CISA also recently published the Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) Operational Cybersecurity Alignment (FOCAL) plan, which offers a roadmap to help public and private sector organizations improve cybersecurity coordination and better defend against nation-state threats.

Adversarial advantage: Using nation-state threat analysis to strengthen U.S. cybersecurity

Upcoming events at the Dickinson County Library — — Write On! kits available beginning today. Share your progress in person at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 21, at the Dickinson County Library in Iron Mountain.

Dickinson County Library lists events for the week

America is now poised for a catastrophic series of inter-branch battles that will push the economy and the political system to the brink. Or is it? Johnson’s first order of business was to outline a plan for dealing with the looming expiration of ...

Matthew Yglesias: Mike Johnson can succeed where Kevin McCarthy failed

Meanwhile, Trolls Poppy, Branch, Barb, Cooper and many others are not only the host for each race, but they can also help you with power-ups, shortcuts, special surprises and much more. In fact, there are even magical switches that you can hit to uncover ...

‘DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing’ Is Ready For Pre-Order: Here’s How To Reserve A Copy Online

A former city centre bank which has stood empty for at least two years is set to get a new lease of life. Plans have been lodged that confirm proposals for a restaurant and nail bar at 55 Corporation Street,

Plans for new city centre restaurant in former branch of HSBC

Taylor Heinicke has moved past turnover-plagued Desmond Ridder as the Atlanta Falcons’ starting quarterback for Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings

Falcons bench Ridder, announce Heinicke as starter against Vikings

Leishmaniasis, a disease spread by a parasite carried by sand flies, is generally considered a tropical disease. Now, thanks to climate change, new research finds it's endemic to the United States.

A 'tropical disease' carried by sand flies is confirmed in a new country: the U.S.

Coach Arthur Smith indicated this is not necessarily a long-term decision. Desmond Ridder is healthy and will be the No. 2 QB this week.

Falcons name Taylor Heinicke as starting QB vs. Vikings

1. Summerville (16) (10-0) 2. TL Hanna (9-1) 3. Byrnes (9-1) 4. White Knoll (10-0) 5. Clover (8-2) 6. JL Mann (8-2) 7. Gaffney (7-3) 8. Ashley Ridge (8-2) 9 Hillcrest ...

High School Football: Summerville's Trae Green heads honor roll

Taylor Heinicke will start for the Falcons on Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings in place of Desmond Ridder.

