Messages

16

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

« on: March 21, 2021, 11:08:11 pm »

Getting mine tomorrow. Vodafone contract cancelled. I can use my bloodstream as a 5G hotspot, right?

17

Apple Talk / Re: Virtual Realities

« on: March 21, 2021, 05:03:46 pm »

True story, I met my producer in recroom, mate introduced us. First thing I did was shot her in the face with a crossbow and then mocked her cos she looked like a fucking dalek. This is my kind of future!

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Aneristic Illusions / Re: Good article that details exactly why the bitcoin is a pyramid scheme

« on: March 19, 2021, 05:24:25 pm »

That the whole thing with the future. You're not going to be surviving in reality as you know it. Either you're not going to be surving in reality, period or that reality is going to be a whole nother kettle of fish

19

Apple Talk / Re: Virtual Realities

« on: March 19, 2021, 12:08:49 pm »

cool stuff - I'd not heard of oculus medium but I am slowly learning Gravity Sketch and I'm absolutely enthralled with it.  I've used it to make a few worlds in Altspace and I can't get over how well it works.

It does seem the healthcare sector is warming up to VR the fastest.  There's a weekly meetup in Altspace (do I maybe spend too much time in altspace, oh probably . . .) on Thursdays called Health Systems chat.  If you haven't been it may be a good networking opportunity for you.

Here's a couple worlds I've made if you're interested in checking them out:

https://account.altvr.com/worlds/1585892395680006822/spaces/1687287820437159965

https://account.altvr.com/worlds/1585892395680006822/spaces/1671215999967297633

I've got a lot of mates who work in GS. Been meaning to get around to playing with it for long enough but not enough hours in the day right now. For now I'm still doing all my subsurf modelling in flatscreen using Blender but when I get a minute I'll totally be looking at bringing it into my pipeline.

I don't have altspace installed for now. Socialising in VR is something I have to restrict to a bare minimum because it's a fucking time sink. Even more so than all these fucking zoom meetings that sometimes seem to be my entire working day right now. Cheers for the heads up, tho, I'll defo pass the info on to my producer. If she's not part of that scene already she'll defo want in on the action. Unlike me, her entire fucking reason for existing seems to be zoom meetings and other press-the-flesh opportunities. I don't complain, tho, whatever the fuck she's up to keeps the wolves away from my door

Medium is a fucking epic piece of software. It's outerface is so far ahead of the game, it's not even playing the same sport at this point. Devs are friendly as hell and actually listen to the community. They've just been bought by Adobe tho so no doubt it'll turn into the same corporate shitfest that all their other warez are. It's free with oculus headset right now or 25 quid or so on the store. I'd get in before it's rolled into fucking CC although, to be fair, I can't see that happening any time soon

20

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Good article that details exactly why the bitcoin is a pyramid scheme

« on: March 19, 2021, 01:11:40 am »

What is the beginning of the end going to look like?  Give me a testable prediction, so that I can check in three months whether you were right or not.

Hyperbole - guilty as charged. The beginning of the end has actually come and gone. You sound like you missed it. In 2009 Bitcoin launched at around $0.0008 per coin. That marked the start of the money exodus. At time of writing  $1,806,885,026,917 worth of money has transferred from various fiat currency platforms to blockchain. Yes, there is ebb and flow for now and probably always will be until the government banks lose the fight. At that point all the money will be on chain. This is what the end will look like. When it happens, I wouldn't like to guess. Governments can be very stubborn when they put their minds to it. I used the phrase beginning of the end to signify an acceleration of this process. Like - it's really going to fucking take off in a big way.

There is practically nothing around here available for purchase using cryptocurrency.  The idea that cryptocurrency will supplant government-issued currency within two years is highly dubious.

That's what changes around june/july. Couple of years and anyone not accepting crypto payments will be finding it as hard to turn a trade as anyone not accepting card payments does now. Couple of years. You can hold me to that.

You can lose a hell of a lot buying bonds, don't you know.

Congratulations, you caught the gag! Have a cookie.

Sounds exciting.  But to be successful, a currency needs to be boring.  It needs to be highly liquid, and it needs to have a stable value.

If a cryptocurrency is boring, it's not likely to catch anyone's interest.  But if it's not boring, it won't be successful as a currency.

Liquidity and stability are already here, just not with bitcoin. Defi platforms already host "stablecoins" tied to pretty much all the cool kid currencies. Ironically the stability of the old currencies is about to become mega wobbly only in part due to blockchain and in part due to manipulation so the stable coins will actually become less stable than the increasingly stable pure crypto options. This is to be expected. The transition doesn't really work unless all the old currencies approach zero as the value moves on chain.

