Source: https://www.helius.dev/blog/how-to-set-up-a-solana-validator

How to Set Up a Solana Validator

This post will focus on getting a Solana mainnet validator up and running from a technical perspective. We will set up tools and configs to make ongoing operations easier, but more advanced validator operations will be out of scope. Also, the economics of running a validator, including topics like attracting stake and applying for subsidies, will be out of scope for this post. As a brief aside, those interested in running a validator should use Cogent Crypto's Validator Profit Calculator to estimate a validator's earnings for a given hypothetical scenario.
This post assumes familiarity with basic system administration on Linux. You don’t have to be a programmer or a systems administration expert to run a validator, but you need to be comfortable running commands in the terminal, basic shell scripting, and working with configuration files.
If you don’t know much about Linux systems administration but would like to learn more, there are many great starting points, such as Linux Journey.

Terminology: What is a Solana Validator?

The Solana CLI tool suite contains the solana-validator binary, which can:

• Connect to a Solana cluster, and sync the current cluster state
• Produce, receive, and share snapshots and other cluster data to stay up-to-date
• Vote to verify new blocks as part of the cluster consensus
• Process incoming transactions and produce new blocks
• Expose RPC and event-driven APIs to allow the cluster data to be queried and new transactions to be submitted

A Solana validator can also be called the client (since it connects to the network of validators and requests data), server (since it handles requests from and provides data to other validators), or node.
An RPC node is an unstaked, non-voting Solana validator that keeps track of all the network’s information. This means that they only respond to data requests and do not participate in consensus.
The term “Solana Validator” can also refer to an entity within the Solana ecosystem that runs a staked, voting Solana validator and participates in the consensus.
More information about the distinction between RPCs, RPC providers, and validators can be found here.

Starting Off: Get the Server Hardware

You will need a beefy computer dedicated solely to operating the validator and a second one if you want to run validators in both testnet and mainnet. Currently, the minimum recommendation is 12 cores/24 threads, 256GB RAM, 2x 1TB SSD disks (ideally w/ RAID0), and a 10GB internet connection. The hardware requirements can be found in more detail here.
If you are tempted to save costs by only running in mainnet, be aware that you must run a testnet validator to qualify for the Solana Foundation Delegation Program (SFDP).
You can purchase and operate the hardware yourself or rent hardware from a data center provider (we recommend TeraSwitch). You can also rent from a cloud computing provider, but we do not recommend this since it is often cost-prohibitive and more prone to performance issues. Solana Foundation Server Program aims to make it easier for validator operators to rent hardware from data center operators. Find out more here.
To help decentralize the network, you may want to consider ASNs and cities that do not already have a lot of Solana nodes or stake. Some staking pools and the SFDP will reward you based on decentralization by ASN and city.
The top current data centers can be found here.

Install the Solana CLI Locally

Having a local install of the tools is highly recommended, so you can generate all the necessary keys locally and keep the withdrawal key away from the validator server. Instructions on how to set up the Solana CLI locally can be found here.
Once the tools are available locally in your command line, configure them to point to testnet by default:

$ solana config set --url https://api.testnet.solana.com

​
For mainnet, you can point to the default endpoint here:

$ solana config set --url https://api.mainnet-beta.solana.com

​
The public mainnet endpoints are often oversaturated with requests. If you are not satisfied with the performance, you can sign up for Helius and use your Helius endpoint like so:

$ solana config set --url https://mainnet.helius-rpc.com/?api-key=

​
Setting up and bootstrapping the validator will require executing transactions, so you must have a wallet set up with some SOL in it. If you’re just getting set up with testnet, you can create a default wallet and airdrop yourself some SOL with the following commands:

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/solana
$ solana-keygen new --outfile ~/.config/solana/id.json
$ solana airdrop 1 ~/.config/solana/id.json

It is highly recommended to use different wallets for testnet and mainnet. Since the key format is the same, the same keys can be used on both, but resist the temptation to do this. If you use the same keys for funded wallets on testnet and mainnet, it is easy to execute commands intended for testnet on mainnet accidentally.
Read more about generating keys here, along with some more secure key-generation methods.

Set up Vote Account

Your validator’s vote account is created using the solana create-vote-account command and three keypairs:

• Identity Keypair - The validator uses this key pair to identify itself to the network and submit transactions such as votes. The private key will need to live on the server, so the best security is to not keep any more SOL in it than is needed for voting transactions (roughly 1 SOL/day).
• Vote Account Keypair - This key pair refers to the vote account itself, and is used to look up the vote account and delegate stake against it. The create-vote-account command only needs the private key to prove that you own the requisite key. After the vote account is created, only the public key is ever needed. This cannot be changed.
• Withdraw Keypair - This key pair acts as a master key for the vote account, and is used to withdraw rewards, change the identity or withdraw key, and other account operations. This key is by far the most sensitive of the three and should not be generated on or copied to your server. For mainnet, consider using a paper wallet, a hardware wallet, or a multi-sig for this key.

Create the Keypairs

Create the keypairs for testnet as follows:

$ solana-keygen new -o identity.json
$ solana-keygen new -o vote.json
$ solana-keygen new -o withdraw.json

Optional: Use a Paper Wallet for the Withdraw Key

A paper wallet is a 12 (or 24) word phrase written down on a sheet of paper, then entered via keyboard whenever the key is needed to sign something. If you are not planning on setting up a multi-sig, the added security this provides is appropriate for the mainnet withdrawal key since it gives root access to your vote account. Run this command:

$ solana-keygen new --no-outfile

​
Write down the phrase that is shown on a piece of paper. You may also want to note the pubkey, the exact command you used to create the key, and the solana-keygen --version. Be aware that different schemes for converting the passphrase into a private key exist. Before you put the sheet away, verify that you can use it to access the key:

$ solana-keygen verify ASK

NOTE: as of this writing, the ASK and prompt:// placeholders have different key decoding behavior. Make sure you are aware of which one works for your key.
Absolutely do not lose the piece of paper with the key written down, as there is no other way to recover it. Don’t forget to clear the key phrase out of your terminal buffer.

Optional: Grind for a Vanity Key for Vote Account

Some validators have vanity pubkeys for identity or vote account keys. For example, the Helius validator has HEL1USMZKAL2odpNBj2oCjffnFGaYwmbGmyewGv1e2TU for our identity key, and he1iusunGwqrNtafDtLdhsUQDFvo13z9sUa36PauBtk for our vote account. You make these with the grind sub-command as follows:

$ solana-keygen grind --starts-with PREF1X:1

This sub-command will generate a key whose pubkey begins with PREF1X, which can be any valid base58 string you specify. This works by generating keys until it comes across one that matches the criteria, so it takes an exponential amount of time based on the length of the prefix you want.
The vote account key cannot be changed, especially once you advertise it and people start delegating stake to it, so if you want a vanity key, now is the time to do it.

Create the Vote Account from the Keypairs

Once the keypairs are ready to go, create the vote account itself as follows:

$ solana create-vote-account --fee-payer ~/.config/solana/id.json vote_account.json identity.json withdrawal.json

Here, vote_account.json is the vote account keypair, identity.json is the validator identity keypair, withdrawal.json is the withdrawal authority keypair, and ~/.config/solana/id.json is a wallet with SOL in it that will be used to pay for the vote account creation.
If you used a paper wallet for the withdrawal keypair, your command could look like this:

$ solana create-vote-account --fee-payer ~/.config/solana/id.json vote_account.json identity.json ASK

​
You can check on the vote account (or any vote account) with this command:

$ solana vote-account

At this point, the identity keypair will be needed to run the validator server, the withdrawal keypair will need to be kept secret and used only for vote account withdrawals and changes, and the vote account keypair will no longer be needed (just don’t forget the pubkey).
More info on vote accounts can be found here.

Optional: Set the Commission

The create-vote-account takes the commission as an optional parameter, but by default, it is 100%, implying your validator is private. If you want to attract external stake to your mainnet validator, you will likely need to choose a lower commission.
If our vote account pubkey was , we wanted to pay for the change from our id.json funded wallet, we had a paper wallet withdrawal key, and we wanted to set the commission to 8%, we could do it like so:

$ solana vote-update-commission --fee-payer ~/.config/solana/id.json 8 ASK

Optional: Add a Multi-sig

A multi-sig is a special type of wallet where the signatures of one or more other wallets are required in order to execute transactions, and can be used to share custody of the vote account between multiple people. Even if you manage the validator yourself, you may still want to consider a multi-sig to add others to the vote account later easily.
Squads is a multi-sig tool for Solana that comes with functionality specifically for managing shared validators. To set up the validator in Squads:

1. Set up your browser with a supported Solana wallet plugin, such as Backpack
2. Navigate to the Squads dApp
3. Configure a squad with the desired people and parameters you’d like for your validator
4. Navigate to Developers > Validators, and go through the flow to add the validator
5. You will be asked to paste in the withdrawal private key, this will be used to change the existing withdrawal key over to the squad’s shared withdrawal key
6. Verify the updated withdrawal pubkey using solana vote-account

More on using Squads for shared validator management can be found here.

