Lurker > Sad_Face

Bitcoin (released 2009)- the first demonstration of digital currency and a separate payment network that anyone can use without needing to go to some authority to receive access. At a bank you need to submit relevant paperwork, with Bitcoin you just download the software for a wallet and you're good to go for a network scoping the entire world. This is powerful as not everyone has access to a bank in their area.

Nowadays, people in 3rd world countries use the Ethereum network and get paid in USDT, USD Tether, a stablecoin pegged to the dollar (1 USDT== 1 USD). But the bitcoin pioneered the technology.

Ethereum (white paper released 2014)- Early bitcoin maximalists, diehard bitcoin fans, had grand dreams for the bitcoin network. You had a financial network that has effectively 100% up time. Bonafide digital assets in the bitcoin (you can't copy/paste a bitcoin like you can copy/paste MP3 files; move 1 BTC from wallet A to wallet B and it will no longer be at Wallet A), so what else can you do with the network? People wanted to put programs on the bitcoin network; accessible to everyone with 100% up time. Turns out you couldn't program shit on the bitcoin network. So disgruntled and frustrated maximalists moved on and created new projects to achieve their vision. Ethereum was among them and with the most exciting vision of becoming the world's decentralized computer as a generalized blockchain platform to host all these programs and protocols people dreamt of.

Ethereum has since grown considerably as the defacto platform for blockchain development. They've recreated a number of traditional financial services with such effectiveness to the point of catching traditional finances attention and have them wanting in.

Unified Golden Record (2023-present) - But here's the problem with Ethereum, first; because of how security is prioritized, the transaction processing speed is too slow. VISA handles something like 40K transactions per second (don't recall the exact number, but it doesn't matter). Ethereum handles 12 per second (this problem has been solved to an extent with layer 2 blockchains that inherit Ethereum's security). Then there's an even bigger issue of it turning out that the libertarian cryptopunks heading the core development of Ethereum, once they have a taste of power, they're not letting that shit go. And so they supported what's called Miner Extractable Value, or MEV. Simply put, for every transaction you make in purchasing a token, a miner will see the transaction you're making and essentially buy it before you to sell to you at a higher price. It's basically theft.

So Banks' response to this is to fork Ethereum and use their own version. However, each bank has their own blockchain. Hundreds of banks means hundreds of private blockchains. More importantly, the NFT craze everyone laughed at? That also caught the eye of banks. AND they have the technology to link an NFT to a real world asset so that NFTs properly represent the RWA as tokens on the blockchain. So right now for banks, the focus is on deploying out these "tokenized RWAs" for trade and use in the industry. It's a financial revolution.

The current direction for public and permissionless blockchains, like Ethereum, waiting for the next craze, ideally real projects that provide real value, but it'd likely be new applications that are designed to be used on multiple blockchains simultaneously and connected seamlessly. Cross decentralized applications or Xapps, the evolution of dapps.

I speedran the history and painted the future somewhat grim with the dominance of bank chains. But the industry is super exciting. It's the next evolution of the internet. The key to understanding the value of blockchains is to understand the power of smart contracts (...which not once did I talk about this). I think that's the hardest thing to wrap your head around. But if you can understand the potential of it then you can understand why so many developers are committing their lives to the industry and be able to filter out those who are merely in it for a quick buck.

Evening_Dragon posted...

Oh shit, they reinstated the topic. At least someone up there recognizes what a stupid fucking take that moderation was.

To anyone who wondered why there's an outrage against the hornyposting ban, this topic having to deal go through this is exactly why.

St0rmFury posted...

and a big part is I stay with my parents so my mom cooks dinner.

You eat quite well then. I live with my parents as well, but I dislike my mom's cooking. Therefore, I'm the primary cook in the house.

radical_rhino posted...

Yes, its a slippery slope.

This. What was considered reasonable to discuss 10 years ago on this board is asking for trouble if you attempt to talk about it now. The angle of "hornyposting", I worry about what's considered "horny", and consequently off limits to discuss, expanding. You really want to take this risk with how the board's access is setup?

