#nft open market

[muzellastudio]

Exploring the Benefits of NFT Marketplaces for Photographers

The rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has opened up a new world of possibilities for photographers looking to monetize their work. NFTs are unique digital assets that represent ownership of a particular piece of content, such as a photograph or artwork.

By using NFTs, photographers can sell their work as one-of-a-kind collectibles and ensure that the ownership and authenticity of their work is maintained.

However, for photographers looking to enter the world of NFTs, finding the right marketplace can be a daunting task. That's where NFT marketplaces specifically designed for photographers come in. These marketplaces offer a range of benefits for photographers, including greater visibility, ease of use, and protection of intellectual property.

One of the major benefits of using an NFT marketplace for photographers is the protection of intellectual property. By using blockchain technology, NFTs provide a way to prove ownership and authenticity of digital content. This ensures that photographers are properly compensated for their work and that their intellectual property is protected.

In conclusion, NFT marketplaces offer a new and exciting way for photographers to monetize their work. These marketplaces provide greater visibility, ease of use, and protection of intellectual property, making them an ideal platform for photographers looking to enter the world of NFTs. With the continued growth and adoption of NFTs, we can expect to see more marketplaces specifically designed for photographers emerge in the near future.

[tetratheripper]

Cryptobros kept sending me messages to "buy" pieces from my portfolio (?¿?¿ they don't even know how portfolios work) so I unpublished all my Artstation posts lol (I wasn't comfortable in there since the AI anyway, so whatever)

[naradreamt]

with the amount of shit Hiroshi manages to put out under his brother's name, part of me is hoping that hide is waiting for him in the fucking afterlife with a bat full of Nails

[addictedgallery]

The battle lines are being drawn. Watch this space!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The AI hype bubble is the new crypto hype bubble

Back in 2017 Long Island Ice Tea — known for its undistinguished, barely drinkable sugar-water — changed its name to “Long Blockchain Corp.” Its shares surged to a peak of 400% over their pre-announcement price. The company announced no specific integrations with any kind of blockchain, nor has it made any such integrations since.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

LBCC was subsequently delisted from NASDAQ after settling with the SEC over fraudulent investor statements. Today, the company trades over the counter and its market cap is $36m, down from $138m.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/textbook-case-of-crypto-hype-how-iced-tea-company-went-blockchain-and-failed-despite-a-289-percent-stock-rise

The most remarkable thing about this incredibly stupid story is that LBCC wasn’t the peak of the blockchain bubble — rather, it was the start of blockchain’s final pump-and-dump. By the standards of 2022’s blockchain grifters, LBCC was small potatoes, a mere $138m sugar-water grift.

They didn’t have any NFTs, no wash trades, no ICO. They didn’t have a Superbowl ad. They didn’t steal billions from mom-and-pop investors while proclaiming themselves to be “Effective Altruists.” They didn’t channel hundreds of millions to election campaigns through straw donations and other forms of campaing finance frauds. They didn’t even open a crypto-themed hamburger restaurant where you couldn’t buy hamburgers with crypto:

https://robbreport.com/food-drink/dining/bored-hungry-restaurant-no-cryptocurrency-1234694556/

They were amateurs. Their attempt to “make fetch happen” only succeeded for a brief instant. By contrast, the superpredators of the crypto bubble were able to make fetch happen over an improbably long timescale, deploying the most powerful reality distortion fields since Pets.com.

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. We’re told that trillions of dollars’ worth of crypto has been wiped out over the past year, but these losses are nowhere to be seen in the real economy — because the “wealth” that was wiped out by the crypto bubble’s bursting never existed in the first place.

Like any Ponzi scheme, crypto was a way to separate normies from their savings through the pretense that they were “investing” in a vast enterprise — but the only real money (“fiat” in cryptospeak) in the system was the hardscrabble retirement savings of working people, which the bubble’s energetic inflaters swapped for illiquid, worthless shitcoins.

We’ve stopped believing in the illusory billions. Sam Bankman-Fried is under house arrest. But the people who gave him money — and the nimbler Ponzi artists who evaded arrest — are looking for new scams to separate the marks from their money.

Take Morganstanley, who spent 2021 and 2022 hyping cryptocurrency as a massive growth opportunity:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/morgan-stanley-launches-cryptocurrency-research-team

Today, Morganstanley wants you to know that AI is a $6 trillion opportunity.

They’re not alone. The CEOs of Endeavor, Buzzfeed, Microsoft, Spotify, Youtube, Snap, Sports Illustrated, and CAA are all out there, pumping up the AI bubble with every hour that god sends, declaring that the future is AI.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/wall-street-ai-stock-price-1235343279/

Google and Bing are locked in an arms-race to see whose search engine can attain the speediest, most profound enshittification via chatbot, replacing links to web-pages with florid paragraphs composed by fully automated, supremely confident liars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Blockchain was a solution in search of a problem. So is AI. Yes, Buzzfeed will be able to reduce its wage-bill by automating its personality quiz vertical, and Spotify’s “AI DJ” will produce slightly less terrible playlists (at least, to the extent that Spotify doesn’t put its thumb on the scales by inserting tracks into the playlists whose only fitness factor is that someone paid to boost them).

