#latestagecapitalism

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1577690192080736256

[Tasty]

We tried this with Second Life. It didn't work then because people who have time for this shit have no life in the real world and transfer that energy to the virtual world. Then the corporates tried to muscle in and anyone doing anything interesting left. The same thing is happening here.

If anything Second Life and its spiritual successor VR Chat seem stronger than ever.  This is just a classic case of people not being down with The Man.

[Uncle]

yeah second life is still trucking along just fine, even though they monetized it from the start and some people became shitty land barons it wasn't that exploitative

I liked the idea of a game you're playing where you can edit and code your own objects within the game, with whatever assets attached that you want, like a live always-on collaborative game maker (when others were willing to use it like that)

[Potato]

Second Life was supposed to revolutionise everything from professional training to dating to work meetings and more. It didn't. This metaverse shit won't either.

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/legotrillermoth/status/1580388328578260992

[chronovore]

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/EconWithNick/status/1581332286338842624

 

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1581654607696384003

[Tasty]

I can see his campaign slogan: "Wrong on Taylor, Right on Banks"

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1582719228674596864

[BIONIC]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/CoinDesk/status/1582851678537019393

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/1583143019444068352

[Nintex]

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/GRDecter/status/1585686969027264515

[Tasty]

Meta fucking sucks

[Joe Molotov]

Meta fucking sucks

The Winklevoss Curse

[Tasty]

Meta fucking sucks

The Winklevoss Curse

That even took down Armie Hammer.

[Tasty]

Young Silicon Valley workers are in for a rude awakening

[Uncle]

[Tasty]

A natural outcome of allowing colors to be copyrighted.

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/FortuneMagazine/status/1585657069520261121

[Uncle]

A natural outcome of allowing colors to be copyrighted.

from what I understand, the specifics have more to do with the combination of the color formatting in the file with specific colors

like it's a file specially formatted to work with particular pantone brand printers and devices

in other words if the color is #FFCC00, that color would be fine in normal photos and files, but if you went to a pantone facility and clicked print or whatever it would not perfectly match the way they prepare their colors, they require a format other than RGB or CMYK, and it's their format where that color is forbidden

maybe

[benjipwns]

Colors actually can't be copyrighted, I think they can be trademarked under certain conditions though. Most of the cases I've seen the violations are more blatant than simply copying a color though. (Most knockoffs I've seen, the colors are actually usually a giveaway. But that's just me being anecdotal.)

[Tasty]

Damn still getting schooled by Benji in copyright even after thinking I was an expert after years of Internet (wiki) research

[benjipwns]

You can't copyright things that occur in nature without human interaction (and it limits where your copyright, trademarks and patents start, you can't dig something out of the ground, paint it and go "I patent this") and it's assumed all colors appear in nature, it'd be funny to see someone challenge this and try to get the Supreme Court to decide which colors are natural and which are not. I actually don't know any of the historical specifics on this, you'd have to research UK law probably, so I have no idea if there was once a period where you could copyright 32-bit colors because everyone else was still on 8-bit. It may just be one of those things that nobody ever tried to do before when they heard they couldn't copyright colors.

Now my understanding is along the lines of what Uncle posted, you can patent specific methods of creating colors and then be a real jerk about it. Like many of the other "technology" patents that are pretty stupid because they're so broad they encompass every future method even if the original patent doesn't even list an actual method. Think patenting "moving a dot around a screen" which courts for some reason go "sounds like wizardry to me, approved!"

[Tasty]

I assumed the creative input was pairing a hex/pantone value with a name

[Uncle]

Tasty, here you go:

https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/freetone

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/dourcandy/status/1585958378320584704

[headwalk]

going on facebook now is like going to one of those old malls that haven't quite been shuttered but only every 4th retail space is occupied, either by somewhere hasn't reupped their inventory in over a decade stocked with free magazine DVDs and scart cables, an "AMERICAN CANDY" shop that exists purely as a tax front or a milsurp wehrmacht shrine that needs to keep under the radar since their main trade is selling flick knives and trench clubs to the local roadmen.

