If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it, Google!

The whole “capitalism gave you the Internet” thing is especially funny if you actually work in network infrastructure, since one of the first things you’ll learn is that many software technologies that are absolutely critical to the day to day functioning of the Internet are being maintained on a volunteer basis by small, decentralised teams working in whatever free time their day jobs leave them, and that we’d have a crisis on our hands within thirty days if any one of those maintainers were to get hit by a bus and nobody stepped up to replace them. Like, the whole commercial edifice of the Internet rests on the continuous unpaid labour of a relative handful of people who are essentially just doing it for fun.

“Hyper-advanced alien can use our technology because obviously it’s basic to them” is so annoying. Like sure, you grew up around holo-screens, but are you telling me you understand every operating system you come across? You understand all the culturally-specific symbols? You can read the language?

A technologically-advanced alien will have as much luck using an iPhone on the first try as I would have trying to use mid-90s computer from China. Like yeah I know how to use more advanced tech, but I don’t know Chinese and I probably can’t guess the various OS.

CODED BIAS (2020) dir. Shalini Kantayya

TikTok Users Are Burning Snowballs in Viral Videos to 'Prove' the Snow is Fake https://ift.tt/37BF3oM

pink euphoria

anyway

Gabe Newell says brain-computer interface tech will allow video games far beyond what human 'meat peripherals' can comprehend https://ift.tt/3sQ8vQS

for yesterday’s @guardian review

NFTs in plain English:

You know what a certificate of authenticity is for a physical piece of art? Like, a chain of documented ownership that can be used to prove your art is the original and not a copy?  

NFTs are like that, except for digital assets. They use cryptographic wizardry to provide a means of proof that a copy of a digital file that you have on your computer was issued to you by an authorised holder, who was in turn issued their copy by an authorised holder, all the way back to the file’s original author.  

To be clear, there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from making unauthorised copies of an NFT, in the same way that there’s nothing stopping you from printing out a photo of the Mona Lisa. All this system does is provide proof of authorised ownership.  

This actually has some practical applications; for example, in online gaming, it can be used to create a relatively foolproof means of detecting item duping, and of figuring out who has the legit item and who has the dupe when such exploits occur.  

For digital art it’s 100% a bragging rights thing and has no real, practical value.  

There are several problems with this.  

First, the terms of service for most existing NFT exchanges are deeply exploitative for both the artist and the buyer, and there’s a fairly solid argument to be made that their main goal is to provide money laundering services rather than to exchange digital art.  

(This is not, of course, a new thing; there’s a fairly solid argument to be made that that all high-end art collecting is a money laundering scheme.)  

Second, most NFT exchanges make absolutely no effort to verify that the person attaching an NFT to a particular digital file is actually that file’s author.  

This means that NFT exchanges have a rampant problem with uncredited or falsely credited art being circulated as high-value collectibles. Again, there’s an argument to be made that this is by design.  

Finally, there’s the environmental impact to consider.  

NFTs require cryptography.  

Cryptography is math.  

Doing math with a computer takes processing power.  

Processing power consumes electricity.  

The math that produces the particular kind of NFTs that all the hubbub is about has deliberately been made very, very inefficient to carry out. In theory, this makes them harder to counterfeit.  

(Whether this is actually true, and what other, less energy intensive mechanisms could be used to achieve the same result, is a whole other post!)  

The amount of processing involved in issuing these particular NFTs is so brain-fuckingly huge that it’s effectively impossible to do it using a home computer – it has to be contracted out to specialised server farms.  

The upshot is that every NFT that’s issued causes the server farms that produce them to consume vast amounts of electricity, with the associated environmental costs.  

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the present NFT art craze provides a means for private individuals to have the kind of environmental impact normally associated with large corporations.  

If this whole business is starting to sound like a scheme a Captain Planet villain would come up with, now you’re catching on!

Quiero un sorbo " de tu pócima ", en la larga copa de tus encantos... para embriagarme ... a todas horas en el hechizo rojo de tus labios !!

Dame las rutas de tus mejillas y la brisa suave de tus párpados... que quiero bañarme " en tus orillas " y volar tus secretos como un halcón !!

Ousía Poética © Leandro Lojek

🎶❤️

20 years. Ugh.  And you?

🙃