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Nearly 22 million people watched Britains first national lottery draw in 1994, an event broadcast across the country in a special primetime TV programme fronted by Noel Edmonds.

Schoolchildren would mimic its famous advertising campaign, featuring the finger of fate emerging from the heavens to choose a lucky winner, booming: It could be you.

After 27 years, the novelty and razzmatazz has dulled somewhat. About 60% of UK adults still play but increasingly do so in more quiet, solitary ways, engrossed in one of 21 instant-win games on their phones.

Spending caps allow users of the national lotterys app to splurge up to 350 a week 18,200 a year on captivating casino-style features that end, for the most part, with a different slogan: Better luck next time. The limit is 75 games a day.

This migration, from simple draw-based games to a dizzying array of scratchcards and rapid-fire apps, is at the heart of a growing controversy over the future of the lottery.

This week, interested parties will be finishing off their submissions to an inquiry into the lotterys future, launched by MPs on the digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) select committee.

Their intervention is already proving controversial: it comes with the Gambling Commission in the midst of a twice-delayed competition process to decide who will run the next national lottery licence, a 10-year contract due to start in 2024.

Camelot, the company owned by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan a giant Canadian investment fund has won all three licence competitions to date but appears to be at greater risk than ever before of losing the gig.

The incumbent faces stiff competition from three challengers: Czech-owned Sazka Group, media tycoon Richard Desmond and Italian lottery operator Sisal.

With a quartet of complex bids to analyse, the Gambling Commissions interim boss, Andrew Rhodes, wrote to the DCMS select committees chair, Julian Knight, advising him that the MPs had chosen an inopportune moment to launch their probe. The licence competition was governed by strict confidentiality rules, he pointed out, making it difficult for anyone involved to give evidence in public.

Knight responded in the strongest terms, warning that the commissions reluctance to face MPs set a dangerous precedent for democracy.

A rapprochement has since taken place, say sources on both sides of the row, with the commission stressing that it is not refusing to appear, but merely highlighting the difficulty of facing a public grilling about a confidential process.

Nonetheless, the spat underscores the extent to which concern about its direction has brought the national lottery to a crossroads.

At the heart of questions over its future lie hard numbers. Camelot has faced criticism, including from a parliamentary public accounts committee (PAC) report in 2018, that charitable donations have not always risen as fast as profits.

In the first year of the current lottery licence, Camelot booked an after-tax profit of 31.5m after selling 5.45bn of tickets, raising more than 1.5bn for good causes. In the year that so exercised the PAC, 2016-17, Camelots profit was more than twice as high at 70m but it raised only a little more for good causes, about 1.6bn.

Since then, Camelot has rebalanced things somewhat. Profits for the year to March 2021 are expected to reach close to 80m but that comes on the back of record sales of 8.37bn, with good-cause money also hitting an all-time high, of 1.85bn.

What matters most, says Camelot, is that the annual sum raised has increased in absolute terms by 350m, while the cumulative total is already more than 43bn.

Yet theres no denying that the companys profit as a proportion of ticket sales has crept up, from 0.6% to about 1%. This is partly as a result of the appetite for those compulsive instant-win games and scratchcards. Growth in sales of traditional tickets has been weak since 2010, up from 4.1bn to 4.7bn, despite a bump in the price from 1 to 2. Meanwhile, combined sales of scratchcards and online instant-win games have surged from 1.3bn to 3.36bn.

The percentage of the punters stake that goes to good causes is between 28% and 34% for the draws, but just 12% for instant-win and 9% for scratchcards.

The operator says that difference is because a higher proportion of each stake on a scratchcard or instant-win game has to go towards prize money. Unlike a weekly draw, which might make you a millionaire, instant-win products are only attractive to customers if they pay out regularly, even in small sums. More attractive games mean higher sales, and therefore more overall cash for good causes, the company says.

There are other areas of concern about shifting trends in lottery play, however. Instant-win games alone reached sales of 1bn during the pandemic, a source told a national newspaper earlier this year.

This trend has fuelled misgivings about the addiction risk posed by quickfire products, which have more in common with frequently criticised online casino games than they do with a lottery draw.