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1587519844324458496

I don't even know where this goes

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1587514105962942464

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/nbcwashington/status/1588309629418835969

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1588588664485203969

*laughs in German*

[Tasty]

Inflate dong, bitch

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/LeeHudson_/status/1588614316517109760

This entire thread

[benjipwns]

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/1589391326118039552

Palmer Luckey, defense contractor and the father of modern virtual reality, has created a VR headset that will kill the user if they die in the game they’re playing. He did this to commemorate the anime, Sword Art Online. Luckey is the founder of Oculus, a company he sold to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. This is the technology that Mark Zuckerberg rebranded as the foundation for Meta.

Luckey’s killer headset looks like a Meta Quest Pro hooked up with three explosive charge modules that sit above the screen. The charges are aimed directly at the user's forebrain and, should they go off, would obliterate the head of the user.

“The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me—you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it,” Luckey wrote in a blog post explaining the project. “Pumped up graphics might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game.”

[Tasty]

This thing is even stupider than most people realize.

It blows the charges when the software "detects" flashing red.

Gee, I'm sure that'll never trigger any false positives!

Why isn't this an API games can opt (or be softhacked) into? Then it can be coded on a game-by-game basis to ensure Suzy doesn't blow her brains out losing at Pokemon VR or whatever.

Try it yourself first, Luckey.

Also fuck SAO

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/Shiny_Demon/status/1589568349151072258

Grease-proof leather

[benjipwns]

BERLIN (AP) — KFC has apologized for accidentally sending an automated push alert to its app users in Germany that appeared to urge people to order food to commemorate the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass” — when Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria.

The company faced an outcry for the alert that went out Wednesday at a time when Jewish groups are warning of rising antisemitism. According to screenshots shared online, the app alert said, “Memorial day for the Reich pogrom night. Treat yourself to more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!”

KFC Germany said the notification was an “unplanned, insensitive and unacceptable message and for this we sincerely apologize.”

[BIONIC]

Finally figured out what filler’s been up to lately

[Nintex]

[paprikastaude]

https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1592155918841647104

[Skullfuckers Anonymous]

https://mobile.twitter.com/edburmila/status/1593258120889143297

 

[Potato]

If you lived through the dotcom boom, it's really hard to feel sorry for any of these crypto scam people.

Exactly the same grift of selling a product that doesn't exist to investors too stupid or greedy to realise they were investing in nothing with any tangible value and then even more stupid people boosting the price to astronomical levels before everyone started asking the question they should have all asked before opening their wallets:

"What real world value does any of this have?"

[Uncle]

If you lived through the dotcom boom, it's really hard to feel sorry for any of these crypto scam people.

Exactly the same grift of selling a product that doesn't exist to investors too stupid or greedy to realise they were investing in nothing with any tangible value and then even more stupid people boosting the price to astronomical levels before everyone started asking the question they should have all asked before opening their wallets:

"What real world value does any of this have?"

it's a shame because a monetary system that is beyond government/big corp reach and oversight is a good idea

people need to be able to send each other money digitally without it passing through a dozen monopoly services who each have to approve the transaction

[Potato]

But the only people who seem to have embraced it to transfer funds are drug dealers and terrorists...
 

[Uncle]

because it's volatile, hard to understand, and apparently prone to hacking

that's the it's a shame part

[Tasty]

people need to be able to send each other money digitally without it passing through a dozen monopoly services who each have to approve the transaction

I'm not sure this is a real need for 99%+ of people, or if it is, it's superceded by a need for safety. In my head it seems impossible for a FDIC loan to work over crypto, but I could be wrong. Either way, Bob and Jane need to be able to call and yell at someone on the phone if their account is messed up. Crypto has no safeguards by design and the attempts to graft them on after the fact have failed spectacularly (see also FTX selling itself as making crypto easy enough for normies).

