nft enthusiasts are not the sharpest tools in the shed
nft enthusiasts are not the sharpest tools in the shed
Crypto on the whole is a scene where Sam Bankman-Fried was considered very smart while he was busy conducting the most inept financial crimes in modern history. The bar is low indeed.
We - humans - could have had digital money - fast and fee-less, micro-transactions, decentralization, secure, anti-spam. Everything Bitcoin claimed to want to be.
Instead we - the tech community - got smug about scams. People here get smug even toward the victims of scams.
The attitude has been 'Who gives a flying fuck about the details of any crypto tech, or the potential of digital money'. 'It's all a scam, so I don't have to learn anything about it'.
The baby got thrown out with the bathwater.
The people working on actually good crypto have nothing to do with SBF. The only way in which they're affected by this is the extent to which they get tarred with the same brush.
Edit: Y'all proving my point. You really don't see that? ... Look at how many of these responses lack table-stakes domain knowledge, missed the point, lack all imagination, and yet have a condescending tone. It's wild.
Mmm. Maybe. It's still not clear to me that you can have a decentralized, P2P verification network that can handle anywhere near worldwide transaction volume.
It's also not obvious to me that cryptocurrencies have value beyond "buying things you're not allowed to buy".
A decentralized P2P verification network is not hard. What's hard is building a global consensus to order these transactions, and there's not really a satisfying solution to that problem.
It's also not obvious to me that cryptocurrencies have value beyond "buying things you're not allowed to buy".
The same could be said about cash but that's an important aspect of life. Whether we're talking about drugs (like cannabis or shrooms) or getting an abortion, there's quite a few things you may not like to be confronted about by your local police.
The same could be said about cash but that's an important aspect of life.
But there are a ton of very obvious uses for cash aside from for things that are illegal. I use it every single day.
Sure, but that's true also with cryptocurrencies. You can make donations to non-profits / free-software with them, or acquire hosting services (web/dns/vps/vpn). I don't think technology is neutral in the general sense, but money (whether cash of cryptocurrencies), much like a pen and paper, is the kind of tool you can use for the best and worst purposes and there's not any way to change short of an orwellian dystopia.
that's true also with cryptocurrencies
To a much lesser degree. I wouldn't be able to use cryptocurrencies for any of the things I use cash for.
But that wasn't what was being asserted. The original assertion was "It's also not obvious to me that cryptocurrencies have value beyond "buying things you're not allowed to buy"."
The same thing cannot be said of cash.
(I don't agree with the assertion I quoted, to be clear. Aside from buying illegal goods, it's good for evading banking regulations and fees, but that's neither here nor there.)
the two core, dare i say intrinsic, values of cryptocurrency are 1) immutable, public ledger requiring no single point of authority and 2) that authority having zero bias or regulatory oversight on any transaction outside of its protocol.
1's value being a traceable permanent record and 2's value is no direct stepping in between a transaction or control over a holding.
both of those, to many skeptics, are actually negatives and give more control and power to sovereign entities, not less.
i am not including the pseudoanonymity of it for two reasons, 1) depending on the crypto, currently the level of sophistication to transact in a manner that any given address cannot personally identify you requires massive amounts of personal responsibility / knowledge and most importantly to most people, effort and 2) because the major way the current digital fiat channels handle the transaction volumes that they do is that they're built on a foundation of authentication linking to personal identification, and so the theorycraft of "sure it has a huge ecological footprint but it could replace the many-many-many times larger ecoprint of the entire fiat banking system" is disingenuous to me because in order to actually replicate that, any main network would be a duplicate of the current authentications backed by men with guns, it would just allow that sidechannel of p2p to have it's wild west.
i do find it a touch humorous that those who want to shatter the fiat-police complex are quick to engage the legal system to protect and recoup from bad actors.
Wait till you realize that any form of money is a scam designed to extort riches from the poorest producers and make those riches climb the social pyramid. Tongue in cheek comment of course, but that's an argument that can be defended.
It's more like a way to trick farmers into producing food for you even though you don't right that second have something they want.
I don't think that's it. They have to do it because they themselves have bills to pay. However, if we're not talking about big industrial farms, most farmers are very much below the poverty line and have massive debt. So it's not exactly a facilitator of mutually-beneficial transactions, but rather a pyramid scheme. Who will profit from the food sale? The middlemen. Who will profit from the little money that the farmer pockets? Banks, Monsanto, etc..
astrange had the right context but characterized it not-so-correctly. Modern agriculture's origin involved power structures where farmers were forced to be unable to be self-reliant, and would instead trade their crops at a market to get the other things they needed. The powers that be then had a nice, centralized place to take their cut and exchanges to offramp goods into currency. we're seeing it all over again with crypto via fiat reliance
Farmers didn't have bills to pay prior to the invention of bills though; some of them were subsistence farmers, some ran on IOUs, and some were slaves.
However, if we're not talking about big industrial farms, most farmers are very much below the poverty line and have massive debt.
Median family farmer in the US is a millionaire (or their household is anyway). You're thinking of farmworkers.
Who will profit from the little money that the farmer pockets? Banks, Monsanto, etc..
This is 70s New Leftism "evil corporations" thought, but it's a bad approach. Small business owners (petit bourgeois / local gentry) are more evil than corporations. Farmers, who are largely a kind of landlord, extra so.
For instance, the reason factory farms took over poultry in the US is that chickens were originally not valuable because there wasn't a market for chicken meat for the longest time. So the farmers left it to their wives to run.
Once it became popular, all the farmers sold their businesses to the factory farms, because having no business was less embarrassing than letting a woman run one.
Fast and fee-less? Does that work on a distributed ledger? Is there some magic I’m missing to make consensus quick and cheap?
Micro-transactions were never going to be feasible considering gas fees required to run a sufficiently secure blockchain app.
Decentralized? I’m still confused. Has anyone actually solved the Oracle problem with crypto? How are we actually getting decentralization?
Anti-spam??????? Ok that’s literally just crazy talk right? In what way does crypto have anything to do with spam? Afaict everything crypto-related still requires an email address to sign up if that’s what you mean.
Block lattice tech has been around for seven years. All your points would be answered by looking into it - it's not a secret.
Eg, Nano uses it. It's been working, efficient, safe, fast (<1 second) and completely fee-less, for seven years now. The entire network could run on a single windmill.
It's tending toward decentralization because there's no mining, no staking, and there was a genuinely fair distribution.
Fee-less transactions come with bad actors spamming the network with microscopic transactions, like a DDOS. So, Nano uses a 'bucket' system to keep things moving.
Tbh, this is exactly what I mean - all of this ought to be well known. People in general have a massive blind spot on what money actually is, and a weird reluctance to discuss what it could be. We're talking about all the crypto that doesn't work, so much so that people don't even know there's good and working crypto right now. We're talking about the scammers, instead of the people doing cool things without seeking glory for it.
Block lattice is IMO far too unwieldy to use, and is useless for decentralization unless the system you're making payments on is actually yours, meaning you can't use it for real-world payments.
Also, still nothing solves the oracle problem. Any form of crypto does nothing for any transaction that doesn't purely take place in digital space. This really is never the case, even when people claim it is. People always use the "NFTs could be used for concert tickets" example, but when it comes down to it, the venue still has to physically let you in.
Same with DNS. Sure, you could have a record put on a blockchain, but somewhere down the road, you're gonna have to be routed through a DNS server owned by someone, and the decision to use a decentralized record is purely theirs. At some point, there's some centralized entity that needs to be trusted or regulated.
As long as the thing being bought/sold with crypto can't be decentralized (nearly everything), you're still kicking the centralization can down the road, and spending a whole bunch of time and energy doing it.
Nano is a great example against your point as well.
Its design flaw is the ORV system requiring someone who just wants the elevator pitch and their life to be wildly more efficient via using digital currency that's faster, safer, cheaper than their debit card having to educate themselves on what-even-is an ORV, how does the voting work, how do you know what a good representative is, and so on. And, as with a lot of the cryptos working on different vectors of what efficiency means, it's also its strength. It's, you know, how it's fast.
So yes, o boy, if people just adopted it, informed themselves about it, and used it in volume "phase 2" could commence and as with crypto it comes in the form of major traffic revealing scalability necessities. Unfortunately who is going to do that to see in X years what the issues are, when there are the grandfather cryptos that do what they do and work how they work (sidestepping the "how they were meant to work/layer2 protocols don't count/cup of coffee as priority or no" dramatics).
And so its largest general population adoption, friction creating flaw is that people do not want to be their own bank. This is absolutely where the smugness from the tech sector comes from regarding the unwashed masses clicking excel macros from email scammers and uninformed people not having a functioning BS-detector and opting in to be the greater fool because they know there is bound to be many more greater fools than themselves.
The other bit that was omitted in your "we fixate on bitcoin and nfts and failures and dismiss the advancements smugly" is how many more declared-better-than cryptos have there been that didn't even make it to the scalability discussion that mature cryptos have and have modified and built systems around the transaction issues?