Configure your Machine as a Validator Server

Your steps will vary depending on the starting point of your machine, but the goal is to end up with:

• Ubuntu’s latest LTS version, installed and up-to-date
  • Other Linux distributions (i.e., Debian-based) may work as well, but all examples here assume Ubuntu; the further you go from Ubuntu, the more you will have to modify the commands
• User-level SSH access configured
• sol service user set up
• System tuning and hard disks set up

System and User Setup

Make sure your system is up-to-date, and create the sol service user:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade
$ sudo adduser sol

You may also want to give sudo access (this trades off some security for convenience):

$ sudo adduser sol sudo

System Tuning

Add the recommended settings from Solana Labs to sysctl and systemd to increase the limits on how many file descriptors, memory-mapped files, etc., are allowed. When your validator is the current or upcoming block leader, the entire network will be trying to open connections and send it transactions, so the file descriptor limit is particularly important.
The latest system tuning settings recommended by Solana Labs can be found here.

Hard Drive Configuration

The current recommendation from Solana Labs is that you should have 2 physical 1TB+ SSDs, one for accounts data and one for ledgers data (the O/S can also be on this disk). They do not recommend having accounts and ledgers on the same disk due to high IOPS.
Here is their guide on how you set up the 2 drives.
An alternative way of leveraging multiple drives to increase the available IOPS is to configure them together in a single RAID0 volume and let the RAID controller optimize which stripes are stored on what drive to maximize the IOPS capacity of both drives. This also makes it possible to add additional drives to the RAID to increase IOPS further if needed. We have not yet had any performance issues running a validator in this configuration.
If you are using a single RAID0 volume, all you need to do is set up the validator data directories on your volume, which can be done directly under the sol user home:

$ sudo su sol
$ mkdir -p /home/sol/accounts
$ mkdir -p /home/sol/ledger
$ mkdir -p /home/sol/snapshots
$ mkdir -p /home/sol/logs

Install the Solana CLI on the Validator Server

Repeat the steps above to install the Solana CLI, except this time on the validator server as the sol user. When installing to the validator server, building from source is highly recommended.
If you use the Solana install tool, you can use the solana-install command to perform future updates to new versions (which you must do to continue participating in the cluster).

Optional: Install the Jito Validator Client

Jito Labs has forked the Solana validator and released its own version, adding Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) capability. MEV is the idea of adding or reordering transactions within a block you are creating, in order to profit. Jito has created a market for people who want to pay a premium to do this (”searchers”). If you run the Jito validator, they will send you MEV transaction bundles for your validator to include in the blocks it creates in exchange for an extra tip.
The Jito validator adds some complexity and latency to your validator operations, but adds MEV tips as an additional revenue source. The configuration is mostly the same, except you will have to look into additionally:

• Collecting and managing MEV tips
• Latency from the Jito block engine
• Possibly running a Jito relayer

Instructions to install Jito’s validator client can be found here.

Create Validator Run Scripts

Create validator.sh Shell Script

First, copy your validator identity keypair to the remote server:

$ scp identity.json [remoteuser@your.validator.host](mailto:remoteuser@your.validator.host):/home/sol

​
The standard way to manage the configuration of your validator is by wrapping it in a shell script. Create a script as a starting point and make it executable:

$ sudo su sol
$ cat >/home/sol/validator.sh < #!/bin/bash
PATH=/home/sol/.local/share/solana/install/active_release/bin:$PATH
exec solana-validator \
--identity /home/sol/identity.json \
--vote-account \
--known-validator 5D1fNXzvv5NjV1ysLjirC4WY92RNsVH18vjmcszZd8on \
--known-validator 7XSY3MrYnK8vq693Rju17bbPkCN3Z7KvvfvJx4kdrsSY \
--known-validator Ft5fbkqNa76vnsjYNwjDZUXoTWpP7VYm3mtsaQckQADN \
--known-validator 9QxCLckBiJc783jnMvXZubK4wH86Eqqvashtrwvcsgkv \
--only-known-rpc \
--log /home/sol/logs/solana-validator.log \
--accounts /home/sol/accounts \
--snapshots /home/sol/snapshots \
--ledger /home/sol/ledger \
--rpc-port 8899 \
--dynamic-port-range 8000-8020 \
--entrypoint entrypoint.testnet.solana.com:8001 \
--entrypoint entrypoint2.testnet.solana.com:8001 \
--entrypoint entrypoint3.testnet.solana.com:8001 \
--expected-genesis-hash 4uhcVJyU9pJkvQyS88uRDiswHXSCkY3zQawwpjk2NsNY \
--wal-recovery-mode skip_any_corrupted_record \
--limit-ledger-size
EOF
$ chmod +x /home/sol/validator.sh

​
These settings are appropriate to get up and running quickly and safely on testnet. Once everything is set up, you will need to come back to this script and run solana-validator --help to see the full list of configuration options and customize it.
Try bringing up the validator using the script:

$ ./validator.sh

The first time it comes up, it will need to catch up to the current state of the cluster.

Verify the Validator is Running Correctly

You can follow your (or anyone’s) externally visible progress from anywhere in the cluster using:

$ solana catchup

​
You can see its progress internally from a session as the sol user with:

$ solana-validator --ledger /home/sol/ledger monitor

​
More info for checking on whether your validator is connecting to the cluster properly can be found here.

Set Up Validator as a Daemon Process)

Create a systemd unit file to have it managed as a daemon:

$ sudo cat >/etc/systemd/system/sol.service < [Unit]
Description=Solana Validator
After=network.target
StartLimitIntervalSec=0
[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
User=sol
LimitNOFILE=1000000
LogRateLimitIntervalSec=0
ExecStart=/home/sol/validator.sh
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

​
Make sure your earlier ./validator.sh invocation is no longer running, then bring up the validator as a daemon:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl enable --now sol

Set Up Monitoring and Security

Disable Password-based Authentication

In your /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, the SSH daemon can be set to not accept password or challenge-response login methods:

...
PasswordAuthentication no
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
...

Don’t forget to reload the sshd daemon with the new config:

$ sudo systemctl reload sshd

Add fail2ban and ufw

fail2ban will work out of the box to ban any connections that fail to authenticate multiple times:

$ sudo apt install fail2ban

​
ufw is a firewall that comes with the system and can be set up with a few commands (assuming your final validator config uses the default ports and port ranges and hosts SSH on port 22):

$ sudo ufw allow 22/tcp
$ sudo ufw allow 8000:10000/tcp
$ sudo ufw allow 8000:10000/udp
$ sudo ufw enable

Validator Identity Keypair

In practice, most validators keep their identity key on the validator server so the validator script can run and be restarted without human intervention. However, it is possible to use ASK or prompt:// to pass in the identity key to the validator so it does not have to be kept on the validator server’s file system. Doing this increases your operational overhead and risk, since a human now has to stand in for systemd and manually manage the daemon process, but it’s possible.
The best strategy for securing your identity keypair is to fund only with the minimum amount of SOL needed to cover a few days of voting costs.
Shinobi Systems has put out some tooling to help manage vote accounts, including automatic balance transfers out of the vote account without using the withdrawal key every time.
See the Solana Labs page on validator security for more tips.

Set Up Monitoring with Watchtower

solana-watchtower is included in the Solana CLI toolkit, and can be used to alert on issues with your validator and the broader cluster. Configuring and running it can be done similarly to the validator itself by making a watchtower.shscript.
Here is an example where it uses PagerDuty for alerting and writes its logs to watchtower.log:

$ cat >watchtower.sh < #!/bin/bash
PATH=/home/solana/.local/share/solana/install/active_release/bin:/ussbin:/usbin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin
exec >>watchtower.log \\
env PAGERDUTY_INTEGRATION_KEY= \\
solana-watchtower \\
--validator-identity \\
--monitor-active-stake \\
--interval 20 \\
--minimum-validator-identity-balance 3 \\
--url https://api.testnet.solana.com
EOF

Solana Labs also has an example of how to set it up using Telegram for alerts.
Setting up watchtower on the same machine as your validator is not recommended because you will not get notifications if the entire machine goes down, but you may be able to get away with that if you have multiple forms of monitoring in place and can monitor for those cases separately.
Unlike the validator, watchtower is not resource intensive, and can be run from a cloud or serverless compute environment such as those offered by AWS or GCP.

Optional: Community-based Monitoring

There are many people within the Solana community that also monitor the cluster and are willing to provide alerting based on similar conditions offered by watchtower.
Stakewiz offers Telegram-based monitoring on Solana validators. For example, if you wanted alerting based on the Helius validator, you could navigate to its page, then click “+ Create Alert”.
Note that community-based monitoring is designed for people to be aware of issues with validators they stake with. As a validator operator you should not rely solely on others to monitor your services.

