which was extracted earlier. Step 9- After locating the file, click on the Download Button in order to start the process of flashing. Step 10- After the completion of the flashing process , Connect the Lenovo A6000 to computer via the USB cable . After connecting the usb cable , press the Volume Button (either up or down ) so that the computer can detect your device without any errors. In case of any error remove and re-insert the data cable. Step 11- When the computer indicates that the flashing process is completed, a green ring will appear on the screen confirming the completion of the process Step 12- Now you can disconnect your Lenovo A6000 from the computer as you have successfully flashed the stock firmware on the Lenovo A6000. Thats All You have Successfully Installed Lenovo A6000 Flash File on your smartphone and now you can use the original stock rom on your smartphone. Features Of Stock Rom Fully Secured- The stock rom is patched with multiple testing in phases by the testers of the rom and since the development is restricted to a particular organization it allows a good amount of security to the users as compared to the other custom roms they don't have the worry of external threats by the developer . Warranty :- The Stock Rom showcases the symbol of warranty as it is provided by the company itself in case of Flashing of Custom Roms or Rotting or any such threads would result in the breach of warranty. Company Updates - Rooting doesn't allow the user to either downgrade or upgrade on a stock rom which may turn annoying so flashing the stock rom can can help you do it easily. Merits Of Stock Rom It's nature is stable which enables the user to use the smartphone without any lagging or other software issues. The updates of the roms are pushed itself by the company to the respective phones . The support services and the after market warranty can be easily availed on the stock rom. Demerits Of Stock Rom The frequency of updates rolled out by the companies are unstable and the process have to go through a lot of corporate release cycles .Also United States is always on priority in terms of updates received Compared to rest of the world. As the user database is quite large the the user cannot give feedback to the manufacturers so that there problems can be resolved . The older devices whose updates weren't rolled out by the manufacturers happens to slow down by the advancement in the technology and they start to heat up and makes the users face difficult time using them.The flexibility to modify the operating system according to the needs of the users are restricted by the manufacturers. Also Read: Install TWRP on Any Android Without PC Root Any android Phone Without PC Install IOS Rom on Any Android Phone So this was our guide on How to Download and Install Lenovo A6000 Stock Firmware, we hope this Lenovo A6000 flash file helped you in Getting back the latest Stock firmware on your Device. Incase if you have any doubt feel free to write down in the comments section below. Read the full article

Adguard Mac Torrent

AdBlockers, similar to Adguard that work in real-time Torrent-trackers The macOS itself may need reinstallation Your user profile got cluttered so create a new user profile The final tip is to disable cross-site tracking and cookies in Safari. It's only available if you are running Safari 14 (2020) that came out with macOS Big Sur. Historically, AdGuard puts users' privacy and safety as the top priority, and it can be backed up with 10 years worth of spotless reputation. It's reflected in AdGuard VPN too: we employ our own fast and secure protocol and provide you with unique privacy-oriented features. Live chat is available 24/7, but most of Mac Set Ipvanish To Auto Reconnect the 1 last update 2021/03/23 time we just ended up talking to a Private Internet Access Encyption sales agent who copied and pasted answers from the 1 last update 2021/03/23 FAQs section. Mac Torrents - Mac torrents. NXMAC - MAC games. RuTor - Russian Torrent Tracker. RuTracker - Russian Torrent Forum. Rustorka - Russian Torrent Tracker. SceneGames - Scene release torrents. Solid Torrents - Has a spam filter. Tapochek - Russian Torrent Tracker. Torrents.csv - Easy viewing torrent search engine.

Adguard For Mac Torrent

Adguard Mac Torrent

Gone are the days when you could make yourself a sandwich while a web page was loading. The Internet is lightning fast now, so when things get slow as you browse the web it feels.. unnatural. But oftentimes it’s not the Internet speed or the Wi-Fi connection that’s testing your patience — it’s the browser.

Safari is not the fastest of browsers to begin with, and it can get downright sluggish as time goes by. There are several possible reasons for Safari running slow or freezing, and in this post we’ll see what they are and what can be done about them. The fixes below are done manually, but to streamline the process get a utility like CleanMyMac X. It’s perfect for fixing a slow Safari on Mac, and it’s free to download.

Safari running slow on Mac - How to speed it up

So, why is Safari so slow? It could be..

1. Too much history data and cache.

Safari stores information about every website you visit, and if you’re an average Internet user in 2020 it’s an awful lot of data. Plus, elements of those websites like images and html files are saved to cache so that pages load faster next time, which puts an additional burden on the browser. Imagine driving a car that’s packed with everything you ever owned: it’s bound to go slower than normal. So, try getting rid of the dead weight and see if Safari is still slow afterwards.

How to fix: Clear history and cache.

Normally, clearing history makes Safari empty cache as well, so try this method first:

Open Safari.

Hit History in the menu bar.

Choose Clear History.

Select the time span and hit the Clear History button.

