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Kevin Klemme
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

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09 Dec 2021 11:49 #328630 by Legomancer

ChristopherMD wrote: What is it you all have against Blockchain? Everything I've read shows the technology to be very useful.


A blockchain is a database made purposely inefficient and wasteful in order to achieve "decentralization". To do this it consumes an enormous amount of energy. I've yet to hear any argument about why decentralization, especially in the context of Kickstarter is necessarily good. I've yet to hear of any use case for blockchain that can't be achieved just as easily with a plain old database. The two most notable usages of blockchain technology are cryptocurrency and NFTs, which are currently manifesting as animal jpegs. The former is used to purchase the latter, and both have no value except as "investments" to be converted back to non-cryptocurrency. Their only value is their artificial scarcity, made possible due to tremendous energy costs. So far blockchain is a solution looking desperately for a problem to solve. But Silicon Valley is all damp for it and Venture Capitalists are demanding it in everything, so soon we'll have to have blockchained soup and toothpaste because omgwow blockchain.
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09 Dec 2021 11:52 #328631 by Shellhead
And that excess consumption of energy is an unnecessary contribution to climate change. It's the tech bro equivalent of "rolling coal."
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09 Dec 2021 11:56 #328633 by ChristopherMD
Doesn't Proof-of-Stake use like 99% less energy than current Proof-of-Work methods?

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09 Dec 2021 12:36 #328635 by Not Sure

ChristopherMD wrote: Doesn't Proof-of-Stake use like 99% less energy than current Proof-of-Work methods?


In theory. "proof-of-stake" has the "fusion power" of blockchain for years now, being "just around the corner". You still burn a lot of useless energy with every node crunching on every block to verify it.

Both methods aggressively tend to recentralize the system (so the opposite of the stated goal) by saying "more resources gets you a bigger slice of the pie". Funny that.

"Proof of stake" would be less of a climate loss, if only because people would be bringing "money" to the table rather than "electricity+GPUs+time". However, "money" is in quotes there, because the idea that that actual cash vs just some other PoW-based coin would be required is laughable.

But the more you dig in, the more the overall goals fall apart and it becomes a naked Ponzi money grab. The clearest writer I've seen recently on the downsides of this is here www.stephendiehl.com/blog.html

Relevant quote:

Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime.


Most of the things that prop up value, especially in the NFT market, are things that were specifically outlawed in the US in the 1930s because of the aftermath of stock market shenanigans in the 1920s. (Pump-and-dump, wash trading, etc). We've re-invented it all, in digital form.
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09 Dec 2021 12:37 - 09 Dec 2021 12:38 #328636 by Virabhadra
The developer(s) of crytpocurrency tech are still anonymous; yesterday I heard that the conspiracy du jour is that the CIA actually created Bitcoin because it is more trackable than a dollar.

Either way, I've never touched the stuff and I'm not about to start. Everyone I know, personally and through a few degrees of separation, who has ever been involved with crypto has lost money.
Last edit: 09 Dec 2021 12:38 by Virabhadra.
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09 Dec 2021 17:15 - 09 Dec 2021 17:30 #328646 by Sagrilarus
As it stands now, companies are charging “gas” fees to cover the cost of the energy, assessed at transaction time. They can be pretty lucrative, because if big proofers don’t get paid the whole thing thing stops working. My question is this — who is paying that? I’d wager it’s not the owners of Kickstarter.

We finally start moving to energy efficiency and this shit comes along, kind of like the people on Easter Island cutting down every single tree for religious purposes.

Long story short — we’re doomed. What remains is determining the timeline.
Last edit: 09 Dec 2021 17:30 by Sagrilarus.
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10 Dec 2021 03:56 #328659 by Erik Twice
Ultimately, it's just an attempt to skirt financial regulations. There's no actual value added by the process, the entire point is being able to run a pyramid scheme. It's old hat. Most of the "tech bro" stuff is just using some kind of technological excuse to trample over legislation or existing checks and balances.

Uber is the best example. It's a private service that was allowed to compete against the goverment-regulated taxi sector. It offers nothing the existing sector couldn't, all its advantages come from not having to comply with the law. Here in Spain it has been allowed to treat its employees like contractors, force them to provide their own cars and to ignore all sorts of regulation, from goverment-set prices to the clothes taxi drivers must wear. And everyone looks the other way, because there's a lot of money to be made in kickbacks and you get rid of that pesky taxi union that protested every time you opened a new bus line.