Why the Atlanta Falcons made the change at starting quarterback

Branch

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KubeCon organizers released their recently and it seems very promising, it also has more sessions than ever before! As always, it’s a real challenge to pick the sessions that let you get the most out of your time at the show. agenda It took me a few rounds of whittling down to choose the sessions that I plan to attend. But based on my experiences in our own environment and what I’ve run into at our customers’ sites, I expect the sessions listed below to deliver great value. While we think these sessions will be helpful to many attendees, they might not be the best sessions for you. So don’t take our word for it — use our list to inspire your own thoughts about what you’d like to hear. Check out descriptions and speakers, and let the best (wo)man win your attendance!! Getting The Most Out Of Kubernetes with Resource Limits and Load Testing. Harrison Harnisch, Buffer Availability and performance are the key when it comes to running production workloads on Kubernetes. Resource limits are essential to ensure that multiple workloads (possibly from multiple environments) can run on the same cluster(s) without interfering with each other. But the trick is to know what those limits should be. For us, this is not idle speculation: We recently witnessed one container damage an entire cluster when enterprise system engineers got the resource limits wrong. We’re looking forward to every time! learning how to get it right, Front-end Application Deployment Patterns — Ross Kukulinski, Heptio If you’re already using Kubernetes for your backend, you might want to see what it can do for your frontend as well. Potential advantages include uniform CI/CD and monitoring, eliminating vendor lock-in and more. Running front-end applications on Kubernetes, however, can create a host of new problems, so before making a decision, it’s important to understand the relationship between frontend and K8s and about the pros and cons of such a move. hear from an expert Kubernetes and the GitOps Face-Off — Ricardo Aravena & Javeria Khan, Branch Metrics While Kubernetes opens a new era of an easy orchestration of cloud and other applications, it often feels like an endless number of YAML files must be configured to manage our servers. Git makes the process less error-prone but it still requires tedious repetitive set-ups. At Rookout, we have moved to Git-Ops to manage our workflows and simplify Kubernetes application set up. We’re counting on to update us on the essential tools that will make it a breeze for us — and you — to set up an application on Kubernetes. this session Automating Enterprise Governance Using the CI/CD Pipeline — Satyam Agarwala, ThoughtWorks & Mark Angrish, ANZ As developers, we love to focus on the code we write and the value we bring to our users. In many large organizations, however, developers are less free to focus on value-generating creativity, since they are bound by their applications requiring internal or external governance. Fortunately for us, the new GitOps paradigm, loved so much for its predictability and traceability, can serve the same function for enterprise governance. So instead of viewing CI/CD as the enemy of governance, provides practical tools on how to leverage the out-of-the-box traceable and predictable qualities of CI/CD to support governance. this session In addition to the sessions above, there are a couple of sessions on debugging that I think will be great. Do it Live: Measuring your Applications in Production — Jason Keene, Pivotal Because we’re all about improving observability of live code, about how to easily collect additional data from running clusters is right up our ally. the session Debugging Applications on Kubernetes — Michelle Noorali & Radu Matei, Microsoft This is an for us since it takes as a baseline that if you’re using Kubernetes, you need to get by without debuggers. Of course, we do allow developers to debug Kubernetes, but we’re very interested in discovering tools and techniques that complement Rookout and make debugging Kubernetes not only possible but (dare we say it?) even easy, sometime soon. interesting one Written by: Liran Haimovitch, Illustration by: Ortal Avraham. Originally published at www.rookout.com .