This should do the trick, but if for some reasons you don’t want to lose your browsing history and just want to get rid of the cache, that can be done as well. Here’s how to clear Safari cache with more precision:

Open Safari.

Hit Safari in the menu bar.

Choose Preferences.

Select the Advanced tab.

Check mark Show Develop menu in menu bar.

Click on Develop in the menu bar.

Select Empty caches

If you’d like to automate all of this, try a popular Mac speedup app, CleanMyMac X. Not only will it clean up Safari history and cache, but it will also clear app caches and other junk to lighten the load on your whole Mac. This is how you clean up cache with it:

Launch CleanMyMac X (it has a free version you can download)

In the app, hit Smart Scan.

Go through the modules to review the files you’ll remove (cache will be in System Junk).

Hit Clean.

That’s it, all the clutter including Safari cache is gone. And while we’re at it, let’s erase the browsing history, too.

Go to the Privacy module in CleanMyMac.

Select Safari from the list.

Check the items you want to delete.

Hit Remove.

Done. Try opening a few web pages to see whether Safari is still running slow. If the spinning beach ball in Safari didn’t go anywhere, check for other possible issues below.

2. Corrupted Preferences.

As you tweak the browser to your taste, like assign the homepage and search engine or pick where the downloads are saved, all the info about your preferred browser behavior is stored in a preferences file. When that file becomes corrupted, the browser can start acting funny. If Safari’s not loading certain websites, lags, or freezes, chances are the problem is broken Preferences.

How to fix: Delete the preferences file.

When you get rid of the corrupted file, the browser will simply generate a new one. Follow these steps to find and delete Safari’s preferences file:

Close Safari.

Open Finder and use the Command+Shift+G shortcut.

Enter ~/Library/Preferences/ into the popup and hit Enter.

Find the file named 'com.apple.Safari.plist' and delete it.

The only downside is that you’ll erase your browser settings and will have to recreate them. But if you use CleanMyMac X, you can make sure Safari preferences are broken before erasing them. That way, you won’t lose all your settings for nothing.

Fix broken preferences file with CleanMyMac X

Another way to check Safari’s preferences file and delete it if necessary, is to try the following:

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Open CleanMyMac.

Go to System Junk and hit Scan.

Hit Review Details when the scan is over.

Select the Broken Preferences tab.

If the file is corrupted, it will be in this tab. Just hit Clean and delete it along with all the other junk. But if it’s not there, your Safari is probably slow for a different reason.

3. Buggy extensions.

Extensions let you do a ton of convenient extras in a browser, like store passwords or translate words with a click. But being third-party add-ons, they can impact Safari’s performance in unexpected ways, especially if they aren’t regularly updated.

How to fix: Remove the extension.

To find out which of your extensions is causing trouble, run a quick diagnostic:

Click Safari in the menu bar.

Select Preferences.

Select the Extensions tab.

Uncheck extensions one by one and see if the problem goes away.

When you’ve identified the culprit, hit the Uninstall button next to that extension in the Preferences.

As an alternative, go to CleanMyMac’s Extensions module and then Safari Extensions to remove any of them. Safari still running slow even though you’ve disabled every add-on? Let’s try the next thing on the checklist.

4. Autofill data.

Autofill comes in handy when you don’t want to memorize passwords and phone numbers, which is most of the time. However, when there’s a lot of autofill data stored, Safari might freeze for a few seconds before filling in every field. If it seems like the feature is annoying you more than it’s helping, you can just turn it off. Alternatively, you can disable only some of the options or remove the autofill data you won’t need.

How to fix: Delete autocomplete history.

To manage Autofill, do the following:

Go to Safari and then Preferences from the menu bar.

Select the Autofill tab.

Here you can disable any or all uses for Autofill (for example, never use it for credit card info). By clicking Edit, you’ll be able to look through the data that’s stored for autocompleting and delete the entries you don’t want there.

If you’d rather clean up all Autofill data in one go, it’s more convenient to do that with CleanMyMac X. You’ll need the Privacy module you’re already familiar with from when we cleared browsing history in Safari.

Go to Privacy in CleanMyMac.

Select Safari.

Check Autofill Values.

Click Remove.

Install elementary os dual boot mac. If you still don’t have CleanMyMac, you can try it for free. The app will be helping you out long after you fix this Safari loading slow problem, because it’s packed with maintenance features that can boost the performance of your whole Mac, not just your browser.

5. Outdated plugins like Flash and Java.

In December of 2020 Adobe updated its infamous Flash Player for the very last time following its plans to discard the app altogether. But still, many websites require Flash and Java for Safari to play video or animated content. These plugins can drag the browser’s performance down if they are outdated, so the reason why Safari is running slow and gets stuck loading pages could be just that.

How to fix: Update Flash and Java.

It’s worth mentioning that big websites are dropping Flash and Java for a number of reasons (they are super buggy, for one), but if you absolutely have to open a website that uses one of those, check if your Flash plugin or Java need updating.