If you can use a "tech bro" excuse to break such an extremely regulated market, it's no surprise companies are so keen on it. At worst, you release a couple NFTs and add a million to your bank out. Van Ryder Games isn't going to make that kind of money releasing actual games, you be sure of that.
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10 Dec 2021 11:41 #328675 by Msample
I'm not going to argue that Uber/Lyft treat their employees/serfs like shit. Two things I'd point out though.

One is that the vast majority of yellow cab drivers in recent decades were not owner operators but leased their cabs from investor groups/owners who bought the medallions required to operate as a cab. I don't know that their take home pay is much better than rideshare drivers.

More significantly was that the disruptors offered a MUCH better product. Taxi companies had close to a CENTURY to evolve their product and refused to do so. The few times I used Uber it covinced me that I would never use a yellow cab again. Being able to summon a car, pay for it on your phone ahead of time knowing the exact fare and have it show up in a predictable manner vs calling a taxi company, pray that they'd even show up, have a driver take you on a joy ride to goose the fare. Its not a hard choice.
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10 Dec 2021 12:06 - 10 Dec 2021 13:35 #328676 by sornars
I certainly don't miss the days where taxis would ask where I was going and refuse to drive me home because I lived in South London. Or the good old broken credit card reader scam where the cabbie would hold my luggage hostage while I went to an ATM; I've been mugged in a more polite manner when on foot.

I don't condone flagrant lawbreaking but just because government cartels could innovate doesn't mean they had any incentive to do so; Uber forced their hands and now the Black Cab experience has improved dramatically. There was no real mechanism for changing incentives beyond breaking the law due to captured interests.

If you wanted a different example of regulatory arbitrage leading to better outcomes for the few at the cost of the commons I think AirBnB is a better poster child.

This is all a bit of a distraction from the broader point with which I mostly agree.
Last edit: 10 Dec 2021 13:35 by sornars.
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10 Dec 2021 12:12 #328678 by Shellhead
I've never taken an Uber or Lyft, because I object to the whole business model. But the last time that I took a cab (in 2015), the driver spent the whole ride wheedling for a cash tip even though I was planning to pay for the ride with a credit card. I came up with a compromise. There was an ATM machine a few blocks from my destination. If the driver promised to turn off the meter for the rest of the trip, I would be willing to get some cash out of the ATM for his under-the-table tip. I was already planning on going to that ATM after picking up my car from the repair shop, so I considered this to be a win-win. But it made for an annoying ride, so maybe I consider Uber or Lyft next time around.

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10 Dec 2021 15:11 - 10 Dec 2021 15:14 #328687 by Sagrilarus

sornars wrote: I certainly don't miss the days where taxis would ask where I was going and refuse to drive me home because I lived in South London. Or the good old broken credit card reader scam where the cabbie would hold my luggage hostage while I went to an ATM; I've been mugged in a more polite manner when on foot.

I don't condone flagrant lawbreaking but just because government cartels could innovate doesn't mean they had any incentive to do so; Uber forced their hands and now the Black Cab experience has improved dramatically. There was no real mechanism for changing incentives beyond breaking the law due to captured interests.

If you wanted a different example of regulatory arbitrage leading to better outcomes for the few at the cost of the commons I think AirBnB is a better poster child.

This is all a bit of a distraction from the broader point with which I mostly agree.


The one thing I will point out is that every Uber and Lyft ride ever delivered was at a loss to the company. Their prices are reasonable because of their angel investors, not because they've come up with a better system. Were they to be on the hook to provide liability insurance for commercial driving (which all Uber and Lyft drivers are, though none of them get it) they would be even more expensive. Uber and Lyft would be a mess if others weren't eating their costs.

When the angel-investor money runs dry (which logic would tell you it has to eventually, but that's not how Silicon Valley stuff works apparently) their prices will likely be much higher than cabs. Or they'll evaporate.

My question regarding Kickstarter is in a similar vein -- KS is looking to divest themselves of their physical assets, in favor of Blockchain providing their system-of-record through distributed processing. That's great if people are willing to volunteer to do that. But Blockchains are getting heavier each day, and verification of transactions becomes more expensive and time-consuming with it. If you want to dump your servers that's great, but you're not doing it for free. Someone is going to charge to host your stuff, and if Gas fees get passed on to KS "backers" it could be a little ugly. Adding a $9 service fee to that $29.99 game isn't going to be well-received.

