Twitter announced the launch of a tool through which users can showcase non-fungible tokens as their profile pictures, tapping into a digital collectibles craze that has exploded over the past year https://t.co/gmxKya4PxG pic.twitter.com/l4NRJtCvoo
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 21, 2022
Wait I have to pay 2.99 in FIAT DOLLARS a month for twitter blue to use my nfts as my avatar? Please get out of my face I do not deal in fake government issued money
— kang (@jaycaspiankang) January 20, 2022
Whenever I see a photo of Jack Dorsey, I imagine Gimli the Dwarf announcing ‘He’s the cousin we don’t talk about.’ But he *does* understand his user base!
The Verge seems dubious about this latest Advanced Tech Move:
… On one hand, NFT profile pictures could be viewed as an incredible technology integration adding real utility for verified digital items. Alternately, it’s an unmissable signal pointing out the people that you should block or mute before they try to sell you some of their blockchain receipts.
No matter what your opinion of easily reproduced digital trinkets is, Twitter is integrating them in a way that separates ridiculous images of cartoon apes that have been right-clicked for use as standard profile pictures from ridiculous images of cartoon apes that are connected to blockchain tokens by adding a special “soft hexagon” shape around them…
Despite Twitter’s list of wallets, there are people who think it isn’t doing enough to verify the provenance of NFTs. As Adam Hollander points out, Twitter’s setup and hexagon logo only checks to see if there is an NFT connected to the user’s wallet — it doesn’t check or tell viewers if that NFT is verified as belonging to a high-profile collection (like the Bored Ape Yach Club, for example). You could go through the same right-click save exercise mentioned above, mint the image as a new NFT, and on your profile page, it will look identical to that of a person who has ownership of the verified image.
The only way someone can tell if your NFTs are actually from the collection that they appear to be is to click on your profile picture and check the details. Otherwise, a fake BAYC toke (like this one) looks at first glance just like the officially minted one (here). Twitter’s head of consumer product marketing Justin Taylor says this is on purpose, and that “We don’t want to limit this to just verified collections, that would be wrong, and non supportive of the broader nft movement. Anyone SHOULD be able to mint anything and make it their nft.”…
SURE ENOUGH…
lol, lmao pic.twitter.com/VSSRLuxnrv
— matthew. (@iAmTheWarax) January 21, 2022
Why do they laugh at my mighty sword?!?…
dr. bloor
Jack is a Ferengi, not a dwarf. Fight me.
Baud
Everyone who works for a living is a sucker.
danielx
Fuck bitcoin, bury gold in the back yard.
Gin & Tonic
I am trying (and failing) to think of a “financial” product in my lifetime that screamed more blatantly “this is for suckers” than NFT’s. And I am old.
Anotherlurker
Those ape NFTs look so racist to me.
Another Scott
Some economists have noted that most of the recent (say, last 40 years) growth in the US economy has relied on various booms/bubbles rather than generalized prosperity. Tech/Internet stocks and housing are two obvious examples. I guess fans of that model are going to continue pushing NFTs and Crypto and Stablecoin and similar things until they find something that sticks.
Be careful out there.
Cheers,
Scott.
dr. bloor
@Another Scott:
Alas, the “fans” understand that nothing needs to “stick.” It only needs to look pretty enough for long enough to make a profit on it, however far down the food chain they might be.
Rusty
If you needed proof that NFT’s are a ridiculous scam, this is it. Yet the true believers don’t get it. I wasted a half hour on a friend’s Facebook thread pointing out the uselessness of NFT’S with someone who was sure they were good for something. Every time I pointed out they often don’t transfer copyright, you can transfer copyright with an NFT, it’s easy to create NFTs for the same image on different platforms (which defeats the only supposed use of NFT’S), they just kept coming back with ever more obscure reasons they should exist. If you care for someone, don’t let them buy NFT’S. If someone is dumb enough to give you money for one, the it’s your conscience if you take it.
Baud
I can’t believe I used to give away dick pics for free.
dr. bloor
@Baud: Alas, like most great works of art, your dick will not be fully appreciated until after you’re dead.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Krebs – Crime shop sells hacked logins to other crime shops:
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott: I’m not an economic historian, but it was my impression that your statement could be made about most technological progress in the last 250 years? railroads ? shipping ? probably other things too. I remember reading about the Worldcom (remember them?) of its day: a railroad tunnel dug thru the hills west of Boston that cost a fortune. That tunnel is still used today, but the original investors lost a packet. And this apparently has been true over-and-over with new technologies: the original investors lose a packet b/c it’s a bubble, but eventually after things settle down, the technology contributes to growth in a sustained way and new investors who come in at much, much lower valuations keep things going and growing.