Adguard For Mac Torrent

The best way to install the most recent Flash player is to download it from Adobe’s website. The page automatically identifies if the Flash player is up to date and will give you the download link if it’s not.

Adguard Mac Torrent

To check if you have the latest version of Java and update it if necessary, go straight to Oracle’s website. You’ll verify your Java version and get instructions on what to do next on that page.

That’s it, your browser should be back up to speed by now, so you can wave goodbye to Safari being slow. Just be sure to do regular cleanups and maintenance with CleanMyMac X, so that Safari keeps running like the wind.

Bonus: A few more things that may slow down your Safari

AdBlockers, similar to Adguard that work in real-time Torrent-trackers The macOS itself may need reinstallation Your user profile got cluttered so create a new user profile The final tip is to disable cross-site tracking and cookies in Safari. It's only available if you are running Safari 14 (2020) that came out with macOS Big Sur. Click the Safari menu > Preferences > Privacy. Check Prevent cross-site tracking.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

8 Key Features to Look for in Manufacturing Inventory Software

In the modern-day factory, manufacturing inventory software is a staple to ensure smooth operations. With the right software, you’ll be able to pull up inventory numbers in an instant, saving you time searching for product and money spent over-ordering extras. But where should you even start when it comes to finding the perfect manufacturing inventory software? With so many options on the market, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. When you’re starting your search, make sure that you’re looking out for these key factors.

Superior Inventory Control

We know, this probably seems like a given. Your manufacturing inventory software should be able to control your inventory, right? You would be surprised at how many people overlook the importance of this vital feature. Your software should provide the Product Availability Report and allow you to easily look up an item with a robust SKU item master file. Ideally, a good inventory software will project or forecast demand for a certain item, so you can be aware of when you should re-order or when you start to run low. The Low Stock Reorder function in DEAR allows streamlined reordering of stock that is running low, ensuring no sales are lost due to an item being out of stock. Stock Reorder parameters can be set globally for each product or independently for each location of your organisation.

Usable Inventory Analysis

It’s not enough for your manufacturing inventory software to simply tell you how much of a product you have. Your software should also be able to tell you what to do with the numbers. Like we’ve mentioned, your software should be able to project demand for an item via Smart Reordering functionality, that way you don’t run out of a hot item or over-order a product and that isn’t moving out of your warehouse as quickly. It’s also helpful if your software can help you determine which products might be good candidates for overstock liquidation, helping you to move inventory out of your warehouse as efficiently as possible.

Reorder Automation

Being able to automate as many processes as possible will save you countless headaches down the road, and one of the most important things to automate is product reorders. Within your manufacturing inventory software, you should be able to set a designated amount for a reorder. As soon as your stock begins to get low, the order will be automatically placed without you having to lift a finger. Just run the Inventory Velocity Report or schedule it using the Report Scheduling Module and reorder all the products at a click of a button. This ensures that you will always have enough product for your customers and will never have to worry about falling behind.

Streamlined Expense Tracking

Your manufacturing inventory software should allow you to easily see into your bottom line. Not only should it tell you your inventory and the figures associated with the product, but your software should also let you see service-based expenses. By streamlining every expense your business undergoes, your manufacturing inventory software allows you to take control of your finances and make the best monetary decisions for your company.

Convenient Cloud System

While you will of course have to use your manufacturing inventory software in the warehouse itself, it’s also nice to be able to pull up this information from anywhere in the world. DEAR Warehouse Management Solution (WMS) integrates seamlessly with DEAR manufacturing inventory software, streamlining your order fulfilment processes while increasing your productivity and reducing costs in the warehouse. Be sure that your software comes with a cloud-based and software-as-a-service (SaaS) feature. Not only does this add an extra layer of security to your information, but it also allows you to designate the number of users allowed and the amount of data you require. This feature is especially helpful if you maintain multiple locations, as you can quickly reference the numbers wherever you are and compare them side-by-side.

Flexibility

While many manufacturing inventory software systems are designed to be one-size-fits-all, your business is one of a kind. Make sure that your software can be configured to your exact specifications and can provide the features you need in your factory. This may include being able to designate certain users for specific functions by assigning the fine-grained control over user permissions, setting your own KPIs and metrics, customising the document and email templates, and adopting your own budget and expense accounting structure.

Advanced Barcoding Systems

Your barcode system can make or break your entire operation. If your manufacturing inventory software isn’t able to meet your high demands, you might risk miscounts or find your business lagging behind in a big project. Your software should be able to support a variety of standards, including everything from your typical barcode to more advanced QR codes. DEAR manufacturing inventory software can handle advanced barcodes with embedded data, which are ideal for stores that sell products based on weight or price. 

Progress Tracking

Especially when you have a big order coming through, it’s just not enough to know that your order has or hasn’t been completed. The ideal manufacturing inventory software will allow you to see the progress of a job and track it in real time. This feature is not only advantageous for you when you speak to your clients, but it can also help your employees understand exactly what needs to be done at any given time.

