New standards help NFTs reach their full potential.

NFTs lack interoperability and functionality. They have great potential but are mostly speculative. To maximize NFTs, we need flexible smart contracts.

Current requirements are too restrictive.

Most NFTs are based on ERC-721, which makes exchanging them easy. CryptoKitties, a popular online game, used the 2017 standard to demonstrate NFTs' potential.

This simple standard includes a base URI and incremental IDs for tokens. Add the tokenID to the base URI to get the token's metadata.

This let creators collect NFTs. Many NFT projects store metadata on IPFS, a distributed storage network, but others use Google Drive. NFT buyers often don't realize that if the creators delete or move the files, their NFT is just a pointer.

This isn't the standard's biggest issue. There's no way to validate NFT projects.

Creators are one of the most important aspects of art, but nothing is stored on-chain.

ERC-721 contracts only have a name and symbol.

Most of the data on OpenSea's collection pages isn't from the NFT's smart contract. It was added through a platform input field, so it's in the marketplace's database. Other websites may have different NFT information.

In five years, your NFT will be just a name, symbol, and ID.

Your NFT doesn't mention its creators. Although the smart contract has a public key, it doesn't reveal who created it.

The NFT's creators and their reputation are crucial to its value. Think digital fashion and big brands working with well-known designers when more professionals use NFTs. Don't you want them in your NFT?

Would paintings be as valuable if their artists were unknown? Would you believe it's real?

Buying directly from an on-chain artist would reduce scams. Current standards don't allow this data.

Most creator profiles live on centralized marketplaces and could disappear. Current platforms have outpaced underlying standards. The industry's standards are lagging.

For NFTs to grow beyond pointers to a monkey picture file, we may need to use new Web3-based standards.

Introducing NFTs 2.0

Fabian Vogelsteller, creator of ERC-20, developed new web3 standards. He proposed LSP7 Digital Asset and LSP8 Identifiable Digital Asset, also called NFT 2.0.

NFT and token metadata inputs are extendable. Changes to on-chain metadata inputs allow NFTs to evolve. Instead of public keys, the contract can have Universal Profile addresses attached. These profiles show creators' faces and reputations. NFTs can notify asset receivers, automating smart contracts.

LSP7 and LSP8 use ERC725Y. Using a generic data key-value store gives contracts much-needed features:

• The asset can be customized and made to stand out more by allowing for unlimited data attachment.

• Recognizing changes to the metadata

• using a hash reference for metadata rather than a URL reference

This base will allow more metadata customization and upgradeability. These guidelines are:

• Genuine and Verifiable Now, the creation of an NFT by a specific Universal Profile can be confirmed by smart contracts.

• Dynamic NFTs can update Flexible & Updatable Metadata, allowing certain things to evolve over time.

• Protected metadata Now, secure metadata that is readable by smart contracts can be added indefinitely.

• Better NFTS prevent the locking of NFTs by only being sent to Universal Profiles or a smart contract that can interact with them.

Summary

NFTS standards lack standardization and powering features, limiting the industry.

ERC-721 is the most popular NFT standard, but it only represents incremental tokenIDs without metadata or asset representation. No standard sender-receiver interaction or security measures ensure safe asset transfers.

NFT 2.0 refers to the new LSP7-DigitalAsset and LSP8-IdentifiableDigitalAsset standards.

They have new standards for flexible metadata, secure transfers, asset representation, and interactive transfer.

With NFTs 2.0 and Universal Profiles, creators could build on-chain reputations.

NFTs 2.0 could bring the industry's needed innovation if it wants to move beyond trading profile pictures for speculation.

10 biases in 10 visuals

Cognitive biases are crucial for UX research, design, and daily life. Our biases distort reality.

After learning about biases at my UX Research bootcamp, I studied Erika Hall's Just Enough Research and used the Nielsen Norman Group's wealth of information. 10 images show my findings.

1. Bias in sampling

Misselection of target population members causes sampling bias. For example, you are building an app to help people with food intolerances log their meals and are targeting adult males (years 20-30), adult females (ages 20-30), and teenage males and females (ages 15-19) with food intolerances. However, a sample of only adult males and teenage females is biased and unrepresentative.

2. Sponsor Disparity

Sponsor bias occurs when a study's findings favor an organization's goals. Beware if X organization promises to drive you to their HQ, compensate you for your time, provide food, beverages, discounts, and warmth. Participants may endeavor to be neutral, but incentives and prizes may bias their evaluations and responses in favor of X organization.