6 KubeCon US sessions you don’t want to miss

techvillage.md In September, Moldova lights up on the global entrepreneurial map. 50 international investors will meet 50 startups from Moldova, Ukraine, and Romania (RUAMD region), in a small Moldovan village, Butuceni. For three days, September 11–13, Butuceni will become the venue for a unique startup event, TechVillage. will take place in the bosom of nature, in a rural environment. It is a small event focused on quality rather than quantity, destined for investors and startups that are tired of the conventional conferences, pitching competitions, and business forums. But why Moldova? And why now? TechVillage All eyes are looking East At a first glance, Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine don’t strike as hot tech startup hubs worth looking at. These countries are more associated with post-soviet mentality, medieval churches, and bad roads. However, in the last years, their startup scenes have evolved and now are showing real potential. The CEE region as a whole, just a decade ago, was not on the tech investors’ radar. But after the success of products such as Skype, Prezi, TransferWise, and Avast; and a sudden growth of numerous small entrepreneurial hubs in the area, the CEE began turning heads. The entrepreneurial ecosystems in Ukraine, Romania, and Moldova Ukrainians already left their fingerprints on Silicon Valley by being involved in the development of giants like (Jan Koum), and (Max Levchin). The outsourcing business in Ukraine has grown exponentially in the last years, counting at least 200,000 inexpensive tech professionals. The Ukrainian IT sector’s share in the national GDP has turned from just 0.06% to 3.3% — a whopping 5500% growth — in just 5 years. It is soon to be Ukraine’s biggest outsourcing industry. Today, over 100 giant corporations such as Samsung, Boeing, Siemens, and Oracle are in Ukraine. Ukraine might be close to reaching unicorn-level companies like , , , and . Whatsapp Paypal Affirm Grammarly bpm on-line, Genesis Readdle Jooble Across the street, in Romania, the tech industry has its own offspring to be proud of — and . A success of the Romanian startup factory is i, founded in 2010, now counting over 17,000 drivers and over 600,000 clients in Romania. Taking in account the local market size, these numbers are tremendous. According to The , Bucharest is in top 10 best CEE cities for starting a business. BitDefender Soft32 Clever Tax European Digital City Index RUAMD’s funding scene For a long while, Eastern Europe’s big disadvantage was the underdeveloped and fragmented funding environment. But things are improving. In 2016 a series of Romanian startups got funded: (e-commerce) — 5.5 million euros Elefant.ro (A/B Testing)– 1 million euros Omniconvert (billing) — 1 million euros SmartBill (recruiting) — 700,000 euros Smartdreamers (intelligent POS) — 600,000 euros SymphoPay A series of other Romanian startups that launched abroad have also received substantial funding: (USA, $60mln), (USA, $35mln), (USA, $20mln), (USA, $10mln), (UK, $5mln), (UK, $2.2mln), (UK, $1.3mln). Databricks Branch Metrics Midokura Knotch Vector Watch Big Step StatusToday In Ukraine, VC funds such as , , and saw the opportunity and decided to capitalize on geoarbitrage, thus helping Ukrainian entrepreneurs to become top class. According to a UVCA study of the Ukrainian investment and private capital, in 2015 the total investment value reached $132mln — 237% more than 2014. AVentures TA Ventures Wannabiz Imperious By comparison, Moldova still has a lot to catch up on the investment front. There are no local funds to speak of, and foreign investors are somehow timid, or just unaware of the possibility. Moldova is a developing country with a yet undeveloped market and a low volume of startup investing. However, in the last couple of years 40 Moldovan startups have received a total of $1mln in funding. Some of the more successful are , , , , and . To be able to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem which is at its embrional stage, Moldova needs success stories that would inspire the young generation to become entrepreneurs. xor.ai Planable Gaus nemo.ai BubbleWits How is TechVillage filling the gaps Growth is the goal, which can only be achieved it by building genuine, lasting collaborations between startups and investors, hubs, and accelerators. When it comes to entrepreneurship, the Moldovan glass is half-full, and the local community is pouring some more water in it — actually wine, if you didn’t know, Moldova hosts two world’s largest wine cellars and wine collections.. A group of motivated community leaders decided to organize an unprecedented event that will bring together 50 foreign investors with a collective investitional potential of $100mln and 50 Moldova, Romanian, and Ukrainian startups in an authentic Moldovan village, for three days. techvillage.md TechVillage’s ultimate purpose is to showcase the potential of CEE startups to the investors, accelerators, and community leaders from around Europe while creating a friendly environment for foreign investment in CEE. In addition however, the event aims to bring value to the Moldovan tech market, as well as, boost the development of the Butuceni village, a small village 30min drive from Chisinau — the capital of Moldova. Butuceni is known for its scenery, a place where traditions have been preserved in time, that’s why the village is the perfect escape from the everyday rush. The entire event budget will be injected in the services and products provided by Butuceni’s entrepreneurs. For three days, the participants will take part in various rural activities aimed to create meaningful connections and potential collaborations while familiarizing with the Moldovan culture. The event is an unconference type that puts focus on the interaction between participants rather than listening to speeches and panels. are as low as €249 for founders and €399 for investors, which includes accommodation, local transportation, food, drinks and all activities for the 3 day stay. To ensure a good matchmaking between the startups and investors, all participants will go through a selection process before payment. The event tickets To find out more about the TechVillage, follow them on and , and check out their . Facebook Instagram website

50 international investors with a collective potential of over $100 million are coming to…