But again, I’m not an economic historian. I could be completely mistaken.
Dan B
@Another Scott: I don’t get why anyone would have anything to do with NFT’s and criminals have already moved in. Yikes!
Baud
@dr. bloor:
They’ll miss me when I’m gone.
The Dangerman
Apparently, I’m losing it (lost it). I don’t understand the value of NFTs, Bitcoin, or any of it. Dollars are backed by the US. Gold has value. Land has value. Stocks have value. Digital has … ???
The crash landing for that shit is gonna be ugly.
Baud
Within a couple of decades, the kids will use the term “hex” as slang for a dimwitted gullible person.
Starfish
@Anotherlurker: You’re right, and it is a reflection of some of the people who are most interested in this space.
Gin & Tonic
@Chetan Murthy: The Hoosic tunnel?
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: Sure, there’s a bunch of that. Infrastructure always costs more than expected, until you consider that it often lasts a very long time (and a lot of the cost is often the land which doesn’t have to be bought again 200 years later).
I’m thinking they were talking about things like Pets.com, and AOL being the monster of the digital world, and everyone making a fortune flipping houses, and getting free money by refinancing every 3 months at a lower rate…
The digital stuff is pathological. Ethereum’s energy consumption is as high as the Netherlands; Bitcoin and Ethereum together is higher than Italy’s…. They know it’s not sustainable and are trying to come up with a “just as good” system for verifying the blockchain and all the rest. It’s setting the planet on fire, and all for some stupid thing that has no value, but something that they all hope to monopolize somehow (because that’s where the real money – monopoly rents – is).
Grr…,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Gin & Tonic: I think that’s the one, yeah. But I can’t find the article wherein it was compared to that one big broadband company (whose name also I forget) of the first Internet boom.
Zelma
I’m not even sure what an NFT is! And I’m not sure I want to find out.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott: Well, there’s always various shysters and shady operators in any boom. That’s what I put Pets.com and Boo.com (remember them?) in the category of: just shysters.
But (and I think we agree here) this crypto stuff is different: there is no legitimate use for the stuff: all uses are illegitimate: crime, ransomware, money-laundering, funding democracy-destruction, capital flight, etc. There are no legitimate uses for the technology. None.
Starfish
The above is also not great and does not give me confidence.
scav
@Chetan Murthy: It’s also handy to distinguish technological innovations from beanie babies when considering bubblomics.
SiubhanDuinne
Whenever I see or hear anything about Bitcoin or NFTs or any of that, I basically just go unconscious for a while.
Bobby Thomson
I should change my profile pic to a tulip
SiubhanDuinne
@Starfish:
Maybe it’s just me, but any grown man called “Mudge” sounds like someone only Brett Kavanaugh would hang out with.
Chetan Murthy
@scav: Yes, this. Even when we set aside all the obviously bullshit companies of the first Internet boom, the ones that people just made fun of, b/c they were all such bullshit (Craftshop? Webvan? Boo?), the ones that were left were ridiculously overvalued, and what happened to them can rightly be compared to what happened to the railroad companies of the 19th century: their finances collapsed, new rounds of investors took over at much lower valuations, and eventually they rested on stable business models that delivered solid value and growth. Which is great stuff, but is a reminder that first-movers don’t always have the advantage.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
I would like to see the actual articles on this. This argument does not make sense to me and I don’t know what “generalized prosperity” means. The US economy has often had booms and busts and economic panics. And yet by the 1870s the US GDP was estimated to be greater than that of Great Britain.
There is a lot of work being done looking back at income inequality and other measures of economic well being.
Again, I am not sure about this. There have been housing bubbles, but also expansions and contractions of housing stock, which is not the same thing. Some tech stocks represent companies that produce goods and services, others are practically vaporware.
ETA: Was there much discussion here about whether Microsoft paying $68.7 billion in cash for Activision Blizzard was a good thing or a bad thing?
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Mudge is a very smart guy.
Scout211
@Zelma:
Seconded.
And I have no patience for anyone trying to ‘splain to me how bitcoins are “mined” using computers. Right over my head.
Another Scott
@Bobby Thomson: :-)
My brain is a bit strange at times – lots of weird connections. I’m reminded of 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
tl;dr – Movie company brainiacs decided that they had a secure system to require cryptographic keys for people to be able to view HD DVDs that they paid for. It didn’t work for long.