Case in point, you say "genuinely fair distribution" but that's a massive *citation needed. Back to genpop, they will never think it is fair if they didn't know about it and someone they consider their peer was able to obtain it with relatively less work or cost than they'd have to right now.
One of the key features of bitcoin (and maybe a small handful others) were that there was no ICO, and no opportunity to be unfair past you were either there and aware or you weren't. Now that more people are aware of the space in general, you cannot simply flip the switch without bad actors doing their thing. That era will never happen again, it was those people (or mmm intel agencies) at the forefront of dropping the tech in the wild interacting with it.
That said, there-and-aware with those early cryptos had a relatively massive near decade-long runway. I honestly would not know where to begin with assessing all cryptos around in 2020 to form an opinion on viability for 2030. Those good ol' days had what, 6-12 to sort out and work on?
Between 2018 and 2022 there are around 1,000 dead cryptos alone. I don't have the time to parse them all out and barely have the knowledge to assert that one that is dead should not be and has something worth pursuing.
I don't want my jadedness of being in the space for 15+ years at this point to lead me by the nose, but my bias would definitely be "if it was worth pursuing, one of the big ones' communities would pursue it as it means more value and a better product" (conspiracies about new world order digi-currency agenda aside).
Case in point, NFTs. Those in the know understand the potential value of an NFT and how they're not just "goofy internet jpgs" and have built in versions of systems accomodating them, or, you know, let parallel tech be the guinea pig. I can see use cases for them regarding licensing, but I can also see very little incentive for any entity to lose their centralized power to accomodate a tech that directly usurps it over time.
I see your point, and you honestly have one. However, nothing in this world works solely based on logic.
How many times have we heard xyz was the more optimal choice but abc won out. It’s because trust and perception are the other equally important dimensions.
That said, North America isn’t the only market for crypto. There are many thriving economies in the world with a broken currency. Argentina, to name one, is constantly weighing down by hyperinflation but the sheer grit and talent of locals is keeping the country relevant. Argentinians are always looking for ways to save their earnings without losing to inflation.
All that to say, there are still “real” problems waiting to be solved for which crypto can be a solution. In the west though, if it ain’t broke - you know the rest.
When will the cryptocurrency promoters understand that society doesn't want decentralization? People don't want scammers going around taking people's money without recourse, causing a burden on everyone else. They have explicitly entrusted governments to claw back ill-gotten gains. It is just a matter of time until regulations on on-ramps and off-ramps hits cryptocurrencies to the point where they have all the same regulatory costs as centralized ledgers with the additional computational cost of decentralized ledgers.
It isn't just the tech illuminati who associate Bitcoin with scams. Everyone in our neighborhood now knows that it's a regular occurrence for older people to get emergency calls from the "gas company" and rush to the corner store's Bitcoin kiosk so they can pay and not get their gas shut off.They then realize it was a scam and post on Nextdoor, Facebook, etc. While I know that cryptocurrency is not a scam, and while I know that such scams pre-exist Bitcoin, that is absolutely the perception that it's getting in our community amongst non-tech people.
Your edit, BTW, is interesting. You tar all the responses with the same brush, "missed the point", "lack all imagination", and then accuse them of having a condescending tone? Do you have a sense there might be a two way street? While you do have a point, there's a lot of reasons why human dishonesty, e.g. scamming, prevents us from having a great many nice things that we could otherwise have.
We have that in Europe, it's called SEPA.
Which one's the good crypto again?
To be fair, that was a very tiny baby in the tub. Maybe in theory crypto could have been a perfect system, but in practice humans are flawed. It was doomed.
It is horrible that these folks lost their vision. They didn't deserve that. Even in the context of crypto apes. It's easy (but boring) to make fun of them-- again humans are flawed.
"We - humans" had already a perfect PoS system called "existing fiat system" and noone should have allowed the virus 'crypto/PoW' making so much co2
The NFT grift is the truest example of the Greater fool theory.
The Gnon-Fungible Token (GFT).
The ??? is there but not the profit.
"was"?
You don't understand how loyal his followers are.
You do know tradfi has had it's share as well, right? Enron? Madoff?
"Not the brightest bulbs" was right there.
Thank you!
Also possible candidates:
A few watts short of a lightbulb.
Their lights are on but nobody’s home.
In french, we have "they are not not the sharpest knives of the drawer" but my favorite one is "he is not the penguin who slides the furthest" :D
On the light related ones, I only know "they are not lights" which is a bit to bare bones to my taste, but works well in french
We have the knife in the drawer one in Swedish too. My favourite one is "The wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead" however.
That feels a lot like 'the lights are on but nobody is home'
but my favorite one is "he is not the penguin who slides the furthest" :D
Did you too learned that one in the related thread on /r/France last year[1]? Or was it something that you heard IRL?
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/uhazwh/connaissezvo...
I heard it in real life and I Googled it to check the person speaking did not make it up ^^
"they are not bright" is common in english
Never heard the penguin one in any language but it sure is hilarious!
I hope I can remember that one.
One taco short of a combination plate.
"A few fries short of a happy meal"
5 watts short of a 10 watt bulb (halfwit)
People there were definitely some half a micrometer short of seeing the light.
I don't get it
the original post is about people near-blinded from the very bright/intense lighting, and therefore using "not the brightest bulbs" is funnier.
They pointed bright UV lights meant for sterilizing air in vents at attendees rather than UV lights meant for this purpose.
Bravo -- well-played!!!
Hey now.
This is what happens when you're short sighted before hitting the "reply" button.
They were, for a couple of glorious hours.
Maybe they were having trouble seeing the joke
The blind leading the blind.
they were looking kinda dumb with the laser
carving an L in their forehead
RIP
You could tell the difference in UV wavelengths just by looking at them, or rather not by looking at them. I wish I was as smart and cool as you.
It's a matter of taste, of course, but the event does not look incredible to me.
I’m surprised they didn’t stuff the room with paid actors. The closest tangible value to NFTs is that they grant membership to an exclusive social club.
They do this with Discords and bots to make interest look high, I can't believe they didn't think to do it with an in person event. Actors must be a bigger pain to get than bots?
Humans who will work for jpgs are hard to find.
For what it's worth, the photo in the article itself shows a much larger crowd. The video might be too early or too late into the event.
Sadly, they don’t need to. The people who actually buy into this are so stup*d that it’s not worth spending a penny more than a lousy eyes blinding “party”
Like the first episode of Silicon Valley
Brilliant and truly innovative stage design, mounting the "do not ever look into those" scan lasers vertically, at head height ... ...
There are regulations on that stuff in some countries. A friend of mine is in lighting and says their company generally avoids lasers due to the hassle of compliance.
In the USA, you need an FDA variance to operate one at events. https://www.proxdirect.com/support/variance has some info but the most important parts are:
- Laser projector must be mounted and have the lowest point on the beam at least 10 fee above the floor and 10 feet horizontally from anywhere a person could go -- this is why many laser shows just do "laser sky" effects that are just projecting wide horizontal lines even though they can do up/down effects as well
- beam must be terminated into something non-reflective -- can't shoot it off into the sky
- absolutely no scanning the audience -- again, the lowest point of the beam has to be at least 10ft above the floor
- ANSI Z136.1* ‘Safe Use of Lasers’ (currently available, but general for all laser use)
- ANSI Z136.10* (to be published shortly, but specifically covers laser light show safety)
in optical research you typically end your beam into a beam dump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_dump IIUC at CERN it's basically a big chunk of graphite that heats up a bunch when you drain your beam into it.
To a broad degree, the industry self-regulates and comes up with its own safety mechanisms, guidelines, hardware and software controls, etc.
I used to be a member of ILDA [1], which developed a number of the protocols, serialization formats, and safety measures. They'll certify hardware and operators, and they'll kick out members that engage in crowd scanning. They don't really have much of an enforcement mechanism, though.
In the US, the FDA and FAA have regulations on laser displays [2]. You're supposed to apply for variance, but many smaller venues and operators skip this outright.
It can be incredibly dangerous if care isn't taken. These multi-watt lasers can easily burn holes into things, with your tissues being among the easiest.
These folks were clearly crowd scanning at eye level.
Didn't they say 2500 people came?
They also said millions of people are trading NFTs every day or something, I don’t remember.
Almost like the event isn't happening at the time of that recording...
That's because you need the lazers to see how amazing it was
Yeah, clearly the camera had a UV filter. We are missing out on the brilliance :)
CAUTION: DO NOT LOOK INTO LASER WITH REMAINING EYE!
The video pans to the audience near the end. 2500 people sounds right https://x.com/dj_soda_/status/1721510442621861925?s=20
Neither incredible nor credible; what a paradox.
Imagine going to the event and all you have to look at for the entire show is hideous monkey "art". If this is what the people like then maybe they didn't deserve to have eyes in the first place.
Given all the wild stuff to do in Hong Kong, this looks pretty middle of the road.
It's not loading for me, here's a nitter link: https://nitter.cz/slandermepls/status/1721352598945677544
This industry is truly the gift that keeps on giving
s/gift/grift/
I know this isn't what you meant, but "the grift that keeps on griving" gave me an excellent laugh.
