Crypto bros wrested Flappy Bird from its creator
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Would it kill these guys to have one original idea.
80% of all mainstream projects in each "hyped niche" (like blockchain, nfts, AI with LLMs) are just rehashing the exact same idea with a 1% change from the previous attempts, if even that.
Judging by the funded startups by Ycombinator and alike, original ideas is not what they're funding or out after at all.
For original ideas I think you have to start sucking up knowledge from research papers and associated conferences instead, seems to be the best way to get better understanding of the frontier, rather than looking at VC funded startups.
Unfortunately, greed and money always wins.
I just feel sad that I have nothing to refute it with. So I am going to go and cry in a corner now.
I think we've all kind of internalized this idea that you have to be a shark to do business. But insofar as businesses are profitable (and many are), every dollar of profit represents a dollar of ruthlessness that that company didn't have to execute. If a company has a 10% profit margin, they can be 10% less ruthless, and that turns out to buy their way out of a lot of the worst abuses. Or at least it could if the company's leadership wanted it to.
But there is absolutely nothing stopping you, in principle, from starting a company of your own, choosing not to hand de facto control over it to shareholders, and making the executive decision not to screw people for an extra dollar. You can do that. In fact, the Flappy Bird guy did exactly that - it's just that in this case he got outmaneuvered by predatory jerks. (Or, if you want to frame it differently: he got outcompeted in the legal arena, as obviously wrong as that is in this instance.)
The only problem here is that he lost, so...you know, don't lose. Be as much of a shark as you need to be to do business and defend yourself against the other sharks, but no more than that, and you'll be doing a lot better than the status quo.
If he thought the game's design was "evil" why did he make the game in the first place? If you want to make a game, you need to actually sit down, come up with a game concept, prototype it and then produce it and finally publish it. He did all that but believing nobody or very few would play it but in reality Flappy Bird was sleeper hit and when it became viral he melt down. Whacky media headlines drove him "crazy" not bad or addictive game design of Flappy Bird.
If you want to be a creator of any kind you need to be open to all sorts of feedback; both bad and good, crazy and kind etc. etc.
>Unfortunately, greed and money always wins.
They don't....if he wanted to protect whatever was left of Flappy Bird's brand he should've copyrighted it and let it rest in peace and not left it for grabs.
It is such a simple game, who would have thought it would inspire such overreaction? Tetris was much more addictive, and it was seen as an interesting phenomenon, but these days communication is so manipulative and violent, it seems any minor problem gets magnified into yet another crisis.
Think about it: Flappy bird is ruining lives. It was said with a straight face in many infotainment shows. Anything in excess can ruin lives, should we avoid cars, knives, alcohol, smartphones, videogames, food, water, etc.?
Flappy bird was never the problem, IMO the author likely withdrew it because the media magnificaton was becoming scary.
They said the same thing about World of Warcraft, Dota, League of Legends, Fortnite and countless other examples. People and I believe all mammals are prone to the addictions, that's why you need to teach yourself self-control or find somebody else who can teach you that or perhaps help you to control yourself.
>Flappy bird was never the problem, IMO the author likely withdrew it because the media magnification was becoming scary.
Exactly, sensationalistic media headlines made him depressed not Flappy Bird as a game.
Anyone can illegally take anyone's content and use it. It's not until the courts are involved you can't.
Some are just better funded than others, like Disney.
Likewise, lots of people seem to think that just because some IP has entered the public domain or it's "fair use" you won't get sued if you start using it. Of course you'll get sued. The plaintiff doesn't expect to win, they expect you to give up. I can already hear the sound of a thousand keyboards typing out responses to this how numerous jurisdictions have laws against "SLAPP" lawsuits.
(Edit: Not anymore, obviously!)
Ethereum switched to plutocracy, I mean proof-of-stake, years ago.
It probably helps that NVIDIA is underpinned by technical competence and their products have some basic utility outside of the bubble we are currently in.
I don't think anyone else was really trying that back then, except maybe Sony with their Cell processors in PS2s (but that was never really popular aside from a limited few supercomputing experiments).