Yesterday, I met angel investor and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Zach Coelius at the Google Campus in London. Zach was giving a talk about what early stage investors like him look for, and sharing some war stories from his time as an entrepreneur. Despite the fact that his talk started at 7 pm on Friday, the room was full — clearly there is a lot of dedicated interest in this topic! This is why I am sharing Zach’s advice in this blog. If you couldn’t make it to Google Campus on Friday night, but want to know about fundraising, read on. Zach’s investments include Cruise Automation (bought by GM for $1B+), Branch Metrics, SkySafe and a dozen other start-ups. His last venture was Triggit, for which he raised over $25m in venture capital and exited to Gravity4 in 2015. Zach ran Triggit for 10 years, growing it from 4 to 60 employees and over $30m in revenue. Start-ups are like babies. Just like babies, they need your attention and daily devotion more than they need money. Even with lots of cash, if you don’t pay attention to your baby, they are unlikely to grow into a well-functioning adult. Investors invest because of 3 things: Team Tech Traction Team: successful entrepreneurs like Elon Musk have a visible track record. If you’re not there yet, make sure your target investors get to know you. If you are building a new education platform, you have a unique perspective on where edu-tech is going. Keeping your target investors informed of these trends is useful to them. Offering to take an investor out for coffee to “pick their brain” is useless, but sending them information on the market you are working in is bringing them value. Tech: build something to show what the vision is. Having a Minimum Viable Product makes a huge difference because investors can see it, touch it, feel it. (Side note — getting a working prototype made a difference in ’s fundraise). Style Counsel Traction: get your baby to walk, even if it is stumbling and the steps are little. Traction is validation of your idea, so even if an investor would not use your product themselves, traction shows that other people want it. If you’re having trouble getting funding, focus on traction first. My view: this is particularly true if you are building a product for women. Since most investors are male, they will not understand the use case for your product if you just explain the idea. If you show that women are using the product, the male investors don’t need to worry about an unfamiliar use case because your proof is in the numbers. Engagement is not the same as growth. Engagement can translate to traction (i.e. growth): if your users like the product enough to keep using it, you can convince them to share it. (We started doing this at Style Counsel and it works. We literally message heavy users and ask them to share us on their social media and they do). Investors hear stories about engagement all the time, but the reason they invest is growth. Your first ever money will most likely come from your friends and family. When you raise money from this group, make sure they understand that you are very likely to lose it. Managing these people’s expectations is very important, so you don’t lose them if things go wrong. Also, you will be able to be more honest about how stressful your life is, if they know how risky start-up life is. Social proof is a great help for fundraising. When LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman invested in Zach’s business, others wanted to follow suit. Smart money is worth fighting for and not just for the social proof. Dumb money can have a tremendous cost. This is not an inherently bad thing, because interests can be aligned, but entrepreneurs should keep this in mind. VCs are not on your team. They ride you like a horse and leave you when you die. Zach’s advice for what to send to an investor: One sentence explanation of your business. Short paragraph: 2 or 3 sentences max. Slide deck. Most Executive Summaries are badly written, but slide decks usually explain the business better. There is a tonne of bros in Silicon Valley and they have solved many bro questions. But there are lots of questions left unsolved that the bros don’t understand, so it is a huge opportunity for women. My view: this is also a great opportunity to grow your female-consumer focused start-up under the radar of the tech giants until it is easier for them to buy your company than to compete with them. There are benefits to being the underdog if you play it right. Always raise money when you can get it. If something bad happens that is outside of your control, like the Lehman Brothers collapse, you’ll be in a safer place with cash in the bank. The further you are away from San Francisco, the higher the bar for Silicon Valley investors to invest in you. Being an entrepreneur is a roller-coaster — you can feel really happy and really down all in one day. That’s just part of the job. Managing your sanity is key to your start-up. If the entrepreneur breaks down from the stress, the company will collapse — just like in the baby analogy. Do something regularly that you cannot do while thinking about work. For Zach, it was playing professional poker, for me it is dance lessons: different micro, same macro. You can see more about Zach and his investments in his Angel List profile: https://angel.co/zach-coelius Hope you found this useful. If you want to share your fundraising or entrepreneurship tips, get in touch on Twitter: @sophiamatveeva See more at creativityandcapitalism.com