What's your excuse for not cooking for so long, OP?

pinky0926 posted...

All you need to do is think about it from the perspective of obeying stakeholders and advertisers. They don't want politics, hornyposting, or really even communities forming at all. They just want people who will click on ads.

It's the same trap that basically every website is falling into - youtube, reddit, etc.

How does destroying communities make money?

pjnelson posted...

I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions in society about wealthy people. For example, they seem to assume it takes a great intellect to become wealthy. This isn't the case, of course, as you can be stupid and get wealthy by dumb luck or swindling people. Trumps strategy was borrow millions from dad, throw it at random things, lose all that money, borrow more, and throw more money at more random things until some are successful enough to outweigh the failures. That doesn't take genius. It also doesn't require hard work.

It takes intellect to recognize the value of an opportunity for what it is (aka recognizing the chance to take action and subsequently "get lucky") and it especially takes effort and intellect to grow and maintain wealth. Having wealth does afford you more opportunities and give you courage to take on other financial endeavors that you wouldn't be able to take on if you were living paycheque to paycheque.

I think the bigger misconception, to the point of society's detriment (I honestly think this is intentional), is the focus on a singular effort to grow wealth as opposed to respecting that wealth is a team and generational effort. From your parents investing in your education and personal interests from young to financially supporting your business and helping you get your feet off the ground and get established, those are tried and true tactics. There's a book called Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, psychologist, who interviewed top people in their fields. Many echoed the same support from their family.

I bought a tent because of this anime, right after the first season. But then my car broke down, and then my local campgrounds got torn up from hurricanes.

I still haven't properly used my tent after all these years.

Been on this site since 2001, first started posting in '03. Found my way to CE in 2009 the latest. Those were the golden years. The arguments and general discourse were fun, we had CYOAs from assaultmuffin, I attended a CEmeetup in NYC a couple times (OP in real life versus on here is night and day when I met him lol). It was great.

Sigh, such is the past.

kirbymuncher posted...

honestly if you really want to do this you should just find some existing forum creation sites instead of making your own thing. not really worth the effort

This was my thought process as well. No need to reinvent the wheel. Unless you intend to fully recreate GameFAQs, then I'd argue designing a stronger incentive mechanism for guide and other user content submissions.

SBAllen posted...

I could've, sure. Won't say that's not true.

Oh, thank you for being a good sport about it. In due time, I will have to come to you to learn about how to run this site.

SBAllen posted...

I seem to recall a lot of people thought I was bad for the site and were happy to see me go,

Yes, the site is figuratively being burned to the ground under new management. Yes, you kept the site afloat. Yes, you are preferable to our current overlords. No, the current mismanagement does not absolve you of your (what I perceived to be) lack of effort in growing and engaging with the community in the face of the rise of other major discourse sites. Let's be real here, you could have tried more dude. I'm not even asking for success; I would have taken a dozen failed experiments.

I'll have ownership of this site in a decade unless someone else buys it out.

What exactly is the vision for the GameFAQs community? Do they want a community to work with or do they want people to upload guides and content and that's it?

Yazarogi posted...

Are you high?

The dude runs a weight loss topic series and wants people to separate the fat from their perceptions of themselves (their identity so to speak), to create a more receptive mindset and make it easier for them to be more motivated and committed to lose the excess weight. If you imagine yourself as Boogie, you certainly won't imagine yourself running a block. If you envision yourself as David Goggins, the sky's the limit in what you can achieve. Running 100 miles in Death Valley during the middle of the day is nothing to you. Extreme examples but identifying yourself as a dude whose exercise consists of flipping channels on Netflix versus someone who is willing to flip tires and run would have different outcomes in terms of what you're willing to accomplish.

This shit isn't difficult to comprehend.

TheOtherMike posted...

It's amazing how many people are getting butthurt at the mere suggestion that we not call people insulting and derogatory terms.