Why would they be?  I can already pay for doughnuts by waving my debit card at the plastic blob next to their till.  How would switching to a cryptocurrency make my life better?  How would it make anyone else's life better?

Quite simply - it's more efficient. Tech revolutions always succeed because they are straightforwardly better at doing whatever it is they are designed to replace. Cars took over from horses because they were better at horse stuff. Microprocessors took over from buildings full of human bean counters because they were better at counting beans. The internet took over from retail because it was better at selling. Crypto is taking over from banking and finance because it's better at banking and finance. The value is in the efficiency and this translates directly to cost saving. As soon as someone can do something cheaper and faster, they outcompete their competitors, the competitors must either adopt the new method or lose the farm. Right now you wave your card and only a fraction of your money pays for donuts, the rest is skimmed off the top by middlemen who facilitate the transaction. What blockchain offers if cheaper donuts, cheaper ingredients, cheaper shipping of said ingredients. Cheaper lighting and heating in a cheaper bricks and mortar donut shoppe. With the banks out the way, everything gets cheaper. The compound effect is astronomical. 

The inflation rate isn't that bad.  Even with all the stimulus cash flowing around, I doubt we'll get up to 1980's levels.

Let's wait and see

I am completely unconvinced.  I have a fair bit of free cash on hand, and I'd like to think that not buying into speculative bubbles is part of the reason for that.  I see no reason to put anything into any cryptocurrency.

Remember the dotcom crash back in 95? Same deal. Tech revolutions always arrive with a kind of cambrian explosion of ideas. These ideas are 99% idiotic and 1% fucking paradigm shifting because humans but money is pumped into all of these ideas more or less equally, also because humans. Skepticism is always popular around these phases because only early adopters actually understand a) the technology and b) the potential. Eventually the bubble bursts and the sceptics all do that smug thing where they say - "See! Told you so! The internet was a fad! We all understood the whole thing better than the experts!" And then the entire world changes very profoundly and very suddenly and the sceptics stand there with their jaws hanging open and say "Well, yeah but nobody could have seen that coming" But we did see it coming, in large part because we were the ones who made it happen. I have no interest in convincing you, tho. It actually works out better for me long term if you remain unconvinced so lets agree to disagree and leave it there

I was under the impression that "support" and "resistance" were just lines that people drew on the graph after the fact, and that they didn't have any significance in reality.  In finance, people like to construct narratives to explain what they've observed.  Often, there's no way to know if the explanations are true or not.

You should get under a new impression, that one's just straight up wrong as fuck. Human psychology and economic activity is actually much more mathematically predictable than a lot of people realise. Especially since the dawn of the microprocessor. Investment bankers and hedge funds have known this for hundreds of years and that's why they now own most of the money. It's not the inability to predict normal market trends that fucks them up it's a mixture of unsustainable criminal manipulation of the markets and black swan events. The invention of blockchain technology is such an event.

21

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Good article that details exactly why the bitcoin is a pyramid scheme

« on: March 18, 2021, 06:29:49 pm »

how would you recommend someone go about buying and holding some bitcoin?

If you're only interested in Bitcoin or Etherium then coinbase is dead easy. Binance has a bigger range of conversion options (other crypto tokens and exchange trading between then) but is a bit more fiddly to use.

You'll need legal photo ID like a driving license or passport for both and you'll need to take a selfie of you holding it and wait til it's verified their end. This felt a little shady and like trying to get a pornhub account or something when I did it but it's a legal requirement to prevent dodgy shit going down on their network that might get them into trouble with the SEC. Same Idea as when you sign up for a bank account only it's remote so the cashier can't see your face while you hand over the docs kinda deal.

From there just figure out how many tokens you want to buy and punch in your credit card number and either store it there for later or don't depending on how you feel about that kind of thing.

And that's pretty much it.

I'd advise you to do some research first, buy a couple of quids worth and keep an eye on the movement for a few weeks or months or whatever until you've lived through at least a couple of pumps and dumps and watched your $10 turn into $1 in the space of a day and jump up to 20 the next. The first time you wake up in the morning to find out that you've "lost" over a grand while you were sleeping can be a bit of a shock to the system. So ease in and make sure you understand how this is going to feel once you've chucked a fair chunk of your savings in there. Even though, like I said, the money I have in there is money I can ultimately live without, it's still a serious kick in the ballsack the first time you see it tank.