Beware of anything claiming to be “valuable” and “secure” and “new” on the Internet…
Tulips at least are pretty, and can be eaten during a famine!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Eljai
@SiubhanDuinne: I understand totally. If it helps, bitcoin/crypto currency is just a medium of exchange. Except it’s digital and cuts out the banks and it’s never printed like dollar bills. Transactions are kept on a big spreadsheet in the sky, or something like that. All I know is I wish I had bought a bitcoin at $150 and sold it when it was worth $60,000. Wishes/horses etc., etc. Anyway, it’s way too speculative for my risk-averse nature.
Baud
@Eljai:
Chetan Murthy
@Eljai: I have a friend who’s a *trader* and trades in these things. He points out that the smart move wasn’t to buy BTC, but to buy Dogecoin: the guy who created that did it as a *joke* and to show how stupid BTC was, and yet, and yet, and yet, it blew up in the last year-or-so.
He is of course not a believer in any of this stuff, and trades it like he’d trade any other “thing” with a price attached to it, and a stream of orders.
Starfish
@SiubhanDuinne:
He has been known by that name for over 20 years.
Here is the hacker collective that they were part of. Mudge later worked at DARPA and Google.
seefleur
Is there any difference between NFTs and a pyramid scheme? As a neophyte to the world of “investments”, I am confoosed…
Another Scott
@Brachiator: Here’s an example – blaming Greenspan (5 page .pdf).
I’m not enough of an expert to evaluate the nitty-gritty, and of course the economy is complicated, but … Greenspan did seem to intentionally inflate the housing market far beyond reason to compensate for the internet stock bubble bursting.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@seefleur: No difference. None.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
But he’s a great pup!
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud:
But not your dick pic. That is for eternity.
Jay
@danielx:
fuck gold, bury bitcoin and NFT’s in the back yard,
in a coffee can,
Anotherlurker
@Starfish: I used to be an avid target shooter. Every chance I’d get I would be at the range.
I lost interest when I started noticing paper targets, portraying black men and muslim men in a very stereotypical racist manner. They featured exaggerated noses and lips and snarling expressions. Caricatures of the scary [email protected]@e%s and “Sand [email protected]@e%s”, in the parlance of Eastern LI, NY assholes.
The rendering on these NFTs are very reminiscent of these racist paper targets.
I gave my Ruger 10/22 to my older brother to lock in his gun safe. I haven’t touched it since.
I don’t miss the activity. Specifically, I don’t miss rubbing elbows with those gun humpping assholes.
Eljai
@Baud: LOL
Origuy
@danielx:
I worked with a Mormon guy who did just that. His teenage son dug it up and cashed it in.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Thanks for the link. This is more a narrow attack on Greenspan than a general study of economic bubbles. Still I found this interesting:
Compare this Wiki article on US recessions and notable panics.
The US began with a bubble:
This is, of course, why God invented Alexander Hamilton.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
heh, that’s about where I am. But I keep hearing about cities and politicians leaning into bitcoin and it makes me…. very nervous.
Suzanne
@Baud:
Rotating tag.
Kayla Rudbek
You know you are getting old when the person responsible for getting you and your spouse together passes away (I got this news in my alumni magazine so it wasn’t a recent death; one of the professors who hired both Mr. Rudbek and me as teaching assistants.)
Baud
@Kayla Rudbek:
My condolences.
WereBear
@Kayla Rudbek: Always a fond memory from the sound of it. My sympathies.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Dangerman:
No, you’re OK. Trust me, I’m an Economist.
Ella in New Mexico
Am I stupid for being glad I have no fucking idea what the Hell all this bodes for me? Or for not wanting to invest in anything that makes life easier for international criminals to do their criming?
God, I am so old.
Starboard Tack
@dr. bloor: Or it is.
Chetan Murthy
@Ella in New Mexico: “When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done” — JM Keynes
You’re not old. You’re just a decent person.
Chetan Murthy
@Ella in New Mexico:
OK, so maybe you’re old: I’ll take your word for it. But you’re not so old. *grin
WereBear
I am enjoying my Apple Pencil even more than I anticipated. Got a new game called Tint that makes watercolor puzzles. I am writing this comment with a little tracing keyboard.
I can even handwrite and mostly words appear. Considering how indecipherable my handwriting is, I’m impressed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chetan Murthy: Sure, but a rail road tunnel has it uses. Weird ass clip art like a NTF? The stuff is mass produced by a AIs.