Optional: Custom Monitoring via getHealth RPC Method

If you would like to go straight to the source of your validator’s health, your validator’s JSON RPC interface has a method called getHealth that you can poll about whether your validator is healthy, and info about any problems.

Optional: Third Party Monitoring Solutions

Once your validator is scaled up and you have a revenue stream to protect, you may want to consider commercial-grade SaaS monitoring solutions such as Datadog or Splunk. These types of solutions usually work either by running a daemon process on your server, which monitors logs and metrics locally and exports them to the provider, or by making the getHealth or a similar status endpoint available and having the provider poll your validator remotely.

Add Stake to the Validator

The Solana network reaches consensus by a proof-of-stake (PoS) voting process, which means a validator’s voting weight is proportional to how much SOL stake is delegated to it, similar to how a stock corporation works if you think of staked SOL as shares. In addition to voting, the frequency at which your validator is the block leader is proportional to the amount of SOL staked to it.
There are many wallets, dApps, and other tools that make it easy to stake your SOL to existing validators, but here are the steps to do it manually with the CLI:

1. Create 3 keypairs using solana-keygen new
2. Create a stake account from the keypairs using solana create-stake-account
3. Transfer some SOL into the stake account (can be done with solana aidrop for testnet)
4. Delegate the deposited stake to a validator using solana delegate-stake
5. Await the next epoch for the stake to activate, and check with solana stake-account

Create Keypairs and Stake Account

The process of creating the keypairs and stake account parallels creating the vote account, where the 3 keypairs are as follows:

• Stake Authority Keypair - allows operational tasks on the stake account such as delegating, undelegating, splitting, merging
• Stake Account Keypair - the public key identifying the stake account itself (the private key is not needed after the stake account is created)
• Withdrawal Keypair - the master keypair for withdrawing stake and resetting authority keypairs on the stake account. Treat with care and consider a hardware wallet, paper wallet, or multi-sig

It is highly recommended to have separate keys for testnet and mainnet for the same reasons as the vote account. However, you can reuse a single stake authority and withdrawal authority keypair for multiple stake accounts within that cluster. Using the same keys for stake accounts is a prerequisite for merging them.
Here is an example of creating a stake account with 1 SOL on testnet using file-based wallets for the keypairs, funding it from your id.json wallet, and delegating that stake to your new validator:

$ solana-keygen new -o stake_auth.json
$ solana-keygen new -o stake_acct_1.json
$ solana-keygen new -o stake_withdrawal_auth.json
$ solana airdrop 1 ~/.config/solana/id.json
$ solana create-stake-account --from ~/.config/solana/id.json stake_acct_1.json 1 --stake-authority stake_auth.json --withdraw-authority stake_withdraw_auth.json --fee-payer ~/.config/solana/id.json
$ solana delegate-stake --stake-authority stake_auth.json --fee-payer ~/.config/solana/id.json

NOTE: refers to the address of the vote account, not the validator identity!
Now you can check up on it to see if the stake is activating and what epoch it will be active at:

$ solana stake-account

Once the next epoch begins and the stake is active, your validator’s votes will start counting, and you can view the recent votes as part of the solana vote-account command. If you only added a few SOL like in the example, do not expect your validator to become the block leader.
Voting costs about 1-2 SOL per day, so at the time of writing, it would cost your validator about $200-300/day just to vote on mainnet.
(More info on stake delegation and managing stake accounts).

Publish the Validator’s Information

If you browse the common Solana validator directories, such as validators.app, you’ll notice that all the validators have a name, description, logo, and other metadata. This data is published on-chain for all the registered validators in each cluster, and you can view it by running solana validator-info get.
Once your validator is up and running, you may want to publish your info, particularly once you are running on mainnet and trying to attract stake.
Here is a basic example of how to publish your metadata:

$ solana validator-info publish "My Awesome Validator" \
--website "https://awesome-validator.xyz/" \
--icon-url "https://awesome-validator.xyz/icon360x360.png" \
--keypair validator_identity.json \
--details "The best validator in the world!"

When the metadata record is created, it will have its own key, which can be updated later with the --info-pubkey argument. Note that the icon URL can be a maximum of 80 characters in length. More info on publishing validator info and metadata can be found here.

Congrats!

Congratulations! If you’ve followed along and made it this far, you should be up and running with your own Solana validator. Welcome to the Solana Validator Community!

Additional Resources

• Solana Validators Overview
• Solana Validator Documentation
• Solana Foundation Delegation Program
• Solana Foundation - Stake Pools

Hi all, first-timer here. I made an old gaming PC into a home server. I have multiple goals and too many solutions to pick from for someone of my low experience level. I am somewhat tech savvy as an average lifelong PC gamer, but this project has me neck deep in github and stack exchange threads for developers and enterprise solutions and my head is spinning. I was hoping more experienced eyes could run through this and help me figure out relatively friendly and manageable solutions.
Hardware so far:
AMD Ryzen 5 1600
MSI B350 Gaming Plus
8GB RAM
1 SSD I ripped out of an ancient laptop
2 new 8TB Seagate HDDs
Right now I'm running it headless with Ubuntu Server and I set up samba, Jellyfin, tailscale, and some other things. I'm not attached to any of this, I just want whatever is easy and secure and reliable and FOSS. At least, as close to all of those as I can have. I should probably run something more GUI-based for ease of use.
My two primary goals are for it to be a family archive and for it to be a home media server & torrent box. I don't know if these are compatible or should even be on the same machine.

• Family archive: I have family photos, a video interview with my late father, etc. Things that I need to save. I want to consolidate all of the pictures and other personal media I have across various PCs and phones and cloud services and get it all in one place and under my control. I'm tired of having all my stuff on other people's servers. I want this to be 3-2-1 backed up and anything else I can do to make it reasonably invincible.
  • Is there software I can use to sort and manage all of these pictures and videos? File formats are surely a disparate mess, I'm talking stuff from old Razr phones to iPhone live photos to (eventually) scanned VHS tapes. Plus I have to pick out all of my random meme screenshots and gacha pulls, etc.
• Media server and torrent box: I want to (legally) download and seed things securely through a VPN. I want to watch them on TV.
  
  • I installed Tailscale on the current rig because I like the idea of being able to tunnel in and watch something from home on my lunch break at work, or set it up so me and friends can watch stuff I have here for a movie night at their place. I haven't gotten far enough in to see if that works.
  • Is it dumb to have this on the same machine I have all my family pictures on?
  • I also like the idea of my remote family members being able to log in and upload or download things. I figured Tailscale would make this a possibility but I don't know.
• Then, I also have some other stuff that I would like to do but is not as important.
  
  • Storage for my (own, personally-ripped) ROMs. I have RetroPie set up on a Pi 4 and I'd like to be able to have my games on the server and play them from there.
  • Password vault?
  • Containers. Never used them before. Do I even need to? It sounds like a good idea, I guess? Sounds like its what everyone does. I ended up with podman and cockpit installed but haven't used them yet. Should I learn Docker or use proxmox or truenas scale, or ..... ?
  • Goofing off with other projects as I think of them. Hopefully in a way that doesn't break my other stuff I've got going. Maybe that's where the containerization comes in.
  • Making sure this is all secure since parts of it will be exposed to the internet. Not just the torrents and Tailscale, but I'd like to try running a Minecraft or Valheim server. I have a reasonable dose of paranoia and not enough knowledge to validate my security.
  • Monitor power usage. I imagine that my setup is not the most power efficient. I'd like to see how much juice this actually uses. Is the only way to buy one of those wattage meters that plugs in between the computer and the wall? Is this going to use so much power that the environment and my wallet would be better off just buying a more power-efficient mini PC or something?

Thank you for reading this and possibly giving me your thoughts. I hope you have a magnificent day 🫶

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Recording of ringtone in question (timestamped, by TPG2009 on YouTube).
I had initially recovered this myself several years ago out of a purely personal drive, though it has been sitting in my archives for several years as I felt it was far too obscure to warrant sharing. But why not? Someone out there might have been looking for this.
For historical context: "Take Me Home" is a track composed by Jonathan Firstenberg and Kenny Edwards, from the stock music album "American Guitar," released on September 21, 2000 and licensed by Universal under the Bruton Music label. (source)
Being a stock music track, it is not very widely recognized in general. Those that do recognize it probably know it from its usage in several of Adult Swim's bumps/intermissions. (source) However, a lesser-known usage is as a ringtone on at least two Motorola phones: The aforementioned Sprint-specific Razr V3m of which this was sourced, and the C168i (timestamped source, from Vintage phones archive on YouTube) of which has yet to be recovered. On both devices, it is known as "Blue Tile."
https://drive.proton.me/urls/J410KV665G#Gjhbt9n0a09e
This zip file contains both the ringtone in its original MIDI format as taken directly from the Sprint V3m's firmware, as well as an MP3 render.