This is a particular hot topic, coming as it does in the midst of a government review of gambling regulation borne on a wave of public disquiet about addictive products.

The Labour MP Carolyn Harris, who leads a cross-party parliamentary group examining gambling harms, takes a dim view of Camelots fondness for instant-win games.

Theyre one of the worst for enticing young people into gambling, using the premise that its for charity, said Harris.

She points out that, while the minimum age for playing the national lottery was raised to 18 in April this year, before that Camelot allowed 16-year-olds to open an account to play instant-win games, even as online casino firms imposed age gates to block under-18s. This, she said, had sullied the brand of the lottery.

I hope whoever gets it next has more moral integrity than Camelot, she said.

When it comes to encouraging young people to play, theyre no better than any other gambling organisation.

Camelot points out that age limits are set by government and that it applied the 18+ rating earlier than it was required to. A spokesperson said that the inherent risk of problem play associated with national lottery products is very low a fact that is backed up by Gambling Commission and [gamblers charity] GamCare data.

Given the air of secrecy around the licence competition, its difficult to pin down what Camelots challengers would do differently.

In theory, the contenders arent allowed to talk about their plans one reason why the Gambling Commission is wary of public select committee hearings. In practice, theyre not averse to offering a glimpse behind the curtain.

Some have latched on to concern about instant-win games, professing eagerness to move back towards draw-based play, albeit marketed to a broader base of people in more locations, on more occasions.

One figure involved in the bid process asked: Why cant Amazon and Deliveroo sell lottery tickets? Why cant you pick up a lottery ticket in a Costa or a Starbucks? Youre sitting having a coffee, why wouldnt you be able to play the lottery then?

Its about changing the emphasis away from instant-win to make it less like slot machines and more like fun, such as gifting at Christmas.

Others say that Camelot has not invested sufficiently in technology, despite the 250m of capital expenditure it has made during the current licence period.

One bidder has a deal with a technology company that would involve replacing the countertop scratchcard cases and lottery ticket booths that you find in supermarkets and convenience stores.

Instead, shops would have electronic terminals that could recognise a lottery players phone, pinging them when they got within a certain distance of the terminal with a reminder to play.

Its unclear how the Gambling Commission, already under pressure over addiction, will view the appeal of phones that nudge you to gamble, or lottery tickets sold alongside cups of tea and coffee.

Final bids must be in by mid-October, with the winner due to be announced in February next year. The finger of fate awaits.

Continued here:
High rollers ready to gamble on winning control of the UKs lottery - The Guardian

Content recommendation engine Taboola has announced a brand safety partnership with DoubleVerify to better control the media partners are being placed in.

As a result of the launch, Taboolas advertiser partners, including performance marketers, brands and media agencies, will receive access to DoubleVerifys standard brand safety and suitability targeting technology, allowing for control over the quality of where their ads are placed.

Many of todays advertisers require a nuanced approach to brand safety and our reach, coupled with DoubleVerifys ability to offer different tiers of safety and suitability within different categories, is uniquely valuable, said Adam Singolda, chief executive officer and founder, Taboola.

With shifts in how consumers view ads online and the growth of ad spend after last year, advertisers deserve peace of mind that their ads are running alongside the content they prefer. DoubleVerify is an innovator in the realm of advertiser trust, and as we bolster our suite of brand safety offerings, partnering with them was a natural fit.

Settings can be customized by advertisers based on DoubleVerifys ontological expertise and brand safety and suitability controls.

This approach to content classification is touted to allow advertisers to carefully balance brand reputation, protection and scale while achieving their marketing objectives across their Taboola campaigns.

DoubleVerifys pre-bid brand safety and suitability segments are now available directly within the Taboola Ads console for use when planning and executing campaigns.

Advertisers can make use of DoubleVerifys safety and suitability segments while taking advantage of the variety of outcome-based buying options, including CPC and vCPM, available in the Taboola Ads console.

Taboola's fighting perceptions around the quality of its inventory and offering assurances to partners.

Excerpt from:
Taboola and DoubleVerify partner for 'peace of mind' on brand safety and suitability - The Drum

A woman from Retford has revealed how a cybercriminal tried to blackmail her after hacking her Facebook account and sending messages to her husband claiming she was cheating on him.