After you've watched the graphs for a bit on somewhere like coingecko or coinbase pro, you'll start to realise what's going on as it pingpongs between support and resistance bands and even occasionally busts through the floor then bounces back to all time highs. Right now we're in the middle of an epic bull run which means that most of the time when it dips, it dips to a higher position that it did the last dip and when it hits the top, the top is also higher so try to get your timing right and, when you finally feel you're ready to jump in with both feet, buy the next dip. It still might go down a bit further but you won't have as long to wait til it shoots back up and suddenly you're in profit. There's nothing as demoralising as sticking a couple of grand in there then watching it plummet from an ATH breakout, down to half or even a third of the value but, even if it does just hold the shit out of it. Stay frosty and wait for the uptick. This is all normal and you're going to gain long term regardless of emotional turmoil of the market.

Like any good tech revolution there are a couple of jargon words that we've come up with:

FUD - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt like when they replaced the main character in the whitehouse pantomime and he immediately appointed some old biddy who can't work facebook to "investigate the terrorist/crime syndicate that is Bitcoin" and the market tanked as all the bubblegummers panicked left in droves.

FOMO - Fear of Missing Out - when Elon Musk announces he's just stuck 1.5 billion on Tesla's balance sheet, suddenly everyone and their dog is remortgaging the house to buy in and bitcoin tops a trillion US briefly before the overvaluation corrects as the big boys frontrun their cream off the top and then convert back in, on the inevitable resulting dip

and my personal favourite - HODL (it's not geek speak if there isn't a typo in there, right?) - Hodling is just holding and all it means is hang onto your coin while the price crashes and have a laugh at all the lesser monkey's overheated amygdala's directing their investment choices.

This guy on YT is probably worth a sub, since he explains all this shit a lot better than me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a0LGCMrjAA

Oh and in terms of onboarding I heard something about paypal enabling buying and selling of BTC only in the states. So if it's really only bitcoin you're after and you live in the US, you could try there. I wouldn't know cos I'm geo-blocked so I can't look but going by the pump we got when that announcement went out it's probably easy as hell to buy in from there.

22

Apple Talk / Re: Virtual Realities

« on: March 18, 2021, 11:56:18 am »

VR is a massive part of my livelihood right now. It's the reason I got invited down to facebook HQ in London the year before last and led directly to my career taking off. I'm currently working with one producer, in the health sector, using VR in areas like palliative care and trauma rehab and I'm holding about 600 quids worth of Decentraland Mana, which I bought at 100 last month, on spec and watched shoot through the sky when atari bought up some land parcels a few weeks back.

Yeah, I kinda monkey around a bit  in VR 

The product

Another day at the office

23

Apple Talk / Re: Fucking humans.

« on: March 18, 2021, 11:29:02 am »

It would, but governments are being lobbied by bosses to force everyone back to work, so they can afford that 6th or 7th home holiday home.

That really is what it comes down to. The same is happening here...we have a vaccine roll-out, it's already gotten most of the most at risk...but the general public is still unprotected. So what do we do? We open everything back up, of course, so we can have one final spike before we all get vaccinated properly.

Precisely! And with covid 2.0 being (how many times?) more infectious this has the potential to be fucking epic!
 

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Aneristic Illusions / Re: Good article that details exactly why the bitcoin is a pyramid scheme

« on: March 18, 2021, 04:27:19 am »

We're getting pretty close to this thread looking spectacularly wrong

All going well (for a fucking shitload of us at least) we're only three months or so from the beginning of the end

All j00r economics are belong to us

Anyone holding dynocurrency a couple of years from now is in serious danger of getting burned and, even before then, you're in for a hell of a heatwave.

From what I can make out pretty much everyone using the ponzi argument (and it's ponzi they're talking about - pyramid doesn't even make sense in this context) against crypto is generally using the word "bitcoin"

Problem with "bitcoin sucks cos..." positions is that Bitcoin is pretty much established now. It's a mature, 1st gen platform, tried and tested, it does exactly one thing at this point and that's act as instantly teleportable gold. As a hedge against $1.9 trillion stimulus packages, financial fuckery, organic inflation and the like devaluing paper it's currently storing about 1/10th as much money as the shiny yellow metal and gaining. So maybe it doubles in value this year or maybe it triples or even quadruples like last year. Maybe the rabid fanboys are right and it finally does an annual 10x. Sure, there's plenty of headroom but who gives a fuck? Few more millionaires and maybe the odd trillionaire. Nothing to write home about. It's settling down, reducing in volatility by the minute. Another couple of years and you'd be as well buying bonds.