It'd have to be s/gi/gri/
No, it would have to be s/gi/gri/w
It looks like latchkey edited their answer to be correct. lol Took me a bit trying to figure out what was meant by this.
I didn't edit anything.
Its called SEO.
If you know something bad has happened, you want to word your public statements in such a way that you beat out the bad news to the top search of Google at least, to minimize the attention given to that issue.
Ex: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1465838829370228737
This Elon Musk tweet coincided to help SEO-fight against a Whistleblower claim.
Ex2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21122806
Boris Johnson using search terms to try and hide the "Bus" incident back during Brexit.
-----------
The #1 goal is to do it in such a way that confuses and befuddles those not-in-the-know (Oh, its just the CEO being quirky... they'll brush it off). But of course, you still want to accomplish the goal and make a news-statement with the largest amount of reach such that you beat the "real news" event on the top search of Google/Facebook/other social media.
It often sounds like gobbytygook, because it is. You're just word-vomiting into the wild trying to shove search terms to the top of Google / other search engines... but in a way that no one realizes why those words are related.
Remember when Musk called some guy in Thailand a 'pedophile' for no reason at all, and it immediately became international news with those keywords. That was so quirky!!
Wow, someone I (somewhat) know in person featured on HN.
I haven't heard from him in a long while (and even then, he was a friend of a friend who happened to show up from time to time). Then, he got lucky publishing Bitcoin prophecies that were accurate enough to gather significant following. A shovel shop in the times of gold rush kind of thing.
Now from what I see on his Instagram, he seems to be living in Dubai and his life consists of fine dining, driving fast cars and attending crypto conferences. Never in my life will I understand why this kind of life is something that people pursue.
In the cult of BoredApe, you are not allowed to disparage BoredApe.
it’s a music festival for people into nfts—don’t expect them to be well-reasoned.
"WE ARE TRYING TO PUT A TINY THRILL INTO THEIR GREY LITTLE LIVES! OH FORGET IT, TURN ON THE LASERS!" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiaWwjZS50s)
That tweet honestly reads like a pars pro toto of the whole NFT world ...
"visionary revolution, it's the future, it will change everything, also it absolutely ruined me!"
What's to say? Satire died years ago and now this is reality.
I’ve almost lost sight this night.
I mean, c'mon. "Thanks, incredible event, it almost blinded me"?
Seems like an event to keep these crypto / nft bag holders blind to their losses and to encourage them to keep buying worthless jpegs.
That’s a sign of a bloody good event, when you go blind but you don’t mind.
This seems pretty reasonable once you realize that other cults have managed to get people excited about literally killing themselves.
This is peak bagholder psychology lmfao
In the world of crypto, there are no negatives. Ever.
There's no reason the party with unsafe UV lights had to be a crypto-party. While I'm no NFT bagholder, it bothers me that the article is mostly about dunking on cryptobros than talking about the dangers of hazardous lighting rigs at a show. At any event, how is an attendee supposed to assess such a thing? It's not like you can DYOR.
At any event, how is an attendee supposed to assess such a thing? It's not like you can DYOR.
That's why I think the cryptobro angle is relevant to the story, because assessing trust in the folks putting on a conference is the way for attendees to figure out if they're likely to be blinded by the lighting or face other issues. And the type of people the whole cryptocurrency and especially NFT scene attract seem at least in my opinion to be way more likely to put on a conference with hazardous lighting than more reputable organizers. Everything about that whole space gives off a Fyre Festival vibe, which seems like pretty fair warning about going to an actual event organized by cryptobros.
That's why I think the cryptobro angle is relevant to the story
That's an interesting perspective, and reminds me a bit of the "libertarian paradise" at the end of http://bitsim.beepboopbitcoin.com/ . But the fact that it's framed more as a dunk than as genuine sympathy for those affected reminds me of other anti-crypto reporting like "Line Go Up" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g ). Which makes it really hard to recommend it as a way to break people out.
Given a choice between reporting which mocks crypto victims and reporting which might actually help get people away from the rigged casino, I'd prefer to see articles aiming for the latter.
I would actually tend to agree. I think the organizers deserve all the scorn and dunking in the world, but I'm less comfortable about that framing for those impacted. "Conference organized by the monkey JPG people" should be a major red flag, but it wasn't a red flag for the target audience for probably the same reason "monkey JPG" wasn't in the first place.
Similar to the Fyre Festival, the real villains are the scammers (or idiots, if you're giving them the benefit of the doubt) running the show, not the people who fall victim to the scam. Cryptocurrency and NFTs fall into that category where I think recognizing the BS requires a level of technical knowledge that is unreasonable to expect everyone to have. Dunking on people who don't get the technical argument for why NFTs and the people promoting them are BS does not feel like the way.
NFTs, and even monkey JPG NFTs, are perfectly sensible when viewed as art projects. (Not as finance: financially, monkey JPG NFTs are rather silly.)
And by 'sensible' I mean sensible compared to weird things other people either do for art or spend money on for art. Compare eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art (and that's far from the most egregious corner).
Arguably Christie's (the auction house) invented the concept of NFT before there were NFTs.
I mean, the value of art may be undervalued by society in general, but paintings that sell for hundreds of millions of dollars is just insane. The art collectors are just using art pieces in the same way crypto folks are using NFTs. The only apparent difference is that there's no physical object for NFTs, but the physical object was never the main value proposition for traditional high value art anyway.
You're absolutely right, but at least there is some underlying art-intended-as-art there. Just as much of the stock market can be viewed the same way but at least there usually is an underlying company with some value behind the stocks. With NFTs there really is nothing there. It's finance without any art component.
You know there's more to NFTs than Bored Apes, right? Look at the stuff Beeple was doing before NFTs hit the mainstream. NFT was about the art before it became a get rich quick thing. Still is if you ignore Yuga Labs and people like them.
Why insane? An asset with a value that can be arbitrarily manipulated in a plausibly deniable fashion is extraordinary useful for money laundering and tax avoidance.
I disagree. They're generally not intended as art or consumed as art. Performance art, modern art, post-modern art, avant-garde art - while not always to everyone's taste - is usually intended in a purely artistic sense. (And in my opinion much of it actually is good. Jackson Pollock was regarded as nonsense or non-art and still is by many but he's one of my favorites, for example.)
NFTs that start themselves as NFTs, like Bored Ape NFTs, are a solely financial product intended to convey status and something to eventually be pawned off to others for a profit. It's a market, not an art community. Not all artists who sell things they make as NFTs necessarily fit this mold, but things like Bored Apes definitely do.
I'm sure there's plenty of art and artists who are very aware of themselves being used as tools in a status game.
See eg https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/apr/14/receipt...
Helping people get out is not the only purpose for media about a thing. Informing people who aren't in it is also legitimate news, and can be important if the people outside need to know what's going on inside so that they don't get taken in in the first place.
That does not require dunking on those who got sucked in.
Well also it's totally fair to say they should know better than to spend thousands of real money on idiotic computer-generated cartoons. But it's really unexpected that any event would blind the attendees. The first is a pyramid scheme and the second is like a war crime or something. There's zero financial incentive to blind the attendees.
Molly White has made a career out of mocking crypto bros, she'll have a hay day with this one!
Guess which kind of reporting gets more engagement?
It was a rave open to the general public. How many people actually consider the reputation of someone setting up a party or rave. Half the time it IS someone out of their mind on drugs in a condemned warehouse or the middle of the desert .
Wait.. just to be clear are you saying you could get in without owning one?
I heard for years the "benefit you don't understand" is the exclusive club access. Exclusive nightclubs were a specific use case I kept seeing argued. If anyone can walk in it's not that exclusive. Heck people might just be a raver that doesn't care about crypto but showed up to dance.
It seems like the club night/party was open to people who bought tickets for the "Open House" event they ran that day, for about $50 US - https://www.artazine.com/news/apefest-2023-nft-bored-ape-yac...
Hard to be sure though.
I think you picked the one avenue where people are wary of the person putting on the event because you are gonna be tripping and need to be in a reasonably safe environment, you will get your hearing destroyed in only a few hours by some idiots who think that turning it up to 11 makes for a better show, and raving is a community of regulars that have collective memory for bad reputation.
It's funny because what you're describing with the warehouse is "the afters" which unbeknownst to someone who isn't a regular has already established a reputation and been vetted by the community because they're all word of mouth.
The point is that lack of reputation likely meant that despite the fact that it was public the usual partygoers weren't there. You typically need either a trusted organizer/venue or a trusted artist and their techs who's done this before and aren't gonna do something stupid.
"in my opinion to be way more likely"
I have no data but still, here's my bias.
It is so annoying... ehag do people believe "in my opinion" means? Also: is everything you believe actually based on facts?