In Just Enough Research, Erika Hall suggests describing the company's aims without naming it.

Third, False-Consensus Bias

False-consensus bias is when a person thinks others think and act the same way. For instance, if a start-up designs an app without researching end users' needs, it could fail since end users may have different wants. https://www.nngroup.com/videos/false-consensus-effect/

Working directly with the end user and employing many research methodologies to improve validity helps lessen this prejudice. When analyzing data, triangulation can boost believability.

Bias of the interviewer

I struggled with this bias during my UX research bootcamp interviews. Interviewing neutrally takes practice and patience. Avoid leading questions that structure the story since the interviewee must interpret them. Nodding or smiling throughout the interview may subconsciously influence the interviewee's responses.

The Curse of Knowledge

The curse of knowledge occurs when someone expects others understand a subject as well as they do. UX research interviews and surveys should reduce this bias because technical language might confuse participants and harm the research. Interviewing participants as though you are new to the topic may help them expand on their replies without being influenced by the researcher's knowledge.

Confirmation Bias

Most prevalent bias. People highlight evidence that supports their ideas and ignore data that doesn't. The echo chamber of social media creates polarization by promoting similar perspectives.

A researcher with confirmation bias may dismiss data that contradicts their research goals. Thus, the research or product may not serve end users.

Design biases

UX Research design bias pertains to study construction and execution. Design bias occurs when data is excluded or magnified based on human aims, assumptions, and preferences.

The Hawthorne Impact

Remember when you behaved differently while the teacher wasn't looking? When you behaved differently without your parents watching? A UX research study's Hawthorne Effect occurs when people modify their behavior because you're watching. To escape judgment, participants may act and speak differently.

To avoid this, researchers should blend into the background and urge subjects to act alone.

The bias against social desire

People want to belong to escape rejection and hatred. Research interviewees may mislead or slant their answers to avoid embarrassment. Researchers should encourage honesty and confidentiality in studies to address this. Observational research may reduce bias better than interviews because participants behave more organically.

Relative Time Bias

Humans tend to appreciate recent experiences more. Consider school. Say you failed a recent exam but did well in the previous 7 exams. Instead, you may vividly recall the last terrible exam outcome.

If a UX researcher relies their conclusions on the most recent findings instead of all the data and results, recency bias might occur.

I hope you liked learning about UX design, research, and real-world biases.

Its not a fuc*ing fad.

It's not about boring monkeys or photos as nfts; that's just what's been pushed up and made a lot of money. The technology underlying those ridiculous nft photos will one day prove your house and automobile ownership and tell you where your banana came from. Are you ready for web3? Soar!

People don't realize that absolutely anything can and will be part of the blockchain and smart contracts, making them even better. I'll tell you a secret: it will and is happening.

Why?

Why is something blockchain-based a good idea? So let’s speak about cars!

So a new Tesla car is manufactured, and when you buy it, it is bound to an NFT on the blockchain that proves current ownership. The NFT in the smart contract can contain some data about the current owner of the car and some data about the car's status, such as the number of miles driven, the car's overall quality, and so on, as well as a reference to a digital document bound to the NFT that has more information.

Now, 40 years from now, if you want to buy a used automobile, you can scan the car's serial number to view its NFT and see all of its history, each owner, how long they owned it, if it had damages, and more. Since it's on the blockchain, it can't be tampered with.

When you're ready to buy it, the owner posts it for sale, you buy it, and it's sent to your wallet. 5 seconds to change owner, 100% safe and verifiable.

Incorporate insurance logic into the car contract. If you crashed, your car's smart contract would take money from your insurance contract and deposit it in an insurance company wallet.

It's limitless. Your funds may be used by investors to provide insurance as they profit from everyone's investments.

Or suppose all car owners in a country deposit a fixed amount of money into an insurance smart contract that promises if something happens, we'll take care of it. It could be as little as $100-$500 per year, and in a country with 10 million people, maybe 3 million would do that, which would be $500 000 000 in that smart contract and it would be used by the insurance company to invest in assets or take a cut, literally endless possibilities.

Instead of $300 per month, you may pay $300 per year to be covered if something goes wrong, and that may include multiple insurances.

What about your grocery store banana, though?

Yes that too.

You can scan a banana to learn its complete history. You'll be able to see where it was cultivated, every middleman in the supply chain, and hopefully the banana's quality, farm, and ingredients used.

