A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted
-
@Arantor said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it? These people are all “we don’t want government involvement” until something goes wrong and suddenly “oh shit now we have no recourse, help me, government!”
TFA talks about different kinds of crytpo-bros. The founder of the company is described as a progressive sort who doesn't so much want to get away from government as get away from the existing banking system, which he finds oppressive or whatever.
And you can definitely sympathize a little with all of they types even if you realize that their solution is even worse.
-
@boomzilla same things though… they want away from the thing doing the oppressing until, aw shit, they find they need the oppressive power when things go horribly wrong, because it’s precisely that oppression that can actually fix things when they go wrong.
-
@Arantor sure, fairly similar. I'm just saying that this guy in particular wasn't super anti-government (according to TFA).
The description of the index coin or whatever was pretty interesting, actually, and I can see how these guys get all caught up in it. Sounds like a fun project on an intellectual level, like how you dream up some system just for fun. Basing actual finance on it is horrifying, of course.
-
@boomzilla said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
I'm just saying that this guy in particular wasn't super anti-government (according to TFA).
Supposedly. That's the framing, yes. And the other guy is a eugenics white supremacist. I don't fit it hard to believe that the guy pulling off the attack is a massive asshole, but I also find it a good a priori assumption that all of them are.
-
@topspin said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@boomzilla said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
I'm just saying that this guy in particular wasn't super anti-government (according to TFA).
Supposedly. That's the framing, yes. And the other guy is a eugenics white supremacist. I don't fit it hard to believe hat the guy pulling off the attack is a massive asshole, but I also find it a good a priori assumption that all of them are.
I thought the guy into eugenics was the attacker. Anyways, was just splitting hairs over what type of asshole we were dealing with.
-
@boomzilla yes. I just repeated that because they make them out for a nice
hgood guy - bad guy story.
-
I'm having difficulty understanding what all this has to do with hats and hoods
-
@Applied-Mediocrity fixed.
-
@topspin
There is another
-
@Arantor said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it? These people are all “we don’t want government involvement” until something goes wrong and suddenly “oh shit now we have no recourse, help me, government!”
And it's funny as fuck!
-
@boomzilla said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Sounds like a fun project on an intellectual level, like how you dream up some system just for fun.
Like communism!
-
@Tsaukpaetra said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
funny as fuck
I guess some people find it funny. Other seem to be seriously preoccupied by it.
-
@Arantor said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@loopback0 shush, don't spoil the second sale I had planned after that!
I sometimes wonder if we should start an nft scam. It can be pictures of winrar cds on various wooden tables. I wonder if winrar offers discounts for bulk purchases.
-
This is kind of interesting. Basically North Korea, the better Korea, is going to rob it all eventually.
-
@DogsB said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@Arantor said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@loopback0 shush, don't spoil the second sale I had planned after that!
I sometimes wonder if we should start an nft scam. It can be pictures of winrar cds on various wooden tables. I wonder if winrar offers discounts for bulk purchases.
Narrator: they do:
MULTI-USER LICENSES
The user purchases a number of usage licenses for use, by the purchaser or the purchaser's employees on the same number of computers. In a network (server/client) environment you must purchase a license copy for each separate client (workstation) on which RAR is installed, used, or accessed.
Number of users Price excluding VAT
2-9 $ 21 each User/Computer order
10-24 $ 16 each User/Computer order
25-49 $ 13 each User/Computer order
50-99 $ 10 each User/Computer order
100-199 $ 8 each User/Computer order
200-499 $ 7 each User/Computer order
500-999 $ 6 each User/Computer order
If you wish to purchase a higher quantity of licenses please contact our Sales Team at sales@win-rar.com. We'll be happy to assist you with your order.
-
-
@topspin said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
none of these "attacks" where someone else was just smarter than your shitty system should be illegal.
I agree. And in this instance, it seems to me that the system is obviously shitty because of its reliance on an internal "index."
AFAICS, this is because the system needs to know very often the value of the tokens that it holds, in the same way as a regular fund needs to know very often the value of the stock it holds. So far, so good, that seems one of the obvious requirement of any system that holds (and trades) many other things.
But getting that information apparently isn't free (no idea why, but I'm assuming TFA is right on that point otherwise I don't see why they would bother with that).
So the hack that the developers found is to use some sort of proxy with their internal index, which again AFAICS is just a way to reduce the number of times they (pay to) get the actual value of something. They somehow manage to compute the value of all other components of their fund from that single index (and, I assume, some actual value-checks from time to time, but not very often).
Now it's a classic hack. We've all done something like this at some point. Some information is expensive to get, so we buffer it and interpolate from it, and only do the actual check from time to time. But as soon as we do that, we know that this means our information may be wrong -- hopefully not too much, and usually most systems don't need the perfectly accurate information all the time, so it works out.
But then using this for an information that is the very core on which your system relies, and that needs to be perfectly accurate at every instant, well, that's obviously dumb, and it's no surprise that someone managed to take advantage of it.
The way I see it, it's like you're writing a file system and instead of actually tracking the amount of free space, you compute it once every day and in between just extrapolate following past days' typical usage. Then a user comes and writes a big file and suddenly your file system crashes, and you're going to say "it's the user's fault" rather than "ok, my heuristic was dumb." Yeah, right.
That doesn't mean the user who took advantage of it didn't do something morally grey, or very very dark grey. But that doesn't change the fact that the developers were morons to start with.
-
Evidence against Peak Greater Fool:
-
Well, gotta pump so they can dump.
