Would you abandon your bank for Apple?

Banks are struggling.

• not as a result of inflation

• not due to the economic downturn.

• not due to the conflict in Ukraine.

But because they’re underestimating Apple.

Slowly but surely, Apple is looking more like a bank.

An easy new savings account like Apple

Apple has a new savings account.

Apple says Apple Card users may set up and manage savings straight in Wallet.

• No more charges

• Colorfully high yields

• With no minimum balance

• No minimal down payments

Most consumer-facing banks will have to match Apple's offer or suffer disruption.

Users may set it up from their iPhones without traveling to a bank or filling out paperwork.

It’s built into the iPhone in your pocket.

So now more waiting for slow approval processes.

Once the savings account is set up, Apple will automatically transfer all future Daily Cash into it. Users may also add these cash to an Apple Cash card in their Apple Wallet app and adjust where Daily Cash is paid at any time.

Apple Pay and Apple Wallet VP Jennifer Bailey:

Savings enables Apple Card users to grow their Daily Cash rewards over time, while also saving for the future.

Bailey says Savings adds value to Apple Card's Daily Cash benefit and offers another easy-to-use tool to help people lead healthier financial lives.

Transfer money from a linked bank account or Apple Cash to a Savings account. Users can withdraw monies to a connected bank account or Apple Cash card without costs.

Once set up, Apple Card customers can track their earnings via Wallet's Savings dashboard. This dashboard shows their account balance and interest.

This product targets younger people as the easiest way to start a savings account on the iPhone.

Why would a Gen Z account holder travel to the bank if their iPhone could be their bank?

Using this concept, Apple will transform the way we think about banking by 2030.

Two other nightmares keep bankers awake at night

Apple revealed two new features in early 2022 that banks and payment gateways hated.

• Tap to Pay with Apple

• Late Apple Pay

They startled the industry.

Tap To Pay converts iPhones into mobile POS card readers. Apple Pay Later is pushing the BNPL business in a consumer-friendly direction, hopefully ending dodgy lending practices.

Tap to Pay with Apple

iPhone POS

Millions of US merchants, from tiny shops to huge establishments, will be able to accept Apple Pay, contactless credit and debit cards, and other digital wallets with a tap.

No hardware or payment terminal is needed.

Revolutionary!

Stripe has previously launched this feature.

Tap to Pay on iPhone will provide companies with a secure, private, and quick option to take contactless payments and unleash new checkout experiences, said Bailey.

Apple's solution is ingenious. Brilliant!

Bailey says that payment platforms, app developers, and payment networks are making it easier than ever for businesses of all sizes to accept contactless payments and thrive.

I admire that Apple is offering this up to third-party services instead of closing off other functionalities.

Slow POS terminals, farewell.

Late Apple Pay

Pay Apple later.

Apple Pay Later enables US consumers split Apple Pay purchases into four equal payments over six weeks with no interest or fees.

The Apple ecosystem integration makes this BNPL scheme unique. Nonstick. No dumb forms.

Frictionless.

Just double-tap the button.

Apple Pay Later was designed with users' financial well-being in mind. Apple makes it easy to use, track, and pay back Apple Pay Later from Wallet.

Apple Pay Later can be signed up in Wallet or when using Apple Pay. Apple Pay Later can be used online or in an app that takes Apple Pay and leverages the Mastercard network.

Apple Pay Order Tracking helps consumers access detailed receipts and order tracking in Wallet for Apple Pay purchases at participating stores.

Bad BNPL suppliers, goodbye.

Most bankers will be caught in Apple's eye playing mini golf in high-rise offices.

The big problem:

• Banks still think about features and big numbers just like other smartphone makers did not too long ago.

• Apple thinks about effortlessness, seamlessness, and frictionlessness that just work through integrated hardware and software.

Let me know what you think Apple’s next power moves in the banking industry could be.

Apocodes helps entrepreneurs create SaaS products without writing code. This post introduces micro-SaaS and outlines its basic strategy.

Strategy

Vision and strategy differ when starting a startup.

• The company's long-term future state is outlined in the vision. It establishes the overarching objectives the organization aims to achieve while also justifying its existence. The company's future is outlined in the vision.

• The strategy consists of a collection of short- to mid-term objectives, the accomplishment of which will move the business closer to its vision. The company gets there through its strategy.

The vision should be stable, but the strategy must be adjusted based on customer input, market conditions, or previous experiments.