If you want locally decent bananas, you can only buy them, offering you transparency and options. I believe it will be an online marketplace where farmers publish their farms and products for trust and transparency. You might also buy bananas from the farmer.

And? Food security to finish the article. If an order of bananas included a toxin, you could easily track down every banana from the same origin and supply chain and uncover the root cause. This is a tremendous thing that will save lives and have a big impact; did you realize that 1 in 6 Americans gets poisoned by food every year? This could lower the number.

To summarize:

Smart contracts can issue nfts as proof of ownership and include functionality.

Unleash the power of the Option key ⌥

#1 Open a link in the Private tab first.

Previously, if I needed to open a Safari link in a private window, I would:

• copied the URL with the right click command,

• choose File > New Private Window to open a private window, and

• clicked return after pasting the URL.

I've found a more straightforward way.

Right-clicking a link shows this, right?

Hold option (⌥) for:

Click Open Link in New Private Window while holding.

Finished!

#2. Instead of searching for specific characters, try this

You may use unicode for business or school. Most people Google them when they need them.

That is lengthy!

You can type some special characters just by pressing ⌥ and a key.

For instance

• ⌥+2 -> ™ (Trademark)
• ⌥+0 -> ° (Degree)
• ⌥+G -> © (Copyright)
• ⌥+= -> ≠ (Not equal to)
• ⌥+< -> ≤ (Less than or equal to)
• ⌥+> -> ≥ (Greater then or equal to)
• ⌥+/ -> ÷ (Different symbol for division)

#3 Activate Do Not Disturb silently.

Do Not Disturb when sharing my screen is awkward for me (because people may think Im trying to hide some secret notifications).

Here's another method.

Hold ⌥ and click on Time (at the extreme right on the menu-bar).

Now, DND is activated (secretly!). To turn it off, do it again.

Note: This works only for DND focus.

#4. Resize a window starting from its center

Although this is rarely useful, it is still a hidden trick.

When you resize a window, the opposite edge or corner is used as the pivot, right?

However, if you want to resize it with its center as the pivot, hold while doing so.

#5. Yes, Cut-Paste is available on Macs as well (though it is slightly different).

I call it copy-move rather than cut-paste. This is how it works.

Carry it out.

Choose a file (by clicking on it), then copy it (⌘+C).

Go to a new location on your Mac. Do you use ⌘+V to paste it? However, to move it, press ⌘+⌥+V.

This removes the file from its original location and copies it here. And it works exactly like cut-and-paste on Windows.

#6. Instantly expand all folders

Set your Mac's folders to List view.

Assume you have one folder with multiple subfolders, each of which contains multiple files. And you wanted to look at every single file that was over there.

How would you do?

You're used to clicking the ⌄ glyph near the folder and each subfolder to expand them all, right? Instead, hold down ⌥ while clicking ⌄ on the parent folder.

This is what happens next.

Everything expands.

View/Copy a file's path as an added bonus

If you want to see the path of a file in Finder, select it and hold ⌥, and you'll see it at the bottom for a moment.

To copy its path, right-click on the folder and hold down ⌥ to see this

Click on Copy <"folder name"> as Pathname to do it.

#7 "Save As"

I was irritated by the lack of "Save As" in Pages when I first got a Mac (after 15 years of being a Windows guy).

It was necessary for me to save the file as a new file, in a different location, with a different name, or both.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do it on a Mac.

However, I recently discovered that it appears when you hold ⌥ when in the File menu.

Yay!

Taking great financial advice is key to financial success.

A wealthy man told me to INVEST MY MONEY when I was young.

As I entered Starbucks, an older man was leaving. I noticed his watch and expensive-looking shirt, not like the guy in the photo, but one made of fine fabric like vicuna wool, which can only be shorn every two to three years. His Bentley confirmed my suspicions about his wealth.

This guy looked like James Bond, so I asked him how to get rich like him.

"Drug dealer?" he laughed.

Whether he was telling the truth, I'll never know, and I didn't want to be an accessory, but he quickly added, "Kid, invest your money; it will do wonders." He left.

When he told me to invest, he didn't say what. Later, I realized the investment game has so many levels that even if he drew me a blueprint, I wouldn't understand it.

The best advice I received was to invest my earnings. I must decide where to invest.