Donna Potter said the hacker also sent messages to her friends after taking over her account.

The hacker then demanded she send Amazon gift card vouchers in return for having her access restored.

Read more: Plans for a lorry park and service station to be rejected due to noise and smell concerns

It really upset me, said Mrs Potter. The hacker started sending messages to my friends pretending to be me. The messages were quite rude but fortunately they asked my husband if that was me sending them, which of course it wasnt.

My husband then contacted the hacker by messaging my account and the hacker replied to say I was having sex with another man. It did cause us problems.

Mrs Potter said the fraudulent messages made her feel anxious and so she called the police.

Nottinghamshire Polices cyber crime unit helped the 34-year-old set up a new Facebook account and gave her advice on keeping her online information safe from criminals.

Mrs Potter said she wanted others to learn from her experience, as the hacker was able to access her account because of a weak password.

She is now urging others to review their passwords on all online accounts, especially social media and email by having strong, separate passwords using three random words and to enable two-factor authentication to help protect themselves.

She said: If you use a childs name or a pets name, the chances are a hacker will be able to hack your password and by having no additional security enabled, any online account you have is left vulnerable.

"Ive had to set up a new account and Ive now got a much stronger password that contains 40 characters.

Kirsty Jackson, one of the forces specialist cyber protect officers, recommended people use at least 20 characters for their passwords. She added it was important for users to take the right steps to keep themselves and their personal information safe.

She said: We know people like to use social media everyday so its vitally important you keep your accounts and data safe from cybercriminals.

In most cases, cybercriminals were able to gain access using old or weak passwords. The best way to avoid an attack is to activate Two-Factor-Authentication (2FA) on your account and ensure any recovery contact details are up-to-date in case you need to reset your passwords or recover an account.

"To create a strong and memorable password, use three random words. You can also include numbers and symbols to increase the security of the password further. For example, !ReadPlantsTreasure4!"

If you believe any of your online accounts have been compromised, or you are the victim of any other type of fraud or cybercrime, report it to Action Fraud online at https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/ or by calling 0300 123 2040.

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Hackers tried to blackmail woman after taking control of her social media account - Lincolnshire Live

Photography by Jessica Turner.

When neighbor Alexey Ershov recently posted his gorgeous dragonfly photos on Nextdoor, he evidently touched an Odonata nerve. With over 150 comments and more than 400 likes, East Dallas clearly loves and values these fascinating insects dating back to prehistoric times as beautiful, beneficial and for some, mystical.

I went photo-hunting for water birds around White Rock Lake and, unexpectedly, I ran into a mesmerizing little neon-red creature sitting on a green reed plant, Ershov says. And when it took off, it was so fast, like a red bullet. The dragonfly immediately drew my attention, and I totally forgot about the birds I was supposed to photograph.

Totally understandable to many, including our favorite urban wildlife biologist Sam Kieschnick, who enthusiastically describes dragonflies as amazing.

Just a side note on terminology: The order Odonata includes two suborders, dragonflies and damselflies, the latter being smaller and more delicate. Both are abundant in the neighborhood. With apologies to all damselflies reading this, they will be lumped into the term dragonfly for this story.

The huge compound eyes of these critters cover most of the head area and can see in every direction except directly behind. They have an extendible mandible similar to the creature in the movie Alien to quickly snatch food. And their flying ability? Incredibly, these expert aerialists can fly as fast as 35 mph and go forward, backward, up and down, hover for extended periods and perform somersaults.

Kieschnick says this is a great time of year to see dragonflies. The warmer the day, the more active and abundant dragonflies are, Kieschnick says. Granted, you can see dragonflies almost throughout the year, even on some warmer winter days, but theyre most abundant during the summer. Around here, youre likely to spot the Eastern pondhawk, widow skimmer, blue dasher and the common blue darner.

Where to look? The best place to see them is close to water either by a pond, creek, river or even a drainage ditch that contains some water, Kieschnick says. They have the aquatic nymph stage, so the adults may be emerging or laying eggs in these spots.

