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AI Surveillance Startup Flock To Cut Several Hundred Jobs Amid Backlash, Sources Say

Reuters reports: Flock plans to let go of about 18% of its employees, people with direct knowledge of the plans said on Thursday, as the maker of AI-powered surveillance cameras and license-plate readers faces mounting opposition to its products from communities and lawmakers.... The company has about 1,500 employees [with job cuts hitting 270 employees]. Flock faces growing scrutiny from regulators, lawmakers, and privacy advocates, despite drawing strong investor interest among venture capitalists. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Americans are divided on whether Flock cameras are a good idea. Some 38% of the country supports the use of Flock cameras in their community, compared to 47% who oppose their use. A related story... In Texas this week a county commissioner decommissioned all 61 of their Flock surveillance cameras and license plate readers, according to a local news report. County residents "have raised serious questions about who can access this data, what vendors can disclose, improper searches, and records being kept after data expires," the precinct's Chief Public Affairs Officer said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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i think i'm driving myself insane trying to make a website from scratch. where can i start with custom theming + components for wordpress?

hi. i am an amateur web designer trying to make a magazine website of my own. i wanted to make it on wordpress initially but the bloat, security issues, and my want for this cool ipod interactive component i am still adamant on making happen and my annoyance with matt because i come from tumblr was putting me off. that's why i went with astro: it was faster, had more support for weirder stuff, and was a lot cheaper (i'm not keen on spending more than $5 for hosting monthly for the rest of my life).

as for site content, it'd be similar to other wordpress music mags i've seen (news, reviews, artist recs, photo galleries, team/author pages) and it was a great idea to do it frugally on paper but i think i am slowly driving myself insane with this site as the build problems and arbitrary code problems pile up. i think my solution would either use wordpress as a headless cms for my astro site or just wordpress if i get really fucking tired.

i've never used wordpress myself before, but i do have a background in amateur blog making so all i ask is:

  1. what are the cheapest, least headache inducing, and most customizable ways/resources i can use to make a wordpress blog that will have a lot of posts and authors?
  2. is it possible to use custom typescript components in wordpress or do i have to convert everything to javascript?

example of the component i frankensteined together with typescript and tears

submitted by /u/blackroseseason
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Page publishing issue

Dear experts, I'm a newbie. Could you please tell me what's going on? I have already built the webpage using Elementor, saved it, and clicked on "Publish". However, when I opened the webpage using Google, I found it was still blank, exactly the same as when I first created the page. It seems as if my editing didn't actually get published. The page's publishing time was also at the beginning when I created the page. But when I clicked on "Edit" and "Preview", it showed the already-built website. What's the problem here?🤯

submitted by /u/Zhangyiquan0124
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We’re experimenting with a different approach to CRM software.

We’ve been building RiverX, an AI platform for building and customizing web apps.

One of the templates we’ve been working on is a CRM with the basic stuff you’d expect:

- Deal board with stages you drag deals between
- Dashboard with pipeline totals and a stage chart
- Companies, contacts and deals linked together
- Sign-up and log-in already included

The idea isn’t to compete with every CRM out there.

It’s more about having a solid starting point and then being able to say things like:

“Add a separate pipeline for renewals.”

“Add lead scoring and show it on the dashboard.”

“Create an approval step before a deal can move to Closed Won.”

…and have RiverX actually modify the application.
You can also customize the template yourself, or if you have a specific CRM workflow you want to build, we’re happy to help customize it for you.

We’re trying to figure out whether there’s value in this approach, so curious:

If you could change one thing about your current CRM, what would it be?

submitted by /u/chiragdotco
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Small team in Stockholm built MCP native CRM to replace HubSpot

Idea is simple. We built our company on the basis that organisations want out from HubSpot but not to a small own built vibe CRM without proper security or CRM development.

We decided for an outcome pricemodel with unlimited seats and access to the full product so the only way we grow is actually if our customers grow.

DM if you want in on it :)

submitted by /u/Sad_Character156
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Credential-Stealing GitHub Actions Workflows Planted in Tens of Thousands of Repositories

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an ongoing credential-theft campaign that has compromised two high-profile open-source maintainer accounts to push a malicious workflow into over 340 repositories. "Using the account of Takashi Kitao, author of the 18,400-star game engine pyxel, the attacker pushed a malicious workflow to 27 repositories starting at 13:20 UTC," StepSecurity

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FBI Arrests Another ShinyHunters Suspect Reportedly Involved in Its Jobs Portal Hack

The FBI has arrested another suspected co-conspirator of ShinyHunters, FBI Director Kash Patel said on October 9 in a post on X. ShinyHunters is the extortion group that said in September it had breached the FBI's jobs portal and stolen sensitive data on almost all FBI agents and job applicants. The FBI has not named the suspect, and no charges have been made public. The

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3,000 leads. One spreadsheet. I joined a non-tech startup and built a system that helped there efficiency 10x.