Begin modestly and aim high.

Be truthful. It's impossible to automate SaaS product creation from scratch. It's like climbing Everest without running a 5K. Physical rules don't prohibit it, but it would be suicide.

Apocodes 5K equivalent? Two options:

• (A) Create a feature that includes every setting option conceivable. then query potential clients “Would you choose us to build your SaaS solution if we offered 99 additional features of the same caliber?” After that, decide which major feature to implement next.

• (B) Build a few straightforward features with just one or two configuration options. Then query potential clients “Will this suffice to make your product?” What's missing if not? Finally, tweak the final result a bit before starting over.

(A) is an all-or-nothing approach. It's like training your left arm to climb Mount Everest. My right foot is next.

(B) is a better method because it's iterative and provides value to customers throughout.

Focus on a small market sector, meet its needs, and expand gradually. Micro-SaaS is Apocode's first market.

What is micro-SaaS.

Micro-SaaS enterprises have these characteristics:

• A limited range: They address a specific problem with a small number of features.

• A small group of one to five individuals.

• Low external funding: The majority of micro-SaaS companies have Total Addressable Markets (TAM) under $100 million. Investors find them unattractive as a result. As a result, the majority of micro-SaaS companies are self-funded or bootstrapped.

• Low competition: Because they solve problems that larger firms would rather not spend time on, micro-SaaS enterprises have little rivalry.

• Low upkeep: Because of their simplicity, they require little care.

• Huge profitability: Because providing more clients incurs such a small incremental cost, high profit margins are possible.

Micro-SaaS enterprises created with no-code are Apocode's ideal first market niche.

We'll create our own micro-SaaS solutions to better understand their needs. Although not required, we believe this will improve community discussions.

The challenge

In 100 days (September 12–December 20, 2022), we plan to build 10 micro-SaaS enterprises using Apocode.

They will be:

• Self-serve: Customers will be able to use the entire product experience without our manual assistance.

• Real: They'll deal with actual issues. They won't be isolated proofs of concept because we'll keep up with them after the challenge.

• Both free and paid options: including a free plan and a free trial period. Although financial success would be a good result, the challenge's stated objective is not financial success.

This will let us design Apocodes features, showcase them, and talk to customers.

(Edit: The first micro-SaaS was launched!)

Follow along

If you want to follow the story of Apocode or our progress in this challenge, you can subscribe here.

If you are interested in using Apocode, sign up here.

If you want to provide feedback, discuss the idea further or get involved, email me at nicolas.tresegnie@gmail.com

The brand-new USB Rubber Ducky is much riskier than before.

With its own programming language, the well-liked hacking tool may now pwn you.

With a vengeance, the USB Rubber Ducky is back.

This year's Def Con hacking conference saw the release of a new version of the well-liked hacking tool, and its author, Darren Kitchen, was on hand to explain it. We put a few of the new features to the test and discovered that the most recent version is riskier than ever.

WHAT IS IT?

The USB Rubber Ducky seems to the untrained eye to be an ordinary USB flash drive. However, when you connect it to a computer, the computer recognizes it as a USB keyboard and will accept keystroke commands from the device exactly like a person would type them in.

Kitchen explained to me, "It takes use of the trust model built in, where computers have been taught to trust a human, in that anything it types is trusted to the same degree as the user is trusted. And a computer is aware that clicks and keystrokes are how people generally connect with it.

Over ten years ago, the first Rubber Ducky was published, quickly becoming a hacker favorite (it was even featured in a Mr. Robot scene). Since then, there have been a number of small upgrades, but the most recent Rubber Ducky takes a giant step ahead with a number of new features that significantly increase its flexibility and capability.

WHERE IS ITS USE?

The options are nearly unlimited with the proper strategy.

The Rubber Ducky has already been used to launch attacks including making a phony Windows pop-up window to collect a user's login information or tricking Chrome into sending all saved passwords to an attacker's web server. However, these attacks lacked the adaptability to operate across platforms and had to be specifically designed for particular operating systems and software versions.

The nuances of DuckyScript 3.0 are described in a new manual. 

The most recent Rubber Ducky seeks to get around these restrictions. The DuckyScript programming language, which is used to construct the commands that the Rubber Ducky will enter into a target machine, receives a significant improvement with it. DuckyScript 3.0 is a feature-rich language that allows users to write functions, store variables, and apply logic flow controls, in contrast to earlier versions that were primarily limited to scripting keystroke sequences (i.e., if this... then that).