While there are countless manufacturing inventory software systems available today, DEAR Systems is proud to offer one of the most affordable and advanced versions. Our software allows you to create advanced Bills of Materials, implement parallel and non-parallel operations in a Production BOM, define manufacturing processes for a single finished product or for multiple finished products at a time, quickly estimate costs by allocating them correctly to all the produced products as a result of one production process, generate the Production BOM Explosion by displaying an assembly at the highest level broken down into its individual components and parts at the lowest level, address production issues as replanning the Capacity and managing the overallocated resources, reschedule the production orders, production runs and operations, and so much more. Our team is always available to help with any questions or concerns, and once you’ve tried the software for yourself, you’ll wonder how your warehouse ever survived without it! Contact us today to learn more about our services.

 Get a DEAR Consultation today

 What are the Benefits of Cloud ERP Solutions?

5 Ways Cloud Inventory Management Software Helps Your Business Grow

The post 8 Key Features to Look for in Manufacturing Inventory Software appeared first on DEAR Cloud Inventory Management.

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The Cryptocurrency Paradox And Why Crypto Is Failing

New Post has been published on https://cryptnus.com/2018/11/the-cryptocurrency-paradox-and-why-crypto-is-failing/

The Cryptocurrency Paradox And Why Crypto Is Failing

The Bitcoin BubbleJay Adkisson

An entire industry exists to take advantage of cryptocurrencies. From the creators of individual cryptocurrencies, to folks who sell software apps such as wallets, to companies that are attracting venture capital for vaguely-described synergies involving the retail use of cryptocurrency, to hedge funds that invest directly in cryptocurrency to those who put on conferences on how to get rich on cryptocurrency, literally billions of dollars worldwide have poured into crypto.

Yet, cryptocurrency is failing, badly. The vast majority of cryptocurrency have already ended up listed at http://www.deadcoins.com and even the flagship best-of-class Bitcoin as of this writing has lost 80% of its value in the last year. Despite the continuing hype for crypto, seemingly every day makes it look worse as both an idea and an investment.

To understand why crypto is failing, it is necessary to understand what crypto isn’t and is.

Cryptocurrency Is Not A Revenue-Producing Asset. Unlike a stock whose value can be determined by earnings, cryptocurrency provides no income stream to its owner. While some owners like to think of themselves as “owning the technology”, nothing could be further from the truth since they earn no royalties if somebody else is using that technology. Because crypto has no earnings, that means it has no P/E ratio by which a rational price can be established. Crypto isn’t even as good as a zero-coupon bond, however, since it has no maturity date when principal will be returned.

Cryptocurrency Is Not A Commodity. A commodity is usually something that is consumed, leading to demand for more. Oil and wheat are examples; once a stock of those is consumed, another must be supplied. Cryptocurrency is not a commodity. There is no demand for cryptocurrency in the consumption sense, and an individual unit of cryptocurrency is not destroyed by a transaction but can be reused over and over such that most demand can be met by existing stocks.

Cryptocurrency Is Not A Store Of Value. Some pundits have claimed that crypto is a “store of value”, meaning that if you put $1,000 of value into crypto today, then in the future you will be able to get your $1,000 of value back by selling the crypto. That’s not the way it works in reality, however, because cryptocurrency is so volatile. As mentioned, the flagship Bitcoin has lost 80% of its value in a year, which in retrospect doesn’t seem like a particularly good way to store value.

Cryptocurrency Is A Currency . . . Crypto is currency, meaning a mechanism of exchange. In the past, humankind has used everything from pretty seashells to beaver pelts to rare metal coins to (now) little pieces of paper with uninteresting pictures on them as units of exchange. At the end of the day, this is all that crypto is — a unit of exchange that does not exist in the material world but instead exists only in binary code on computer ledgers somewhere. If this sounds high-tech and really innovative, then you’d better consider that we’ve had such payment systems for years in the form of debit and credit cards, wire-transfers, and services such as PayPal.

The difference is that those older systems dealt in the local governmental currency, such that a Nebraskan buying beer with a credit card did it with dollars, or if there was an international wire-transfer from Moscow there was a conversion from rubles to dollars, etc. With cryptocurrency, the currency itself is predominantly used so long as the user can find a seller who takes that cryptocurrency, although it should be noted that Bitcoin ATMs dispense cash in the local currency. The point being that cryptocurrency, as its name suggests, is in fact currency and not something else.

. . . But An Unprotected Currency. There is a reason that some nations have relatively stable currencies such as those found in the industrialized nations: The governments of those nations have strong central banks (in the U.S., the Federal Reserve Bank for example) which keep those currencies stable by variously expanding or contracting the money supply, guiding government economic policy decisions, and using a variety of methods — including criminal prosecution — to prevent currency manipulation.

By contrast, nations such as Venezuela, the Sudan, etc., have no meaningful central banks and thus their currencies are extremely volatile, sometimes changing their value relative to the stable currencies by the hour. These nations are subject to what amounts to “currency anarchy” and have no effective weapons in their financial arsenals to combat price manipulation.