After bitcoin came Defi, in the form of Etherium. This 2nd gen technology is often mistaken as a competitor to bitcoin or even a successor. It's not. BTC is to ETH as Gold is to every networked system currently in existence that's handling any kind of transactional or contractual financial business. BTC's potential growth is limited to metal, precious stones and the rest and it's unlikely to hoover up all those markets in their entirety. Diamonds will probably remain a girls best friend for the forseeable future. ETH/Defi on the other hand has the potential to swallow up all 100-odd trillion of the global capitalism apparatus. It's the internet all over again, only this time it's money but here's the rub, ETH has some serious fucking issues.

Since the institutional investors jumped onboard at the arse end of last year, more or less doubling my portfolio in the space of a couple of months, the cracks have begun to really appear in the creaky old second gen platform. Daily trading volume across the chain has spiked like a motherfucker. And this has caused insane levels of network congestion to the point where transaction fees are spiking close to the equivalent of 100USD during the busy times. This isn't anything you'd even notice if you're shifting a couple of hundred grand but if all you want to do is buy fifteen quids worth of cryptokitty to complete your collection it's a fucking serious showstopper.

Enter third generation. Massively scalable solutions with a side order of ffs we really ought to do something about the global warming thing. Third gen solves network bandwidth, transaction fees and energy consumption in one fell swoop. Right now we have a couple of contenders in the running, shiny new, 3rd gen protocols in direct competition with Etherium but the old workhorse might not be ready for the knackers just yet. There's an upgrade in the process of being rolled out, imaginatively titled "ETH2.0" which, if it goes smoothly and arrives in time, will effectively turn ETH into a 3rd gen platform with the kind of first mover advantage that would have made the late steve Jobs piss his pants back when i-phone launched. A thriving ecosystem of dapps and smartcontracts and layer2 solutions with hundreds of billions of dollar value already locked in and trading. Those Non-Fungible Tokens you keep hearing about in the news right now? All running on Etherium network. So from here it goes one of two ways. Either the ETH2.0 rollout progresses smoothly and in a timely manner or one or more completing protocols end up replacing it.

Either way, old fashioned virtual paper and those cute little trading cards with the pictures of presidents on, those are gone. They're not really even any use as collectibles since there's fucking trillions of them in circulation and the firm that prints them keeps flooding the market with more so, as an investment, they're fucking useless cos they devalue way quicker than you can possibly "catch them all".

So no, Bitcoin isn't a ponzi scheme. Bitcoin is shaping up to be the new gold. It's also going to be the new gold standard. Yup - that concept was good enough for your grandad and the whole world has kinda gone to shit since it was dumped so it's made a comeback. I've used the term $USD a few times referring to the value of this and that token but, honestly, I hardly look at it any more. I have Sterling for paying the bills and collecting payments from clients who aren't interested in the ETH discount. I measure my holdings against BTC these days as the emerging global reserve. When the dust settles, and volatility with it, that's pretty much what we're looking at. The fed can piss and moan all they like but what they can't do is compete on profitability and a wave from the invisible middle finger of the market is the best that uncompetitive business models can ever hope to receive. You've had a nice run Benjamin, you've served us well over the centuries now will someone take this guy outside and shoot him in the head? They either rebrand as a hipster cafeteria chain or they go the same way Barnes and Noble did when young Jeff Bezos came along.

So that's my take and, yeah, I've been wrong about a few things in the past (although never with technological revolutions) so take this with the customary pinch of salt. I just wanted to point out the counter argument. If I'm right then it'd make sense to at least hedge some of your savings in this space. Yanno, just in case? Short to medium term, it's a purely speculative market right now and it's in one hell of a bubble so ffs do your research (especially with the altcoins) and don't put anything in there that you're likely to need back out in a hurry. Unfortunately, for anyone who doesn't have any spare money they can afford to lose, you're as good as fucked. Because from where I'm sitting you're going to lose it if it stays in fiat long term. We're a decade and change into yet another tech revolution and these things always leave a hell of a lot of carnage in their wake when they reach inflection.

25

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Scottish Independence

« on: March 18, 2021, 01:46:52 am »

It's a pretty simple formula really. The truth of the matter is always the exact opposite of what they say on the BBC. That's how I knew all along that boris johnson is actually a woman and thus predicted the "covid infection" story half way through the third trimester, as I just new that a well heeled tart like that was going to take extended (paid) maternity leave upon the arrival of her bouncing baby daughter, pandemic or no pandemic.

26

Apple Talk / Re: The Compleat Billy Chronicles (thanks to Zenpatista)

« on: March 16, 2021, 12:00:02 pm »

That's not a zombie and you know it. Sure it's cool as fuck and I can't wait to start hacking these things in the field for profit and lulz but damn you all to hell for getting my hopes up!