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A website where I check for sotware updates is showing an update today for the razr 40 ultra and razr+. I am going to download and flash it but just wondering if anyone has any info as to hat it may be. Can't find info in google search.
XT2321-3_ZEEKR_RETUS_13_T2TZ33.18-75-9_subsidy-DEFAULT_regulatory-DEFAULT_cid50_CFC.xml.zip 2023-11-29

Navigating the complexities of UDYAM registration can be a daunting task, especially when it comes to verifying your certificate online. This comprehensive guide is your go-to resource for simplifying the UDYAM certificate verification process.
Understanding UDYAM Registration
Before delving into the verification process, let's grasp the essence of UDYAM registration. It is a government initiative aimed at providing recognition to Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). This registration is vital, offering a spectrum of benefits, including access to subsidies, credit facilities, and various government schemes.
Importance of UDYAM Certificate Verification
Verifying your UDYAM certificate online is crucial for ensuring its authenticity and reaping the associated benefits. It's a validation step that confirms the legitimacy of your registration, assuring stakeholders, suppliers, and potential collaborators of your status as an authentic MSME entity.
Step-by-Step Guide to Online Verification
1. Access the UDYAM Portal
Begin by visiting the official UDYAM registration portal. Look for the dedicated section or link for certificate verification.
2. Enter Certificate Details
Input the required details from your UDYAM certificate. This typically includes the UDYAM registration number and other relevant information as prompted.
3. Authentication Process
Follow the instructions provided on the portal to complete the verification authentication. This step may involve entering an OTP (One-Time Password) sent to your registered mobile number or email.
4. Verification Confirmation
Upon successful completion, the portal will display a confirmation message validating your UDYAM certificate.
Common Issues and Troubleshooting
- Incorrect Details
Ensure the accuracy of the information entered. Even a minor discrepancy can hinder the verification process.
- Technical Glitches
In case of portal errors or technical issues, reach out to the designated support channels provided on the portal for assistance.
Benefits of Verified UDYAM Certificate
Once your UDYAM certificate is successfully verified, you gain access to a multitude of benefits, including:
Priority sector lending from banks and financial institutions.
Eligibility for government subsidies and schemes.
Ease of participating in global tenders and collaborations.
Enhanced credibility for potential partnerships.
Conclusion
Verifying your UDYAM registration certificate online is a pivotal step toward harnessing the advantages that come with MSME recognition. By following this comprehensive guide, you can streamline the verification process and unlock the myriad benefits awaiting your authenticated status.

Good afternoon
I have been passed 3 mobiles by my mother to check for old photos, 2 Nokias both easily sorted but also a Motorola (think it’s a Razr v3) flip phone thing. It’s her old ‘orange’ phone and has no sim and keeps asking me for a subsidy code? I’m assuming this is a network lock.
I have no interest in using it but want to check if it has any photos on it. I have a known working mini usb cable and that just makes noises when inserted, found/lost device window beeps etc. There is as far as I can tell no card SD etc in the device along with no sim. Orange bit the dust with the dinos and before I send it to the scrapyard in the sky is there anything else I can do?
I downloaded Motorola device manager and that just loads up and then automatically starts looking for a device update, says there isn’t one and turns off - useful!
If it stores everything to SD there isn’t one so I’ll sling it if so.

Hello,
I have an old RAZR V3 from Cingular. I'm not looking to use the phone I need to access it to get some pictures off it. AT&T was able to give me a code but I believe its an unlock code and not a Subsidy code. I called Motorola but I had no luck there either. It currently has an AT&T card that was bought off ebay. No service is attached to that card.

• The U.K. Parliament has passed the Online Safety Bill (OSB), which says it will make the U.K. “the safest place” in the world to be online. In reality, the OSB will lead to a much more censored, locked-down internet for British users. The bill could empower the government to undermine not just the privacy and security of U.K. residents, but internet users worldwide. Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/today-uk-parliament-undermined-privacy-security-and-freedom-all-internet-users
• Researchers have discovered a never-before-seen backdoor for Linux that’s being used by a threat actor linked to the Chinese government. Source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/09/never-before-seen-linux-backdoor-is-a-windows-malware-knockoff/
• Microsoft AI researchers accidentally exposed tens of terabytes of sensitive data, including private keys and passwords, while publishing a storage bucket of open source training data on GitHub. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/18/microsoft-ai-researchers-accidentally-exposed-terabytes-of-internal-sensitive-data/
• New malware named HTTPSnoop and PipeSnoop are used in cyberattacks on telecommunication service providers in the Middle East, allowing threat actors to remotely execute commands on infected devices. Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-backdoor-telecom-providers-with-new-httpsnoop-malware/
• A leaked court document has seemingly revealed Microsoft's plans for future Xbox consoles. First off, the company is working on hybrid machines that it says would leverage the "combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences." The document also claims that the console will be optimized for real-time gameplay and creators, and will offer enhanced capabilities beyond what the client hardware can offer. Source: https://www.techspot.com/news/100200-massive-leak-reveals-next-gen-xbox-could-cloud.html
• X owner Elon Musk today floated the idea that the social network formerly known as Twitter may no longer be a free site. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/18/elon-musk-says-x-will-charge-users-a-small-monthly-payment-to-use-its-service/
• Pizza Hut's Australian outpost has suffered a data breach. The baked goods purveyor has delivered bitter news to around 190,000 customers: that their name, delivery address, email address, and phone numbers have been accessed by unautorised entities. Source: https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/21/pizza_hut_australia_data_breach/
• People who work remotely all the time produce less than half the greenhouse gas emissions of office workers, according to a new study. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/18/people-who-work-from-home-all-the-time-cut-emissions-by-54-against-those-in-office
• MGM Resorts (MGM.N) said on Wednesday its hotels and casinos were back to normal operations but it was working to resolve issues at its luxury Excalibur hotel and casino in Las Vegas, over a week after a cyberattack disrupted its systems. Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/mgm-says-its-hotels-casinos-operating-normally-after-cyberattack-2023-09-20/
• The Signal Foundation, maker of the Signal Protocol that encrypts messages sent by more than a billion people, has rolled out an update designed to prepare for a very real prospect that’s never far from the thoughts of just about every security engineer on the planet: the catastrophic fall of cryptographic protocols that secure some of the most sensitive secrets today. Source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/09/signal-preps-its-encryption-engine-for-the-quantum-doomsday-inevitability/
• Amazon executives were “okay” with people being secretly signed up for its Amazon Prime membership program, the FTC said in an amended lawsuit on Wednesday (as reported by The Wall Street Journal). The original lawsuit, filed in June, claimed that Amazon had tricked millions into unwittingly subscribing to Prime through buttons that were presented prominently during checkout. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/20/23882675/amazon-prime-ftc-dark-patterns-lawsuit
• The family of a US man who drowned after driving off a collapsed bridge are claiming that he died because Google failed to update its maps.Philip Paxson's family are suing the company over his death, alleging that Google negligently failed to show the bridge had fallen nine years earlier. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66873982
• Incomplete information included in recent disclosures by Apple and Google reporting critical zero-day vulnerabilities under active exploitation in their products has created a “huge blindspot” that’s causing a large number of offerings from other developers to go unpatched, researchers said Thursday. Source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/09/incomplete-disclosures-by-apple-and-google-create-huge-blindspot-for-0-day-hunters/
• The U.S. Commerce Department on Friday is issuing final rules to prevent semiconductor manufacturing subsidies from being used by China and other countries deemed to pose American national security concerns. Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-finalizes-rules-prevent-china-benefiting-52-bln-chips-funding-2023-09-22/
• Atlassian and the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) have disclosed several security flaws impacting their products that could be exploited to achieve denial-of-service (DoS) and remote code execution. Source: https://thehackernews.com/2023/09/high-severity-flaws-uncovered-in.html

The Indian government's Udyam Registration Scheme has revolutionized the way Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are registered and managed. With the introduction of the Udyam Certificate, formerly known as the Udyog Aadhar Certificate, MSMEs can now access a plethora of government scheme benefits. In this blog, we will guide you through the easy and efficient process of printing your Udyam Certificate through Udyog Aadhar online.

Understanding Udyam Registration

The Udyam Registration Scheme aims to promote and support the growth of MSMEs by providing them with various benefits and incentives. It replaces the earlier Udyog Aadhar registration process and offers a simple, streamlined online system for MSMEs to obtain their Udyam Certificate. This certificate serves as an official acknowledgment of an enterprise's registration under the Udyam scheme and grants eligibility for a range of government scheme benefits.

Step-by-Step Guide to Print Your Udyam Certificate through Udyog Aadhar Online

Step 1: Access the Udyog Aadhar Website

Start by visiting the official Udyog Aadhar website. The website provides a user-friendly interface to facilitate the Udyam Certificate printing process.

Step 2: Click on Print Udyam Certificate

On the Udyog Aadhar website's homepage, locate and click on the "Print Udyam Certificate" option. This will direct you to the certificate printing section.

Step 3: Enter Your Udyam Registration Number

To proceed further, you will need your unique Udyam Registration Number. Enter this number accurately in the space provided on the portal.