Steeplejack
Easy Rider (1969) just started on TCM. Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson. Directed by Dennis Hopper. Two Oscar nominations: Jack Nicholson, best supporting actor; Hopper, Fonda, Terry Southern, best original screenplay.
Steppenwolf, “The Pusher.”
Uncle Cosmo
The bulbs anyway – IIUC they taste like weird onions.
All the talk about tulips keeps reminding me of this bit of deathless whizdumb:
Ken
Maybe it’s one of those meta things, where Twitter’s real message is that NFTs are meaningless? Even — dare I say it? — valueless?
Chetan Murthy
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: 100% agree. As @scav: put it, there’s a difference between scams (like beanie babies and NFTs) and bubbles (like railroads and fiber-optic networks).
danielx
@Jay:
Faraday cage! That will do it!
Uncle Cosmo
Economist, n.: Someone who likes to work with numbers but isn’t personable enough to be an accountant.
(Trust me, Monty – I spent almost 5 years working for a small-cap Untied Nations of econometrticians.)
Philbert
If bubbles were easy to recognize, they wouldn’t be bubbles.
Steeplejack
@Uncle Cosmo:
Okay, that’s funny. ?
Layer8Problem
@debbie: I loved reading those books to my ex-little guy. Mudge was a boon companion.
Chetan Murthy
@Philbert: OTOH, pyramid schemes, much easier to recognize.
Bill Arnold
FWIW there are a few ways to wholesale block twitter users who have these profile pics.
I have not tried them. This github project has one, and recommends a couple of others.
https://github.com/mcclure/NFTBlocker
debbie
@Layer8Problem:
I worked for the publisher. Those books sold as reliably as Hemingway or Fitzgerald.
brendancalling
I don’t know what an NFT actually IS, and to be honest I don’t give a shit. It sounds scammy and I stay away from scammy.
Everything is stupid. The world just gets stupider every day. I’m not even old and I feel like my grandma as I look at all this frivolous scammy bullshit.
NFT. SMDMF.
Steeplejack
@Starfish:
???
HumboldtBlue
For those in the know, Dick Butkus has gone active on Twitter and he’s an absolute Master Shitposter.
First target, the Green Bay goblin and virus vector Qaaron Rodgers.
Kayla Rudbek
@WereBear: yes, many fond memories of him and we always tried to stop by his office when we visited campus. He was happy when Mr Rudbek and I started dating, although we kept it so professional at work that one of the other TAs who worked with us didn’t figure out that Mr. Rudbek and I were engaged for quite some time.
When I think about all of the events that had to line up for Mr. Rudbek and me to get together, it’s amazing that it all worked out.
Steeplejack
@Kayla Rudbek:
Similar experience a few months back.
James E Powell
@brendancalling:
I’m in the same place. My genius brother who scorns all such things tried to explain what they are and why people think they are something big, but MEGO.
I guess you & I are sitting on the sidelines with all the others who are apparently missing out on the deal of a lifetime.
Ohio Mom
I think I could understand what a NFT is but I can’t get past how ridiculous it sounds and my brain just shuts down. Same with Bitcoin.
Ohio Dad’s friend from high school has some bitcoins, or shares of bitcoin, or whatever it is. This friend also went into a panic about Y2K, hoarding supplies, making sure he had lots of cash on hand (which led him to installing a safe in his house), etc.
I wouldn’t care about any of this — if that’s what high school friend wants to spend his money on, fine — except for all the energy it uses during this critical time to slow down climate change.
hueyplong
Steeplejack
@HumboldtBlue:
That’s hilarious!
Steeplejack
@Kayla Rudbek:
I love this story. I’m glad it all worked out for you. ?
GregMulka
Folding ideas is one of my favorite YouTube channels and he just released a two hour dismantling of cryptocurrency, nfts and a lot of the web 3 horsecrap. https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g
NotMax
@Another Scott
Hold the phone. Did someone say “prosperity?”
Mmmm.
:)
Another Scott
@NotMax: Interesting!
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Alison Rose
God in heaven, I will be so glad when this portion of human history is over.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Uncle Cosmo:
Have we met?
Another Scott
Circling back on some earlier news from the land of Crackers and Silvermans – FloridaPolitics:
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Baud
“Collect the entire set.”
//
Brachiator
@WereBear:
Are you using this with an iPad? I don’t know Apple products well.
Ken
The real money is in the cryptocoin options futures credit default swaps market.