-
-
-
-
-
@DogsB "it ain't gonna suck itself..."
-
@loopback0 said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
We don't take Itchy & Scratchy money.
-
@Medinoc said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
We don't take Itchy & Scratchy money.
Just because you aren't allergic to poison ivy doesn't make make rubbing your money with it a funny practical joke.
-
@HardwareGeek said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@Medinoc said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
We don't take Itchy & Scratchy money.
Just because you aren't allergic to poison ivy doesn't make make rubbing your money with it a funny practical joke.
Yeah, LSD is much more fun.
-
-
Keep clicking on the bottom dialog choice.
-
@Zerosquare said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Keep clicking on the bottom dialog choice.
Sounds like he's been super funged.
-
Alexa, play “Death March”
-
-
-
-
@TwelveBaud If worst comes to worst, at least you can eat an onion.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
I'm always amused when someone talks about "the blockchain."
-
@PleegWat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@TwelveBaud If worst comes to worst, at least you can eat an onion.
True, but those are Tulips, which are edible (the center of the bulb can apparently be toxic, so should be removed) but nutritious they are not.
Yeah, think I will avoid tulip based foods.
-
@Dragoon said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@PleegWat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@TwelveBaud If worst comes to worst, at least you can eat an onion.
True, but those are Tulips, which are edible (the center of the bulb can apparently be toxic, so should be removed) but nutritious they are not.
Yeah, think I will avoid tulip based foods.
Are tulip flowers edible? Pumpkin flowers are quite good for example.
-
@MrL According to TFA, yes. TFA (edit: or maybe it was linked from TFA) goes into more detail about the relative sweetness and flavor of various colors, as well as trimming off the bitter tips.
-
@HardwareGeek said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@MrL According to TFA, yes. TFA goes into more detail about the relative sweetness and flavor of various colors, as well as trimming off the bitter tips.
Huh. I may get into
cryptotulips after all.
-
@Dragoon said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
True, but those are Tulips, which are edible (the center of the bulb can apparently be toxic, so should be removed) but nutritious they are not.
I'm not too good on bulb recognition. I figured their stablebulb was an onion and this was somehow part of the joke.
-
-
@TwelveBaud said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
What triggers me is the picture suggesting that either
- the peasant working on the field wears gloves
- the glove-wearing gentleman actually works on the field
In any case, this is not how you run a proper 17th century business!
-
@Kamil-Podlesak said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@TwelveBaud said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
What triggers me is the picture suggesting that either
- the peasant working on the field wears gloves
- the glove-wearing gentleman actually works on the field
In any case, this is not how you run a proper 17th century business!
No. The glove-wearing gentleman hasn't the faintest idea about how to work a field, agriculture in general, nor - in fact - tulips.
What he does have is a lot of money, so he's been brought out to the farm for the dog-and-pony show, so he can go "um" and "ah", and maybe even prod the bulb (pictured), and nod sagely - all in the hopes that he and his actually-quite-real-money may be parted.
-
@GOG said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
The glove-wearing gentleman hasn't the faintest idea about how to work a field, agriculture in general, nor - in fact - tulips.
If it is the 17th century, then the glove-wearing gentleman will be wearing silk gloves, not latex. And the camera won't exist.
-
@dkf Are you suggesting that anyhing posted on WTDWTF might be something other than the truth, the whole truth and noting but the truth?
So help me...
-
Gasp!
-
@Arantor I skimmed TFA and I don't think I get it. Ok, so the endgame state is where you can duplicate any item for nothing, which breaks down the economy. The laws do not handle infinities. But if you want players to build crazy Minecraft shit, you need to have the effortless duplication. So market items lose all value. And yet you can use this crap to purchase... gasp... market items. And market items themselves can be duplicated afterwards, so... IT ALL LOSES THE FUCKING MEANING!
-
@Applied-Mediocrity
Ultimately it comes down to trading the cryptocurrency for other people's time & expertise (& third party tools, if you're a console player) to decorate your "base". Or otherwise help you get some sort of endgame item or base.It seems like at least some of the external/seed money comes from paying it forward with the wiki or other similar things, but I haven't caught much more detail on how the crypto cycles back from the decorators & service providers to keep the currency flowing
-
@Applied-Mediocrity so what’s going on is that they’re using crypto as a form of “currency” in the sense of barter tokens exchanging crypto for work done.
So far so normal. The key difference is that the barter tokens have no value.
Out here in the real world, we exchange labour for barter tokens and give those barter tokens to everyone else for the goods and services we consume, and the circle of life continues.
This works because the barter tokens have a value, implied to be intrinsic and for the most part that’s somewhat true - I do a thing, I am given $100, I can take that $100 and it has value, more or less, wherever I go.
The premise of TFA is that these barter tokens have no value outside this bubble they have created for themselves, at least no intrinsic value and they’re not tradeable as a commodity itself (unlike other currencies where the currency itself is a thing with value to be bought and sold)
Their protoecomony is basically people doing work for each other measured in used matchsticks where you can’t trade used matchsticks for other matchsticks and is basically a formalised honour system.
This only works if the barter tokens have no otherwise value, so there’s no external force to cause a revaluation as such because you can’t artificially drive up demand, but you also can’t do other things to manipulate the price - no constraining the supply of money via interest rates, no taxation to fiddle with availability or demand. Of course, crypto only has the adjusting work done to constrain supply mechanic, but open to market forces because they’re worth what the market decides.
The question will be if people start deciding that services cost more or less matchsticks going forward, which is inflationary all by itself…