Step 4: Verification and OTP

After entering your Udyam Registration Number, the website may prompt you to complete a verification process. You might receive an OTP (One-Time Password) on your registered mobile number or email. Enter the OTP in the provided field to verify your identity.

Step 5: View Your Udyam Certificate

Upon successful verification, the Udyam Certificate will be displayed on the screen. This certificate contains essential details, such as your business name, registration information, and other relevant particulars.

Step 6: Download and Print

To keep a digital copy of your Udyam Certificate for your records, download it to your computer or mobile device. For official purposes, consider printing a hard copy of the certificate.

Benefits of Printing Your Udyam Certificate through Udyog Aadhar Online

Access to Government Scheme Benefits: With your printed Udyam Certificate, your MSME becomes eligible for various government scheme benefits, including financial support, subsidies, and priority in government tenders.
Easy Business Transactions: Many financial institutions and banks require a valid Udyam Certificate while processing loans or financial services for MSMEs. Having a printed certificate readily available can expedite these transactions.
Participation in Support Initiatives: The Udyam Certificate allows your MSME to participate in government-supported programs aimed at enhancing productivity and competitiveness.
Credibility and Trust: Possessing a printed Udyam Certificate showcases your business's legitimacy and compliance with government regulations, earning trust from customers and partners.

Conclusion

Printing your Udyam Certificate through Udyog Aadhar online is a straightforward and time-efficient process that grants your MSME access to an array of government scheme benefits. The Udyam Registration Scheme empowers your business to grow and flourish, enabling you to tap into various financial incentives and supportive initiatives. Waste no time, print your Udyam Certificate today, and take your MSME to new heights of success.

This is long so I will try to sum up the main aspects.

• My parents are unhappily married, they married years ago because my mother got pregnant of me, my paternal grandparents did not like her but once she got pregnant they supported everything. They let them live in the house they had built with much effort (they were born during a dictatorship in my country in extremely poor families and had to go abroad to a country they hated to save enough to build the house) for free. My parents never paid rent or bills or childcare or food: my grandmother cooked for everyone, took care of me during the day and later of my brother and my grandparents paid everything. Despite all this I grew up hearing my mother badmouthing my grandparents, saying they were stingy. When my grandmother passed, my grandfather was heartbroken. He is a traditional man so he doesn't cook and my mother wanted to charge him money to cook for him. Remember, he still paid every bill of the house and did not charge them rent. When he got sick, she did not take care of him yet was helping to take care of a old lady which was our neighbor, for free. This person has no kinship with her. She did not visit him in the hospital. Before dying my grandfather actually pressed charges against my mother to a social worker. A few days before my grandfather passed, me and my father went to the hospital see him and the last thing my father said was "don't worry, the pension for money for this month already arrived". For context, my grandparents had opened a business where they employed my father. The business went bankrupt and since then my father was unemployed. He had some jobs but could not hold one for long (he does have some health issues), he was unemployed for 12 years and often asked money to my grandfather.
  
• My parents took home a female dog when I was a teenager and did not take care of her. She eventually got pregnant, had three babies. I found a home for one, and since could not find for the other two I decided to take ownership of the three of them. Back then I was a student, so did not have a lot of money but did the best, including neutering both the females so they would not have more babies. They never helped with that, even though technically they're the ones who created the problem by bringing home a female and not neutering her (they didn't even gave her vaccines)
  
• My parents did not pay for my education. I had a scholarship, and lived in the house throughout my degree but my grandfather was alive so he paid for all bills. The government paid a small subsidy to my parents up until when I was 24 years because I was studying, but my mother never gave me that. I survived with around 3k per year (plus some savings because I took a gap year to work), paying tuition, transportation, books, lunch at school, still paid for food for my pets, vet bills and helped with the internet bill sometimes. Later on I was struggling to get a job and moved to a different city alone. I started paying rent there and only visited here on weekends because of my dogs. My parents did not buy them food, so I brought bags of food for my dogs. At some point my parents wanted me to pay 50€/month to be here 4 days a month, I refused, so as revenge, they stopped picking me up from the station when I came home. I arrived at 11pm, and had to do a 20 minute uphill walk with a huge trolley and dog food (fun). Sometimes when kids visit parents, the parents here pack them some food for them to take for the week. I actually had to cook food to bring with me when I came visit my dogs because my mother refused to cook and I had no supplies here since I only came on weekends. It's a small place so not a lot of restaurants and supermarkets are closed on weekends. I then was unemployed for 5 months and decided to enroll in a 3 month course. During that period I had no income and had to pay rent and provide for myself in an expensive city. I took a personal loan for that (already paid off), but they never helped either. Due to that course I then landed a better job.
  
• With pandemic I started spending more time here due to my dogs. I started working from home, I kept renting in the city to go there a few days per month, but to be with my dogs I started spending most of the month here. I do not like it, but it is hard for me to leave my dogs. I also had a health issue and my mother did help by cooking for me during that time, but since then, I pay for my food, gas and in the winter I help with electricity bill if I know I spent too much.
  
• They rent part of the house to a guy with a rent of 75€. Stores in a building in front of my house pay rents of like 400-500€. This guy pays 75€ which includes also the internet and electricity. Once he did some shit with the internet router and then went away, leaving me with no internet to work (I work from home). He told me to connect to the internet of the a store in front of my house (lol, did not even know the password). I freaked out and called him an idiot and my mother went to apologize to him. The winter before the electricity bill was huge, I knew he had the heater on, but my mother did not ask him extra money, I ended up having to pay like 80€ to cover for the extra bill (I did spend, but he also spent and did not pay his share).
  

Yesterday my brother told me he thinks nobody helps me because I don't help anyone. I basically only ask him for stuff for my dogs, I never ask for stuff for me. For example, when I am not here, I leave all the food and I ask them to give them the food. I asked them to text me if my dogs are sick and then I call back (so they don't have to spend money on the call). If they need to take the dogs in a vet emergency I pay for everything. So basically the only favors I ask is feed the dogs, take them to the vet if they're sick and call me in that situation.
My parents, specially mother, are always crying they are poor and need money (they now both work on a minimum wage salary, but they only have the 6th grade, and they don't have to pay for the house, many people in my country get a minimum wage sometimes they even are more educated AND they need to pay for rent). If I go on vacation or buy new clothes or spend money in the vet with my dogs, the conversation is "you're rich, if you'd give that money to us, you'd be a better daughter". I refuse to do so, because I am not willing to pay for other people stuff. If she takes the bill, divides by 5 and tells me "you pay this part", I'd pay. My guess is it would be like 20€/month if that much. But she does not want that. She wants me to pay for everything. 50€, 100€, whatever. Yet this guy who is nothing to her is here with a business for 75€/month. Legally it's their house but they inherited it. They never paid for the house, they never in their 50 years of life paid rent (I do pay rent in the city), so what moral have they to come ask me for money? They're always saying I make more money than them which is true... But the money I make now I make because of all the sacrifices I did, which they did not help, not even with motivation (they didn't want me to quit my gap year job to go to college) so I don't feel I need to share since they never helped me.
Again the only reason I am here is my dogs (one of my dogs passed recently, now it's just one unfortunately). I have an ongoing saving plan to buy a house and when I have enough I will do it and take him with me. However this is not something that easy, housing prices are high and interest rates also went up. In a single income, it takes a while to have enough for a downpayment.
I clearly have no love for this people, they took me to the doctor when I was sick as a kid and they didn't sexually abuse me or didn't physically abuse me a lot (just slapping because I forgot to put milk on the fridge, stuff like that), guess I should thank them for not physically or sexually abusing me or not abandoning me (lol), but that was it. There was a lot of emotional abbuse going on whose consequences I still deal with. I suffer from depression and anxiety and I medicated for that for years now.
Am I wrong for having this attitude?