But even if you add all of this up, double it, square it, and add a billion dollar confidence interval, it still doesn’t add up to what Bank Of America analysts called “a defining moment — like the internet in the ’90s.” For one thing, the most exciting part of the “internet in the ‘90s” was that it had incredibly low barriers to entry and wasn’t dominated by large companies — indeed, it had them running scared.

The AI bubble, by contrast, is being inflated by massive incumbents, whose excitement boils down to “This will let the biggest companies get much, much bigger and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves.” Some revolution.

AI has all the hallmarks of a classic pump-and-dump, starting with terminology. AI isn’t “artificial” and it’s not “intelligent.” “Machine learning” doesn’t learn. On this week’s Trashfuture podcast, they made an excellent (and profane and hilarious) case that ChatGPT is best understood as a sophisticated form of autocomplete — not our new robot overlord.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4NHKMZZNKi0w9mOhPYIL4T

We all know that autocomplete is a decidedly mixed blessing. Like all statistical inference tools, autocomplete is profoundly conservative — it wants you to do the same thing tomorrow as you did yesterday (that’s why “sophisticated” ad retargeting ads show you ads for shoes in response to your search for shoes). If the word you type after “hey” is usually “hon” then the next time you type “hey,” autocomplete will be ready to fill in your typical following word — even if this time you want to type “hey stop texting me you freak”:

https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/provocations/neophobic-conservative-ai-overlords-want-everything-stay/

And when autocomplete encounters a new input — when you try to type something you’ve never typed before — it tries to get you to finish your sentence with the statistically median thing that everyone would type next, on average. Usually that produces something utterly bland, but sometimes the results can be hilarious. Back in 2018, I started to text our babysitter with “hey are you free to sit” only to have Android finish the sentence with “on my face” (not something I’d ever typed!):

https://mashable.com/article/android-predictive-text-sit-on-my-face

Modern autocomplete can produce long passages of text in response to prompts, but it is every bit as unreliable as 2018 Android SMS autocomplete, as Alexander Hanff discovered when ChatGPT informed him that he was dead, even generating a plausible URL for a link to a nonexistent obit in The Guardian:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/02/chatgpt_considered_harmful/

Of course, the carnival barkers of the AI pump-and-dump insist that this is all a feature, not a bug. If autocomplete says stupid, wrong things with total confidence, that’s because “AI” is becoming more human, because humans also say stupid, wrong things with total confidence.

Exhibit A is the billionaire AI grifter Sam Altman, CEO if OpenAI — a company whose products are not open, nor are they artificial, nor are they intelligent. Altman celebrated the release of ChatGPT by tweeting “i am a stochastic parrot, and so r u.”

https://twitter.com/sama/status/1599471830255177728

This was a dig at the “stochastic parrots” paper, a comprehensive, measured roundup of criticisms of AI that led Google to fire Timnit Gebru, a respected AI researcher, for having the audacity to point out the Emperor’s New Clothes:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/

Gebru’s co-author on the Parrots paper was Emily M Bender, a computational linguistics specialist at UW, who is one of the best-informed and most damning critics of AI hype. You can get a good sense of her position from Elizabeth Weil’s New York Magazine profile:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html

Bender has made many important scholarly contributions to her field, but she is also famous for her rules of thumb, which caution her fellow scientists not to get high on their own supply:

Please do not conflate word form and meaning

Mind your own credulity

As Bender says, we’ve made “machines that can mindlessly generate text, but we haven’t learned how to stop imagining the mind behind it.” One potential tonic against this fallacy is to follow an Italian MP’s suggestion and replace “AI” with “SALAMI” (“Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences”). It’s a lot easier to keep a clear head when someone asks you, “Is this SALAMI intelligent? Can this SALAMI write a novel? Does this SALAMI deserve human rights?”

Bender’s most famous contribution is the “stochastic parrot,” a construct that “just probabilistically spits out words.” AI bros like Altman love the stochastic parrot, and are hellbent on reducing human beings to stochastic parrots, which will allow them to declare that their chatbots have feature-parity with human beings.

At the same time, Altman and Co are strangely afraid of their creations. It’s possible that this is just a shuck: “I have made something so powerful that it could destroy humanity! Luckily, I am a wise steward of this thing, so it’s fine. But boy, it sure is powerful!”

They’ve been playing this game for a long time. People like Elon Musk (an investor in OpenAI, who is hoping to convince the EU Commission and FTC that he can fire all of Twitter’s human moderators and replace them with chatbots without violating EU law or the FTC’s consent decree) keep warning us that AI will destroy us unless we tame it.