Zach Coelius: Navigating early stage VCs 101

A link behavior flow diagram from the early days of . Branch we published Part 2 of this story, in April, 2019. It discusses the future of cross-platform measurement and UX. UPDATE: The Death of App Attribution This is the story of Branch . Not the chronological history, but the reason behind why we exist. If you have ever wondered how “ deep linking ” came to be both a buzzword and an industry dirty word at the same time, here is the answer. It’s also the solution to the impending crisis of content discovery on the internet. Links are awesome. They’re the foundation of the web as we know it, and since this is the 21st century, we’ve all been surrounded by links for most of our lives. Pretty much everyone intuitively understands how to one, but do you ever stop to think about how a link actually Probably not, because the concept is so darn simple: when you click on a link, you are transported somewhere you wanted to go. use functions? With such an obvious process, you could be forgiven for missing just how fragile this system really is. Links on the Web vs. Links on Mobile Native code has many advantages over web experiences, but content accessibility and discoverability are certainly not among them. See, in the early days of the web, when each browser implemented things differently and “the internet” was something most people experienced as “that place outside of AOL,” there was a real risk that links could have ended up not “just working.” It was the widespread adoption of open standards that gave us the web as we know it today, and made search engines like Google (essentially just massive, ranked databases of trillions of links) possible. However, even this wasn’t without controversy. We now take it for granted that Google search results consist of links that point directly to content, but many early webmasters were at the thought of users being “deep linked” into the middle of their sites. The proposed alternative was for every website to be a walled garden, accessible only through its own homepage and with internal content unreachable by any other approach. Fortunately for us, this future never materialized. The web has remained open and deep linking (whether via search engine or otherwise) is something we now use every day. less than thrilled But does this alternative version of the early web sound somewhat familiar? It should, because . Native code has many advantages over web experiences, but content accessibility and discoverability are certainly not among them. So, now we have come full-circle back to the early days of the web, except that this time the walled gardens are a very real technical limitation rather than just a theoretical possibility. this is the current reality for mobile apps Solving the Walled Garden Problem on Mobile by Rethinking Links Can content be accessible and discoverable, regardless of platform or device type? The web and its well-defined link standards are not going away anytime soon, but the equivalent mechanisms for iOS and Android apps are still remarkably immature, despite anything Apple and Google may claim to the contrary. Right now, the behavior of a link often differs depending on things as innocuous as the version of the app in which it was viewed prior to being clicked. To make matters worse, the digital landscape is now changing so rapidly that it is no longer safe to assume anything about how a given user will reach you — yesterday it was your desktop website, today it is your mobile website, tomorrow it could be in your native app, but next week it may be a completely new channel that hasn’t even been invented yet. The recent trend in multi-platform linking (including iOS Universal Links, Android App Links, and Facebook App Links) has been distorting web links to accommodate apps. With this approach, a regular web link points to multiple destinations simultaneously and the local client is responsible for determining which one to load. It’s fundamentally confusing, a hack on the existing system, and it breaks as soon as content exists on one platform but not another. Whether we like it or not, , and the links of the future cannot continue to be constrained by the limitations of workarounds like these. This is not good enough. also native apps are part of the future Instead, we need to take a fresh look at how we handle linking on the internet. A new approach to linking infrastructure is needed, adopting the best of what has worked in the past, but designed from the start to accommodate both websites and mobile apps, and flexible enough to adapt as future technologies come on the scene. “Deep linking” will be part of it, but what we need now goes far beyond that. Requirements for a New Linking Infrastructure Link routing is becoming too complex to handle locally on the user’s device. We are going to need something more powerful. Here are the eight critical aspects that this system must fulfill: A single, backwards-compatible address (URL) for each link that is valid everywhere links can be used. Delivers users to the requested destination (the basic definition of a ‘link’). Capable of handling both public destinations that should be discoverable, and private destinations that require authentication or authorization. Able to detect the device and environment details of the user, and intelligently route to the best-available experience (desktop web, mobile web, native app). This should be possible even if the preferred option is the native app, and it needs to be installed first. Centralized implementation of technical details (e.g., handling failure edge cases), preserving ease of creation and use for individual links. Updatable on the fly (including retroactively for existing links) to incorporate emerging technologies and new edge case failures as they are discovered. Analytics reporting (such as the HTTP