Cryptocurrency falls into this later category. With cryptocurrency, there is no governing body to expand or limit the money supply to meet changing events, and utterly no mechanism to prevent widespread price manipulation. This is the primary reason why cryptocurrencies are so volatile — like a nuclear reactor without control rods, once a cryptocurrency is launched there is no way to control it until it finally burns itself out.

This is also why cryptocurrency adoption by merchants has dramatically lagged predictions: What merchant wants to accept much of a currency that is like a Venezuelan bolivar that can go down in minutes? Oh sure, a few merchants have thought that it is neat to hang a sign on their window that says “We accept Bitcoin!” because that sounds kind of hip, and, who knows, maybe somebody will make a large purchase someday with crypto. But taking in a bunch of it everyday and risk losing a bunch of money on wild price swings? No way.

Cryptocurrency As A Speculative Investment

By far the most purchases of cryptocurrency have been raw speculation; investors buying particular cryptos in the hope that they would dramatically appreciate in value. This phenomena was illustrated in the Great Crypto Boom of December, 2018, when Bitcoin shot up in value from $1,000 per Bitcoin on January 1, 2017 to $19,783.06 in mid-December of that year.

During the 2017 bubble, many ordinary folks who were smart enough to sell became instant multi-millionaires and, just like the gold-rush days of old, many other ordinary folks started taking second mortgages on their houses and cashing out their credit cards and IRAs to spin the Wheel of Crypto Fortune and buy in, which further accelerated the price until that bubble finally burst and those belated investors were wiped out.

The point being that few, if any, of those investors bought into Bitcoin because they had faith that it would be the “currency of tomorrow”, but rather they just wanted to get rich, and quick. But even as the Bitcoin bubble was building, other promoters of their own cryptocurrencies were out pitching their deal as the next big thing. It is these other currencies — nearly all of which eventually failed entirely — ended up on deadcoins.com where you can read their obituaries. The other cyptos (called “altcoins”) often lacked any usage whatsoever and had no merchants that would accept them in payment. But folks bought in because they were speculating on their values rapidly appreciating just as Bitcoin had done. But this is not to overlook that Bitcoin itself has value only because of the promise of future appreciation, i.e., the price of Bitcoin is driven primarily by speculation.

The Cryptocurrency Paradox

All this now brings us to The Cryptocurrency Paradox:

Crypto has value based on its usage to buy things; because of that value, most owners of crypto do not want to use it to buy things; therefore, crypto is not widely used to buy things and thus has no value other than related to relatively minimal usage.

In other words, the sine qua non of a particular cryptocurrency is based on the mutual concepts of “acceptance” (how many merchants will take the crypto in exchange for goods or services) and “usage” (how many owners are spending their crypto in exchange for goods or services).

Whatever the rates of acceptance, the problem is that because crypto owners expect their crypto to appreciate in value, they are holding it as an investment and not using it. This is supported, among other things, by a study reported in Reuters that usage of Bitcoin had gone down approximately 80% in January to September, 2018.

Thus, the paradox: Crypto investors buy and hold crypto because they want their crypto to appreciate in value, but unless they use their crypto the value will not go up. To the contrary, unless the crypto is used, the value of the crypto will keep falling, and investors will start unloading their investment to avoid further losses. Repeating this cycle leads to the inevitable “death cycle” that is so common to finance, and ends badly for the crypto and any remaining investors. This seems to be what is happening to Bitcoin now.

Because of this paradox, no cryptocurrency is likely to be successful until investors can be persuaded to actively use their crypto, and not simply hold on to it and speculate that it goes up in value.

But, again, there are significant barriers to increasing usage not the least of which is crypto’s high volatility, and the possibility (if not likelihood) of widespread price manipulation. Here, acceptance plays a role: What large company wants to hold on its books an asset that can fluctuate by 10% in an hour, or which can be pumped-and-dumped by bad actors? But even beyond this, the fundamental problem is that there is no means available (such as taxes) to incentivize investors to quit holding for speculation and actually use large amounts of crypto for mercantile activities.

It is largely because of this paradox that leading economists such as Nouriel Roubini and many others have predicted that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will sooner or later return to a value near zero. With Bitcoin in a long slide, and the handful of remaining altcoins having one foot already in the grave, it is probably more likely than not that such will be end result for all cryptocurrencies unless some really bright person can figure out how to solve this paradox.

In the meantime, there will certainly be peaks and valleys in the price of Bitcoin, and the volatility is likely to get even worse which will drive down usage as a currency even further. But something quite spectacular will have to occur to break the paradox and stop Bitcoin and the remaining altcoins from entering the death cycle. One this is absolutely certain, however, which is that for the next few months investing in cryptocurrency should be strictly limited to those willing and able to lose the totality of their investment because that is exactly what will be at risk.

