HBlix

Better examples of the intersection of science and art might be found in the work of someone like Buckminster Fuller. The nature of science being what it is, the science probably has to come first, with the art emerging from it

The funny thing is that people who feel like Brexit, Trump and so on are crazy would say yes, and people who think that Brexit and Trump are the best things to happen in long time will say yes for opposite reasons.

I’m done with attempts to frame yourself or your “team” as a wronged party.

But what I'm asking you to do, as a better course of action, or on top if you prefer, is say what "existing solutions" are superior and why they win. We started with baseline ad blocking and some of our users, who see the ecosystem problem of free-riding (which you still dismiss)

I don’t dismiss it, I encourage it. I’ve actively stated several times that it’s a model in need of a bullet in the neck. I’ve pointed out that much ad-supported content and “journalism” exists on a scale between useless and toxic. Moreover, the ad industry itself is inseparable from the industry of information brokering, creating demand for crap, and the subsequent environmental catastrophe of modern consumer culture. The death of it, and the noisy bollocks which exists to draw attention to it would be a good thing. Given their history they don’t deserve more chances, and it’s reasonable to suspect that even if they started off allowing for good intentions, over time the envelope would be pushed until we were back where we are now.

I understand that you disagree with what I’m saying on several levels, but the good news is that ad blocking is free and easy, not to mention popular compared to what you’re attempting.

asked us to build an option for giving back. So we prototyped with Bitcoin, and when that got expensive and cut off users who could not buy it, we created the Basic Attention Token instead. Again if you dislike our ethics, no need to rehash. But I'm still interested in how you think pure blocking, AKA "free riding", will result in a superior outcome for anyone in the long run. Publisher revenues have been falling for years, decades if you look at newspapers. How do your top ten sites keep their lights on?

Less noise, more signal. Will “free riding” kill loads of clickbait, outrage factories, and “journalism” that is really a collection of affiliate links? Yes, and it’s a feature, not a bug. As a bonus it could even encourage a more functional and less societally destructive means of remuneration for content creators that isn’t mediated by profiteering sociopaths who call themselves advertisers.

It’s also worth pointing out that I’ve explained the core issue I have with your plan have nothing to do with your motives or ethics. I’m not sure how many times I need to repeat the idea that something like uBlock Origin is a superior performer, and “but the ad-supported content!” argument is unmoving for reasons I’ve already stated. It’s not that I’ve failed offered a broader perspective, it’s just that you’ve focused a lot on what you perceive as a personal attack, despite it being nothing of the sort.

Did I really? Looking back over our brief exchange I’m not seeing it, you just seemed to use my supposed impropriety as a justification to turn this into a fight. It’s a pattern that seems to hold throughout comments on this thread when you’re questioned on the ethics or wisdom of BAT. A more cynical person would suspect that your position is sufficiently untenable that you’re employing a bit of the dead cat strategy.

“Right now” is doing some terribly hard work in that claim.

You’re selling an ICO based on that premise, I’d argue that yes you do very much need to convince at least some people of that. In addition I’d argue that you need to convince people (against the evidence of their own experience) that the majority of the “visible web” isn’t a dumpster fire that would be better off dead.

Cutting advertisers off at the knees does, and as a stance it isn’t subject to being degraded through its relationship to advertisers and their money.

So when is it just a conquest and not an occupation? 70 more years? 170? When does Israel stop being a special case the rest of the world uses as a distraction from their own recent history of violent conquest? Do you seriously think Palestinians have a future that isn’t as a diaspora of refugees? If we’re just into pure quality of life, I’d argue that resettlement in Jordan, SA, Egypt and other neighbors would be better than leaving them stuffed into a few small regions of a country they no longer control and never will again. Of course then they can’t be used by oppressive Arab regimes as a scapegoat and distraction.

I want to say that I realize how unpopular this view is likely to be here, and I’d just ask that you set aside what you want to be, and just consider what is. I’m not arguing for the right or wrong of the situation, just the reality and immutability of it. I don’t think it’s very fair that the U.S. is built on the graves of a whole series of cultures and peoples, but I also recognize that calling the U.S. an occupying force would be a farce.

Look at the new Assassin’s Creed game, which is a reskin of Origins, plus a dozen pages of “buy this shit!” The xp system is rigged to make it a slog and a grind unless you buy “boosts” and it’s a giant map filled with what amount to chores. I feel badly for kids who grow up thinking that skinner boxes connected to a publisher’s bank account are what games have to be, but I’m not touching that stuff.

Meanwhile there are great mid-tier games, indie games, and the very occasional AAA effort that doesn’t punish the player for playing. It only really gets hard when something like CDPR makes great games that don’t monetize outrageously, but also famously treat their employees like dirt.

Mostly they want to be re-elected, and they want to feed their shrinking base lots of red meat to inspire a bigger turnout. As I said, if Ted Bundy on the court could do that for them, they’d try to make it happen.