If not, by posting your comment just showed a whole bunch of biases that are secretly controlling you.
in customer experience design the user's perception is objective reality.
so it's not "i have no data but here's my bias," it's "anecdote IS the singular of data, not only that, but data doesn't matter: what matters is what happened to me."
i can't imagine going to a movie theater and getting your arm lopped off by a whirling sawblade, but since you have no data on the frequency of it, your anecdote is an inaccurate overgeneralization, and you should not dare to assert that an entity that throws raves that burn and blind people are more likely to jump into trends recklessly with such limited information.
I don't have a spreadsheet handy, but I will say that entities that consider these types of happenings as good investments are trying to embody the "don't miss out on being cool at the cool party" moreso than the "there is no party because we are interested in having a conservative and responsible image to bolster our solid technological foundation" side of the spectrum.
I'll get back to you after I get back from the ayahuasca + squirrel wingsuit base jump retreat my retirement fund manager is holding
I would have mistakenly assumed there are like regulations or common sense preventing blasting people in the eyes with raw UV regardless of the event.
This story is a rude awakening for me that one does have to asses event planners for competence, not only for remote Fyre Festivals but also for regular venues. I hope the attendees recover.
At any event, how is an attendee supposed to assess such a thing?
If you see clear tubes emitting a light blue glow, close your eyes and get away ASAP.
One of the few positive things about the pandemic may be that it's educated lot more people on what UVC lamps look like, as they're often used --- away from people --- for sterilisation purposes.
What? I've seen lots of tubes that may or may not have been clear, I really don't know, emitting light blue glows. Like, I used to go into Spencer's at the local mall a couple decades ago... I would have no clue what the difference is here.
They're made of a distinctively clear quartz glass (used because regular glass is quite effective at blocking UVC), and you can see the filaments at the ends. Hopefully you won't have to ever experience looking at a lit UVC tube, but they appear very different from regular fluorescents.
The comment here has a link to a previous incident of this happening, which shows what UVC tubes look like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38170902
Well, good to know! Thanks! But this would not have previously been obvious to me at all.
Bring sunglasses (and ear protection while you're at it) when going to a concert.
I can't stand the mixing at many concerts unless I wear earpro, but thanks for the reminder.
I'd rather not go at all at that point. Why bother going to a musical performance when you are just going to muffle the sound.
Because part of cryptobro culture is thinking you know more than anyone else, and projecting an image of access to secret insider knowledge. Likely one of them just decided to be a lighting designer because they thought they new more than the professionals.
Because part of cryptobro culture is thinking you know more than anyone else
That’s basically the case with most if not all internet cultures.
It’s kind of a metaphor eh?
After I learned that NFTs were essentially just signed git commits, I wrote them off as a hilarious grift. I feel bad for the people that were injured, so here's my advice: run away from NFTs and crypto. RUN AWAY!
A signed git commit is actually immutable. An NFT is generally the signed text of a URL, which kind of isn't.
Wait what, I thought it was at least the hash of the image or something.
No, NFTs technically have nothing to do with images, or files at all. The way it works is that you write a random string and save it on a blockchain, which becomes the NFT. From there, you can use a lookup table to map the NFT to a URL that links to an image that's stored on the owner's server. NFTs are truly the worst of all grifts.
you write a random string and save it on a blockchain, which becomes the NFT. From there, you can use a lookup table to map the NFT to a URL that links to an image that's stored on the owner's server
The way which they are mapped to images vary from NFT to NFT.
But let's look at Bored Ape Yacht Club specifically.
Collection https://opensea.io/collection/boredapeyachtclub
Pick a random bored ape. For example #1337.
https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061...
From there we can see the bored ape Ethereum "smart contract"
https://etherscan.io/address/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118...
This contract is responsible for minting all of the original Bored Ape NFTs
Click on "contract". And then click "read contract".
Scroll down. There is a method named "tokenURI". It takes an integer as parameter. Let's query it with value "1337" (the id of the bored ape we are interested in knowing about).
Result:
ipfs://QmeSjSinHpPnmXmspMjwiXyN6zS4E9zccariGR3jxcaWtq/1337
Let's visit that URL via an IPFS gateway.
https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmeSjSinHpPnmXmspMjwiXyN6zS...
It contains JSON data.
{"image":"ipfs://QmWjXFUVNjavM4hDzXeQYGXGCXjV86mP7kPEaTeP5bohae","attributes":[{"trait_type":"Background","value":"Yellow"},{"trait_type":"Fur","value":"Dark Brown"},{"trait_type":"Clothes","value":"Bone Necklace"},{"trait_type":"Mouth","value":"Bored Unshaven"},{"trait_type":"Hat","value":"Horns"},{"trait_type":"Eyes","value":"Bloodshot"}]}
ipfs://QmWjXFUVNjavM4hDzXeQYGXGCXjV86mP7kPEaTeP5bohae
And visit that one via our chosen IPFS gateway.
https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmWjXFUVNjavM4hDzXeQYGXGCXj...
So there you have it. Via the Bored Ape smart contract we retrieved the JSON data and image file for Bored Ape #1337 from IPFS.
Retrieving that image relies on someone continuing to pin the file indefinitely, though, right?
The neat thing about IPFS is that the IPFS URL is based on a hash of the file.
So having saved that file offline on my harddrive, I can later re-add it to IPFS.
ipfs add Downloads/1337.png
added QmWjXFUVNjavM4hDzXeQYGXGCXjV86mP7kPEaTeP5bohae 1337.png
140.68 KiB / 140.68 KiB [=============================================] 100.00%
QmWjXFUVNjavM4hDzXeQYGXGCXjV86mP7kPEaTeP5bohae
So, IPFS doesn't even require that the file is indefinitely pinned.
And if I have a public node, others can now once again retrieve the file using the same known id.
The person that re-adds it doesn't have to (nor can) specify the id of the file; that's calculated from the hash of it.
(Although, IPFS does also have a way to serve mutable data, so in those cases the id is not calculated directly from just a hash. But in the case of the image we looked at here we see that it was.)
The difference between needing to pin forever and merely needing to have a copy of the same file somewhere outside of IPFS which is then re-added to IPFS and gets the same ID is a fine distinction perhaps, but still an important one IMO.
And I think that even if all of the IPFS nodes that currently have a copy of the Bored Apes would go offline, there is probably someone out there who would notice that and for whatever reason be motivated to make all of the apes available again on IPFS with their same original id's that they had by re-adding the original files.
Right, it's like a torrent in that way. I have dozens of torrents where I am waiting for that one guy to -- bless his soul -- open up his torrent client and seed the last 14 bytes.
I guess the best thing to do if you own an Ape is to store the image on your HDD and put a copy in a safe-deposit box, and then pin it yourself whenever you can.
Thanks for the explanation, it makes a bit more sense that it is an ipfs URL.
As mentioned though, it varies between different NFT projects. Some NFT projects lazily use Google Drive links etc instead. And then the files in the Google Drive could later be modified or deleted.
See for example https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?tech=nft&id=goblintown-nft-ima...
Goblintown NFT images all changed to an illustrated middle finger in protest about royalties
{"trait_type":"Eyes","value":"Bloodshot"} is a particularly well-chosen example here.
AFAIK it is often perfectly possible to actually encode image data on-chain, it is just much more expensive (and much less common as a result)
People get upset when you do this because storing data on-chain is, possibly, infinitely expensive, since you can never get rid of it.
since you can never get rid of it
if you're an actual believer in NFTs, isn't that kind of the point?
Perhaps but the standard NFT is a URL encoded in the chain. Yes this is as absurd as it sounds.
It seems to me that cryptocoin adjacent things somehow attract well meaning people who just don't understand what parts of the technology are critical to its functionality. Maybe they understand one use case for a signature but don't really understand what signature is and more importantly what it isn't.
And sadly enough - several cryptocoins themselves are also this way.
I used to think cryptocoins were truly revolutionary. But the tech space is so rife with abuse, theft, scams that it doesn't feel worth it.
Since finding this out a couple years back it's always my delight to see this realization happen for others.
We knew NFTs were stupid... we just couldn't comprehend how incredibly stupid they actually are.
What baffling is how did they get this popular ? Plenty of stupid things to go around, why this specific one? Who was the marketing genius that convinced a critical mass to buy something worse than sand in the middle of the desert.
At a first level, similar phenomenon to why trading cards or any other collectible fads have their periods of excitement. Is digital beanie babies at all surprising?
Then there were also folks who wanted to use them as an open standard for, like, "metaverse assets" and whatnot. And while there are many different ways to solve that technically, you also have the blockchain proponents looking for any problem that blockchain can solve... So there is the added energy from that synergy as well.
Then I believe there are fairly serious businesses looking at NFTs for things like digital albums sales (or other ways to cultivate and monetize parasocial relationships) while disintermediating the traditional platforms.
It could be. I don't know about the ERC for NFTs and I can't be bothered to read it, but in theory just store the IPFS address for the image.
In reality though it is an implementation detail. An NFT is just a coloured coin, and derives it's value from someone else thinking they can buy it and sell it on to someone else / OR some kind of bragging rights value, i.e. I can afford $100k on X useless thing (e.g. watch, gold plated iPhone etc.) so therefore I am rich.
