alanfalcon

There were certainly a great number of real people who got hyped up about the reports of it this weekend. The reports that went viral were generally sensationalized, naturally, and good at creating hype. So I don't see how this would even be in dispute, unless you do not participate in or even understand how social media sites work. (I do agree that the borders are broad, and that real human hype was boosted by self-perpetuating artificial hype.)

Not technically a screenshot, I guess, but trivially easy to do with software I had lying around all the same. https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExYXloZ3Z0NT...

Now my local Burger King (in Las Vegas, NV, USA) has a sign at each table telling you that you have 30 minutes to eat your food and get out before you get thrown out for loitering.

What an interesting find!

Not that this specific quirk is covered in the novel, but a reading of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon would certainly help make one understand the kind of necessary paranoia that would lead to this kind of (important!) protective measure.

In fact there are cases where crypto makes it impossible for you to accept my money unless you send me the thing I'm paying for atomically.

But those are limited to purchasing things where ownership is also meaningfully controlled by crypto.

That'll be revealed in episode 3.

(They do have Jeri Ellsworth and some OGs from Commodore signed up to be part of the team though, and seem to genuine love the brand and have nostalgia for the C64, so I have cautious optimism!)

An infamous Starcraft example also contains notes of a similar story where they were so humbled by a competitor's demo (and criticism that their own game was simply "Warcraft in space") that they went back and significantly overhauled their game.

Former Ion Storm employees later revealed that Dominion’s E3 1996 demo was pre-rendered, with actors pretending to play, not live gameplay.

There's similar for "pack hits" and trading cards, and the regulars learn which hobby shops are reputable and which ones to avoid. Most that remain in business are not scum.

I don't even understand this bug description. It's an edge case I guess I never ran into, so pretty easy to handle.

That said, it's not like everything is perfect, just 100% better than my drive-by experiences trying to have a gaming PC (dead, again), and an Android phone for testing purposes.

e^(iτ) = 1; true beauty.

This is supremely cool, thanks for sharing. I'm probably missing something obvious but why would the casting be any more expensive than any other pressing?

Anecdotal evidence is they are still flagging this content. https://x.com/quijanophd/status/1741897926924726449?s=46&t=c...

A plot point in Neal Stephenson's Anathem involves the specific wavelength of red light that is seen in a certain circumstance, which is similarly 'forbidden'. (Side note: Had to read Anathem multiple times to really get the novel, but it was worth the investment to me.)

Welcome to the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. Now go watch The Holiday (2006).

Gravity is an effect of the curve of space and relativity coming together in what we now call spacetime. Right? Einstein told us so. But... Maybe not?

There's promising math behind the idea that there are multiple additional dimensions, but where are they? How can we perceive them? What do they have to do with gravity?

The unifying theory of dimensional geometry and interaction: https://youtu.be/fvqXshyuvOg

It is tricky because humans are biased for intuitive understanding rather than logical understanding. Intuitions are shortcuts that are very valuable, but sometimes they are just plainly wrong. Many people will try to apply intuition rather than logic because that works with many other similarly worded questions.

But if you wanted some of what makes this particular piece special you would also have to hire a camera crew to capture the backstory and provenance and an influencer to show it to most of a million people and care about it. The best art isn't just the end result!

Just because it's tradition to not let "someone being wrong on the internet" stand: https://www.cryptokitties.co/blog/post/learn-how-our-last-my...

So I've been thinking about this and working on this for years, so I have a different perspective. Is everything fully better for having blockchain integration? Clearly no. Are the benefits worth the trade-offs? I'd argue yes, on the whole.

1. The global worldwide market place. While this introduces commerce/real money, which come with very real downsides, it also makes the game high stakes (meaning most people play to the best of their ability). WoW and other games showed how much a vibrant marketplace can add to a game experience for some players, and having everything trading for essentially real money doesn't change that underlying level of engagement.

2. Permissionless development. While there are many examples of attempts at building on top of CryptoKitties fizzling out, there are also success stories, especially around "WCK"—a fungible token created by an unaffiliated third party developer that essentially created a worldwide "Give a Kitty, Take a Kitty" pool that let you send away any cat you didn't want and get back one that you preferred. And because it's on the blockchain and uses blockchain standards, it can also be used as liquidity and barter, both of which add to the experience. I don't believe I've ever seen something like this built on top of a non-blockchain game... certainly it wouldn't be quite as easy as this was to build! Some examples of other third party creations include an auto-breeding platform, a Kitty racing game, a Kitty battling game, Kitty cosmetics (your cat NFT can own its own hat NFT!), and a trustless Kitty bounty smart contract.

3. Almost unparalleled transparency. This has all kinds of fun side effects from allowing the community to fully "check the work" of the developer to what amounts to an open-to-everyone API. And what's more, this is a standardized API so that someone who builds tools for CryptoKitties would be able to also use those tools for Cheeze Wizards. Again, there are amazing third party tools built on the backs of APIs of online games all the time, but it's actually cool how much you get "for free" by being on the blockchain. The verified fairness is pretty cool IMO.

4. Immortal assets. I poured a lot into City of Heroes back in the day, and then one day the devs shut down the server, and took all my heroes with it. This is a very common refrain. As long as there are nodes out there running Ethereum, anyone can breed their Kitty NFTs. That's not nothing. (There's a lot of nuance here about art assets, IP rights, user interface, etc., and it's messy and still very much being figured out, but that's how the world works—you build it, then you improve it!)