The financial system is predicated on known trusted entities and reputation. Crypto is the opposite and I don't think it solves a real problem* that normal money couldn't.

* Assuming the "problem" to solve is a legal one.

[benjipwns]

Crypto in theory places even greater priority on keeping track of reputation. Nobody checks whether your local bank actually doesn't suck because they assume someone else is checking. Crypto solves the problem of knowing that the means of the transaction is secure at the moment of the transaction but it can't inherently tell you the reputation of the other person you're transacting with.

One reason the great mass leveling of reputation that was supposed to happen due to the internet and stuff like Yelp hasn't happened is because apparently humans believe that they personally are always an exception. If they want to dismiss a bunch of bad reviews because they want to think it will work out for them especially if they want what the other person is offering or claiming to be offering. eBay and Amazon have spent who knows how much trying to figure this out and one of the main takeways from their research is that providing reputation scores/user reviews mostly just gets people to rank who they will do business with not actually refuse to do business if all the options are reported to be bad. (And also anyone who gets a bad reputation will just rebrand with a new username.)

In the case of crypto I think all the calls to have it regulated like banks or the stock market to "legitimize" it for the mass public are missing the point so much that it's amazing that supposedly credentialed people continue to be willing to say it publicly. Why would people interested in anonymized transactions want the government to be able to go through the records of every transaction with every party identified at any time?

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1593690166807478274

[Tasty]

Crypto in theory places even greater priority on keeping track of reputation. Nobody checks whether your local bank actually doesn't suck because they assume someone else is checking. Crypto solves the problem of knowing that the means of the transaction is secure at the moment of the transaction but it can't inherently tell you the reputation of the other person you're transacting with.

One reason the great mass leveling of reputation that was supposed to happen due to the internet and stuff like Yelp hasn't happened is because apparently humans believe that they personally are always an exception. If they want to dismiss a bunch of bad reviews because they want to think it will work out for them especially if they want what the other person is offering or claiming to be offering. eBay and Amazon have spent who knows how much trying to figure this out and one of the main takeways from their research is that providing reputation scores/user reviews mostly just gets people to rank who they will do business with not actually refuse to do business if all the options are reported to be bad. (And also anyone who gets a bad reputation will just rebrand with a new username.)

In the case of crypto I think all the calls to have it regulated like banks or the stock market to "legitimize" it for the mass public are missing the point so much that it's amazing that supposedly credentialed people continue to be willing to say it publicly. Why would people interested in anonymized transactions want the government to be able to go through the records of every transaction with every party identified at any time?

Maybe anonymized transactions, like communism, is something that works better in theory than actual practice.

Because we've had 10+ years of crypto/BTC evangelism and the whole thing is in a far worse position, financially and reputationally, than where it started.

Crypto is a failed experiment. We should move on.

[benjipwns]

It's probably a failed experiment to achieve the main goal of replacing established currency systems but the interest and associated money helped propel a lot of technologies. A lot of standard institutional investors wouldn't be interested in a new encryption and transfer protocol scheme, but you had a lot of years where you tell him it will let people make money from "nothing" theoretically and his wallet opens up.

[Tasty]

I feel like I haven't been offered any legitimate, legal examples of what crypto offers the average person over the financial system they already know and has been embedded in society for hundreds of years. Especially after Venmo came along and made easy P2P transactions a thing (shamelessly copied by PayPal, Zelle, et al.)

The only legitimate use that I see, over and over, is illegal transactions. And you can say, "well everyone should have the right to transfer money anonymously," but if the primary use is facilitating crime, then it should be made illegal, the same way we have regulations against washing money.

[benjipwns]

I really don't think you're going to like the government outlawing everything that goes into crypto on the presumption that any anonymous transaction of non-legal-tender is evidence of federal crimes. You can get banned from traditional payment processors (which all enforce with each other) for "moral" reasons like legal pornography or hosting whistleblower content.