I can afford $100k on X useless thing
Pretty sure the X useless thing was $44 billion.
No. You just own a number in a smart contract.
It’s typically an IPFS hash of an image that is stored on the blockchain, rather than a mutable URL. Some generative artworks will even store all of their code on-chain.
Ultimately, the chain is meant to be a ledger of transactions (like a decentralized Christie’s auction house maintaining provenance), not a storage layer.
essentially. a whole industry cropped up around hosting them, which mostly defeats the point
there are a lot of NFTs that are better implementations, the primary improvement being that there is no external hosting and they build the visual data into the smart contract function for a renderer to interpret
Ive done a lot with SVGs that way. others upload dependendies like three.js on the blockchain in other smart contracts, so when called they can return into yours and you have more sophisticated renders
I think artblocks does something like that, not sure
Most of the financial sector NFTs have an onchain svg too, like all the Uniswap liquidity pools
first movers are often poorer implementations of the technology, its up to the consumers to discern and if they dont then there is no incentive to act differently
This whole smart contract stuff looks very interesting.
Do you have resources for someone that only know the basics of cryptocurrencies and blockchains ?
build some EVM (ethereum virtual machine) scaffolding in a local environment at
Hey! i mean you own that commit hash! and you can show it to others through an ipfs link!
So basically ipfs won?! or lost?!
the worst were one that didn't even host on IPFS, they used their own domain names
Not even a signed git commit.
But rather, a signed receipt that says you paid for the nft.
It’s actually a mapping between an unsigned integer and public key, stored on all nodes. It only requires a signature to persist the state change.
Yep, git is essentially a blockchain. NFTs but also all cryptocurrency transactions are essentially git commits containing a digital signature from the owner (to prove ownership), what the owner is transacting, and the public key of the receiver. Sometimes it is a bit more complicated, there may be some instructions others than "I am A, send the X to B", but that's the idea.
The big difference between git and a blockchain like Bitcoin and Ethereum is how you do "pull requests". On git, usually, there is a designated central repository that is controlled by project maintainers, and when you submit a pull request, they check it, merge it to central, and others get it back from here.
With blockchains, there is no designated central repository, to merge a pull request, you have to win a sort of lottery, commonly by reversing a crypto hash (mining). The more invested you are into the system, the higher the odds. If you win, you show it to the the world, do the merge, and everyone pulls from you. By randomly selecting who does the pull among the most invested limits the chance of one bad actor ruining the system for everyone. In case of a conflict, the branch with the most commits wins, because that's the one with the most "lottery winners" and therefore the most likely to be the right one. To encourage others to merge that pull request, there is usually a reward for those who do (transaction fees).
Technically, it is very sound, just like git is, in a sense. The "proof-of-work" lottery is wasteful in electricity though, and of course, what you do with it is another matter. Just like git can be used for good (ex: linux) or for bad (ex: developing malware).
The Financial Times [1] has attendee numbers:
“About 2,250 people attended the Saturday evening party at a cruise terminal, said organiser Yuga Labs, one of the pioneers in this market. Since then, more than a dozen have posted on social media complaining of a burning sensation in the eyes and sometimes also impaired vision.”
Honestly that’s a lot more proud Bored Ape bagholders than I would have guessed. But what do I know — maybe Beanie Baby meet-ups also pull crowds of thousands.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/fe9a3fa3-edfc-41df-a333-1f91e6248...
That's about the attendance of an average furry convention (or roughly one NordicFuzzCon) where the A/V crew will know what they're doing with the lights. Questionable ideas and their events and services struggle to attract competent staff for some reason. They're always getting hacked or melting faces.
I help run an anime con with, uh, 15 times this reported attendance. The most important thing is to keep your competent volunteers entertained so they're happy to run a rave one weekend a year that doesn't blind anyone.
+1 I've also got some friends who do sound, lighting, and DJ for anime / furry cons. It's a fun little niche.
Lots of requests for "Hamster Dance"?
(Sorry, couldn't resist the pun. No actual offense intended.)
We'll know the furry and anime communities are finally back together after decades apart once a cosplayer and a fursuiter go head to head with Caramelldansen and Hamster Dance at Floor Wars.
Thanks for the link! I would never have imagined an event like was real.
We (furry con A/V) care a lot about safety, so there's no way you'd see UV-C lamps at a furry con dance. We also measure sound levels and keep them in check, have free water stations around the room, have medical trained security staff around, keep an eye on the crowd, etc.
I've gotten to know some A/V people doing furry music, and I'm always appreciative of how dedicated they are to their craft.
Clearly, Yuga Labs has no incentive to either exaggerate the number of attendees or understate the number of people harmed. =)
Everybody in crypto is so honest and the numbers they love to tout are always real, so I don’t see any reason to be so cynical. Unless of course one is a fiat-blinded NPC sheep who hates disruptive innovation and wants to kill the children in Africa and El Salvador who are being rescued from poverty by the limitless power of blockchain energy.
saving the world, one block at a time...
This isn't even sarcasm, this is just collecting various actual statements in one location. I know I have been called genocidal for expressing an opinion that we should maybe run medical studies prior to massive ivermectin doses for everyone in the third world. Same energy.
Grade A sarcasm.
I was curious when I heard the initial reports so I went looking for pics on Twitter — the ones I found looked absolutely nothing like the 2,500 attendees and more like 250..
Are these the same people that count attendees at inauguration speeches?
I'm more interested in the gender distribution.
Oh, we all know that these things are just the wurst.
Skewed towards male for most events involving technology. Does it matter?
https://twitter.com/CryptoTurkweb3/status/172136398921162773...
Looks almost exclusively male to me.
Honestly that’s a lot more proud Bored Ape bagholders than I would have guessed
The breakdown of locals vs people that flew in would be revealing. e.g. passionate owners vs cryto-casual hongkongers looking for a party.
According to the Zeke Faux book "Number Go Up", one needs to "own" a Bored Ape YC NFT to be admitted. The author had to pay $20,000 for one of these in order to gain admission to this event.
In this case there appear to be other ways. Ape holders could '+1' for the whole three-day event for $269 (US$ I think).
It also appears[1] that the party was after an open day of sorts, and you could buy tickets[2] for the open day and party for 388HK$ (about $50 US).
It is a little hard to tell exactly what the open house included and whether it gave access to the event that had the problem, so I could be wrong.
[1] https://www.artazine.com/news/apefest-2023-nft-bored-ape-yac... [2] https://openhouse.boredapeyachtclub.com/
I was once (probably) the largest secondary market retailer of Beanie Babies, 1997-1998.
I used to organize "Beanie Fairs" (which were scams).
Can confirm attendance of thousands.
Superb picture editing work
I really am surprised by all the “lol you buy NFT so already blind” folks. Actually pretty disgusting.
Disclaimer: I don’t own NFTs.
People love laughing at people they think are below them. In the current political climate, pretty much all of the groups that were laughed at are protected now and deriding them is uncouth. Thankfully, it will always be okay to laugh at stupid people but only in specific contexts.
It isn't ok to make fun of people just because they are stupid, no, these people can be made fun of because they are stupid AND greedy.
We're all stupid and greedy to various degrees. Making fun of people probably isn't conducive to a happy life.
In this case I think it's more accurate to say the laughter is directed at people who said they're above us normies that aren't hodling any NFTs.
For several years, anyone who pointed out problematic or criminal aspects of crypto were subject to a torrent of abuse from the people you are identifying as the victims.
Why not?
Its called Schadenfreude and tbh the amount of NFT or Crypto scams, garbage and co people had to endure the last years is horrendes.
Its one thing to state in a comment that you shouldn't use NFT or crypto, but unfortunate we are not discussing banning them activly.
I think being into NFTs and crypto makes you a fool.
But I do not think fools should suffer vision damage, or that they deserve harm on them.
Fools alone, maybe deserving of some sympathy. Greedy get-rich-quick fools who derided everyone not participating in the scam, nah, no sympathy from me, none at all.
What is this horrible suffering people had to endure?
IMO, it was basically all self inflicted anguish due to "someone else is wrong on the internet" syndrome.
If someone wants to gamble their money away, you don't have to care. If they want to talk about it, you don't have to listen.
People act like living in a world with people who act differently was some kind of ordeal. they have totally lost the ability to not engage with topics they don't enjoy, and then take joy in the pain of others.
The billions of Dollars taken by people not understanding it from the cryptobros.
Lots and lots of people didn't just lose 'play money'
Really? These grifters have stolen millions from innocent patsies all while clogging social media with scams and arrogant “stay poor” memes and directed billions of VC funding into creating useless tools to facilitate the scams. And we’re disgusting for maybe thinking maybe karma had something todo with this?
The people that still own Bored Apes are more likely to have lost millions though
There is no need for a disclaimer
People making those jokes can’t see how disgusting that behavior is. It is like they were blinded by the bright lights of cynicism. When I look into these people’s souls it is like staring into a vast black abyss.
Luckily they should recover in 2-3 days, this is usually more like a sunburn than permanent injury.