It's fine to shame fat shaming (calling someone fat won't make them decide to show you up and hit the gym), but what OP is trying to do is redesign the definition of an adjective that has done its job effectively and accurately for god knows how long. OP, your logic need some reworking, but I will give you points in that your heart is in the right place.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go for a run; this fat won't trim itself.

Mad-Dogg posted...

What is the point of trying to gauge rebirth's success based off remake's 1st week sales on the playstation 4, a console with a way larger install base at that point in time and changing trends where more and more gamers is going digital?

My post is a response to the tweet you posted framing FFVII as a modest success. And, mind you, that is a title that people have been clamoring to see a remake of for well over a decade. It's supposed to move consoles. And yet as of last Thursday, it has moved less than 320K physical copies while other majorly successful titles have strong physical sales in addition to their strong digital sales.

Mad-Dogg posted...

Only thing anyone can do.....just relax and wait until square-enix is ready to talk about it. There is also been updates on whatever physical only numbers its doing in japan that implies its doing well. At least enough to be the number 1 selling game for march in japan.

Look for the first week sales for Part 1 my dude.

wackyteen posted...

It benefited, heavily, from being on the best selling consoles of the generation.

FF7 sold 'over 10 million' copies on a system that sold 100 million consoles. Which is impressive, not to downplay, but that isn't really 'system mover' per se. FFX, as a series, sold a little over 20 million copies between originals and remasters. Even if that was, say, 15 million for FFX1 on the PS2, that's still a 10% install base on the PS2.

The games, being larger thanks to CDs over cartridges and Sony making the console as accessible as possible for 3rd parties while Nintendo intentionally wanted the N64 to be difficult to program is what drove 3rd parties to Sony. FFVII was a breakout performance for the FF series that launched it to legendary status in the West. Basically I'm saying the 3rd parties demonstrating the immense graphical jump from the previous generation sold the PS1, not the other way around.

The PS2 carried that momentum of strong 3rd party support but what made the PS2 reach astronomical numbers, that other consoles haven't been able to match despite the industry being much bigger (though the Switch is on track to match it), is that the PS2 doubled as an affordable DVD player.

FF was very much a well respected and popular (and profitable) franchise, which is why Sony has such a strong relationship with Square to the point of owning shares in Square and why it was a massive story when Square announced FFXIII to be multiplatform.

You are right in that the 'flubs' have hampered fan interest, but you could also just chalk it up to the fact that the gaming market is way larger and things that were impressive and could sell copies back in the 90s and 00s, just aren't anymore. FF7's cutscenes were impressive for the time. the sheer size of the world and story was also impressive given the time. Same for FFX.

Off the top of my head, the Mario series broke records despite being platformers, the simplest entry level genre, Zelda's sales are an order of magnitude bigger than prior generations, Pokemon, an RPG, somehow continues to pump out comparable sales each generation despite not keeping up with the development standards. Grand Theft Auto commands the industry,

I bring these up to say to put into perspective of FF's faltering. You could say I'm agreeing with you but I would say there's no conflicts with our statements not that I'm agreeing with you. Square has had troubled development from XIII on. XIII was not a good game, it's a corridor simulator with an uninteresting story. It took 30 hours for the world to open up and then it goes right back to corridor simulator mode. It wasn't fun. People wanted to see a sprawling lived RPG world and Square was blindsided by the scope of difficulty in transitioning to HD development. They never recovered with respect to the FF franchise.

wackyteen posted...

However, there are well over 80 different Final Fantasy games between main games, spin-offs, one-offs, etc so it isn't even like it's diluting FF at large. The franchise is insanely large.

It has a rich history, but it's a dying series now. FF used to sell systems but since the PS360 generation with FFXIII, they've had flub after flub after flub. As a consequence, they've failed to capture the new generation of gamers, the ones who are growing up with Minecraft and Fortnite.

FFVII doing this poorly, even the first one's lack of stellar sales (Imagine if the next Zelda title sold 7M copies in 3 years, that's not good at all) is a reflection of this.

Kradek posted...