Keep in mind that dragonflies are most active when the sun is out, so Kieschnick recommends late morning or afternoon as ideal times to glimpse these insects.

Dont be surprised if they hover near as though studying you. They may notice our movements and out of curiosity, get a bit closer, Kieschnick says. Some may land on us, especially if youre able to stay still for a while, but theyre quite harmless.As a matter of fact, they may even be pursuing some of the mosquitoes flying nearby.

Yes, these beauties are beneficial to us humans. They feast on whats bugging us: mosquitoes. Neighbor Judy Meagher welcomes the sight of these amazing creatures.

My yard is full of dragonflies, says Meagher, a master naturalist, entomology specialist and docent at Texas Discovery Garden. They are evident at dusk when theyre flying back and forth over the yard in the search of insects to eat. One dragonfly can eat up to 300 mosquitoes a day.

University Meadows neighbor Hance Burrow can attest to dragonflies pest control abilities. I jokingly call them my army of dragonflies, because they patrol my pool and eat the mosquitoes, Burrow says. I have gone mostly organic over the past number of years, so I have some wildlife in the backyard. I can see up to 15 to 25 at a time patrolling the pool area.

Friends have commented on the number of dragonflies and noted the lack of mosquito bites, Burrow adds. I have not used insect spray on myself and have probably only been bitten once or twice this summer.

If youre interested in attracting dragonflies, Meagher has advice. Dragonflies, like many of our insects, are suffering from loss of habitat and pesticide use, she says. The use of native plants which attract insects and not using pesticides can help all of our insects.

If you have some water features in your landscaping, then adding in some aquatic vegetation is ideal for dragonflies, Kieschnick says. This allows other aquatic invertebrates to thrive, so thats crucial for dragonflies too.

Neighbors find them not only lovely and helpful but mystical as well. In several dragonfly discussions on East Dallas-centric social media sites, a good number of folks have chimed in with their belief that dragonflies visiting their yards are actually deceased relatives in another form flitting by to say hello.

These prehistoric insects have long been part of folklore all over the world, and many see them as a sign of purity or good luck. Whether or not you believe that Eastern pondhawk in your yard to be a winged four-leaf clover or dear, old, departed Aunt Agnes, its hard not to find dragonflies fascinating. As Kieschnick says, They are quite charming!

PATTI VINSON is a guest writer who has lived in East Dallas for more than 20 years. Shes written for the Advocate and Real Simple magazine.

Read the rest here:
Dragonflies: Where to find natures built-in pest control - Advocate Media

A London-headquartered startup called LOVE, valued at $17 million following its pre-seed funding, aims to redefine how people stay in touch with close family and friends. The company is launching a messaging app that offers a combination of video calling as well as asynchronous video and audio messaging, in an ad-free, privacy-focused experience with a number of bells and whistles, including artistic filters and real-time transcription and translation features.

But LOVEs bigger differentiator may not be its product alone, but rather the companys mission.

LOVE aims for its product direction to be guided by its user base in a democratic fashion as opposed to having the decisions made about its future determined by an elite few at the top of some corporate hierarchy. In addition, the companys longer-term goal is ultimately to hand over ownership of the app and its governance to its users, the company says.

These concepts have emerged as part of bigger trends towards a sort of Web 3.0, or next phase of internet development, where services are decentralized, user privacy is elevated, data is protected and transactions take place on digital ledgers, like a blockchain, in a more distributed fashion.

LOVEs founders are proponents of this new model, including serial entrepreneur Samantha Radocchia, who previously founded three companies and was an early advocate for the blockchain as the co-founder of Chronicled, an enterprise blockchain company focused on the pharmaceutical supply chain.

As someone whos been interested in emerging technology since her days of writing her anthropology thesis on currency exchanges in Second Lifes virtual world, shes now faculty at Singularity University, where shes given talks about blockchain, AI, Internet of Things, Future of Work, and other topics. Shes also authored an introductory guide to the blockchain with her book Bitcoin Pizza.

Co-founder Christopher Schlaeffer, meanwhile, held a number of roles at Deutsche Telekom, including chief product & innovation officer, corporate development officer and chief strategy officer, where he along with Google execs introduced the first mobile phone to run Android. He was also chief digital officer at the telecommunication services company VEON.