By Meaghan Tobin, Lyric Li
Thai YouTube star Jo Chirawatt recently took two of the best-selling electric cars in Thailand for a test drive. One was Tesla’s Model 3. The other was the Atto 3, made by Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD.
The Atto 3 marked “the iPhone moment” for EVs, Chirawatt told his nearly 900,000 YouTube followers, suggesting it would set off a hype cycle that would transform a novelty purchase into a mainstream luxury. For most of the world, previous generations of EVs were aspirational purchases.
From Bangkok to Tel Aviv, BYD — which stands for “Build Your Dreams” — has been pushing to make EVs mass-market.
The Chinese car company, which has also sold low-priced gasoline-powered cars for more than a decade, has this year surpassed Tesla to become the top-selling EV brand in the world.
At the Shanghai auto show in April, the company’s biggest bid yet to capture the global market for affordable EVs was unveiled in the tiniest package, with the lowest price tag: a compact battery-powered hatchback called the Seagull that sells for just over $11,000.
“The Seagull was the shot heard around the world when it comes to affordability of electric vehicles,” said Bill Russo, founder and chief executive of the Shanghai-based advisory firm Automobility.
This year has marked a moment of arrival not just for BYD but for the much-maligned Chinese auto sector as a whole.
The country exported 1.07 million cars in the first quarter of this year, according to China’s Association of Automobile Manufacturers — overtaking Japan to become the world’s top auto exporter.
One out of every four of those cars was electric. BYD models are now the top-selling electric vehicles in Thailand, Israel, New Zealand and Singapore.
Like many Chinese tech companies before it, BYD has targeted fast-growing emerging markets without strong local brands. It did the same with its earlier gas-powered cars, selling across South America, Africa and the Middle East.
Now, BYD is racing to get drivers in these same markets into their first EV — building its dream almost everywhere, except the United States.
In Thailand, the Atto 3 accounted for nearly 40 percent of the local EV market in the first quarter of this year. Now, BYD has its sights on becoming one of the top sellers of EVs in India, where it has an assembly plant.
“If Tesla decides to enter a market in Latin America or Southeast Asia, guess who they’re going to have to compete against in every single one of those markets?” said Tu Le, founder of the Beijing-based consultancy Sino Auto Insights. “That’s an advantage to BYD.”
But being a newcomer has drawbacks. In target markets like Australia, people on social media question the longevity and long-term reliability of the low-priced models. In 2022 J.D. Power surveys, BYD lagged its foreign rivals on multiple metrics, including dependability and performance.
And BYD didn’t grow on its own. Over more than a decade, the company has received billions of dollars in support from the Chinese government.
The EV industry has long been a priority for Beijing, which sought to curb China’s reliance on fossil fuels and foreign automakers by supporting domestic firms’ mastery over every part of the EV supply chain.
By 2018, the Chinese government had spent nearly $60 billion on achieving the transition to “new-energy vehicles,” according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
As China became the dominant processor for the essential minerals that go into EV batteries — 95 percent of the manganese and over 60 percent of the cobalt and lithium is processed in China — Chinese EV and battery makers like BYD benefited from government grants, subsidies and tax credits.
These incentives sparked the growth of dozens of EV companies in China, all vying for the top spot in the market. The battle has been so fierce that Tesla has repeatedly cut prices. Analysts predict that BYD’s Seagull will bring this cutthroat competition to markets around the world.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk “likes to think he can make the EV affordable for everyone — he’s been talking about a $25,000 electric vehicle for years, but he doesn’t have one right now,” said Russo, of Automobility.
“BYD has an $11,000 electric vehicle, and it will be available this year. If anyone is democratizing the EV, it’s Wang Chuanfu, and he’s the one who should be called the Henry Ford of the 21st century.”
Wang, a chemist, founded BYD in 1995 to make batteries for early laptops and cellphones like the Motorola Razr. Twenty years ago, Wang bought a failed car company with the idea of making batteries for those, too.
Analysts have described Wang as just as relentless and ambitious as Musk. During a factory tour in 2008, according to Fortune magazine, Wang told David Sokol, an executive at Warren Buffett’s investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, that in an effort to make recyclable batteries, BYD had developed nontoxic battery fluid.
Then, to prove it, Wang poured it into a glass — and drank it. Sokol didn’t partake. But a few months later, Buffett invested $230 million.
At Tesla, Musk focused on making EVs into a flashy aspirational purchase. But at BYD, Wang doubled down on the company’s battery technology. He insisted that BYD’s batteries had become so efficient that if the cars didn’t work out, the company could make batteries for competitors. Today, BYD sells its batteries to both Tesla and Ford.
“BYD has always built its own chips and made its own batteries and engineered them themselves,” said Le, of Sino Auto Insights.
All of Tesla’s big announcements revolve around the company taking ownership of the engineering of some component, Le said. “In effect, they’re saying they want to be BYD.”
When asked to name Tesla’s biggest competition during an earnings call earlier this year, Musk answered, “Some company out of China.”
Buffett’s longtime business partner Charlie Munger said in February that BYD was “so far ahead of Tesla … it’s ridiculous.”
Tesla ignited a wave of interest in EVs in China in 2019 when it opened its Shanghai Gigafactory, intensifying competition among dozens of Chinese EV companies as sales surpassed government targets.
During the pandemic, while most of the world’s automakers faced major supply-chain disruptions, BYD and Tesla were able to keep exporting. Last year, more than a third of the world’s EVs were exported from China, up from one-quarter the year before, according to the International Energy Agency.
As tensions between Beijing and Washington increase and both sides move to shore up the growth of their domestic tech industries, Chinese-made EVs face multiple hurdles getting
To read the full story go to: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/13/china-byd-electric-vehicle-tesla-rival/

Hi ecommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry pretty closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. .