There’s a lot of credulous repetition of these claims, and not just by AI’s boosters. AI critics are also prone to engaging in what Lee Vinsel calls criti-hype: criticizing something by repeating its boosters’ claims without interrogating them to see if they’re true:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

There are better ways to respond to Elon Musk warning us that AIs will emulsify the planet and use human beings for food than to shout, “Look at how irresponsible this wizard is being! He made a Frankenstein’s Monster that will kill us all!” Like, we could point out that of all the things Elon Musk is profoundly wrong about, he is most wrong about the philosophical meaning of Wachowksi movies:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/18/lilly-wachowski-ivana-trump-elon-musk-twitter-red-pill-the-matrix-tweets

But even if we take the bros at their word when they proclaim themselves to be terrified of “existential risk” from AI, we can find better explanations by seeking out other phenomena that might be triggering their dread. As Charlie Stross points out, corporations are Slow AIs, autonomous artificial lifeforms that consistently do the wrong thing even when the people who nominally run them try to steer them in better directions:

https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

Imagine the existential horror of a ultra-rich manbaby who nominally leads a company, but can’t get it to follow: “everyone thinks I’m in charge, but I’m actually being driven by the Slow AI, serving as its sock puppet on some days, its golem on others.”

Ted Chiang nailed this back in 2017 (the same year of the Long Island Blockchain Company):

There’s a saying, popularized by Fredric Jameson, that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. It’s no surprise that Silicon Valley capitalists don’t want to think about capitalism ending. What’s unexpected is that the way they envision the world ending is through a form of unchecked capitalism, disguised as a superintelligent AI. They have unconsciously created a devil in their own image, a boogeyman whose excesses are precisely their own.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway

Chiang is still writing some of the best critical work on “AI.” His February article in the New Yorker, “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web,” was an instant classic:

[AI] hallucinations are compression artifacts, but — like the incorrect labels generated by the Xerox photocopier — they are plausible enough that identifying them requires comparing them against the originals, which in this case means either the Web or our own knowledge of the world.

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web

“AI” is practically purpose-built for inflating another hype-bubble, excelling as it does at producing party-tricks — plausible essays, weird images, voice impersonations. But as Princeton’s Matthew Salganik writes, there’s a world of difference between “cool” and “tool”:

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2023/03/08/can-chatgpt-and-its-successors-go-from-cool-to-tool/

Nature can claim “conversational AI is a game-changer for science” but “there is a huge gap between writing funny instructions for removing food from home electronics and doing scientific research.” Salganik tried to get ChatGPT to help him with the most banal of scholarly tasks — aiding him in peer reviewing a colleague’s paper. The result? “ChatGPT didn’t help me do peer review at all; not one little bit.”

The criti-hype isn’t limited to ChatGPT, of course — there’s plenty of (justifiable) concern about image and voice generators and their impact on creative labor markets, but that concern is often expressed in ways that amplify the self-serving claims of the companies hoping to inflate the hype machine.

One of the best critical responses to the question of image- and voice-generators comes from Kirby Ferguson, whose final Everything Is a Remix video is a superb, visually stunning, brilliantly argued critique of these systems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rswxcDyotXA

One area where Ferguson shines is in thinking through the copyright question — is there any right to decide who can study the art you make? Except in some edge cases, these systems don’t store copies of the images they analyze, nor do they reproduce them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

For creators, the important material question raised by these systems is economic, not creative: will our bosses use them to erode our wages? That is a very important question, and as far as our bosses are concerned, the answer is a resounding yes.

Markets value automation primarily because automation allows capitalists to pay workers less. The textile factory owners who purchased automatic looms weren’t interested in giving their workers raises and shorting working days. ‘ They wanted to fire their skilled workers and replace them with small children kidnapped out of orphanages and indentured for a decade, starved and beaten and forced to work, even after they were mangled by the machines. Fun fact: Oliver Twist was based on the bestselling memoir of Robert Blincoe, a child who survived his decade of forced labor:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59127/59127-h/59127-h.htm

Today, voice actors sitting down to record for games companies are forced to begin each session with “My name is ______ and I hereby grant irrevocable permission to train an AI with my voice and use it any way you see fit.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d37za/voice-actors-sign-away-rights-to-artificial-intelligence

Let’s be clear here: there is — at present — no firmly established copyright over voiceprints. The “right” that voice actors are signing away as a non-negotiable condition of doing their jobs for giant, powerful monopolists doesn’t even exist. When a corporation makes a worker surrender this right, they are betting that this right will be created later in the name of “artists’ rights” — and that they will then be able to harvest this right and use it to fire the artists who fought so hard for it.

There are other approaches to this. We could support the US Copyright Office’s position that machine-generated works are not works of human creative authorship and are thus not eligible for copyright — so if corporations wanted to control their products, they’d have to hire humans to make them:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/21/22944335/us-copyright-office-reject-ai-generated-art-recent-entrance-to-paradise

Or we could create collective rights that belong to all artists and can’t be signed away to a corporation. That’s how the right to record other musicians’ songs work — and it’s why Taylor Swift was able to re-record the masters that were sold out from under her by evil private-equity bros::

https://doctorow.medium.com/united-we-stand-61e16ec707e2

Whatever we do as creative workers and as humans entitled to a decent life, we can’t afford drink the Blockchain Iced Tea. That means that we have to be technically competent, to understand how the stochastic parrot works, and to make sure our criticism doesn’t just repeat the marketing copy of the latest pump-and-dump.

Today (Mar 9), you can catch me in person in Austin at the UT School of Design and Creative Technologies, and remotely at U Manitoba’s Ethics of Emerging Tech Lecture.