I feel sorry for the attendees (though as noted their suffering is temporary, and they were probably drawn by the lure of easy money). I'm delighted about the organizers' further loss of reputation and likely legal troubles.
Given the.. qualities.. of people involved in the NFT space the organizers probably bought a bunch of UV-C lamps off alibaba because they were cheap and looked cool-- doing absolutely no research and with no regard for others.
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t expect the average guy to know how to tell whether a UV bulb is safe (regular non-quartz glass helps a lot) or that dangerous ones are sold without warnings.
Average guy here, I have no clue what you're talking about.
quartz is mostly transparent to UV radiation, glass is not
Ah so one makes UV light just an innocuous, annoying purple and the other makes it like the inside of a tanning bed.
The "average guy" shouldn't be doing technical stage production.
You hire trained professionals for this kind of thing. There are literally entire companies who specialize in putting together these kinds of events safely, every single day.
A professional stage lighting designer or theatrical electrician would absolutely know that this is a risk.
If you're talking about old-school fluorescent-tube black lights, the bulb type designation will have a -BLB suffix, like F15T8-BLB for a typical 15-watt tube, as well as a visibly dark phosphor. A germicidal tube would be G15T8, and have a clear quartz envelope with no phosphor coating.
All bets are off if you're using LEDs.
There have been reports of UV-C bulbs being repackaged as "party lights" and sold on eBay/Amazon/etc. So it is possible they had no idea.
Which is why you hire an AV company to put on an event like this, and not just pay Bill to show up with a truck full of electronic crap.
Yup, never ever buy lasers / UV light equipment from Amazon. Shit's dangerous and they don't go through any real regulation.
You often get class 3B lasers being sold as 3R which is extremely dangerous. I opted to pay a lot more for a green laser for astronomy purposes on a legit website then buy dirt cheap on Amazon because I don't want to blind/injure myself or others.
related: https://youtu.be/CpRMud6EFtE
It's the kind of thing a competent A/V staffer would think of because the event's insurance would have required more credible sourcing. Given the nature of the crowd, I wouldn't be surprised to learn they had no legal support or insurance.
I think that is 100% true. I had a friend keep his grow lights on a little too long, a little too often, because they looked cool. I got instant migraines when I walked in his room.
Grow lights use UV-A, UV-B.
UV-C is used to sterilize stuff since it damages DNA/RNA. It's toxic to plants too.
This is pathetic. The original promoters behind BAYC, two guys from Florida and the son of some official of a bank in Africa, were rave promoters. They botched their metaverse project, Otherside, but that was technically ambitious. The people running it now can't even run a medium-sized rave properly. Earlier ApeFest events were only for BAYC holders and had a celebrity lineup. This time they sold tickets to anyone.
BAYC is the top end of NFTs. Almost everything else is worse. Overall, NFT value has declined something like 98%.
(The NFT crowd irks me because I want to see good metaverses, and between the NFT clowns and Zuckerberg, the whole field crashed.)
two guys from Florida
And that's all I need to know. I avoid buying from, selling to, or doing business with anyone from FL if I can, I've been burnt too many times. I'm not sure if the state attracts shady characters, or produces them, or both.
That's a pretty broad generalization. I could say the same for the Bahamas. Or Nigeria. Or New Jersey. Definitely Russia. So let's just address that there are bad actors everywhere, no matter from where, and that you must do you due diligence when dealing with people for business. What you probably meant to say is "There seems to be more lawlessness in FL than usual" which I would definitely agree with you.
There's good people working at Disney, Universal, L3/Harris, etc. It's not all crazy Florida man in shorts with pet alligators.
What you probably meant to say is "There seems to be more lawlessness in FL than usual" which I would definitely agree with you.
This itself is interesting enough.
I've been on the inside of a few risk management systems, with hundreds of signals feeding into a scoring product.
Invariably, and justifiably from the data, there is a "Florida rule", which affects the user's final risk score by a few percent.
This is mostly old-school deterministic stuff with manual weighting, tweaked over years of time by people far away from (and with no particular opinions about) Florida. The newer mystery box AI stuff, trained on many years of data, also shows the same bias!
I'm sure there's a story in this data.
No doubt there is. The new story (and a story probably on-topic in the context of this discussion) is the quantity of financial arbitrage firms who have lately been relocating their employees and headquarters _to_ Florida.
Florida has no state income tax and has a homestead bankruptcy exception. Two huge reasons for high-risk traders to prefer living there.
Under Florida bankruptcy laws you are allowed to exempt an unlimited amount of value in your home or any other property which is covered by the homestead exemption.
Buy a $50 Million house. Fill it with expensive art. If you lose everything, at least you still have your $50M house filled with $500M in Artwork to fallback on.
This is why. It's a tax, retiree's, high-risk trader's, haven. The Florida bankruptcy laws are so lax that people often file multiple times throughout their lifetimes. And still run for president. /s To quote a man behind bars for attempted murder and was on a Netflix series - Florida's favorite - Tiger King: "I'm never gonna financially recover from this." is something you hear often in Florida. Both from visitors, and from residents.
You're probably right...I definitely don't think every single person and business is corrupt, I lived there for 2 years and enjoyed it even!
But as a swappa/eBay buyer and seller, it's hard to ignore trends I guess.
I would hope that this is a forum where we can do better than broad generalizations about a place with over 20 million people.
As someone from Florida, I'm disappointed. I clicked in here for some cryptobro hate.
And yet, there are few who disagree and it's worth mentioning.
Shysters love it because it's the closest you can get to a "tropical paradise" in the CONUS with relatively cheap housing and low CoL, then you can run away to Cuba or Mexico if things get bad, or fly to Europe and NYC easily when things are good. Plenty of yacht babes, drugs, and yacht babes who will hang out with you in exchange for drugs, which is also a great draw for some of these types of folks too.
between the NFT clowns and Zuckerberg, the whole field crashed
This is well put. I remember back when both of these visions for "metaverse" were heading up the hype curve. It's really a bummer how disappointing both visions are.
BAYC is the top end of NFTs. Almost everything else is worse.
Judged by floor price, not by artistic value
Sounds very much like arc eye (welder's flash). Very painful, caused by UV.
You would think the pain would be immediate though.
That's the big danger with solar eclipses. It's not bright enough to hurt at the time. The damage only starts to become apparent after a few hours or the next day.
When I went to see a total eclipse I was surprised that even a tiny slit of the sun was still hard to look at. Not sure why anyone would try to stare at that.
galileo (the galileo) used to stare at the sun for extended periods of time (without a telescope), to the point he could identify sunspots. But IIUC he looked at it near the horizon when it's attenuated by more atmosphere.
A couple of years ago, I had a mishap with a moderately powerful laser, meant for engraving, grazing quickly across my left eye (I was wearing appropriate eye protection).
It wasn't until the next day that it started feeling like someone poured sand in it. It took a few days to return to normal.
If you were wearing appropriate eye protection, this would not have been possible.
Appropriate eye protection does not provide 100% protection. Outside of a welder's helmet, maybe, even the best eye protection won't stop a reasonably powerful laser beam directed straight into your eye. It will reduce its intensity, though. The main benefit of wearing it is that even the diffuse, scattered light bouncing off of the walls is hazardous, and the eye protection stops that. Without it, you couldn't safely be in the same room as an operating laser even if the beam never comes near you.
If I had not been wearing it, there is an excellent chance that I would have suffered permanent vision damage. The eye protection I wore did exactly what it was supposed to do.
Only if the source is extremely strong. E.g. the sun
As a kid (~6 years old), I once tried to look at the sun for as long as possible, competing against myself. Luckily, I didn't do any noticeable damage, but I feel like someone should have told me about UV radiation and the damage it can cause to the retina.
Its like a sunburn blister. Takes a while to develop, usually whilst you're asleep. When you wake up, you open your eyes and rip the blisters open. I'm told it feels like hot sand being poured in your eyes at that point. Definitely one to avoid!
It's like a sunburn. The radiation damages the DNA of the cells. DNA damage like that triggers a cellular self-destruct mechanism. It's a cancer-prevention mechanism. So over the next few days as the skin or corneal cells start to go through their normal replication cycle, the DNA damage is discovered and causes those cells to die off. This causes an injury just like if another mechanism like heat or chemical damage, had killed those cells. Inflammation, oozing, pain, scarring.
Unfortunately no, like a sunburn sometimes you don't feel it until later. This can also happen when hiking across snow covered plains under clear very bright skies. It's called snow blindness.
Green lasers. Not the first time ive seen this sort of thing. Green lasers are made by running an IR laser through a crystal that doubles thier frequency, shifting IR into what we see as green light. But go cheap on the crystal and a green laser pumps out invisible IR possibly in a slightly different direction than the visible beam. Your eyes dont even blink because they dont see the IR. You dont notice the damage and simply think it a headache.
See an eye doctor asap and tell them you were exposed to a high power green lasers. They cannot fix things, but better you learn about any new blind spots before you drive a truck.