referer header and UTM parameters) for the entire traffic pipeline. Able to accept additional, contextual link data (often implemented on the web as URL query parameters). In other words, a remote link service. An API for link routing. A dedicated link redirection server in the cloud. Hosted deep links. Whatever name you prefer, the reason for it is the same: as the mobile ecosystem becomes more fragmented, link routing is becoming too complex to handle locally on the user’s device. We are going to need something more powerful. How to Build a Linking Solution for Every Device Working on for the last two years, we have realized that a system like this actually does not need to existing link standards. Instead, it can mesh parts from all of them together, filling in the holes and adding glue between the pieces to complete the user experience. There are two basic components necessary to make this happen: Branch replace This determines which experience to use for each visitor. A remote, hosted service. . These allow each app or website to receive instructions from the remote service about what content to display. Local, client modules Part 1: Remote Service On the web, we never needed anything like this. Every web browser could handle its own routing based only on the data contained in the link URL, and there was no risk that it might be to load the experience. But that happens all the time on mobile — if the app isn’t installed, for example — and the result is frequently an error message. Not ideal. The primary purpose of this remote service is to take everything we know about incoming visitors (device type, app installation status, data from link opened, etc.), use that to determine the best possible user experience (website, App/Play Store, directly to app), and then send them there. unable Aside from the simplified routing process, there are several other advantages to implementing this routing logic remotely instead of on each device: It’s possible to follow users in places where they would usually disappear from view (e.g., when passing through the App or Play Stores). The most common example of this is “deferred deep linking,” or the ability to link directly to a piece of content inside a native app that isn’t yet installed. Links can be shorter, because the link address is a unique key for a set of data parameters stored on the remote service. In other words, you no longer need to cram all of the link data and behavior control information This makes it incredibly simple to do “contextual deep linking,” or the ability track things like where the link was clicked, who originally shared the link, and an almost unlimited amount of other custom data and tracking parameters in addition to the link destination. into the link itself. The remote service is also responsible for creating links. This involves accepting a set of data keys — the content locations on each platform, behavior control parameters, tracking and display configuration, plus other custom data — and returning a link address to reference them. That link is then valid for use anywhere, and if you pass up a system-wide unique ID for each piece of content, it’s even possible to deduplicate for data integrity when multiple links all point to the same thing. Part 2: Local Client Modules Once the remote service has determined which experience is best for a visitor, we need to communicate what should happen next. The app or website needs link data to know what content the visitor requested, and there are tracking and analytics housekeeping tasks to be done. All of this is handled by the local modules, which are packaged as platform-specific SDKs. Each SDK is optimized to best fit its programing language and environment, and is broadly responsible for the following tasks: Every single time the app or website is loaded/opened, find out if the remote routing service was involved (check if a link was clicked). Retrieve the data from that link and pass it over to the app or website for use. Track that all this happened, and report back to the remote service for analytics purposes. Links on the web have conditioned us to expect an immediate response, so our new links should be no different: all of this must take place instantly, which sounds easy, but can sometimes require careful choreography so as to remain invisible to the user. And of course the SDKs also facilitate easy link creation by wrapping convenient programming interfaces around calls to the remote service. A Snapshot of the System This is the platform we began building at in 2014. What is the result, and what have we learned so far? Branch We’re far past “deep linking” now. This is something much bigger. SDKs for app linking make perfect sense. There has never been a broadly-accepted, universal approach to app deep linking, so this is brand new territory and . On the other hand, web links already “just work,” so while the Branch web SDK technically be used as a standalone method for routing into websites, it’s almost always better to use a hybrid approach together with standard redirect rules. Any data returned from the remote link service is then used for added value rather than primary navigation. Branch now has an SDK for every major platform and development toolkit can As for the remote link service, Branch does use a remote backend for much of the heavy lifting, but in practice, we often have to lean on local web browsers for “last mile” functionality. Even if support for the remote service is eventually built directly into device operating systems, routing via web browser will always be necessary for full backwards compatibility. The end result is a linking infrastructure that does indeed fulfill all eight of the requirements above, and works better than anything else available, in almost every situation. The Branch platform has now been widely adopted by over 11,000 active