As things go now, it is looking more and more like the final procession of crypto funerals will occur in 2019. In that case, the epitaph written on the tombstone of Bitcoin and the altcoins might well be that phrase by which Jefferson Davis in his later years characterized the failure of the Confederacy: “Died of a Theory.”

This article at https://goo.gl/TK8q1X

5 Best Python Machine Learning IDEs

In this article we are going to discuss about best Python Machine Learning IDEs and will find out which one suits you according to your needs. Also we will be deciding what should be the system requirements and hardware configuration of our machine to run these IDEs smoothly without any lag. So without wasting a moment let us get straight to the point.

IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

As it is very much clear from the name itself what an IDE is and for most of the people here who are into programming this is not a new term. So here we are talking about different IDEs that are available for us as a data-engineer/enthusiast and to decide which one will be an ideal choice according to our needs.

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So, here we are going to mention five IDEs that are being helpful for the data scientists and engineers and are productive too. Based on their respective features you will be very easily to choose an IDE of your choice. Come let’s explore.

5 Best Python Machine Learning IDEs

1. Spyder

Coming to our very first focus i.e. Spyder. This IDE got this short name from it’s name itself: “Scientific Python Development Environment”. Pierre Raybaut is the author of Spyder and it got officially released on October 18, 2009 and is written solely in Python.

Features at a glance:

Very simple and light-weight IDE with detailed documentation and quite easy to install.

This is an open source editor and supports code completion, introspection, goto definition as well as horizontal and vertical splitting.

This editor comes with a Documentation Viewer where you can see the documentation related to classes or functions you gotta use.

Like most of the IDEs, this also supports Variable Explorer which is a helpful tool to explore and edit the variables that we have created during file execution.

It supports runtime debugging i.e. the errors will be seen on the screen as soon as you type them.

This IDE integrates with some of the crucial libraries like NumPy, Matplotlib, SciPy etc.

Spyder is considered best in the cases where it is been used as an interactive console for testing and development of scientific applications and scripts which make use of libraries such as SciPy, NumPy and Matplotlib.

Tip: Want to download? No need to bother we’ve got you covered. Click here to download your version of Spyder.

2. Geany

Geany is primarily a Python machine learning IDE authored by Enrico Troger and got officially released on October 19, 2005. It has been written in C & C++ and is a light-weight IDE. Despite of being a small IDE it is as capable as any other IDE present out there.

Features at a glance

Geany’s editor supports highlighting of the Syntax and line numebering.

It comes equipped with the features like code completion, auto closing of braces, auto HTML and XML tags closing.

It also comes with code folding.

This IDE supports code navigation.

Tip: Download your instance of Geany here.

3. Rodeo

This is special we got here. This is a Python IDE that primarily focuses and built for the purpose of machine learning and data science. This particular IDE use IPython kernel (you will know this later) and was authored by Yhat.

Features at a glance

It is mainly famous due to its ability to let users explore, compare and interact with the data frames & plots.

Like Geany’s editor this also comes with a editor that has capability of auto-completion, syntax highlighting.

This also provides a support for IPython making the code writing fast.

Also Rodeo comes with Python tutorials integrated within which makes it quite favourable for the users.

This IDE is well known for the fact that for the data scientists and engineers who work on RStudio IDE can very easily adapt to it.

Perfection doesn’t exist and so is the case for Rodeo, it doesn’t consist of code analysis, PEP 8, etc.

Tip: Download your Rodeo workspace here.

4. PyCharm

PyCharm is the IDE which is most famous in the professional world whether it is for data science or for conventional Python programming. This IDE is built by one of the big company out there that we all might have heard about: Jetbrains, company released the official version of PyCharm in October 2010.

PyCharm comes in two different editions: Community Edition which we all can have access to essentially for free and second one is the Professional Edition for which you will need to pay some bucks.

Features at a glance

It includes code completion, auto-indentation and code formatting.

This also comes with runtime debugger i.e. will display the errors as soon as you type them.

It contains PEP-8 that enables writing neat codes.

It consist of debugger for Javascript and Python with a GUI.

It has one of the most advanced documentation viewer along with video tutorials.

PyCharm being accepted widely among big companies for the purpose of Machine Learning is due to its ability to provide support for important libraries like Matplotlib, NumPy and Pandas.

Also PyCharm is capable of distinguishing between different environments (Python 2.7, Python 3.5) according to different project’s needs.

Tip: Download your version of Pycharm here.

5. JuPyter Notebook or IPython Notebook

Due to its simplicity this one became a sensational IDE among the data enthusiasts as it is the descendant of IPython. Best thing about JuPyter is that there you can very easily switch between the different versions of python (or any other language) according to your preference.

Features at a glance

It’s an open source platform

It can support up to 40 different languages to work on including languages beneficial for data sciences like R, Python, Julia, etc.

It supports sharing live codes, and even documents with equations and visualizations.

In JuPyter you can produce outputs in the form of images, videos and even LaTex with the help of several useful widgets.