Tomorrow (Mar 10), Rebecca Giblin and I kick off the SXSW reading series.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A graph depicting the Gartner hype cycle. A pair of HAL 9000's glowing red eyes are chasing each other down the slope from the Peak of Inflated Expectations to join another one that is at rest in the Trough of Disillusionment. It, in turn, sits atop a vast cairn of HAL 9000 eyes that are piled in a rough pyramid that extends below the graph to a distance of several times its height.]

[90shaladriel]

AI Manipulations of Rings of Power. (Longish)

Saw the AI edits of Haladriel scenes being altered by GenAI to make the characters* kiss. I have seen chatter about it and the negative implications of creating or interacting with AI generated content.

At the risk of being nuanced, (feel free to block or scroll past this) it interests me what exactly is the concern with it and why. To be clear, I do work in an industry that is both working to incorporate and profit off AIs while simultaneously my own job is increasingly at risk by the same products or we are forced to use them for productivity reasons.

Some reasons that make sense to me that you would not want AI content would be

1. Legal and copyright infringement of the ownership of the art or source material used to train the AI models. Stolen work, no credit or payment to artists

2. It’s generally shitty, sloppy, uncanny valley. Which aesthetically I think most people would be against

3. It directly competes against manual labor of a human, devalues work, replaces jobs, or floods the market so creators never can be separated, investment in a skill or art form isnt worth it.

4. It extremely energy intensive, the environmental implications can he huge with the climate crisis.

5. Its being shoveled in our faces by overhyped tech bros because they think its cool and can find gullible investors for, like NFTs and crypto curriencies

6. Deep fake abuse with AI, making up fake news, abusing a real person image in a degrading way without consent.

I think all of these are serious issues with AI.

The stuff that was shared about Sauron and Galadriel kissing does it materialize those concerns? I’m going to assume that it may for the first one, legal and copyright ownership of training data. Im not a lawyer, and there are also some AI models trained on legally owner content or public domain / open source content. I have no way of knowing what models were used by the GenAI that made those haladriel kisses, so we probably have to assume they may have questionable provenance, and I think by that alone we should boycott those.

Now what if someone used a more solidly vetted model or genAI service without those legal issues? What if the artists do get paid or some form of royalties?

The kiss videos themselves were ok, maybe halfway believable, there were obviously the weird uncanny ai artifacts and stuff. It’s objectively worse than if ROP had actually filmed a kiss with live actors in the show proper. But who am I to judge whether that slop is aesthetically pleasing to someone else or not? Sometimes I have found AI art that is truly bizarre in that this is too weird surrealness quality like looking into a dream while being awake. I’m not sure that this feeling is necessarily wrong to enjoy on its own.

Regarding the AI replacing jobs argument. I suppose it depends what we mean. They were never going to remake ROP Season 1 or 2. Morfydd and Charlie won’t be offered the same role if another company were to buy the rights and make Rings of Power reboot. We will never get those kisses on screen. Maybe you can say that if people were fed content for Haladriel you could give them that almost infinitely by GenAI and then those people would be less likely to consume or pay for some other newer media that might otherwise give a satisfactory ETL with backstory and build up equivalent to what ROP has done with Haladriel? I’m not sure how to weigh that, it might be true? I tend to think these AI kisses arent replacing any creative workers in the film/tv industry. I don’t think we say that fanfic reusing known characters competes with original written stories (or do people argue this?) although i suppose it does on some level. Do people boycott fanfiction?

Along these lines, what about the actors consent and deep fake aspects? Personally, I don’t see how the AI images are more offensive or harmful than fanart which uses the actors depictions to do all sorts of things, stabbing, killing, kissing, screwing and everything and everyone in between. Or fan edits which use clever editing and overlay soundtracks with pointed lyrics which completely change the artistic intent of the actors /creatives who made the original in a particular way, say make two characters have a romantic chemistry that wasn’t there in the original? Or even the old photoshop manipulation stuff? I thought we’re ok with this in the fandom world, is this that different?

I’m not saying I like AI or you need to. I probably wont interact with it and try to avoid it personally wherever I can. But I do wonder if the arguments people are making against ROP AI edits are actually in good faith? Because then i question why other kinds of fan creations are acceptable?

[howtofightwrite]

Do heist stories still work in the modern world, especially the developed world? More and more wealth these days seems to be intangible and electronic, and more and more of the physical stuff that's still valuable is marked and traceable so that even if you take, it's hard to spend or unload it anywhere. What are macguffins that a thief in today's world could still physically steal today and realistically hope to profit from (without the profiting getting him caught)?

Heists still happen in the modern world. Hell, the entire NFT “economy” crashed last year as a result of a multiple heists. The Axie Infinity hack last year saw over $600 million worth of crypto tokens stolen. There have been many, many, famous heists, and there is no sign of them slowing down anytime soon.

So, in the vague sense of, “is it realistic?” It happens today, in the real world.