When I joined an IoT company, its sales team was managing the entire process in spreadsheets. The business had been around for about six years and already had product-market fit.

I’d been building SaaS products for three years. I wanted to try working in another industry, and the founder gave me responsibility for working with the sales team.

I started building a CRM from scratch. The first version was a Kanban board for tracking leads, which gave us somewhere to put the enquiries coming through Google Ads.

As I understood the workflow, I wanted the system to help the team continue working on each lead. Someone opening a record needed to see its history and understand the next action.

Normal WorkFlow--->

Our pipeline started at “acquired.” A new enquiry needed a qualification call about the customer’s requirements. Smaller deals went to sub-dealers because we had a minimum ticket size for opportunities handled by our team.

Suitable leads moved to “verified.” We estimated device requirements and conducted a survey, then prepared a quote covering the devices, installation, and other charges.

After sending it, the lead moved to “quoted.” The team followed up, sometimes every 10 to 15 days, until the customer sent a purchase order and we closed the deal.

That could take three to six months altogether.

Building around those stages brought up more work than I’d originally pictured. We needed to track the activities completed for a lead, understand why deals hadn’t closed, and see how many deals each salesperson had closed. I also added duplicate-lead prevention.

Then I added My Sauce --->

For initial qualification, I built an AI voice agent that called new enquiries and asked the qualification questions. An Decision Model to evaluate the answers and scored the lead.

We then assigned leads using deal value and the number each salesperson already had, with higher-ticket deals going to more senior people.

I connected the WhatsApp API so quotes could be sent from the CRM. We also added offline conversion imports, sending lead progress and closed-deal events back to Google Ads.

I enjoyed seeing the system grow around the team’s process. Each addition had a place in the journey from enquiry to purchase order, and I could understand why the team needed it.

I handled everything from design to deployment, with plenty of bug fixes and sleepless nights along the way. After the product had been stable for about a month, I couldn’t think of any new features to build.

So I started using the CRM as a member of the sales team. I handled acquisition and lead verification myself, doing the work the application was supposed to support.

I found 30 features we didn’t need. I removed them and added features people actually wanted. Using the pipeline myself helped me understand needs I hadn’t picked up while building it.

That was one of my biggest reflections from the project. The team couldn’t always put what they wanted into words. Sometimes you have to get involved in their day-to-day work to understand what should be added and what can be removed.

submitted by /u/According-Invite9092
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[PROMO] I made a plugin to help political campaigns with door to door voter outreach and Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts!

Hi everyone, I've just released a plugin called Your Right Campaign Voter Outreach that's designed to help small political campaigns in the US and Canada with door to door voter outreach and Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts leading up to an election!

The plugin allows a campaign to import a CSV of voter data from their local election authority, such as their local county, and use that data to create custom walk lists for door-to-door campaigning. The candidate or their campaign imports the voter data, then creates a list from that data that a volunteer can use to go house to house soliciting support. For the volunteer, the list appears in a custom volunteer portal where each voter's name and address is accessible to them.

As a volunteer walks their walk list, they can mark off each contact along with a relevant status, such as pledged to vote, not home, moved, etc. They can also mark whether a person has received a mail in ballot, voted early, etc as well as leave custom notes for each voter. The volunteer portal is optimized for mobile and designed to be used in the field. Volunteers can also search voters on their list by contact status, vote status and and name / address as well as filter their contacts based on even / odd addresses so one team can split up outreach on a single block.

All voter contacts are logged in real time and each volunteer can log a support score for a voter, indicating how likely a voter is to vote for the candidate's campaign. This tool is designed to make it easy for small campaigns who may be low on funds to easily manage Get Out The Vote efforts for local and municipal races.

Encryption of voter data is present out of the box and the plugin also supports storing a custom encryption key and salt in your wp-config.php file for extra security. Voter data is protected with custom user roles and the plugin makes it easy to set up volunteers who have access to walk a walk list or search and edit voter data. As far as I'm aware, this plugin is one of the only options available for a campaign who wants to truly self-host their own voter data for free.