The two crossed paths after Schlaeffer had already begun the work of organizing a team to bring LOVE to the public, which includes co-founders Chief Technologist Jim Reeves, also previously of VEON, and Chief Designer Timm Kekeritz, previously an interaction designer at international design firm IDEO in San Francisco, design director at IXDS and founder of design consultancy Raureif in Berlin, among other roles.

Image Credits: LOVE

Explained Radocchia, what attracted her to join as CEO was the potential to create a new company that upholds more positive values than whats often seen today in fact, the brand name LOVE is a reference to this aim. She was also interested in the potential to think through what she describes as new business models that are not reliant on advertising or harvesting the data of our users, she says.

To that end, LOVE plans to monetize without any advertising. While the company isnt ready to explain its business model in full, it would involve users opting in to services through granular permissions and membership, were told.

We believe our users will much rather be willing to pay for services they consciously use and grant permissions to in a given context than have their data used for an advertising model which is simply not transparent, says Radocchia.

LOVE expects to share more about the model next year.

As for the LOVE app itself, its a fairly polished mobile messenger offering an interesting combination of features. Like any other video chat app, you can video call with friends and family, either in one-on-one calls or in groups. Currently, LOVE supports up to five call participants, but expects to expand that as it scales. The app also supports video and audio messaging for asynchronous conversations. There are already tools that offer this sort of functionality on the market, of course like WhatsApp, with its support for audio messages, or video messenger Marco Polo. But they dont offer quite the same expanded feature set.

Image Credits: LOVE

For starters, LOVE limits its video messages to 60 seconds, for brevitys sake. (As anyone whos used Marco Polo knows, videos can become a bit rambling, which makes it harder to catch up when youre behind on group chats.) In addition, LOVE allows you to both watch the video content as well as read the real-time transcription of whats being said the latter which comes in handy not only for accessibilitys sake, but also for those times you want to hear someones messages but arent in a private place to listen or dont have headphones. Conversations can also be translated into 50 languages.

A lot of the traditional communication or messenger products are coming from a paradigm that has always been text-based, explains Radocchia. Were approaching it completely differently. So while other platforms have a lot of the features that we do, I think thatthe perspective that weve approached it has completely flipped it on its head, she continues. As opposed to bolting video messages on to a primarily text-based interface, [LOVE is] actually doing it in the opposite way and adding text as a sort of a magically transcribed add-on and something that you never, hopefully, need to be typing out on your keyboard again, she adds.

The apps user interface, meanwhile, has been designed to encourage eye-to-eye contact with the speaker to make conversations feel more natural. It does this by way of design elements where bubbles float around as youre speaking and the bubble with the current speaker grows to pull your focus away from looking at yourself. The company is also working with the curator of Serpentine Gallery in London, Hans Ulrich-Obrist, to create new filters that arent about beautification or gimmicks, but are instead focused on introducing a new form of visual expression that makes people feel more comfortable on camera.

For the time being, this has resulted in a filter that slightly abstracts your appearance, almost in the style of animation or some other form of visual arts.

The app claims to use end-to-end encryption and the automatic deletion of its content after seven days except for messages you yourself recorded, if youve chosen to save them as memorable moments.

One of our commitments is to privacy and the right-to-forget, says Radocchia. We dont want to be or need to be storing any of this information.

LOVE has been soft-launched on the App Store, where its been used with a number of testers and is working to organically grow its user base through an onboarding invite mechanism that asks users to invite at least three people to join. This same onboarding process also carefully explains why LOVE asks for permissions like using speech recognition to create subtitles.

LOVE says its valuation is around $17 million USD following pre-seed investments from a combination of traditional startup investors and strategic angel investors across a variety of industries, including tech, film, media, TV and financial services. The company will raise a seed round this fall.

The app is currently available on iOS, but an Android version will arrive later in the year. (Note that LOVE does not currently support the iOS 15 beta software, where it has issues with speech transcription and in other areas. That should be resolved next week, following an app update now in the works.)

The rest is here:
LOVE unveils a modern video messaging app with a business model that puts users in control - TechCrunch