What gets stolen? Anything of sufficient value is a potential target. Art is one of the classic examples, and it remains a tempting target. Any liquid asset is tempting, and no matter how good the tracking is, chances are, someone will find a way to defeat it. In theory, crypto tokens are impossible to scrub, as the entire history of that token will be publicly logged on the block chain... so, thieves were using places like Tornado Cash to launder their cryptocurrency. (Incidentally, the US Treasury has sanctioned Tornado Cash, as of August last year.)

How realistic is it to get away with a heist? There are a lot of unsolved heists. Both, of physical items, and also with a lot of crypto thefts in the last few years. Some of the latter are believed to have been the product of state actors (read: Hacker groups believed to be working for authoritarian states with few extradition treaties.)

Art theft is alive and well. Now, I'm not an expert on laundering stolen paintings, however, from the ones that have been found, a lot find their way into private collections. Art collectors, and brokers who aren't particularly bothered with the legality of a given piece will move stolen art. It's not going to command the prices it would on the open market. (If someone estimates a stolen painting as worth four million dollars, expect that the thieves will get considerably less than that when they fence it, and while the fence will make enough to justify their risk, they're probably not going to be raking in millions either. Once it's made its way to a new owner, it will likely go up on a wall in a private gallery, or get carefully stored in a vault, and never seen again by the outside world for decades (or longer.)

Of course art theft can also be sculptures, books, or really anything else.

When it comes to other things, any liquid asset is a potential target for a heist. Cash, precious metals, and gem stones, are probably the most obvious examples, though, certainly not the only options.

The heist is, generally, a fairly consistent (if modular) structure.

It starts with identifying a vulnerable asset. The reason for the vulnerability may be important for the story, but not for the genre itself. This may be as simple as, “the asset exists,” and the PoV character learns of it, or it could be a situation where an exploitable flaw in the electronic tracking for the item is identified.

Once that's happened, then the ringleader starts assembling a team of specialists (and, amusingly, it is almost always specialists), to fill necessary roles in the heist. Usually this is a mix of technical specialists, social specialists, and at least some muscle.

So, assembling the team is something very specific to the formula, and not reflected in reality. A lot of real world heists simply need bodies, and prefer to have as few people as possible involved. The reasons are twofold. First, the less people involved, the less ways the resulting cash has to be split. Second, the fewer people involved, the fewer people that can lose their nerve and screw up, or rat their partners out to the police.

Once the team has assembled and they have a plan (this is usually hammered out along with the recruitment phase of the story, though that doesn't make a lot of sense when you step back and think about it), then they identify the preceding steps that need to be completed before executing the heist. This involves prepwork, sometimes smaller thefts to obtain the resources they need, and other necessary activities. (Again, this is more of a formula consideration, than a strictly realistic one. Especially the perpetration of earlier crimes. Those crimes can easily result in errors that would lead law enforcement to identify the heist before it occurred, and also help with identifying the thieves. To be fair, this is sometimes handled intelligently while staying within the formula to build tension. As the police close in on the team before they've even gotten started.)

After this, the team goes to execute the heist. Expect several things to fail simultaneously, with members of the team scrambling to salvage the heist. So, I don't want to harp on this too much, but this is another one of those places where the formula structure is extremely unrealistic. When looking at real heists, these kinds of fumbles will usually either botch the heist on the spot or provide the police with the threads they need to find the perpetrators. From a narrative perspective, it makes sense, it help build tension moving into the climax. So, while it's not realistic, that's not the point.

Once the team has the item, then they need to extract with it. Sometimes you'll see this skimmed over, but, getting the thing you're stealing away from the people trying to arrest the thieves is a somewhat important consideration. Generally speaking, yeah, a loud extraction with gunfights and car chases is going to end with the police response scaling to the point where escape is impossible. Also, generally speaking, most writers have a difficult time keeping stealth sequences tense, especially when their instinct is to transition into action.

Once they're out, lot heist stories end. The thieves, “won,” and the climax has played out. From a writing perspective, this makes sense. They won, and everything from here is going to be downhill. The team will break up. The actual process of fencing the stolen goods are going to be fairly dry, and, alternately, the process of laundering any cash they may have stolen isn't going to be that interesting either. There might be some lingering character threads to resolve, but the story is over, at least until you start another.

The main purpose for dragging a story beyond the heist is if you're setting up a tragedy. Probably with the police hunting them down for whatever errors they made along the way. I know I've cited it before, but Michael Mann's Heat (1995) is an excellent example of how the heist structure can be turned into a tragedy. (It's also a rare case that reworks a lot of the formula into something more realistic.)

On the whole, I'd say the heist genre is as relevant today as it's ever been. The specific stumbling blocks your characters will encounter are different. That always changes, and your ability to tune your story to your setting is always important. From a strictly mechanical perspective, there's no difference from your character accidentally leaving his driver's license behind at the scene of the heist, and failing to identify a tracker concealed in the stolen object. Both of them create a direct line from the crime back to that character. In a very real sense, a lot of the particulars for how this plays out is simply flavor. If you want your heist to be a techno-thriller, then you can absolutely do that, though you will probably have to spend quite a bit of time studying modern security methods and technology, but you can do that.

-Starke

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more details, examples, and contact info are on my [commission site] if you are interested!