This implies that, for instance, the new Ducky can check to see if it is hooked into a Windows or Mac computer and then conditionally run code specific to each one, or it can disable itself if it has been attached to the incorrect target. In order to provide a more human effect, it can also generate pseudorandom numbers and utilize them to add a configurable delay between keystrokes.

The ability to steal data from a target computer by encoding it in binary code and transferring it through the signals intended to instruct a keyboard when the CapsLock or NumLock LEDs should light up is perhaps its most astounding feature. By using this technique, a hacker may plug it in for a brief period of time, excuse themselves by saying, "Sorry, I think that USB drive is faulty," and then take it away with all the credentials stored on it.

HOW SERIOUS IS THE RISK?

In other words, it may be a significant one, but because physical device access is required, the majority of people aren't at risk of being a target.

The 500 or so new Rubber Duckies that Hak5 brought to Def Con, according to Kitchen, were his company's most popular item at the convention, and they were all gone on the first day. It's safe to suppose that hundreds of hackers already possess one, and demand is likely to persist for some time.

Additionally, it has an online development toolkit that can be used to create attack payloads, compile them, and then load them onto the target device. A "payload hub" part of the website makes it simple for hackers to share what they've generated, and the Hak5 Discord is also busy with conversation and helpful advice. This makes it simple for users of the product to connect with a larger community.

It's too expensive for most individuals to distribute in volume, so unless your favorite cafe is renowned for being a hangout among vulnerable targets, it's doubtful that someone will leave a few of them there. To that end, if you intend to plug in a USB device that you discovered outside in a public area, pause to consider your decision.

WOULD IT WORK FOR ME?

Although the device is quite straightforward to use, there are a few things that could cause you trouble if you have no prior expertise writing or debugging code. For a while, during testing on a Mac, I was unable to get the Ducky to press the F4 key to activate the launchpad, but after forcing it to identify itself using an alternative Apple keyboard device ID, the problem was resolved.

From there, I was able to create a script that, when the Ducky was plugged in, would instantly run Chrome, open a new browser tab, and then immediately close it once more without requiring any action from the laptop user. Not bad for only a few hours of testing, and something that could be readily changed to perform duties other than reading technology news.

In this essay, I studied REAL NFT use examples and their potential uses.

Knowledge of the Hype Cycle

Gartner's Hype Cycle.

It proposes 5 phases for disruptive technology.

1. Technology Trigger: the emergence of potentially disruptive technology.

2. Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity creates hype. (Ex: 2021 Bubble)

3. Trough of Disillusionment: Early projects fail to deliver on promises and the public loses interest. I suspect NFTs are somewhere around this trough of disillusionment now.

4. Enlightenment slope: The tech shows successful use cases.

5. Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption has arrived and broader market applications have proven themselves. Here’s a more detailed visual of the Gartner Hype Cycle from Wikipedia.

In the speculative NFT bubble of 2021, @beeple sold Everydays: the First 5000 Days for $69 MILLION in 2021's NFT bubble.

@nbatopshot sold millions in video collectibles.

This is when expectations peaked.

Let's examine NFTs' real-world applications.

Watch this video if you're unfamiliar with NFTs.

Online Art

Most people think NFTs are rich people buying worthless JPEGs and MP4s.

Digital artwork and collectibles are revolutionary for creators and enthusiasts.

NFT Profile Pictures

You might also have seen NFT profile pictures on Twitter.

My profile picture is an NFT I coined with @skogards factoria app, which helps me avoid bogus accounts.

Profile pictures are a good beginning point because they're unique and clearly yours.

NFTs are a way to represent proof-of-ownership. It’s easier to prove ownership of digital assets than physical assets, which is why artwork and pfps are the first use cases.

They can do much more.

NFTs can represent anything with a unique owner and digital ownership certificate. Domains and usernames.

Usernames & Domains

@unstoppableweb, @ensdomains, @rarible sell NFT domains.

NFT domains are transferable, which is a benefit.

Godaddy and other web2 providers have difficult-to-transfer domains. Domains are often leased instead of purchased.

Tickets

NFTs can also represent concert tickets and event passes.

There's a limited number, and entry requires proof.

NFTs can eliminate the problem of forgery and make it easy to verify authenticity and ownership.