This is the dream of every Silicon Valley company. Set up a server, get rid of all physical assets, get rid of all employees, let money roll in. The hope is that you earn money while sitting in front of your TV doing nothing. Now Kickstarter wants to dump the server as well. Good luck!
Last edit: 10 Dec 2021 15:14 by Sagrilarus.
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10 Dec 2021 15:29 - 10 Dec 2021 19:26 #328691 by sornars

Sagrilarus wrote:

sornars wrote: ...


The one thing I will point out is that every Uber and Lyft ride ever delivered was at a loss to the company. Their prices are reasonable because of their angel investors, not because they've come up with a better system. Were they to be on the hook to provide liability insurance for commercial driving (which all Uber and Lyft drivers are, though none of them get it) they would be even more expensive. Uber and Lyft would be a mess if others weren't eating their costs.

When the angel-investor money runs dry (which logic would tell you it has to eventually, but that's not how Silicon Valley stuff works apparently) their prices will likely be much higher than cabs. Or they'll evaporate.


I might be coming across as some sort of Uber apologist but I'm also guessing very few people on this site actually use the services in question regularly. In the early days of Uber this was undoubtedly true; they were hemorrhaging cash and I was happy to have some VCs subsidise my nights out (we're currently in that same phase for the instant delivery service industry). For anyone paying attention those price points were obviously unsustainable but the service improvements and rise in standards in terms of customer experience have little to do with the cost - online payment, GPS tracking of your cab on arrival, preplanned routes, predicted fares, clean cars - none of those were available in the old world and now they are the default across a variety of services.

Uber has now focused aggressively on profitability and the cost of rides has increased to the point where the difference between an Uber and a Black Cab is often negligible; however, I still get to reap the benefits of all of the other things across multiple services, including regular taxis. This price rise has also been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has made it much harder to find a driver but the changes they have introduced are mostly here to stay.
Last edit: 10 Dec 2021 19:26 by sornars.

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10 Dec 2021 15:54 #328692 by Erik Twice
Make no mistake, I have no sympathy for taxi cartels. To me it's just an example of how the "tech bro disruption" lies in skirting regulation, not technology. It's not that new technology has changed how cabs work, it's that goverments have decided basic labour rights laws don't apply to these companies.

You can use any other tech bro technology and it's always the same. The entire point of Airbnb is to rent flats in residential areas without meeting the legal requirements you would normally be asked to do so. Glovo is disrupting the take-out market, not by having poor inmigrants ride bikes, but by not paying their social security. I firmly believe the entire point of "cryptocurrency" as it stands today is to run Ponzi schemes. The technological angle is beyond the point.

Msample wrote: One is that the vast majority of yellow cab drivers in recent decades were not owner operators but leased their cabs from investor groups/owners who bought the medallions required to operate as a cab.

There was a man in Spain who owned tens of thousands of taxi licenses. One day he sold them all, despite being highly profitable and hard to obtain. Instead, he invested his money in licenses for "rental cars with drivers" that had very few uses. Completely normal stuff. A bit later the law was slighty changed so that these new licenses could be used for Uber and Cabify and he became even richer. How unexpected.

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10 Dec 2021 15:57 - 10 Dec 2021 16:02 #328693 by Erik Twice
I just saw Geoff Engelstein share some specualation on Kickstarter making this move so as to skirt potential EU regulation regarding crowdfunding:


I'm not aware of the details but there does seem to be an incoming EU Directive on the issue. So there might indeed be an intent to skirt the incoming regulations. It fits so neatly into my view of cryptocurrency that now I feel awkard about it.
Last edit: 10 Dec 2021 16:02 by Erik Twice.
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10 Dec 2021 17:48 #328697 by Sagrilarus

sornars wrote: Uber has now focused aggressively on profitability and the cost of rides has increased to the point where the difference between an Uber and a Black Cab is often negligible; however, I still get the reap benefits of all of the other things across multiple services, including regular taxis. This price rise has also been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has made it much harder to find a driver but the changes they have introduced are mostly here to stay.


They still are charging below cost. They needed to stop the hemorrhaging to settle down investors that were threatening to call their loans.

And they’re still not paying the commercial insurance and liability insurance, certifications of drivers. Uber drivers know to never tell their insurance company what they’re doing, and most are unaware that their hourly rate is below minimum wage after expenses are removed.

I agree my Lyft experience is way better than my traditional cab experience. But their costs are much lower and they completely disempower their workers. I tip huge to relieve my guilt on the occasions I need to use them.

It’s one of those things where you enjoy it while it lasts.
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