Before receiving my service, you must abide to my TOS [link or below]

A consultation will happen where we discuss payment and art specifics before the sketch phase begins, such as: - What the art will be used for - Commission type - Pose - Information on characters - Required [Must have these]: Drawn reference, visual references, visual reference collage, OR a written description of appearance - Optional [Having any of these is preferred, but not necessary]: personality, important details, clothing, face claims, voice claims, playlist, aesthetic, images, visual boards, vibes, backstory, relationships, etc - Written descriptions add +$18 minimum (varies depending on complexity) per character to final price - Visual references add +$15 minimum (varies depending on complexity) per character to final price - What I can or cannot do for the art piece(s) The artwork can be used for personal use only (including slight edits/manipulation only if you are the commissioner themselves) unless we discuss about commercial use beforehand, - You may never take credit for my work - Always link back to my social media when using/referencing my art. - Payments will be upfront and made through paypal (more TBA). - Turnaround is at least 1 month. - This can fluctuate as I am chronically ill; it will take more time for me to complete commissions if I have flareups. - Delays will be communicated clearly when possible. - No refunds will be given if the commission has been started I have the right to cancel a commission at any time, for any reason (only this would include a refund) I retain copyright to my artwork, not your characters. - I may use your commission piece for my own portfolio / examples / sites.

My art is not to be put through AI or for NFT marketing When given the initial sketch, please note any changes you would like as they are there for you to be happy with the end result! - Changes beyond the sketch may cost extra, prices are simply a baseline and will fluctuate per piece. Experimental NSFW / Suggestive is available for adults - You will need to provide an 18+ ID

Failure to follow the TOS will get you blacklisted.

divider credit

[becoming-less-than]

✨~ For the many abusers masquerading as Doms: I’m an ex-pro Domme, and kink educator; I will call you on your shit. Respect is a two way street if you’re not my Dom and/or haven’t gotten my consent to be misogynistic, degrading, or objectifying, don’t be until you have permission and we won’t have any trouble. - 🖤 - At this time unsolicited dick pics will have the meta data extracted and as many identifying details as possible about the sender added to them, before being turned into NFTs and sent to market, you’ve been warned. I want be dumb, pleasing, and playable; don’t make me have to be smart, bitchy and vindictive because you’re a douche~✨

- 🖤 - Now that the boundaries have been set - 🖤 -

Hello, you may call me Eris. I’m open to any asks that don’t violate the above boundaries, happy to receive hypnosis files, gifs and videos from others, and willing to chat with prospective Doms. I’m a sub but not your sub unless we negotiate some sort of arrangement and messages should be respectful until you’ve gotten permission to be otherwise. This is kink for me, one I’m very happy to let spill (to a greater or lesser degree) into the rest of my life, but a kink none the less not a full time lifestyle as that’s untenable in my current situation.

~✨ - 🖤 - ✨~

So what am I looking for in a perfect world where I didn’t have to hold a smart girl job:

I’d want to be conditioned to present as being a totally vapid and dependent, but incredibly sweet and lovable sex toy for my Dominant. I’d want to be gradually turned into a hyper feminine bimbo through behavioral modification, protocol and other techniques. I’d want to have my intelligence gradually taken away so that I’m aware of the fall, but helpless to stop it. To have my vocabulary slowly stripped away, my critical thinking and math skills diminished, all while becoming more bubbly, girly, and submissive. I’d want to know that I used to be a genius, but see that now people I used to condescend to for being less intelligent need to patronize me and explain things like I’m 5. I’d want to be reduced to being arm candy and a house wife, someone who’s good only for menial chores and getting fucked.

In my current circumstances I’d like much of the same but I’d like to be able to lock it behind triggers to await safe times to totally surrender. If this has interested you and you’d like to talk further to discuss limits and expectations or other details feel free to message me.

Thank you for your time! I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

[songbird-at-the-fireside-chat]

Browsing the World Wide Web

Browsing the World Wide Web

One of my favorite passions is creating/finding ways to navigate the web that are healthy, authentic, and fun! Here are some resources I use to guide my internet usage. Some language has been slightly adapted for tone and accessibility. For more in-depth reading, follow the links! (taken with permission from https://yair.garden/browsing). Shared Ideals

MelonKing has an excellent list of shared ideals which I try to keep in mind as I browse the web. It's a great starting point!

Creativity is First: We see the ability to design, decorate, and graffiti digital spaces as essential and powerful.

The Internet is Fun: We want the Web to be a playground that's free to explore and enjoy.

Corporations are Boring: We are tired of the monetization, data abuse, and endless breaches of trust in corporate culture.

The Web is Friendly: We believe the Web should be friendly and supportive; caring is a radical act.

Right to Repair: We value the freedom to make, break, and repair our stuff - tinkering is a form of debate and protest.

One World Wide Web: We want free open knowledge and global connectivity, without paywalls, bubbles, or borders.

Chaotic Effort: We believe that value comes from the time and effort put into projects they love for no reason other than love.

No to Web3: In many (but not all) situations, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, unfairly trained AIs, and buzzword tech are unwelcome and uncool.