1. STAT OF THE WEEK: 70% of e-commerce shoppers experienced shipping delays without any reason provided by the business for the delay. Faced with that experience, 90% of respondents said they are less likely to buy from a brand again after a poor online shopping experience, while 29% say they are increasingly willing to share a negative review online. – According to Koerber .
2. If some of Temu's deals appear too good to be true — it's because they are! An analysis of the company's supply chain costs by WIRED shows that Temu is losing an average of $30 per order as it throws money at trying to break into the American market. Most of Temu's subsidies are in the form of free international shipping, with even a small package costing the company around $14 to ship to the US (although it offers the shipping for free). When adding in the additional product discounts and cash coupons that Temu gives to customers, the average loss per order jumps to $30. .
3. The FTC has proposed new rules in the US called “click to cancel” that will impact e-commerce subscriptions — but in a good way for consumers! The rules would require any business selling subscriptions to add a simple cancel mechanism on the same website as the initial transaction, and include the same number of steps. In other words, a “one click subscription” would require a “one click cancelation.” This “click to cancel” rule is part of the FTC's proposed changes to its 1973 Negative Option Rule, which establishes how subscription sellers must communicate offers, ensure consent, manage billing, and simplify cancellation. .
4. BigCommerce announced new leadership including the appointment of Daniel Lentz as the company's CFO, Chuck Cassidy as its General Counsel, and Hubert Ban as its Chief Accounting Officer. .
5. Google is launching Product Studio, a new tool that allows Shopping merchants to quickly edit and customize their product images for free using generative AI. According to Google's data, product listings with more than one image typically see a 76% increase in impressions and a 32% increase in clicks compared to listings with a single image. With the new generative AI tool, text prompts can be used within Product Studio to quickly make visual adjustments to product images, such as generating new backgrounds for seasonal campaigns. The tool also allows sellers to instantly remove the existing background of an image if they need a blank backdrop, and increase the quality of small or low resolution images. .
6. Morning Consult published their annual report of Most Trusted Brands for 2023. The survey ranks roughly 1,500 brands in the US, most of which were dominated by big, well-established names including: #1 Band-Aid, #2 UPS, #3 Amazon, #4 Lysol, #5 Kleenex, #6 Cheerios, #7 Visa, #8 Dove, #9 The Weather Channel, and #10 FedEx .
7. Axios, in collaboration with market research firm Harris Poll, also ran a recent survey to determine the Most Reputable Brands in the US. The results were very different from Morning Consult's most trusted brands. Only one company overlapped in the top ten which included: #1 Patagonia, #2 Costco, #3 John Deere, #4 Trader Joe's, #5 Chick-fil-A, #6 Toyota, #7 Samsung, #8 Amazon, #9 USAA, and #10 Apple . Bottom of the list included: #90 Family Dollar, #91 Balenciaga, #92 BP, #93 Bitcoin, #94 TikTok, #95 Spirit Airlines, #96 Meta, #97 Twitter, #98 Fox, #99 FTX, and #100 The Trump Organization .
8. The latest data from PYMNTS shows that high earners are feeling the pinch of credit card debt and that their wages aren't keeping up with inflation. This is resulting in higher-end retailers who depend on wealthier households feeling the pinch as well. The data shows a number of correlations including that for bouseholds earning more than $100k annually, 42% were living paycheck-to-paycheck in April 2022. That number has crept up to over 49% this past year. .
9. Netflix must have forgotten what love is since 2017 when it made its famous tweet that “Love is sharing a password.” The company has finally launched its ill-awaited crackdown on password sharing in the US and the UK. The new rules state that subscribers are permitted to share their account with members of their own household, which Netflix defines as “you and the people you live with.” Netflix will begin using a variety of tools, such as IP checking, to spot when people are using another household’s account and prevent them from doing so, or give them the option of adding a household for $7.99/month. The company expects cancellations, but optimistically (or idiotically) predicts that those same people will come back again, which will overall lead to more people paying for subscriptions. .
10. Laws are changing in Australia to treat BNPL as a credit product. Finally! When was it NOT a form of credit? BNPL should have been recognized as a credit product the day the first BNPL company put up a coming soon landing page. Australia’s Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones said that a litany of issues reported to the Australia Securities and Investments Commission have added up to “unacceptable levels of unaffordable lending occurring, largely concentrated amongst low-income borrowers.” He added that “BNPL looks like credit, it acts like credit, it carries the risks of credit.” Jones promised draft legislation in the coming months and the introduction of a final bill to the Australian Parliament by the end of the year, which will include the need for BNPL firms to hold Australian Credit Licenses and comply with Resonspible Lending Obligations. .
11. Bill Gates said that AI could kill Google Search and Amazon as we know them, and that the technology could radically alter user behaviors, resulting in people never needing to visit a search website again or use certain productivity or shopping tools. Gates remarked that the first company to develop it will have a leg up on competitors. .
12. A recent study conducted by Lloyds Banking Group revealed that a UK consumer falls victim to a purchasing scam that originates on Facebook or Instagram every seven minutes, resulting in a cost of over £500k per week. (That man is Michael Scott.) The banking group is now urging Meta and other tech giants to take responsibility and contribute to refunding innocent victims of scams. .
13. Analysts at Bernstein project that Reliance Industries is poised to outpace Amazon and Flipkart in the race for India's $150M e-commerce market, citing the conglomerate's robust retail network, mobile network, and home field advantage as its biggest assets. Reliance already operates the country's largest retail chain with over 18k stores and is leveraging its presence to form partnerships with Meta, Shein, and other companies as a strategic advantage against its competitors. .
14. Shopify is introducing its POS hardware to the Canadian market. Its mobile selling device, the POS Go, which is built to run Shopify’s POS software, was first rolled out to retailers in the US in 2022. .
15. Meta announced that ads in Instagram search results will now be available through the Instagram Marketing API, allowing third-party social-management platforms to offer a new Instagram ad-placement type in their apps. Meta began testing the placement in March and are now opening it up to all brands. .
16. Shein is exploring plans to build a factory in Mexico as one of its manufacturing hubs outside China, which could shorten shipping time and cut distribution costs for customers in Latin America and USA. Earlier this month I reported that Shein is creating a hub in Brazil. .
17. Amazon opened the first phase of its Metropolitan Park on Monday, its long-awaited second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia that can hold up to 8k employees. However not all Amazon employees are excited about the new office location (or any office location). At least 1,000 office workers are planning a walkout this Wednesday to take a stand against the company's return-to-office mandate. .
18. The Vietnamese government is putting pressure on TikTok to police its content and remove videos that fall short of the state’s standards, or risk a ban. Eight government departments are targeting toxic content deemed “to pose a threat to the country’s youth, culture and tradition” — including videos that simply criticize college degrees. .
19. eBay unveiled generative AI on its mobile app to help sellers list new items for sale, however the company forgot to inform sellers and didn't label the icon. When clicked, the icon replaced sellers' entire product descriptions with AI generated text, with no way to recover the original description. .
20. Boozt AB, a Sweden-based online fashion retailer, blocked 42,000 customers for returning too many items, calling their actions too costly for the company and the environment. The company said that these particular customers represented less than 2% of their 3M customers, but around 25% of the total return volume. .
21. Twitter withdrew from an agreement with the EU to cut down misinformation on its social network, which the company joined alongside other tech companies in 2018. Thierry Breton, the EU internal market commissioner, noted that fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation from August 25th, due to the EU's Digital Services Act, so the agreement would become irrelevant. .
22. Jeff Bezos is ripped now! The Amazon founder started working with personal trainer, Wes Okerson, who's also trained Tom Cruise and Gerard Butler, and now he's gotten super buff. This is about the least e-commerce specific news you'll ever see me share in this newsletter, but the Jeff Bezos before / after photo is kind of wild! .
23. Amazon will close its official Amazon app store in China on July 17, which launched in 2011 as an alternative to the Google Play Store. Amazon noted that its marketplaces and AWS services will remain operational in China. However while it may be leaving China, the Amazon App Store will soon be bringing more Android apps to the Windows ecosystem. The expanded partnership will allow Windows users to access a wider range of Android apps seamlessly. .
24. Google updated the badges some merchants display for their product listings in Google Search to say “Top Quality Store” instead of the original “Trusted Store” badge. Google said this is just a name and title change and won't have any impact on search rank or performance. .
25. Auctane, an e-commerce shipping specialist that operates brands such as Metapack, ShipStation, Packlink, ShipEngine, Stamps.com, and others, appointed Albert Ko as its new CEO, who previously served as CEO of EWS, which is best known for the Zelle payments network. Current CEO Nathan Jones will join the company's Board of Directors. .
26. eCampus.com, a website that sells textbooks and course materials, announced that it would keep offering textbook rentals, even though its retail partner Amazon was exiting the business. The company had been powering the program behind the scenes for Amazon since 2012, and plans to keep it going through its own website. .
27. Walmart is partnering with Pawp, a veterinary telehealth provider, to offer Walmart+ subscribers free access to virtual veterinarians for a year, starting this week. Currently Pawp charges $99 for an annual membership. .
28. Alibaba Group said that it aims to hire 15,000 people this year, dismissing rumors circulating that the company planned to cut 20% of its staff. They also mentioned that more than 3,000 of those hires would be newly-graduated students. .
29. Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including a $12M Series A round by Laced to grow its resale marketplace for authenticated sneakers.

I hope you find this news recap helpful. See you next week!
-PAUL

Hi ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. .