[Tasty]

Benji shut up im drunk and trying to make a point

[benjipwns]

I was just surprised at your take considering what the government tried to do to PGP! It's because I think highly of you, Tasty!

[Uncle]

I feel like I haven't been offered any legitimate, legal examples of what crypto offers the average person over the financial system they already know and has been embedded in society for hundreds of years.

https://reclaimthenet.org/dick-masterson-new-project-2-mastercard/

I'm not a staunch supporter of alt-tech or anything but projects to establish new financial alternatives to things like Paypal or Patreon keep starting up and then getting strongarmed into nothingness by the black box that is credit card processing companies

you obey their rules or you're blacklisted, sometimes you're not even told what you did wrong and given no path to remedy the situation, you're just over and completely sunk without the ability to process the most common methods of money transfer

often it has to do with what you'll tolerate on the platform, especially if you allow porn, even if it's all actually legal you can be deemed a bad risk and simply shut down


credit card companies are why:

• pornhub has had persistent issues with accepting cards as payment in the past few years
• onlyfans made the baffling decision seemingly out of nowhere to ban porn, but then walked it back (caught between customers/bad press of destroying sex workers and credit companies' demands)
• tumblr suddenly banned all porn (now tentatively allowing some of it, attempting to capitalize on twitter negative press)
• patreon and subscribestar keep changing their TOS in terms of what they allow and have rules in a very similar vein to each other

porn and sex work is legal, payment processors just act "out of an abundance of caution" and practically write the TOSs for the sites that use them, and what are you gonna do, tell them no?

to operate a legal website in the US you still have to obey all US laws.  a site should be expected to obey the law on their own terms and for their own sake, not because some credit card company mandated their behavior.

[benjipwns]

To go off that, just an example from a news story:

Banks will now have to ensure that sellers have documented consent as well as age and identity verification for those involved in the content before being able to process payments, Mastercard said in a blog post Wednesday.

“In the past few years, the ability to upload content to the internet has become easier than ever,” wrote John Verdeschi, the company’s senior vice president of customer engagement and performance. “All someone needs is a smartphone and a Wi-Fi connection. Now, our requirements address the risks associated with this activity.”

Banks will also be required to ensure that sites have a review process and a system for complaints that addresses illegal or nonconsensual activity.

...

Moody told The Hill that the requirement for a content review process prior to publication of adult content isn’t feasible for livestreaming on sites like Twitch or Charturbate, which she called “one of the best income sources for smaller models who are barely scrapping by.”

“This requirement would also force huge expenditures for sites like OnlyFans, Twitter and others that rely on a news feed style engagement,” Moody added, noting that being able to share content quickly is important for creators on such sites.

Mike Stabile, the communications director for the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade association, noted that the regulations might dissuade social media sites from “dealing with adult content entirely.”

“If not, they risk not being able to process payments on their network,” he tweeted. “It’s hard to explain how short-sighted this is, and how devastating it will be to independent performers.”

The new requirements follow a decision late last year by Mastercard to stop allowing its cards to be used on Pornhub in the wake of a New York Times opinion story alleging the platform was contributing to sex trafficking. Visa and Discover similarly cut off payments to the site.

Sex workers have said those decisions made it difficult for them to rely on the platform, forcing them to pursue other, potentially more dangerous, sources of income.

Porn is the most obvious one you find stories about because the industry obviously sees this as an existential threat and the financial companies are willing to talk about it publicly but all kinds of random people can find themselves cut off or even prominent groups like Wikileaks. You get hit by one all the others will accept it on the word of the first one that bans you and it can often be global as lots of banks use the same list. And being on the list becomes evidence against you even though you can't find out what you did. There's not really any kind of appeals process for people to find their way back into good graces from what I understand. It's like the No Fly List.