Source for "green lasers"? All the reporting I've seen says that they used disinfectant-grade UV lamps as blacklights. https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1721602536225091716
The footage ive seen had a few green lasers scanning. UV causes cornia damage, but not the headaches. IR lasers cause headaches, strange pains that the body doesnt understand and get interpreted as headaches.
If this was only UV, most anyone wearing glasses should have been protected as most modern glasses have substantial UV protection. IR protection is more rare in eyewear, although rather common in automotive glass.
So when I roll down a car window and feel the radiant heat of the sun more intensely than when the window is up, is that difference primarily due to the glass filtering UV or IR?
Much automotive glass filters (reflects) IR, and also absorbs UV. Each UV ray is "higher energy" but the sun pumps out vastly more IR than UV. You cannot immediately feel the UV on your skin, not until it gives you a sunburn. You are feeling the IR that was previously blocked by the automotive glass.
Interestingly, glass on military vehicles generally does not filter IR. You need IR if you ever want to use nightvision equipment.
I'm currently limited to mobile, so I don't have he link. Yesterday I got recommended a green laser at freezing temp YouTube video which was interesting. Basically at low temps green lasers are no longer visible because they shift to strong uv light, this includes Christmas decoration lasers which people put in front of their houses. So you think it's off, but it may be cooking your eyes.
So I guess that if they used some shady lasers at the party, it's entirely possible.
I think I also burned my eyes a bit while tinkering with LEDs, I had a pain in them and since then see bad at night. I avoid watching into LEDs at any cost since then.
Here's some informed speculation and commentary/explanation from a radiation safety expert:
https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2023/11/ultraviolet-rant/
"Having now had a chance to take a look at the likely culprit, assuming a repetition of the previous incident, all I can say is You Completely Irresponsible Fucks. I am having flashbacks to yelling at Naomi Wu for irresponsible deployment of germicidal UV designs in 2020."
The article seemed to suggest UV not IR before the paywall cutoff. Is this from the article or are you speculating?
It is clear that these morons didnt understand anything about stage lighting risks. They obviously just went with whatever light sources gave the best bang for the buck. Cheap green lasers, cheap high-power UV lamps, no respect for best practices. I bet that a close look at the stage structure would reveal other shortcomings too.
Why is everyone else only talking about UV? Unfortunately I can't access TFA in its entirety so maybe it discusses both?
Could someone have used uv-c black lights thinking they looked cool and not realising about the severe health hazards?
Yes, and it’s apparently not the first time it happens in Hong-Kong. Easy access to electronics, no real control.
oof, yeah those were powerful UV-C disinfecting bulbs. I've got half a dozen Elektralite eyeBall UV fixtures that I use for parties in conjunction with other lights, which are 18x3w 385nm UV LEDs per fixture. I don't stare directly into them as they're pretty intense, but they're still firmly in UV-A territory and don't hurt your eyes. They do light up anything fluorescent super bright though!
- UVA (315-400 nanometers)
- UVB (280-315 nanometers)
- UVC (180-280 nanometers)Since you are familiar with the topic:
So now when I go to a place with blacklights, how do I know someone didn't get confused (or is just ignorant) and used bulbs that can burn my eyes? Thanks.
If the blacklights are LEDs they are UV-A and safe. UV-C LEDs exist, but they are so expensive noone would make a stage lighting fixture out of them.
If they are fluorescent tubes that look kinda purple, black or really deep blue when off, they are UV-A and safe. These tubes use a phosphor to convert UV-C light to UV-A light and are made of wood's glass to filter out all but that UV-A light.
If they are fluorescent tubes that are clear, they are UV-C and unsafe.
Theres a third type that uses phosphor and regular glass that emits UV-A and some white light, but those are almost never seen in stage lighting fixtures.
There are also UV-A arc lamps like the Wildfire IronArc series, which are safe as long as they have the dark purple wood's glass filter installed on them (these lamps do not ship without such a filter, but sometimes you encounter used ones that the filter was broken in or otherwise removed).
An ozone smell can be an indicator.
UVC will break O2 into two Oxygen atoms, which then combine with other O2 to form O3, ozone.
Leave it to NFT bagholders to find new ways to get burned.
Replace "uv-c black lights" with "radium paint" and it doesn't change the answer: yeah somebody could have done just that.
Exactly what I was thinking. UV-C.
If you read this article and it gave you pleasure, examine those feelings. I find the generally schadenfreudic reaction to be disgusting. These people just wanted to get together to talk about something they enjoy and you don't.
It's a wonder that there isn't more sympathy for a group of people who say "have fun staying poor" so often they started using an acronym for it.
I think it's funny to see smug people lose money but I don't think it's funny if they are seriously injured and possibly permanently disabled.
it's a fixation on the extremes, no?
the people making jokes like "I'm surprised everyone wasn't wearing sunglasses already, their future is so bright" (ok, it was me, right now) are those who had witnessed some form of the extreme cryptobro asserting anyone not on board is mentally disabled.
i'd assert there's nothing unhealthy or immoral about laughing at the poetry of the stereotypical actor doing a sterotypical action and it paralleling the generalization regarding the trope of the failures of NFTs: "a declared cool reality shifter, but potentially harmless fad meeting physical reality with a literally harmful event."
sociopathic, of course, but to those not considering internet based social media "society" it's in containment
Shouldn't they have double sympathy though. First, for being idiots and second for getting eye damage?
HN1: "Let people enjoy whatever they enjoy"
HN2-100: <Enjoys the disastrous hubris when people who oppose regulation discover how unsafe life is without rules which prevent unsafe behaviour>
HN1: "Not like that"
The "regulations" resulted in them going to a party and nearly losing their eyesight. It was implied safe, and it wasn't. How is this not absolutely validating to the entire ethos of strawman you are trying to burn here?
If you read this article and immediately wanted to admonish others for what you imagine their reactions to be, examine those feelings.
Why is this news? Doesn't buying a bored ape kinda guarantee you're blind to begin with?
Given the demographic overlap with Funko Pops, I'd tend to think so.
what? people hate funko pops now?
They were neat tchotchkes for a bit, but they just kept making absurd quantities of them, and for increasingly irrelevant side characters. There are currently over 15,000 different figures. Plus I think people are losing their appetite for "collectibles" that are just mass produced plastic.
It’s a double-blind test.
kek
Trust, but verify.
I wonder how much they charged and made in ticket revenue. They couldn't even hire stage and lighting professionals to determine the right amount of UV and lighting at a conference hosting hundreds or thousands of folks?!?!
On social media, some suspect photokeratitis — damage to the eye caused by UV exposure. If that’s what caused the Apes’ agony, they likely won’t be blind forever: it’s a temporary condition. People usually get it from being in bright sunlight and snow for too long, and not at concerts, which typically have stage managers and lighting professionals who understand how to safely set up a show.
They would probably call them `tradprofessionals` and would think they know better.
Or were those affected just not used to the amount of sunlight they were exposed to while travelling there?
It was more like thousands of folks, based on other comments.
In bright snow your pupils are super small as the brightness is constant. At a night show your pupils are dilated in let in maximum light intermittent if exposure in these circumstances could be quite different in terms of short/long term damage
Could have? Definitely. Thought to? Maybe not. After all, when you already know you're the smartest guys in the room...
I learned last night that there are low-cost cards that test for UVC exposure; here is an example:
https://www.amazon.com/QuantaDose-Light-Power-Visibility-Tec...
They are usually used to verify that a purported UVC lamp is working, rather than working as a measure of protecting your eyesight, but maybe I should start bringing one of these to any concerts I go to.
I would not rely on a stain test designed to be used in close proximity to a light source being sensitive enough to detect eye-damaging UV at a distance. It might react only slightly, and the stain may not be discernible from the control in such circumstances.
Even clear "sunglasses" made of polycarbonate can provide excellent UV protection, but no telling if it's enough to protect against a blacklit room or stage laser that's been set up by incompetents.
I believe even regular contacts provide some amount of UV protection.
I'm thinking UV safety glasses too. If you attend with one of these cards, you've already been subjected to them too. At least with glasses, you can have some protection. Unless you're going to wears these over your eyes as protection
The point, I'm assuming, would be to simply leave if those things indicate there is a lot of UV present. I certainly would not hang around regardless of adequate protection.
it was the My Eyes Are on Fire Festival
Totally thought you were double referencing this classic rave song from a decade ago https://youtu.be/IUGzY-ihqWc?si=eK53NHAEc5cegFCw
My Eyes Are on Fyre Festival
The NFT alternative to the Burning Man festival
Blacklight so strong people got sunburn?
This sounds to me like someone put in real UV fluorescent tubes instead of blacklight tubes, those things are dangerous.
Cheap blue LEDs will leak the dangerous parts of the UV spectrum. I've had projects hit import snags in the EU because they got spot checked - the overseas contract manufacturer used parts which were out of spec.
It’s not much brighter than usual, but it’s UVC, a higher frequency/shorter wavelength than what we are used to on the surface of the Earth. UVC reacts with (di-)oxygen to make ozone, so it’s blocked by the ozone layer. The smell is very distinct and it burns eyes and skin readily.