You can download the plugin free on WordPress.org or learn more about the plugin on my website. I'm also working on creating a manual for the plugin that goes over the whole process of importing voter data and setting up a campaign in more detail.

Download Your Right Campaign Voter Outreach from WordPress.org

submitted by /u/YourRightWebsite
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P7 DarkSword iOS Exploit Kit Adds Crypto Wallet Data Theft and Remote Commands

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a previously unseen variant of the DarkSword iOS exploit kit called P7 DarkSword. "Compared with the variants we usually observe, P7 reduces its on-device footprint, adds on-device keychain and crypto-wallet theft, and adds two way C2 communication with the attacker's infrastructure," iVerify said in a new report published Thursday. The name

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CRM adoption and engagement

Does anyone use incentives to drive CRM user engagement (besides the obvious threat of getting fired if they don’t 😅)?

I work for a fun-loving company that wants to make CRM adoption more fun and engaging, rather than just another task on everyone’s to-do list.

Aside from cash bonuses, do you offer incentives or prizes to recognize your most engaged CRM users? Think company swag, gift cards, fun perks, or other creative rewards.

I’d love to hear what’s worked for your team

submitted by /u/GenZAmerican
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prospeo review - not perfect but surprisingly solid overall

decided to try prospeo about 2 months ago for our outbound campaigns. we're a series A startup doing ~5k cold emails/week.

the good: their email finder is accurate. we went from like 18% bounce rate with our old setup (mixing LeadIQ + Hunter) down to maybe 3-4% with prospeo's data. the direct dials are real too - people actually answer their phones now which is wild. the weekly data refresh is nice since we target fast-growing companies where people change roles constantly.

the meh: their chrome extension is pretty basic compared to something like LeadIQ. works fine for grabbing emails from linkedin but thats about it. also wish they had more integrations - we use outreach and had to jerry-rig it through zapier which was annoying.

pricing is reasonable, way cheaper than what we were paying for credits before. we burn through about 4k lookups monthly between email verification and enrichment. main thing is you only pay for verified contacts which saves money compared to tools where you burn credits on everything whether the data is good or not.

overall its become our primary b2b data provider. not perfect but the data quality is noticeably better than the bigger players we tried. curious if anyone else has a prospeo opinion or experience worth sharing

submitted by /u/framifydesigns
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Thinking about switching CRMs? Here’s what I’d try first

If your team wants a new CRM because nobody trusts the pipeline, give it a month first. In close to twenty years of sales and ops, I’ve watched teams switch and end up with the same complaints in a new tool. The bad habits get exported along with the contacts.

Here’s what I’d do instead. Check ten deals. Pick ten open ones at random and ask each owner: is the stage right, and will the next step actually happen? Write down how many are wrong.

Hide the junk fields. If half the entries say “tbd”, “n/a”, or just a period, reps are filling it in to get past the save button. Take it off the layout, but don’t delete it.

Define each stage in one sentence, like “Proposal: they have our pricing and confirmed they got it.” Right now every rep probably has their own definition.

Ask reps what they type twice. Email and calendar sync plus a simple Zapier or Make automation usually covers it.

Give each rep one saved view of deals with no next step or an overdue one. Their day starts there, and so does your pipeline meeting. Updates in side spreadsheets don’t count anymore (people will push back on this one).

After a month, check ten deals again. If it’s better, keep going. If not, and the tool really is the blocker, like it won’t connect to your phone system or billing, then switch. You’ll go into the demos knowing what you need.

Disclosure: my team builds CRM automations and integrations, so weigh that in.

I’ll be around in the comments. If you’ve cleaned up a CRM before, what made the biggest difference?

tl;dr: before switching, spend a month fixing fields, stages, and data entry. Check ten deals before and after.

submitted by /u/danishkaleemahmed
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What's the biggest challenge in managing a sales pipeline for a small team?

Hi everyone,

We're the team behind LeadMino, a sales CRM we're building for growing teams.

We're interested in learning how small businesses and sales teams actually manage their pipelines day to day.

A few areas we're curious about:

  • Keeping track of leads across different channels
  • Remembering follow-ups and daily activities
  • Managing deals through different sales stages
  • Getting a clear view of pipeline progress

For those working in small sales teams, which of these is the biggest challenge? Or is there something else that takes up more of your time?

We'd love to hear how you're handling it today, whether that's with spreadsheets, an existing CRM, or another workflow.

Not looking to promote anything here, just interested in learning from real experiences.

submitted by /u/LeadMino_App
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