(That’s where instead of buying a bitcoin, you buy an options contract that you can exercise to buy a futures contract allowing you, on September 1, to buy a tranche of a synthetic basket composed of twenty of the more widely-traded cryptocoins. Your hope is that the value of the options contract you bought will go up so that you can sell it.)
(Somehow the preceding parenthetical is treated seriously when it’s all based on grain instead of cryptocoin.)
karen marie
@Chetan Murthy: This is a bit, right?
Captain C
I think the best simple description of NFTs I’ve heard is along the lines of:
Imagine a beautiful [person of your preferred persuasion] selling, not a date with themselves, but slips of paper, each with a unique code, which gives the bearer the right to claim they went on one date with said beautiful person. You can resell this slip to someone else who then can say they went on that date.
Makes as much sense as any other description, and illustrates the pointlessness of the whole enterprise.
Another Scott
@GregMulka: This is really, really excellent. I haven’t seen such a succinct explanation of the housing bubble anywhere. Listening to the rest with interest.
Thanks very much.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@karen marie: Not sure what you mean, but not joking. From what I remember of reading economic historians, it is the case that pretty much in every major technological wave that’s hit the modern world [and setting aside all the criminal bullshit] there are large numbers of early-adopter companies that get insanely high valuations, end up cratering, and then get bought for pennies on the dollar by latecomers. The investments of these early-adopters end up delivering value, but nowhere near what would have been needed to satisfy the valuations of those early-adopters’ investors at their peak valuations.
HumboldtBlue
@hueyplong: @Steeplejack:
I laughed out loud.
Ohio Mom
@Ken: My brain just turned off again. For all I know, high school friend has options — I try to ignore this stuff as much as possible. My tongue still has dents from 1999 when I bit it during that episode.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ohio Mom:
that’s what’s driving me crazy too
Omnes Omnibus
@Ken: Grain actually exists.
lgerard
I am eagerly awaiting the apocalypse when these stable geniuses will have to spend their life savings on fungible “tokens” like sips of brackish water from a rusty oil drum or bites of freeze dried beef stroganoff from some prepper who has been waiting for this moment for 50 years
mrmoshpotato
Fixed it!
mrmoshpotato
@lgerard: You mean pictures of sips of brackish water from a rusty oil drum or pictures of bites of freeze dried beef stroganoff.
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose:
Hello, asteroid…
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
One swung by only this week. But it forgot to wear its spectacles.
;)
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Coincidentally, my financial adviser Charlie Ponzi has recommend investing NFTs
Noskilz
The Folding Ideas Youtube channel has a really good look at the screwed-up world of cryptocurrencies, NFTs and DAOs.
The Problem with NFTs
It’s over two hours long, but it’s also a very thorough treatment of the subject.
brendancalling
@mrmoshpotato: We are the asteroid.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: To elaborate, after seeing the whole thing, this was just astoundingly good. Everyone interested in how these finance people and wannabe MotUs have tried, and are trying, to bend the economy to their will should watch it. It’s worse than a scam. It’s worse than burning up the planet. It’s worse than bad “art”. It’s all that and much more.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Busts and booms are because the currently monied, on the whole, look for things to invest in that no one or very few has seen. And then they do stock splits or create different types of stock and sell to the public. That gives new stockholders some money but no control. The problem is that this creates hills and valleys or booms and busts which makes buying cheaper, for more control. If one plays their cards right they can make a bundle doing nothing actually productive. They don’t create anything, they just move money around. They can make money at this, they can also loose money at this. But it does nothing for the general public because most of them can’t play the game. And it gives them enough money which helps them control the government which means the general population that actually has to produce or provide something solid but doesn’t make the kind of money that this wholesale gambling does, which allows those that do the gambling to get taxes changed by effectively purchasing politicians so that they pay a lower effective rate of taxes than the people that make much less. Which makes the average citizen even less wealthy, the nation less well run, which causes bigger busts and booms. It’s not the proper way to run a democracy, it’s not the proper way to treat the citizens and in the long run creates far more problems than it will ever fix. As an example, take our current political situation in the face of a pandemic. It requires a lot of government spending to fight, but the people with a vested interest in making money by moving money really, really, really do not want that because it can negatively affect their bottom line, which is far, far more important to them than citizen survival.
mrmoshpotato
@brendancalling: LMAO! True! – as of now.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
Clicked on the music link in your linked post from last year.
One of my favorite songs. Simple, short, memorable.
I could also be the memories of when it came out…..