27

Apple Talk / Re: Getting stuck in unproductive thought patterns

« on: February 04, 2021, 10:08:32 am »

If you look for threats, you'll find them. If you look for opportunities, you'll find them too. I try to keep an eye out for both.

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Aneristic Illusions / Re: Boogs storm the capitol building

« on: January 29, 2021, 05:40:15 pm »

BREAKING NEWS!

Man with history of throwing people under buses, throws more people under a bus!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG4rBlac-UE

Not a bad speech, though.  Didn't sound a whit like Trump.  I'm surprised he read it.  I wonder who wrote it.

That has got to be one of the most piss poor uses of deepfake tech I've seen since since Faceswap came out on iphone and I had to look at nothing but on my insta feed for the best part of six months. I mean even disney's Luke job at the end of Mandalorian S02 was more convincing than that and that's currently getting slagged off left right and center by pretty much anyone who charges money for the same vfx pass and a bunch of the hobbyists to boot.

I can just picture the scene - the old guy in the bad suit is currently off his tits on 21st century quaalude and lying in a puddle of his own drool, in the oval office, pants round his ankles, gibbering incoherently about turtle power and "Shredder wouldn't stand for this shit". Meanwhile the guys in charge of keeping this trainwreck profitable and their own heads off the chopping block know that it's not really feasible, right this minute, even for an arch villain character like Cartman, not to make some kind of rambling statement along the lines of "Not all people with antlers on their heads are bad people" or whatever the fuck.

Tension is mounting amongst all the arses on a seat of power which is fast looking like more of an electric chair for anyone caught sitting on it. Suddenly some aide who's facebook posts for the last 6 months have been tiktok clips of her starring in everything from Titanic to Harry Met Sally pulls her iphone out and relives her favourite - plucky kid from the typing pool saves earth from the asteroid - moment from that movie where the plucky kid from the typing pool saved the earth from the asteroid. The same one that got her 20 likes from her pals on FB and a bunch of "You're so tech savvy, you're wasted as an assistant to one of the assistants to someone important in the Whitehouse." - type comments when she chopped her face over it.

And some fucking desperate high ranking communications official actually decided that was their best option right then and greenlit the fucker

29

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Boogs storm the capitol building

« on: January 29, 2021, 05:13:05 pm »

Hello  welcome to my unfiltered garbage

Part of me really wants to believe that this will change anything for the people who were outside the building and didn't actually want to storm it. Like, I can see that faintest glimmer of a possibility that they could see how part of a protest could be calm while another one is a complete shitstorm, that they could take a step back and say "oh so some people burned buildings during BLM events but just like I didn't want to storm the capitol and do a coup maybe the BLM people aren't about rioting." And I know, I know, it's not going to happen. It's a moment that would make sense for it to happen if it could, but the MAGA cult is very resistant to enemy memes. I know.

I am sick to death of people who are whining that police hitting these chuds with teargas or killing that woman is bad somehow. No. They are my enemies and I wish them harm. Full stop. The reasons you do things matter, and these fuckos invaded the Capitol to install their beloved dictator for another 4 years. They didn't storm it to end police brutality, or to end the concentration camps, or to end the fossil fuel industry before it kills us all. They did it because they are at best gullible wannabe revolutionaries and more likely because they are racist fucks who want to return to a fictionalized version of America where their Whiteness would get them a house and wife and kids and the ability to beat the shit out of any brown people in their neighborhood, and also the wife and kids. FUCK THEM. I HOPE THEY DIE.

All of this.

Twice.

Thrice. Soz, late to the party but it's been motherfucking busy as a motherfucker this end

30

Aneristic Illusions / Re: So, how's that Brexit thing coming along?

« on: January 29, 2021, 01:46:24 pm »

Report flashed across my feed the other day reckoned we've lost about 1.4 million foreign workers since brexit and our suicidal covid strategy came into effect. So the good news is all the dumb bastards who lost their jobs to foreigners will have job opportunities now. Sure, they'll be the kind of jobs that only desperate romanians were prepared to do for minimum wage back when minimum wage was something you could realistically hope to earn, before we did away with the eurocratic evil bastards who mandated that human rights shouldn't be one of those optional luxury items on the balance sheet but if that's not good enough it's their fault for not specifying they wanted jobs that didn't carry a higher than average suicide rate. Hell mend 'em

In other news, now that the finance sector has jumped on blockchain the government will pretty much just have to cede control of currency once and for all and my tax contributions become optional so I'm not forced to piss away my hard earned cash on tory party members redecorating or bombing the living shit out of little brown kids I don't really give much of a fuck about. So they can pretty much forget about me chipping in on the "austerity" caper this time around. I'll be over in the corner eating expensive black market popcorn and watching their Rome burn