You can even avail the advantage of Big Data tools due to the fact that JuPyter has got Big Data integration within to help the data scientists.

Tip: Download the JuPyter IDE here.

Conclusion

Since we have gone through all the IDEs that are famous in the field of Data Sciences and Machine Learning, now you must be able to make your choices based on the points we’ve discussed above.

Pro Tip: We would recommend our readers to use JuPyter Notebook if you are giving a start to ML. It has got that simplicity and features that most of the IDEs have combined. Apart from the features discussed above it also supports for data cleaning, transformation, etc. to help its users. Talking in terms of ML JuPyter has a good support for the libraries like Pandas, NumPy and Matplotlib. You can get complete guide on how to install and configure JuPyter here.

Comment down below if you know about any other good machine learning ide for python.

The post 5 Best Python Machine Learning IDEs appeared first on The Crazy Programmer.

Identity Theft Solutions for Families

The best identity theft solution would be to protect yourself, and get the information you need to keep yourself from becoming a victim. Guard your personal data, and just give it out if you're certain it is needed.

Never give your social security number on the internet. If you frequently access your financial accounts on the internet, run your anti-spy ware program before obtaining your account. Regularly update your virus protection and anti-spy programs programs.

Keep track of your fees, so you will know whether any fraudulent charges have happened. If you don't receive your statements, contact enhanced identity theft protection the bank immediately. Your invoices could be sent to an alternate address so you won't notice the extra charges on your invoice.

They will tell you there is a problem with your account, and they need one to send your social security number, or your own credit card number to them to solve the issue. If you get this type of request, don't react to it, or click on the link in the email. You can either call the company to confirm your data, or visit their website by checking their web address directly into the browser address bar.

If you receive a call telling you that you have won a valuable prize, and they simply need to confirm rknglobal.org your information, ask them to send you a written application. If they refuse, hang up the phone.

As the incidence of identity theft raises, the offenders continue to come up with new ways of attempting to get your own personal information. The majority of them would rather take the easy way out, and victimize people who are unprotected, and oblivious of the steps which you can use to protect yourself. Be vigilant about protecting your personal information, and keeping your computer protected. That is the ideal identity theft solution.

Most credit card companies have implemented identity theft security to assist you in the event that you become a victim. You should not assume that you have protection since you handle a significant financial institution. Have them send you info concerning the type of protection you are eligible for, and how to access it if you want it. This type of information that you want to have before you find you require it.

Due to this present growth in identity theft, alternatives and prevention tips are getting to be a requirement for everyone. Many victims of identity theft are unaware they've been concentrated until weeks after the initial crime. Your charge card invoices could be lost for a month, and when you contact the bank, they tell you that there's been an address change that you didn't authorize. You may be applying for a mortgage renewal, and discover that your great credit was destroyed by a scammer. This time lag gives the scammer a head start at spending all your hard-earned money.

However, over the next 3 times my checking account balance improved by $400-$500.00 daily unbeknownst to me or my spouse. Back then it was not as easy to receive your accounts as it is today. For three days we had no clue that

I was recently married and my spouse and I'd just combined our separate checking accounts into one. 1 day I was at home assessing our accounts balances preparing to compose monthly bills. (This particular incident happened prior to the presence of online banking.) When I called the bank to confirm our account balance, I discovered that our bank accounts balance had increased unexpectedly by four hundred bucks. At the time, I did not think much of this four hundred dollar increase because my first thought was that my spouse had deposited a check and just didn't mention it to me, no big deal

Some specialty businesses offer identity theft solutions. They will allow you to take steps to protect yourself from becoming a victim of identity theft. They'll provide you checklists, internet references, and clear measures to take to resolve identity theft issues. Specially trained staff is available to help you fill out police reports, contact creditors and credit bureaus, as well as the FTC. They work together with you to solve the numerous issues that you will experience as a victim of identity theft.

Here's how they did it

As you can see from my personal story that occurred many years back that some forms of identity theft are comparatively simple crimes to commit and are easy to eliminate. In my case , I gave the perpetrator(s) the opportunity to victimize me very careless with my personal info.

In retrospect, I didn't understand the first clue that something was wrong when Ronald-K-Noble's facebook I neglected to follow up with my wife when I noticed the very first deposit.

Items I regularly shred are bank statements, mail with our names on it, junk mail, monthly invoices, (once I pay them of course) expired credit cards, pay stubs and whatever else I don't want at the hands of a identity theft opportunist.

Before I shred info that I deem important or I'd like to keep a record of, I

Back then I was not as careful as I am now with my banking records i.e. statements, cancelled checks and deposit slips. I somehow inadvertently threw some checks, deposit slips or both from the trash bin that was located in a heavily traveled alley behind our apartment building. At that time, there was not a lock on the garbage bin and anyone driving or walking can sift through the trash without increasing suspicion. As it turned out, the perpetrator(s) needed accurate information I'd given to them (by not being careful) to carry out the identity theft.