I'll preface by saying I'm not a financial advisor or Your financial advisor, but I'll share what I've learned from books, links, and sources. The rest is up to you.

Basically:

Invest your Money

Money is money, whether you call it cake, dough, moolah, benjamins, paper, bread, etc.

If you're lucky, you can buy one of the gold shirts in the photo.

Investing your money today means putting it towards anything that could be profitable.

According to the website Investopedia:
“Investing is allocating money to generate income or profit.”

You can invest in a business, real estate, or a skill that will pay off later.

Everyone has different goals and wants at different stages of life, so investing varies.

He was probably a sugar daddy with his Bentley, nice shirt, and Rolex.

In my twenties, I started making "good" money; now, in my forties, with a family and three kids, I'm building a legacy for my grandkids.

“It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” — Robert Kiyosaki.

Money isn't evil, but lack of it is.

Financial stress is a major source of problems, according to studies. 

Being broke hurts, especially if you want to provide for your family or do things.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Benjamin Franklin.

Investing in knowledge is invaluable. Before investing, do your homework.

You probably didn't learn about investing when you were young, like I didn't. My parents were in survival mode, making investing difficult.

In my 20s, I worked in banking to better understand money.

So, why invest?

Growth requires investment.

Investing puts money to work and can build wealth. Your money may outpace inflation with smart investing. Compounding and the risk-return tradeoff boost investment growth.

Investing your money means you won't have to work forever — unless you want to.

Two common ways to make money are;

-working hard,

and

-interest or capital gains from investments.

Capital gains can help you invest.

“How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case.” — Robert G. Allen

If you keep your money in a savings account, you'll earn less than 2% interest at best; the bank makes money by loaning it out.

Savings accounts are a safe bet, but the low-interest rates limit your gains.

Don't skip it. An emergency fund should be in a savings account, not the market.

Other reasons to invest:

Investing can generate regular income.

If you own rental properties, the tenant's rent will add to your cash flow.

Daily, weekly, or monthly rentals (think Airbnb) generate higher returns year-round.

Capital gains are taxed less than earned income if you own dividend-paying or appreciating stock.

Time is on your side

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t — pays it.” — Albert Einstein

Historical data shows that young investors outperform older investors. So you can use compound interest over decades instead of investing at 45 and having less time to earn.

If I had taken that man's advice and invested in my twenties, I would have made a decent return by my thirties. (Depending on my investments)

So for those who live a YOLO (you only live once) life, investing can't hurt.

Investing increases your knowledge.

Lessons are clearer when you're invested. Each win boosts confidence and draws attention to losses. Losing money prompts you to investigate.

Before investing, I read many financial books, but I didn't understand them until I invested.

Now what?

What do you invest in? Equities, mutual funds, ETFs, retirement accounts, savings, business, real estate, cryptocurrencies, marijuana, insurance, etc.

The key is to start somewhere. Know you don't know everything. You must care.

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” — Lao Tzu.

Start simple because there's so much information. My first investment book was:

Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad"

This easy-to-read book made me hungry for more. This book is about the money lessons rich parents teach their children, which poor and middle-class parents neglect. The poor and middle-class work for money, while the rich let their assets work for them, says Kiyosaki.

There is so much to learn, but you gotta start somewhere.

More books:

***Wisdom

I hope I'm not suggesting that investing makes everything rosy. Remember three rules:

1. Losing money is possible.

2. Losing money is possible.

3. Losing money is possible.

You can lose money, so be careful.

Read, research, invest.

Golden rules for Investing your money

• Never invest money you can't lose.

• Financial freedom is possible regardless of income.

• "Courage taught me that any sound investment will pay off, no matter how bad a crisis gets." Helu Carlos

• "I'll tell you Wall Street's secret to wealth. When others are afraid, you're greedy. You're afraid when others are greedy. Buffett

• Buy low, sell high, and have an exit strategy.

• Ask experts or wealthy people for advice.

• "With a good understanding of history, we can have a clear vision of the future." Helu Carlos

• "It's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right." Soros

• "The individual investor should act as an investor, not a speculator." Graham

• "It's different this time" is the most dangerous investment phrase. Templeton

Lastly,

• Avoid quick-money schemes. Building wealth takes years, not months.

Start small and work your way up.

Thanks for reading!

This post is a summary. Read the full article here

Few sentences can have global significance.

Ethan Zuckerman invented the pop-up commercial in 1997.