1. STAT OF THE WEEK: 70% of e-commerce shoppers experienced shipping delays without any reason provided by the business for the delay. Faced with that experience, 90% of respondents said they are less likely to buy from a brand again after a poor online shopping experience, while 29% say they are increasingly willing to share a negative review online. – According to Koerber .
2. If some of Temu's deals appear too good to be true — it's because they are! An analysis of the company's supply chain costs by WIRED shows that Temu is losing an average of $30 per order as it throws money at trying to break into the American market. Most of Temu's subsidies are in the form of free international shipping, with even a small package costing the company around $14 to ship to the US (although it offers the shipping for free). When adding in the additional product discounts and cash coupons that Temu gives to customers, the average loss per order jumps to $30. .
3. The FTC has proposed new rules in the US called “click to cancel” that will impact e-commerce subscriptions — but in a good way for consumers! The rules would require any business selling subscriptions to add a simple cancel mechanism on the same website as the initial transaction, and include the same number of steps. In other words, a “one click subscription” would require a “one click cancelation.” This “click to cancel” rule is part of the FTC's proposed changes to its 1973 Negative Option Rule, which establishes how subscription sellers must communicate offers, ensure consent, manage billing, and simplify cancellation. .
4. BigCommerce announced new leadership including the appointment of Daniel Lentz as the company's CFO, Chuck Cassidy as its General Counsel, and Hubert Ban as its Chief Accounting Officer. .
5. Google is launching Product Studio, a new tool that allows Shopping merchants to quickly edit and customize their product images for free using generative AI. According to Google's data, product listings with more than one image typically see a 76% increase in impressions and a 32% increase in clicks compared to listings with a single image. With the new generative AI tool, text prompts can be used within Product Studio to quickly make visual adjustments to product images, such as generating new backgrounds for seasonal campaigns. The tool also allows sellers to instantly remove the existing background of an image if they need a blank backdrop, and increase the quality of small or low resolution images. .
6. Morning Consult published their annual report of Most Trusted Brands for 2023. The survey ranks roughly 1,500 brands in the US, most of which were dominated by big, well-established names including: #1 Band-Aid, #2 UPS, #3 Amazon, #4 Lysol, #5 Kleenex, #6 Cheerios, #7 Visa, #8 Dove, #9 The Weather Channel, and #10 FedEx .
7. Axios, in collaboration with market research firm Harris Poll, also ran a recent survey to determine the Most Reputable Brands in the US. The results were very different from Morning Consult's most trusted brands. Only one company overlapped in the top ten which included: #1 Patagonia, #2 Costco, #3 John Deere, #4 Trader Joe's, #5 Chick-fil-A, #6 Toyota, #7 Samsung, #8 Amazon, #9 USAA, and #10 Apple . Bottom of the list included: #90 Family Dollar, #91 Balenciaga, #92 BP, #93 Bitcoin, #94 TikTok, #95 Spirit Airlines, #96 Meta, #97 Twitter, #98 Fox, #99 FTX, and #100 The Trump Organization .
8. The latest data from PYMNTS shows that high earners are feeling the pinch of credit card debt and that their wages aren't keeping up with inflation. This is resulting in higher-end retailers who depend on wealthier households feeling the pinch as well. The data shows a number of correlations including that for bouseholds earning more than $100k annually, 42% were living paycheck-to-paycheck in April 2022. That number has crept up to over 49% this past year. .
9. Netflix must have forgotten what love is since 2017 when it made its famous tweet that “Love is sharing a password.” The company has finally launched its ill-awaited crackdown on password sharing in the US and the UK. The new rules state that subscribers are permitted to share their account with members of their own household, which Netflix defines as “you and the people you live with.” Netflix will begin using a variety of tools, such as IP checking, to spot when people are using another household’s account and prevent them from doing so, or give them the option of adding a household for $7.99/month. The company expects cancellations, but optimistically (or idiotically) predicts that those same people will come back again, which will overall lead to more people paying for subscriptions. .
10. Laws are changing in Australia to treat BNPL as a credit product. Finally! When was it NOT a form of credit? BNPL should have been recognized as a credit product the day the first BNPL company put up a coming soon landing page. Australia’s Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones said that a litany of issues reported to the Australia Securities and Investments Commission have added up to “unacceptable levels of unaffordable lending occurring, largely concentrated amongst low-income borrowers.” He added that “BNPL looks like credit, it acts like credit, it carries the risks of credit.” Jones promised draft legislation in the coming months and the introduction of a final bill to the Australian Parliament by the end of the year, which will include the need for BNPL firms to hold Australian Credit Licenses and comply with Resonspible Lending Obligations. .
11. Bill Gates said that AI could kill Google Search and Amazon as we know them, and that the technology could radically alter user behaviors, resulting in people never needing to visit a search website again or use certain productivity or shopping tools. Gates remarked that the first company to develop it will have a leg up on competitors. .
12. A recent study conducted by Lloyds Banking Group revealed that a UK consumer falls victim to a purchasing scam that originates on Facebook or Instagram every seven minutes, resulting in a cost of over £500k per week. (That man is Michael Scott.) The banking group is now urging Meta and other tech giants to take responsibility and contribute to refunding innocent victims of scams. .
13. Analysts at Bernstein project that Reliance Industries is poised to outpace Amazon and Flipkart in the race for India's $150M e-commerce market, citing the conglomerate's robust retail network, mobile network, and home field advantage as its biggest assets. Reliance already operates the country's largest retail chain with over 18k stores and is leveraging its presence to form partnerships with Meta, Shein, and other companies as a strategic advantage against its competitors. .
14. Shopify is introducing its POS hardware to the Canadian market. Its mobile selling device, the POS Go, which is built to run Shopify’s POS software, was first rolled out to retailers in the US in 2022. .
15. Meta announced that ads in Instagram search results will now be available through the Instagram Marketing API, allowing third-party social-management platforms to offer a new Instagram ad-placement type in their apps. Meta began testing the placement in March and are now opening it up to all brands. .
16. Shein is exploring plans to build a factory in Mexico as one of its manufacturing hubs outside China, which could shorten shipping time and cut distribution costs for customers in Latin America and USA. Earlier this month I reported that Shein is creating a hub in Brazil. .
17. Amazon opened the first phase of its Metropolitan Park on Monday, its long-awaited second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia that can hold up to 8k employees. However not all Amazon employees are excited about the new office location (or any office location). At least 1,000 office workers are planning a walkout this Wednesday to take a stand against the company's return-to-office mandate. .
18. The Vietnamese government is putting pressure on TikTok to police its content and remove videos that fall short of the state’s standards, or risk a ban. Eight government departments are targeting toxic content deemed “to pose a threat to the country’s youth, culture and tradition” — including videos that simply criticize college degrees. .
19. eBay unveiled generative AI on its mobile app to help sellers list new items for sale, however the company forgot to inform sellers and didn't label the icon. When clicked, the icon replaced sellers' entire product descriptions with AI generated text, with no way to recover the original description. .
20. Boozt AB, a Sweden-based online fashion retailer, blocked 42,000 customers for returning too many items, calling their actions too costly for the company and the environment. The company said that these particular customers represented less than 2% of their 3M customers, but around 25% of the total return volume. .
21. Twitter withdrew from an agreement with the EU to cut down misinformation on its social network, which the company joined alongside other tech companies in 2018. Thierry Breton, the EU internal market commissioner, noted that fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation from August 25th, due to the EU's Digital Services Act, so the agreement would become irrelevant. .
22. Jeff Bezos is ripped now! The Amazon founder started working with personal trainer, Wes Okerson, who's also trained Tom Cruise and Gerard Butler, and now he's gotten super buff. This is about the least e-commerce specific news you'll ever see me share in this newsletter, but the Jeff Bezos before / after photo is kind of wild! .
23. Amazon will close its official Amazon app store in China on July 17, which launched in 2011 as an alternative to the Google Play Store. Amazon noted that its marketplaces and AWS services will remain operational in China. However while it may be leaving China, the Amazon App Store will soon be bringing more Android apps to the Windows ecosystem. The expanded partnership will allow Windows users to access a wider range of Android apps seamlessly. .
24. Google updated the badges some merchants display for their product listings in Google Search to say “Top Quality Store” instead of the original “Trusted Store” badge. Google said this is just a name and title change and won't have any impact on search rank or performance. .
25. Auctane, an e-commerce shipping specialist that operates brands such as Metapack, ShipStation, Packlink, ShipEngine, Stamps.com, and others, appointed Albert Ko as its new CEO, who previously served as CEO of EWS, which is best known for the Zelle payments network. Current CEO Nathan Jones will join the company's Board of Directors. .
26. eCampus.com, a website that sells textbooks and course materials, announced that it would keep offering textbook rentals, even though its retail partner Amazon was exiting the business. The company had been powering the program behind the scenes for Amazon since 2012, and plans to keep it going through its own website. .
27. Walmart is partnering with Pawp, a veterinary telehealth provider, to offer Walmart+ subscribers free access to virtual veterinarians for a year, starting this week. Currently Pawp charges $99 for an annual membership. .
28. Alibaba Group said that it aims to hire 15,000 people this year, dismissing rumors circulating that the company planned to cut 20% of its staff. They also mentioned that more than 3,000 of those hires would be newly-graduated students. .
29. Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including a $12M Series A round by Laced to grow its resale marketplace for authenticated sneakers.

For more details on each story, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/how-much-money-does-temu-lose-per-orde
What else is new in e-commerce? Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks.
See you next week.
-PAUL

What happened is someone got a hold of my Driver’s license, SSN and Home Address. This probably happened during one of my visits to medical facilities since all of them require SSN, ID and Home Address, along with Insurance card. Somebody must have passed along my info to crooks who immediately created fake Driver’s license and tried to purchase luxury cars on a loan written in my name. I was lucky to have Discover Card credit monitoring that alerted me to new inquiries on my Credit Report. So far no banking or credit card accounts were penetrated and my Email address and phone numbers remain mine. I instituted credit report freeze on all three Credit Agencies (silly for me for not doing it before), but I need an advise on what to do next. My banks are all protected by strong passwords and 2FA, but can crooks try to break in by using driver’s license and SSN to take over accounts? What about various government subsidies that they can try to apply for with my info? Would ID protection services help in this situation or are they mostly a waste of time and money?
Need your expert advise.

Hi, I’ve made a throwaway account for this, as people I know follow my other account. I hope that’s okay. I’d love some advice if possible, I’m really worried because I’ve stuffed up majorly and am scared.
So around July last year I (24F) had a major mental breakdown, I don’t want to go into specifics if possible but it was bad. I stopped work abruptly and basically haven’t worked since, aside from a couple of random shifts a couple of months later. However I never got an official separation certificate and I wasn’t in my right mind so I never updated this information/circumstance to Centrelink.
I have twins that were in daycare 4 days a week last year, and while I was working we were receiving the child care subsidy, this took the payments from $560/week to around $90/week. This year they’ve only been going 1 day a week paid, as the other 3 days are free with the 4 year old funded kinder.
We receive $220/fortnight FTB (part a). No parenting payment as that was cancelled when I went full time at my old job. No rent assistance as we live in quite a cheap rental luckily.
Now that my antidepressants are working and I’m getting back to myself, I’ve become very scared for the EOFY reports. That’s 5 months of full daycare weeks & 4 months of 1 day/week daycare weeks that were subsidised but I wasn’t working. I’m assuming this will all need to be paid back but I was hoping someone who has been in a similar circumstance may have some advice? Is there any possibility to have this amount reduced, maybe if I get documents from my doctor or psychologist? And since I never changed the income estimate to show I stopped working, we’ve been receiving the lower FTB payment. When this is balanced at EOFY can this be used towards the debt, or do they take it automatically off the debt? I’m also wondering if they would do a payment plan rather than asking for it all to be paid back upfront.
I’m starting a new casual job in 2 weeks that will meet the required hours for CCS, so at least going forward that will be covered. But should I apply for parenting payment again? Or not botheit won’t pay anything? I haven’t updated our family income estimate to what it’ll likely be yet as this will trigger their system I’m guessing and I wanted to ask for advice first. I’m planning to go into a Centrelink office in person as that should be easier to navigate than their website or phones to clean up this mess. What documents should I bring?
Sorry for the massive wall of text, I tried to cover all of the info I could think of, I’m just really scared. Thank you for any help.
Edit: thank you for all of the replies & advice, I got a bit overwhelmed and logged out and couldn’t remember the password for a bit. Also, the new job fell through 🙃 but I’m looking for something else that’ll work around daycare hours. Thank you again everyone.