NFT tickets can be traded on the secondary market, which allows for:

1. marketplaces that are uniform and offer the seller and buyer security (currently, tickets are traded on inefficient markets like FB & craigslist)

2. unbiased pricing

3. Payment of royalties to the creator

4. Historical ticket ownership data implies performers can airdrop future passes, discounts, etc.

5. NFT passes can be a fandom badge.

The $30B+ online tickets business is increasing fast.

NFT-based ticketing projects:

• @GetProtocol

• @SeatlabNFT

• @YellowHeartNFT

• @GUTStickets

• @WicketEvents

Gaming Assets

NFTs also help in-game assets.

Imagine someone spending five years collecting a rare in-game blade, then outgrowing or quitting the game. Gamers value that collectible.

The gaming industry is expected to make $200 BILLION in revenue this year, a significant portion of which comes from in-game purchases.

Royalties on secondary market trading of gaming assets encourage gaming businesses to develop NFT-based ecosystems.

Digital assets are the start. On-chain NFTs can represent real-world assets effectively.

Real estate has a unique owner and requires ownership confirmation.

Real Estate

Tokenizing property has many benefits.

1. Can be fractionalized to increase access, liquidity

2. Can be collateralized to increase capital efficiency and access to loans backed by an on-chain asset

3. Allows investors to diversify or make bets on specific neighborhoods, towns or cities +++

I've written about this thought exercise before.

I made an animated video explaining this.

We've just explored NFTs for transferable assets. But what about non-transferrable NFTs?

SBTs are Soul-Bound Tokens. Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum co-founder) blogged about this.

NFTs are basically verifiable digital certificates.

Diplomas & Degrees

That fits Degrees & Diplomas. These shouldn't be marketable, thus they can be non-transferable SBTs.

Anyone can verify the legitimacy of on-chain credentials, degrees, abilities, and achievements.

The same goes for other awards.

For example, LinkedIn could give you a verified checkmark for your degree or skills.

Authenticity Protection

NFTs can also safeguard against counterfeiting.

Counterfeiting is the largest criminal enterprise in the world, estimated to be $2 TRILLION a year and growing.

Anti-counterfeit tech is valuable.

This is one of @ORIGYNTech's projects.

Identity

Identity theft/verification is another real-world problem NFTs can handle.

In the US, 15 million+ citizens face identity theft every year, suffering damages of over $50 billion a year.

This isn't surprising considering all you need for US identity theft is a 9-digit number handed around in emails, documents, on the phone, etc.

Identity NFTs can fix this.

• NFTs are one-of-a-kind and unforgeable.

• NFTs offer a universal standard.

• NFTs are simple to verify.

• SBTs, or non-transferrable NFTs, are tied to a particular wallet.

• In the event of wallet loss or theft, NFTs may be revoked.

This could be one of the biggest use cases for NFTs.

Imagine a global identity standard that is standardized across countries, cannot be forged or stolen, is digital, easy to verify, and protects your private details.

Since your identity is more than your government ID, you may have many NFTs.

@0xPolygon and @civickey are developing on-chain identity.

Memberships

NFTs can authenticate digital and physical memberships.

Voting

NFT IDs can verify votes.

If you remember 2020, you'll know why this is an issue.

Online voting's ease can boost turnout.

Informational property

NFTs can protect IP.

This can earn creators royalties.

NFTs have 2 important properties:

• Verifiability IP ownership is unambiguously stated and publicly verified.

• Platforms that enable authors to receive royalties on their IP can enter the market thanks to standardization.

Content Rights

Monetization without copyrighting = more opportunities for everyone.

This works well with the music.

Spotify and Apple Music pay creators very little.

Crowdfunding

Creators can crowdfund with NFTs.

NFTs can represent future royalties for investors.

This is particularly useful for fields where people who are not in the top 1% can’t make money. (Example: Professional sports players)

Mirror.xyz allows blog-based crowdfunding.

Financial NFTs

This introduces Financial NFTs (fNFTs). Unique financial contracts abound.

Examples:

• a person's collection of assets (unique portfolio)

• A loan contract that has been partially repaid with a lender

• temporal tokens (ex: veCRV)

Legal Agreements

Not just financial contracts.

NFT can represent any legal contract or document.

Messages & Emails

What about other agreements? Verbal agreements through emails and messages are likewise unique, but they're easily lost and fabricated.