That's cool and all, except that communal/extended family helping raise children has been demonstrated as more beneficial to both the children and the parents.

Within a western culture where the nuclear family is the norm, I can agree, especially in this current day and age where the sense of community has also plummeted in comparison to decades ago. But from the findings of the links @ellis123 brought up, I personally would prefer our current nuclear family based society over a clan based society.

It's also rich that it's the Catholic Church who concocted this as it opens the door for more child abuse when it's only 2 adults in close proximity with the children on a regular basis and so are more easily able to get away with it.

I would deduce that the articles contradict this notion that child abuse would be more prevalent (not saying the other way applies either, I don't know what the statistics are). The articles talk about how people are more trusting of strangers in our current Western society than other clan based societies. If child abuse is more prevalent in nuclear family homes, how is society as a whole more trusting of strangers? If you're raised, not being able to trust your own parents, the people closest to you, to keep you safe, why wouldn't this be extended to strangers? You would be distrusting of everyone else too.

ellis123 posted...

That said, it's not really all that hard to find people going over the findings: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/roman-catholic-church-ban-in-the-middle-ages-loosened-family-ties/

This is bloody cool. I recall hearing that the Catholic church also pioneered the nuclear family structure (husband, wife, and children they bore together as opposed to a clan based family that includes extended family members) to allow for nimble family movement in search of superior economic opportunities. This allowed the rise of journeymen and allowed people to learn trades and crafts under experts unrelated to them. Prior to this, skills were mostly taught and passed down from generation to generation within a single family.

So I can see how your link ties into this; reducing the amount of ties to allow someone to walk their own path.

Cemith posted...

1.) US is a two party system. Either Biden wins, or Trump wins. Voting third party is a waste, sorry you have to pick between old establishment Demtrist and a fascist. But, you do.

Voting 3rd party signals to both parties that you're an active voter yet neither major platforms appeal to you. A big enough base forces both parties to rethink their strategies in attempt to appeal to you. I get this is unrealistic as your individual vote means even less in deciding the presidency if you're not in a swing state, but it still sends a message. I wouldn't ever discredit voting simply to make your voice heard.

At one point, MJ owned a billion dollar music portfolio, including The Beatle's discography, and Sony was not happy about that to say the least. He was aware of the abuses of children in Hollywood and so he setup Neverland Ranch to essentially be a sanctuary for kids in that space. He was quite business savvy and ultimately had a good heart.

StealThisSheen posted...

If the person Tweeting is correct, saying that Kyle was openly pointing his gun at people BEFORE he got confronted, then... No, it probably would have been quite different.

The objective of the pictures would be to use as evidence that Kyle directly provoked Rosenbaum into chasing after him. I am interested in seeing how this new information fits in the timeline of events as that would flip the narrative and perception of Rosenbaum to say the least if the objective was met.

tremain07 posted...

I suggest you really pay attention to the characters mannerisms. Going back after beating the game really made me notice things alot more especially concerning Nagi.

This. The writing of this game, the minute details are far above TWEWY and other titles. TWEWY's character development is in your face. With NEO, it's more subtle but just as impactful.

emblem-man posted...

I just think based on the past, despite some new technology taking away a job, we tend to create new jobs or adapt current jobs based on the new tech. And as ai increases, it will take those new jobs, and new jobs will be created based on that.

I think the most terrifying image for me regarding the future of AI is the combination of AI and robotics in manufacturing. A manufacturing plant run by AI and robots doesn't need any light systems nor any need for HVAC systems; just a completely dark cold factory running 24/7.

You're referring to an old adage on history, but man... AI produces so much and can do so without human input.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-sci-tech/meet-devin-ai-first-autonomous-ai-software-engineer-9212537/

Here's an article of an autonomous software agent in development, taking on work for pay and solving coding problems. What's going to happen when these guys are ubiquitous in the market?

EDIT: Watching this video on Devin now,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RxbHg0Nsw0

I'm glad I'm working with people who aren't very technology savvy.