If I remember correctly, your eyes don’t adjust to black light the same it would as full spectrum, and will stay mostly dilated as if it were in the dark. This can increase the chances of photokeratitis, or basically sunburn on the eyes with high powered shows like this.
I am obviously not a dr
Just like looking at a solar eclipse.
Similar to the effect of wearing one earplug or one headphone/IEM: when one ear is exposed to much louder sound than the other, the combined exposure across both ears doesn't trigger the natural protective mechanism [0] to the degree that it would be triggered if that same level of exposure was applied to both ears, so the one ear gets totally wrecked. Also not a doctor and would appreciate a counterpoint from anyone who knows this to be a myth.
[0] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Sound/protect.htm...
"Richard, these are real people with real crotches, and they're burning."
Burning crotches?!
Quote from Silicon Valley sitcom. Probably intended as a response to a different post, not as a top-level post.
"all this time i thought the lasers were going in the other direction" -Molly White
Oh shit, the top comment burns "All my retina gone."
Molly killed that. She killed it, cleaned it, cooked it, and served it up hot. Damn she goes hard.
This is horrible. I hope they all recover fully and quickly. And that there's some kind of lesson learned by everyone in a position to prevent it from happening again.
Yeah, maybe don't put your health and safety in the hands of hucksters and charlatans.
I've been criticizing "crypto" as much as almost anyone, but blaming the victim of eye damage at an event doesn't seem appropriate.
They should rename their site to 403media, the article is behind a paywall.
Theoretically 402 would be best, although I suppose 403 is closer to reality.
429media. Because every request is too many requests. Unless you pay.
UV light for entertainment? What's the point?
Blacklights are cool.
These weren't the blacklights you'd normally use for entertainment.
entertainment
When NFTs turned up I had people telling me in some detail, very seriously, how NFTs were going to change the world.
the success of PFP collections aren't any barometer of that though
aside from showing the size of the existing collector speculation market
This website had tons of grifters shilling it during the peak. A lot of them raised money somehow too.
Normally HN is HN. In these comments HN is Reddit: cheap sarcastic “haha I’m smart they’re dumb” jokes.
Very little curiosity or intriguing anecdotes, just “I was smart enough to identify NFTs were a scam from the get-go, so now enjoy your eye damage losers”.
It’s a cheap way to feel good about oneself, but it makes us look like what our detractors say we look like.
Sadly I agree. Poor @dang is probably looking forward to the end of this work shift.
Who was this conference for again?
Visionaries
Can anyone recommend an insurer where can I take out an insurance policy that covers against this sort of thing and any other weird and random spookie stuff at a distance, in order to cover medical costs and any quality of life issues that result?
Some sort of literal insurance policy would make me feel better after reading stories like this.
It probably wouldn't be too expensive, people tend to inflate risks based on saliency, I bet the actual risk is very low, but it will give me enough peace of mind to be worth it.
Wouldn’t just regular medical/vision insurance cover this?
Or temporary disability insurance
TLDR; Basically too much UV light resulted in people getting skin burns and burned, red eyes
The likely cause imo? Someone bought/used UVB fluorescent tubes/lights (~200nm) instead of LED UVA (~400nm) as blacklights. They're cheaper, brighter and have a stronger effect.
Unprotected skin/eyes can feel the difference in <10 minutes (anecdotal evidence*), depending on how close they are. Being in a dark room at a party, makes it worse, as the pupils dilate and drugs/alcohol can dull the initial itchy/burning feeling from the eyes.
I don't think these were UVC, since the UV light affects DNA in a logarithmic scale. UVC is soooo much more likely to damage DNA, UVB is somewhat likely to damage DNA, UVC has a low likelihood of damaging DNA, blue light has an even lower chance of damaging DNA and so on. The time of exposure and effects were likely high nm UVB/low nm UVC. I could see this being the effects of a 280nm-315nm LED light source, or a skin treatment fluorescent tube. UVC bulbs and tubes are really hard to buy and cost a ton, so unlikely.
*I'm a nerd, wanted to solve myopia, there was a paper that suggested that UVB or UVA could help form crosslinked proteins that would prevent myopia from getting worse. It could explain why outdoor exposure helped so much. So I bought some of these UVB fluorescent bulbs and stared at them them for 10 minutes. Started feeling the itchy, burning feeling and stopped. Currently my theory of myopia has to do with regular defocusing to relax the eyes (that's what the myopia prevention glasses do)
regular defocusing to relax the eyes
I wonder if we lived in nature instead of cities, if there would be times when we'd relax our eyes and just sit in the grass with defocused vision. It would be nice, I think.
Now I wonder whether wearing photochromatic lenses (transitions lenses) would have reduced the damage. I do believe they are triggered by UV.
Plain clear polycarbonate lenses would have worked. polycarbonate is opaque to uv light.
Er... might of worked. A lot of light can come in around the sides of normal glasses. so it would depend how the uv was reaching the eye.
There have been stories of venues using UVC (germicidal) lamps because they looked pretty and fit standard fixtures. It resulted in sunburns and lots or eye pain.
I don't know if that's what happened there, but I think that using the same fixtures for dangerous yet pretty looking germicidal lamps and regular lighting is not the smartest idea.
the article I read on google news said they believed lights used for cleaning may have been used, so yeah
I predict that this disaster will end up driving up the price of the Bored Ape NFTs.
Already on https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
i can't shake this just being an incredibly hamfisted way to garner attention for an otherwise dead project.
Looks like they tried to kill the prosecution.
Wow BAYC's offering free Lasik now
What actually happens at a conference based on the common ground of "owning" a jpeg with a generic CGI chimp in it?
Especially when the cat's already out of the bag that this was all a scam to begin with?
I don't understand.
Reminds me of an urban legend about a rave party in Russia where the laser show blinded people in the audience.
What if they provide an NFT as compensation for those who burned their eyes? I bet more than half would accept it.
Yikes. Those receptors are not growing back...
Anecdotally, I've seen more fast and loose things happen at crypto conferences than others I have attended. Some were pretty big safety concerns, things that legally could cause massive headaches etc. so this does not surprise me.
Are people still talking about BAYC? Wow. I thought that was over.
In case you weren't aware, BAYC is full of Nazi symbolism [1]. Now there are two groups who use Nazi symbols:
1. Actual Nazis; and
2. Suburban Ohio 14 year olds and NEETs who are 4chan edgelords and groypers.
I suspect the Nazi influence on BAYC came from the second group.
NFTs are a scam to sell crypto, which is also a scam. NFTs are like Inception-level "we must go deeper" scams. Can we move on yet?
This symbolism is pervasive and you start to see it everywhere. Some examples are:
- comments of "well well well" (left on videos fitting an alleged racial stereotype by white supremacists);
- use of three nested parentheses (eg "(((Julie)))", you'll see it all over Twitter);
- the sonnenrad (or "Black Sun") [2];
- the totenkopf [3];
- usernames or references to the numbers 88 or 1488;
- usernames or references to the numbers 1350 or 1352. This isn't a Nazi reference but it's common among white supremacists.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRPHZQFuT24
[2]: https://newrepublic.com/post/174753/its-confirmed-team-desan...
[3]: https://www.hillsdale.net/story/news/politics/county/2023/02...
Just another weeknd in crypto.
Where's the yacht?
Few things I hate more at a concert than a light show pointed directly into my eyeballs!!
I heard they had it there because Chernobyl was not available.
just looking at bored apes has been doing this to my vision for a while
This has happened before when the event planners have put the wrong type of UV lights around. Instead of "UV-A" blacklights, they used shorter wavelength UV-C lights
https://hongkongfp.com/2017/10/26/partygoers-left-burns-ligh...
It's easy to order the wrong tubes on AliExpress....
Isn't it pretty much just advertising to post a link that you have to pay for to view?
There's a lot of UV-C generating LEDs in the wake of Corona which seems to now be put in everything, I've seen halloween decorations with florescent paint using them, china don't care.
Reads like a Silicon Valley screenplay draft.
> a crypto project that peaked in 2021 and recently crashed to a two-year low, costing many investors thousands of dollars. First you lose your money and now your eyesight
Web3 bear market entering its body horror phase
This is a terrible thing to have happened. I’m confused about one aspect: is party light show equipment something you just hack together? I always thought it was kind of pricy and made by companies who specialize in lighting.
'I never thought nihilistic hominids would melt my face,' sobs man who invested his entire net worth in the Nihilistic Hominids Melting People's Faces launch.
Some nitwits used UVC light just cos it looked purple?
I been blinded. all my eyes gone. this just lasered please help me.
Bad art causes eye pain. You really can't make that up.
The schadenfreude is strong here.
Cited in the article:
https://twitter.com/crypto_birb/status/1721222853394121193
"Thanks for great apefest logistiscs guys @yugalabs & @BoredApeYC. Incredible event and met plenty of amazing people. Still, as dozens of others, I’ve almost lost sight this night."
I mean, c'mon. "Thanks, incredible event, it almost blinded me"?