Health Records

Medical records or prescriptions are another types of documentation that has to be verified but isn't.

Medical NFT examples:

• Immunization records

• Covid test outcomes

• Prescriptions

• health issues that may affect one's identity

• Observations made via health sensors

Existing systems of proof by paper / PDF have photoshop-risk.

I tried to include most use scenarios, but this is just the beginning.

NFTs have many innovative uses.

For example: @ShaanVP minted an NFT called “5 Minutes of Fame” 👇

Here are 2 Twitter threads about NFTs:

1. This piece of gold by @chriscantino

2. This conversation between @punk6529 and @RaoulGMI on @RealVision“The World According to @punk6529”

If you're wondering why NFTs are better than web2 databases for these use scenarios, see this Twitter thread I wrote:

If you liked this, please share it.

You’ll be surprised; I sure was

Blogging and writing online as a side income has now been around for a significant amount of time. Nowadays, it is a continuously rising moneymaker for prospective writers, with several writing platforms existing online. At the top of the list are Medium, Vocal Media, Newsbreak, and the biggest one of them, Quora, with 300 million active users.

Quora, unlike Medium, is a question-and-answer format platform. On Medium you are permitted to write what you want, while on Quora, you answer questions on topics that you have expertise about. Quora, like Medium, now compensates its authors for the answers they provide in comparison to the previous, in which you had to be admitted to the partner program and were paid to ask questions.

Quora just recently went live with this new partner program, Quora Plus, and the way it works is that it is a subscription for $5 a month which provides you access to metered/monetized stories, in turn compensating the writers for part of that subscription for their answers.

I too on Quora have found a lot of success on the platform, gaining 23 Million Content Views, and 300,000 followers for my space, which is kind of the Quora equivalent of a Medium article. The way in which I was able to do this was entirely thanks to a hack that I uncovered to the Quora algorithm.

In this article, I plan on discussing how much money I received from 23 million content views on Quora, and I bet you’ll be shocked; I know I was.

A Brief Explanation of How I Got 23 Million Views and How You Can Do It Too

On Quora, everything in terms of obtaining views is about finding the proper question, which I only understood quite late into the game. I published my first response in 2019 but never actually wrote on Quora until the summer of 2020, and about a month into posting consistently I found out how to find the perfect question. Here’s how:

The Process

Go to your Home Page and start scrolling… While browsing, check for the following things…

1. Answers from people you follow or your followers.

2. Advertisements

These two things are the two things you want to ignore, you don’t want to answer those questions or look at the ads. You should now be left with a couple of recommended answers. To discover which recommended answer is the best to answer as well, look at these three important aspects.

1. Date of the answer: Was it in the past few days, preferably 2–3 days, even better, past 24 hours?

2. Views: Are they in the ten thousands or hundred thousands?

3. Upvotes: Are they in the hundreds or thousands?

Now, choose an answer to a question which you think you could answer as well that satisfies the requirements above. Once you click on it, as all answers on Quora works, it will redirect you to the page for that question, in which you will have to select once again if you should answer the question.

1. Amount of answers: How many responses are there to the given question? This tells you how much competition you have. My rule is beyond 25 answers, you shouldn’t answer, but you can change it anyway you’d like.

2. Answerers: Who did the answering for the question? If the question includes a bunch of renowned, extremely well-known people on Quora, there’s a good possibility your essay is going to get drowned out.

3. Views: Check for a constant quantity of high views on each answer for the question; this is what will guarantee that your answer gets a lot of views!

The Income Reveal! How Much I Made From 23 Million Content Views

DRUM ROLL, PLEASE!

8.97 USD. Yes, not even ten dollars, not even nine. Just eight dollars and ninety-seven cents.

Possible Reasons for My Low Earnings

• Quora Plus and the answering partner program are newer than my Quora views.

• Few people use Quora+, therefore revenues are low.

• I haven't been writing much on Quora, so I'm only making money from old answers and a handful since Quora Plus launched.

• Quora + pays poorly...

Should You Try Quora and Quora For Money?

My answer depends on your needs. I never got invited to Quora's question partner program due to my late start, but other writers have made hundreds. Due to Quora's new and competitive answering partner program, you may not make much money.

If you want a fun writing community, try Quora. Quora was fun when I only made money from my space. Quora +'s paywalls and new contributors eager to make money have made the platform less fun for me.

This article is a summary to save you time. You can read my full, more detailed article, here.