Manifesto for a New Web

The YesterWeb is an organization seeking to progressively transform internet culture and beyond. After two years, they created three core commitments and three social behavior guidelines to benefit everyone.

A commitment to social responsibility and partisanship.

A commitment to collective well-being and personal growth.

A commitment to rehumanizing social relations and reversing social alienation.

50 additional manifestos can be found here Social Etiquette

Engage in good faith.

Engage in constructive conflict.

Be mindful of participating in a shared, public space.

Why say no to Web 3.0?

One of the shared ideas of our community of web surfers is to push back against "Web 3.0". Here's why:

It's driven by predatory marketing tactics.

It requires complex technological and financial knowledge to fully understand.

It is actively harming the environment.

It caters to early adopters and whales.

It profits off artificial scarcity.

Investors are banking on Web3, and they really don't want to be wrong.

Personalized Web Surfing Guide

Make your web surfing personal and adventurous, away from corporate influences. Here's a simple guide for a unique browsing experience.

Configure your browser

Remove Ads and Clean up Privacy:

Ublock Origin for removing ads

ClearURLs for removing tracking elements from URLs

SponsorBlock for skipping sponsorships on YouTube

Make it a Safer Space:

ShinigamiEyes for highlighting transphobic/anti-LGBTQ sites

TriggerRemover for removing trigger-inducing content from pages

Clean up UI for Beauty and Minimalism:

CleanerReads for a muted Goodreads experience

Minimal; for a minimal and less attention-grabbing internet

Bonuses for a Cool Experience:

Library Extension: Check book availability at local libraries

Translate Web Pages: Translate pages in real-time

Return YouTube Dislike: Bring back the YouTube dislike feature

How to Browse and Surf the Web

Explore Beyond Corporate Sites: While the internet is vast, the majority of users only see a small fraction dominated by large corporate sites. These sites often prioritize shock value and extreme content, overshadowing the richness of the wider web. Explore alternative avenues to discover the internet's diversity.

Search Engines: Avoid corporate search engines like Google. Instead, consider using alternatives like Kagi, which focuses on privacy and doesn't sell your data. While it costs around $10/month, Kagi offers a diverse mix of web content, making it a worthwhile investment for varied search results. Other niche or non-commercial search engines can also provide unique content. While they may not be sustainable for daily use, they're great for discovering new sites. Find them here.

Webrings: Webrings are collections of websites united by a common theme or topic. They offer a unique way to explore sites created by real people, spanning a wide range of interests. Here are some of my favorite webrings:

Hotline Webring

Retro Webring

Low Tech Webring

Geek Webring

Soft Heart Clinic Mental Health Circle ...and here are some list of webring databases to explore!

Curated List of 64 Webrings

Neocities Webrings

Curated List of Active Webrings

Comprehensive List of 210 Webrings

Cliques/Fanlistings Web Cliques/Cliques are groups which you can join usually if you fulfill a certain task such as choosing an animal or listing your astrological sign. Fanlistings do the same for fans of various topics! You can then be linked on the clique's/fan group's site for further website discovery! Here are some web clique directories:

Project Clique

Cliqued

Fanlistings Network

5. Link Directories

Many sites have smaller link directories of buttons where you can find sites that they are "mutuals" (both creators follow each other) and "friends/neighbors" — sites they follow. It's a great way to build community. There are also larger link directories of sites which someone finds cool, and it's a great way to intentionally explore the web. Here are some of my favorites:

SadGrl Links

Melonland Surf Club

Neocities Sites

Onio.Cafe

Though there are many more! 6. Random Site Generators

Finally, there are random site generators which allow you to randomly stumble upon websites. While not very practical, they are a lot of fun and offer a unique way to discover new corners of the web.

A list can be found here

What now?

The next question you have is probably how can you become an active member/contribute in this world of the underground web? I unfortunately don't have the energy to write a guide right now but it will come soon! In broad strokes, consider making a site on Neocities. If you do make a site, remember to include a robots.txt file to get AI and bots out of there and don't forget to rate your site so we can know who it's for. If you'd like to transition off social media I recommend an RSS Reader such as the one at 32bit.cafe or on Fraidycat (guide on this to come soon as well!). For your twitter-fix you can always post a status at Status Cafe and your mood at imood. There is a whole world out there full of passionate and friendly people who are ready to reclaim the web. Excited to see you there!

[watsername]

ok lets get into the creator league stuff (local essay andy is back)

I mean first and foremost what Is the creator league

its an esports tournament ran by eFuse and presented by Mr Beast. its designed as this kind of interactive league allowing fans to play with and for their favourite creators. their trailers on instagram claim that theres gonna be a full years worth of content, however Mr Beasts recent video claims the event will happen across a 10 month time frame.

so the ting that makes this event 'special' is that the creators are not listed as players in the event but as 'team managers'- which is where the creator pass comes in. Each creator has a 'pass' that allows you as a fan and viewer to join their team and participate in the league events. Each pass costs around $20 and from what ive read I believe you can only sign up to participate on behalf of one player.

obviously for reasons of fairness, not everyone who buys a pass will be able to officially compete- there is a limited number of spaces on each team and the places are won via an open qualifier Fortnite tournament where they will also be competing for a $50 k prize- although im yet to find any comment from creator league or any articles on how this money is split. But don't worry even if you don't qualify youre still entitled to a free box of mr beasts chocolate should you buy a pass before September 9th. yey.

so what's the problem with this.