5. Value capture. Yes, this almost always has evolved into speculation and nonsense valuations and irrational behavior. But still: when you buy a Kitty, you have the right to sell that Kitty. When you breed a new Kitty, you have the right to sell that Kitty. This is enabled by blockchain almost for free! Note this is distinct and different from point 1. WoW has a marketplace, but when you earn a legendary BoP sword, you cannot then capture that value by selling it if that's what you want to do. This point is as often riddled with downsides as it brings upsides, but the unique and novel truth of it makes it better than a non-blockchain game for some people.

Again, this comes from years of being in the space, playing with these toys, building these systems, being a part of these communities. For some of us, this has been incredibly exciting, and fun, because we chose to explore and figure out for ourselves what upsides this new frontier might hold for us.

Breeding is a complex and nuanced game mechanic, which when coupled with the worldwide marketplace unlocks a dizzying rabbit hole. Once you understand the mechanics, you realize just why a Gen 1 Tendertears would be a grail collectible to own.

I called it more of a sandbox than a game, but there are also Fancy Chases, events where a specific limited-time breeding goal is introduced and it's a race to be among the first to achieve this goal and breed a Fancy Kitty.

Not saying it's for everyone, but it's definitely something that thousands of people found and find pretty darn fun (again: if expensive).

CryptoKitties is a lot of fun, for what it is. It's super deep and while it's more of a sandbox than a typical game, I became obsessed with it when it came out, though not for monetary reasons (if it has one huge drawback as a game, it's always been how much it costs IMO).

Became so obsessed that I ended up hired by Dapper Labs and working on the CryptoKitties team, later helped design and launch NBA Top Shot on Flow. Now that we have (the markedly cheaper and easier) Flow and lots and lots of lessons learned from building NFT products, I'm excited for us to bring the next generation of CryptoKitties to life.

If you want to check out a fun crypto game that just recently launched from another developer, I urge you to check out dimensionxnft.com with an open mind.

It felt right at the time to many people. The two towers trailer scene was specific to the trailer according to them at the time, so not having that scene was apparently already the plan. The way the film was, I certainly never felt the lack of the towers but would have been pulled out by their presence.

I figured that rather than create a TC account to comment there, I'd be more interested in sharing my thoughts with the HN crowd. There is a reply to that article that larps about being old... As someone turning 40 this year, I would posit that perhaps "getting old" is just the point at which you decide to stop trying new experiences for yourself. Because this NFT "craze", at least in the current NBA Top Shot / Nifty Gateway generation, is 0% scary or hard to understand in practice. It's just that you do need to experience it for yourself to get it, reading Pakman's or Cuban's or Fred Wilson's words doesn't accomplish what 20 minutes of actually buying and selling and showing off digital collectibles for yourself can accomplish.

Add on top of that the fact that some 60% of the world just doesn't "get" and will probably never "get" any kind of collectibles, and that creates a lot of noise. If that's you, I'd suggest trying to understand that there's a vast minority who really does connect with collecting, and for us the benefits to being able to meaningfully do it online are as massive as the advantages of email over snail mail. This is the gift of NFTs for us.

The amount of fiat money spent on NBA Top Shot should help indicate there's more to the story than allocation of crypto. But yeah, that crypto can help get a heck of a flywheel spinning.

Sometimes, yes!

An NFT is authentic, traceable, has a history/provenance, and is different from any other NFT. There is no 1:1 copy, which is the point. That's essentially the same thing that makes a baseball from a world series game more interesting than one from batting practice. Same physical good, different history. Except on the blockchain that history is provable and can't be faked. Pretty cool stuff.

I wondered about this recently and assumed one reason this sort of thing doesn't catch on for mainstream sports like football (soccer) or basketball is because it'd be a mess to spectate/broadcast. Sounds fun though!

I think it starts, at least, with simple practicality. Apple products usually sell in massive volumes. When they introduce some new aspect, they have to be able to produce huge numbers of this thing, and since it's new, the industrial capacity to produce at those numbers reliably does not exist. They have no choice but to buy out and invest in all the available capacity, because they rarely release innovations in some small-scale experimental product. They swing for the fences for a mass market home run almost every time.

And they do this so well because they're led by Tim Cook who approaches the big picture in part in terms of supply chain.

I don't argue that cornering the market isn't an accounted-for and desirable side-benefit of this arrangement. I just don't think it's usually the starting point for them.

Breadth is nice, but depth is too. I tend to gain more from a second read than from a first, and also I can consume content where I know what to expect while in a different mindset and state of being than what I require to crack open and explore something all new.

But sure, everyone is different and does things their own way. If it works for you, that’s great!

(Totally agree with putting down a book that isn’t working for you. You have no obligation, in most cases, to any book. It can be freeing to realize this if it’s not something that’s already obvious!)

I find myself re-listening to large portions of my audible library fairly often. I pick up so much more on additional read/listen-throughs.

I listen to or read Snow Crash at least once a year. I just enjoy most everything about it. Anathem required a couple listens, and a third listen was just for comfort food.

The Altered Carbon trilogy has depth and sublime world-building that I have now enjoyed at least a half dozen times.

I second mentions of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (and will mention The Long, Dark Tea Time of the Soul as well).

Ender’s Game is also comfort food for me.

Breaking from the speculative fiction reco’s above... The Power of Vulnerability (Brené Brown) is more lecture series than audiobook, but as for non fiction I’ve recently given multiple listens to, that tops the list.

I borrowed “Landline” from the local library, read it twice and then bought it so I could continue to read it when I want to. I think I was in just the right age group and life situation for this novel to hit home for me. Your mileage may vary, but IMO read it without knowing anything about it in advance if you’re going to read it. That means don’t read the back cover etc.

(Blind borrowing of books from the library is fun and can be eye opening, try it sometime! Most places, you can borrow eBooks and even digital audiobooks without even leaving your home as long as you have a library card.)