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
It is worse, because it could ruin this country. Possibly even in my lifetime. And I’m in my eighth decade. (HT to BillinGlendale.)
Steeplejack (phone)
@Ruckus:
Thanks. “Embryonic Journey” is one of my favorites.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Ruckus:
LOL. I’ll be starting my eighth decade next week. Sounds kind of imposing said that way.
JoyceH
Lately I’ve been seeing ads about an investment service that will enable you to invest your retirement funds in cryptocurrency.
Twenty years from now, a common sight will be the neighborhoods of tiny houses (perhaps repurposed shipping containers) created by a compassionate government to prevent homelessness among those fools who put their retirement funds into crypto and jpegs of ugly monkeys.
Jeffro
@Bobby Thomson: that’s some good history-based inside baseball right there ?
Debbie(Aussie)
@Another Scott: Have to agree. I feel a little les ignorant. They are as bad as I thought they were. Still have 40 minutes to go. Brain can’t take all the terminology in with ease. Thanks to GregMulka.
Brachiator
@GregMulka:
Coming back late to the thread.
Thanks for the link. I watched part of it and it was very interesting and well done. Also curious to check out other Folding Ideas videos.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack (phone):
Yes it does sound imposing. And I’m getting to almost 30% through my eighth. Time flies. Along with all sorts of inhabitants of this planet. Some are amazingly beautiful and some are amazingly annoying. Still they fly, just like time.
Oh and I’ve got an entire bookmark segment on Embryonic Journey. There are a large number of people who have recorded it on YTube. A number of them are even pretty good. Some are damn fine. It is a short song that seems simple but really isn’t.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack (phone):
You know Jorma Kaukonen is 81 and still plays a mean guitar, including Embryonic Journey.
Spanky
The jokes just write themselves on this CNN headline.
NotMax
@Spanky
Goes right along with the top floor where it is in a 58 story building being marked as the 68th floor on the elevator buttons.
germy
Jack Dorsey stepped down as chief executive [of Twitter] in November, handing the reins to top deputy Parag Agrawal.
Grum Grumby
As usual, South Park lampooned these things better than anybody else ever could. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVW_Cu2C7Q8
different-church-lady
My fucking god these people are ridiculous.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Ruckus:
He was in Jefferson Airplane and did that original version I posted. Nice to know he’s still chugging along.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
The thing about cryptocurrencies and NFTs is … I can see how the concept of independent decentralized exchanges and repositories could be useful, but the way they’ve been implemented is basically disastrous. Like you guys said, Bitcoin’s energy consumption is on par with a first-world nation’s, and when you look at how fast it can compute transactions, it’s abysmal – if I’m reading Wikipedia right, as currently constructed, Bitcoin maxes out at seven transactions per second across its entire network. That’s compared to Visa, which currently is running somewhere close to two thousand transactions per second (and claims it has enough headroom to handle up to 65 thousand per second).
And as far as I can tell, NFTs have all the same problems added to the issue of someone drafting an ownership deed for the Brooklyn Bridge.
kindness
I don’t have a Twitter account and now Twitter won’t let me read other people’s tweets without one. Screw them. I don’t have time for Twitter and if I did I wouldn’t spend that time there.
Uncle Cosmo
Geez, I dunno. Are you a dead ringer for Groucho Marx or Vladimir Lenin? Didja grow up in the Red projects in NYC? Get canned from a teaching job because you were, um, too friendly with the little girls? Terminally paranoid that the boss hated you enough to gin up an excuse to fire your butt? Or banished to a lonely existence in the division library at the far corner of the building because the boss couldn’t gin up an excuse to fire you?
No? Welp, guess we never worked together…:^D
(NB I did not include my boss or his boss in the descriptions – by now they’re both dead, deported, or ensconced in persisted-living quarters trying to puzzle out what millennium this is & what planet they’re on…)
Another Scott
@kindness: Sometimes you can get past their demand to sign up if you open the subject tweet in a new tab.
They’re always trying to find new ways to annoy people into signing up, but usually they’re temporary.
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Yeah, but bitcoin/etc. is a complex math problem being solved, while Visa is just moving money from your account to their account. That’s easy and fast (addition and subtraction mostly) compared to the block-chain transaction computation all those non-existent thingys use.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack (phone):
As much as any one person can be, he WAS Jefferson Airplane.
He seems to be doing a bit more than just chugging along.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I agree with your take on Folding Ideas.
Just a bit in depth….
Which is good for as stupid and flawed idea as NFTs.