apps, including . most of the top names in the industry But the most surprising thing we have learned is just how many ways things can go wrong. Apple and both try to pretend that mobile deep linking is a simple thing. A check-the-box, “nice to have” feature that can be implemented by following a few guides buried deep in the developer documentation for each platform. Unfortunately, this couldn’t possibly be further from the truth, and more importantly, it misses the true scale of the problem: if links are to be used everywhere, they need to The true complexity of how difficult this is to accomplish only becomes clear with much painful experimentation. Google work everywhere. First of all, there are numerous competing mobile deep link standards, all with different functionality and requirements for implementation: Note: iOS and Android together control 99.3% of the mobile market . Because of this, Branch has very limited support for other platforms, and they are omitted here for simplicity. Of course, none of these standards is supported on every platform or OS version: Facebook deserves special recognition for inventing an open-source deep linking standard that actually showed promise, and then completely abandoning it: Even within each platform, every web browser does things differently. This matters, because the majority of links clicks still happen in browsers, and every link routing system relies on browsers for at least some core functionality: Things get even messier outside the web browser category. So many other apps are capable of opening links that attempting to generate a comprehensive list would be an impossible task, but here are a few notable highlights: The Difficulty of Building Linking In-House You will want your app’s links to be part of the largest mobile content index in the world. First of all, building a linking system that can accommodate all these edge cases is a lot of effort. At Branch, our team spends every waking moment exclusively working on this, and we have learned that the devil is in the details. For example, what if you add app deep linking to all your emails, only to realize your unsubscribe link needs to go to the web on every platform? Now your emails are broken even worse than they were before. And even once the infrastructure is built, ecosystem changes happen so frequently that nothing can be relied upon to “just work” in the future. Keeping up to date with ever-changing standards is a full time job you don’t want, because you already have more exciting things to do. But more importantly, there is a critical final piece we haven’t discussed yet: . App content doesn’t show up in web searches, and the best workaround Google has developed involves (yet again) the hack of tying apps and websites more closely together. As the app ecosystem continues to develop, this cannot be our best answer to the problem of content discoverability. Just like the vast majority of us use Google for web searches without a second thought (how many other search engines have become their own verb?), you will want your app’s links to be part of the largest mobile content index in the world. This index is Branch, and it is growing every day. search For better or worse, . But no advancement comes without costs, and the move to apps means that links — a core concept of the internet — have taken a big step backward. It’s up to us as developers to find a solution that brings back the openness of the web, otherwise apps will be doomed to live inside walled gardens forever. the age of the native mobile app is here Appendix: What Could Go Wrong? This is a pretty fundamental adjustment to the way we’ve grown up handling links on the web, so of course there are some valid objections to address. What if the service goes down? I won’t know where to send my users! This is probably the biggest risk of using a centralized system for link routing. But in reality, we already rely on remote services like DNS and CDNs for much of the modern internet. The benefits of these systems outweigh the risks, and link success rates over 99.9% (meaning less than one failure per 1000 attempts) are well within reach. What about generating links without an active network connection? When this happens, whether due to network congestion or simply because an extra network call is unwanted, all the link data can be encoded into a long-form URL and then passed up to the remote service the first time that link is loaded. The result is a much longer link address, but the same behavior. Shortened link URLs are harder to read. One of the great things about web links is that the addresses seen by users often follow a structure. In fact, this is so common that it is . Structuring things this way was originally reflective of the underlying filesystem of the server where the site was hosted, but has already started to break down with the rise of URL shortener services like Bit.ly and Goo.gl. The Branch platform (along with knockoff attempts like Firebase Dynamic Links) have used a similar short URL approach, because there is no guarantee that content inside a mobile app will be structured the same way as the corresponding website. This frees links from being tied to the technical implementation of any single platform, but nothing prevents building a structure into the addresses of links, and the Branch system already allows customization of these addresses if desired. path/to/content taken as a best practice How does this fit with Universal Links and App Links? Even though Apple and Google intended these standards to more closely tie apps and websites — the opposite goal from a comprehensive linking infrastructure focused on flexibility — it’s easy to incorporate them into the system. For our purposes, they function as pre-authorized shortcuts to speed up the user experience.

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