The perpetrator(s)) would obtain another individual's bank account tests by fraud or theft. They'd then go to the lender as if they were me, walk up to the teller window and using one of my deposit slips, deposit a check payable to me using the stolen checks. Typically that amount will be between $400.00-$500.00. They'd finish the transaction by requesting for $100.00 back. I was told that the bank did not require identification for this small amount of money back when depositing a check.

The time that it took us to shut our account, consult with the credit bureaus, open new accounts, obtain new checks was time consuming. My anger soon turned to frustration when I saw firsthand how cavalier the bank was about this crime or what it's effects could or would have on my profile. It appeared like they simply didn't care. In the large scheme of things from the banks ruling, this is a minor breach of a single client's bank accounts. No big deal. A five hundred dollar loss isn't even petty cash for a lender. However, it wasn't about the money per se because our accounts was finally restored to the initial amount prior to the breach. But, my identity had not been revived as well as the perpetrator was out there free to continue to victimize others.

The perpetrator only walked from the lender, pleasant and simple with $100.00 in his pocket. This occurred five times in a four day interval which equates to some $500.00 loss to my account and a whole lot of time to fix.

The bank representative told me I would need to arrive at the bank in person to straighten out things because they too (the bank) had observed the suspicious transactions happening on our accounts. The driveway to the bank was a brief ride but it seemed like forever because I had a sinking feeling the bank was likely to tell me that our account was cleaned out. After I arrived in the bank and sat Status for protected identity down with one of the branch directors, I was relieved to find out the thieves were only able to steal five hundred bucks. Although the amount of money stolen from us was little, the incident was very unsettling to me along with my new wife. To know that my identity had been compromised by someone impersonating me hammering my name on checks that were drawn on closed accounts made me very mad.

Following the fourth day, I began receiving "returned test letters" from my bank stating that checks deposited to our account had been written from closed accounts and had "bounced." At that point I knew I had solutions to identity theft problem a problem with our account and that I was devastated and scared when I realized that I was a victim of identity theft. I promptly called the bank to find out the extent of the damage done to our account

Our Identity-Theft Solutions So you've got the newest security features installed in your pc and you never use the internet to shop or bank; you are still not entirely protected.

We do not give out our private data in response to email, snail mail or telemarketer questions unless we initiated the contact. We are very careful not to respond to email posts that are phishing for our information. Some of these websites are extremely good at simulating legitimate websites. However, legitimate companies and your bank do not ask you to update your personal data via email. Please, do not fall for these scams.

This was my experience with identity theft and some of the identity theft answers that my wife and I implemented later I became a victim.

We have a credit score tracking subscription that tracks our credit reports for any changes to our profile. I inspect our credit reports through the online service after every 2 weeks. (You may look at your personal credit report as often as you like through the monitoring service.)

Despite all the deterrents and bureaus involved many identity theft alternatives how to solve identity theft fall flat as there are several loopholes to gain access to private information.

We advise that the post office if we're heading out of town for more than a couple of days and ask for a vacation hold. We take it to the postal collection box located nearby or the post office itself.

Will scan it into my desktop computer and convert them into PDF files for later viewing and record keeping. This is a simple way to keep records of particular information without keeping endless amounts of paper that has your personal info on it. Prior to implementing this solution, I would recommend that you ensure your firewall and anti virus software are up to date and in good working order. You should also put a password on your personal computer to protect it from prying eyes.

We are living in a technological age where hackers, thieves and impersonators do a pretty good job at getting what they would like to further their requirements. Your garbage is up for private scrutiny when you put it to the curb; your own mailbox, in most instances can be readily opened and contents removed and did you know that your mail can easily be plotted through the world wide web? The postal office may tell you that they have checks and balances but it can be accomplished.

We have a lockable mailbox to stop easy access to our mail. I am amazed how many people do not have locks in their mailboxes. If your email is stolen which is a federal crime.

Keep all your important personal records; social security cards, birth certificates, passports, insurance policies, IRS and State tax documents, credit cards you don't keep in your wallet along with your marriage license secured in a thick safe that is bolted to the ground in your property. Identify thieves are also thieves who will aim a house specifically to steal confidential files in order to assume identities.

I encourage you to inform your identity theft stories along with your identity theft alternatives so we all can learn from them. Most of us need to be aware of the scams, fraud and tricks out there so we don't find out, after the damage is devastating, that somebody is walking around pretending to be you and putting you deeply in debt. Educate a friend or relative about identity theft so that they do not become victims.

We don't take our Social Security cards around with us. There's no reason to take your Social Security card in your pocket on a daily basis. Commit those amounts to memory. If you want to demonstrate the actual card or perhaps give out the number for some reason, take care to inquire about what it is going to be used for and if it's absolutely required. If possible do not provide your Social Security amount to medical hospitals or offices. Oftentimes a drivers license number is acceptable. Medical fraud and identify theft throughout your medical file is huge because almost everyone in the health care office has access to your chart.