He was working for Tripod.com, an online service that let people make little web pages for free. Tripod offered advertising to make money. Advertisers didn't enjoy seeing their advertising next to filthy content, like a user's anal sex website.

Zuckerman's boss wanted a solution. Wasn't there a way to move the ads away from user-generated content?

When you visited a Tripod page, a pop-up ad page appeared. So, the ad isn't officially tied to any user page. It'd float onscreen.

Here’s the thing, though: Zuckerman’s bit of Javascript, that created the popup ad? It was incredibly short — a single line of code:

window.open('http://tripod.com/navbar.html'
"width=200, height=400, toolbar=no, scrollbars=no, resizable=no, target=_top");

Javascript tells the browser to open a 200-by-400-pixel window on top of any other open web pages, without a scrollbar or toolbar.

Simple yet harmful! Soon, commercial websites mimicked Zuckerman's concept, infesting the Internet with pop-up advertising. In the early 2000s, a coder for a download site told me that most of their revenue came from porn pop-up ads.

Pop-up advertising are everywhere. You despise them. Hopefully, your browser blocks them.

Zuckerman wrote a single line of code that made the world worse.

I read Zuckerman's story in How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World. Torie Bosch compiled a humorous anthology of short writings about code that tipped the world.

Most of these samples are quite short. Pop-cultural preconceptions about coding say that important code is vast and expansive. Hollywood depicts programmers as blurs spouting out Niagaras of code. Google's success was formerly attributed to its 2 billion lines of code.

It's usually not true. Google's original breakthrough, the piece of code that propelled Google above its search-engine counterparts, was its PageRank algorithm, which determined a web page's value based on how many other pages connected to it and the quality of those connecting pages. People have written their own Python versions; it's only a few dozen lines.

Google's operations, like any large tech company's, comprise thousands of procedures. So their code base grows. The most impactful code can be brief.

The examples are fascinating and wide-ranging, so read the whole book (or give it to nerds as a present). Charlton McIlwain wrote a chapter on the police beat algorithm developed in the late 1960s to anticipate crime hotspots so law enforcement could dispatch more officers there. It created a racial feedback loop. Since poor Black neighborhoods were already overpoliced compared to white ones, the algorithm directed more policing there, resulting in more arrests, which convinced it to send more police; rinse and repeat.

Kelly Chudler's You Are Not Expected To Understand This depicts the police-beat algorithm.

Even shorter code changed the world: the tracking pixel.

Lily Hay Newman's chapter on monitoring pixels says you probably interact with this code every day. It's a snippet of HTML that embeds a single tiny pixel in an email. Getting an email with a tracking code spies on me. As follows: My browser requests the single-pixel image as soon as I open the mail. My email sender checks to see if Clives browser has requested that pixel. My email sender can tell when I open it.

Adding a tracking pixel to an email is easy:

<img src="URL LINKING TO THE PIXEL ONLINE" width="0" height="0">

An older example: Ellen R. Stofan and Nick Partridge wrote a chapter on Apollo 11's lunar module bailout code. This bailout code operated on the lunar module's tiny on-board computer and was designed to prioritize: If the computer grew overloaded, it would discard all but the most vital work.

When the lunar module approached the moon, the computer became overloaded. The bailout code shut down anything non-essential to landing the module. It shut down certain lunar module display systems, scaring the astronauts. Module landed safely.

22-line code

POODOO    INHINT
    CA  Q
    TS  ALMCADR

    TC  BANKCALL
    CADR  VAC5STOR  # STORE ERASABLES FOR DEBUGGING PURPOSES.

    INDEX  ALMCADR
    CAF  0
ABORT2    TC  BORTENT

OCT77770  OCT  77770    # DONT MOVE
    CA  V37FLBIT  # IS AVERAGE G ON
    MASK  FLAGWRD7
    CCS  A
    TC  WHIMPER -1  # YES.  DONT DO POODOO.  DO BAILOUT.

    TC  DOWNFLAG
    ADRES  STATEFLG

    TC  DOWNFLAG
    ADRES  REINTFLG

    TC  DOWNFLAG
    ADRES  NODOFLAG

    TC  BANKCALL
    CADR  MR.KLEAN
    TC  WHIMPER

This fun book is worth reading.

I'm a contributor to the New York Times Magazine, Wired, and Mother Jones. I've also written Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World and Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds. Twitter and Instagram: @pomeranian99; Mastodon: @clive@saturation.social.