I mean first of all. creators arent even required to play. they can fully just let their team do all the work in every event which might work for people like Vinnie Hacker I guess. This might be a way to try and 'even the playing field' by not giving creators with gaming backgrounds any advantage, however it makes the marketing of 'playing with your favourite creator' a little meh. also as a viewer, id be more interested in watching an event that my creator was an active participant in than just watching my streamer watch other people play on their behalf.

the other huge thing that everyone is really waiting to hear about in this post is the nft situation. so recently the narrator of the creator league announcement video, brycent, conformed that the passes are nfts to be minted on the blockchain operating system Near Protocol. so obviously people are extremely concerned about this discovered involvement in NFTs and crypto currency.

so I went to investigate the website to see what its looks like when you purchase a creator pass and unsurprisingly there is no mention on nfts anywhere. The passes are sold on mynt.gg , which according to their faqs is a 'first of its kind marketplace looking to evaluate esports through community' just have a look actually

so no mention of the passes actually being nft purchase here's . if we go to the check out as well this is what we see for the descriptors

so . people who are purchasing this have no way of actually knowing they are purchasing an nft. you also need an account to add a pass to your basket and im not willing to make an account so im unaware if at any time during the payment process people are made aware of what they are purchasing. its listed and discussed more like a membership than anything, and in a way it is there are benefits to it, however with no information as to what people are actually buying its extremely sketchy and a literally misleading purchase perhaps a scam even . since the fact that they've just purchased an not isn't listed anywhere on mynt.gg prior to purchase. and after going through a few more articles .

so theyre definitely trying to hide it from you. as mentioned you need an account to purchase anything. and you only get to know what youre purchasing if you go through the TOC, which most people don't read lets be real.

it's worth noting as well creator league is the only collection available on mynt.gg at the minute, it seems like this entire business was started FOR creator league.

after reading through the faqs again I want to correct myself and say that yes you can buy more than one pass, but only for one creator. so this seems to me like a pay to win scheme.

im not going to go super in depth into this bit bc its a topic that has already been discussed in detail but obviously a lot of people are not happy with the inclusion of nfts because of their environmental impact, the secrecy and dedication to hiding this fact that the company is involving crypto in the event itself is a little weird if u ask me. oh yeah theres been reports on twitter too that they have been blocking and deleting replies to their posts that accuse them on using crypto.

so theyre lying to you as the viewer about what they are and what youre purchasing. but it seems like theyre lying to the creators too.

again. crypto and nfts is not mentioned anywhere at all. not in the trailer, not on the website not in any announcements . only discovered when people were paying for passes bc they wanted to support their fave creators.

recently one of the listed creators Connor CDawgVA released a twitter statement conforming that he was completely blindsided by the fact that there was cryptocurrency involved in the event- if u haven't seen his tweet here

so this raises the question were creators told about their involvement with Near, or was it written using jargon that people unfamiliar with crypto would not pick up on.

CEO of TAMU Esports Dylan Liu also weighed in on the creator league misleading their creators as well here's his statements too

this isn't everything Dylan has had to say hes done a lot of discussions with people on blockchains and of the event itself as someone who has known about the event for a while, id recommend checking out his twitter if you have time he goes into depth about how much funding theyre getting from near and way more issues with creator league than I have time to explore rn .

but it really does seem that the Creator League and eFuse have gone out of their way to try and hide the fact that they are using cryptocurrency from everyone possible. This is a marketing scheme to try and trick people into buying into their market- and if you google Near Protocol right now you see that they are declining so they actively need more people to buy into their schemes.

investors are leaving Near right now. Theyre tricking people into buying into their organisation. At least thats my understanding of it im not hugely knowledgeable about crypto.

I have a headache lets just wrap this up

this is super sketchy . as of right now CDawgVA is the only creator to have withdrawn from the event, but I hope a lot of creators follow suit. its unknown to us the details of their contracts but from what we know of the event they have done everything to hide the genuine content of creator pass purchases from the viewers- making a lot of people rightfully angry that the event is trying to pull the wool over fans eyes. hiding tweets and refusing to acknowledge their involvement in crypto programmes to the point where its unclear if people like Mr Beast and any of the participating creators are aware of it is super suspicious activity. Especially with how vague their promotions have been on the event, very little information has been available on their instagram and I think it was yesterday that we actually got some kind of timeline of the event. its supposed to start like next week and so many people are still so unsure of what is actually happening in the event or what prizes theyre actually getting if they participate. there has been no redeeming quality in the way that this event has been conceived and executed and I really do hope to see that the event is cancelled or that creators start to speak out against the way that the event is being run and support the fans who feel cheated and blindsided by the organisers . I will say I do not believe any of the creators willingly involved themselves in a cryptocurrency scheme, it's all just too sketchy . and no I did not proofread this nor can I be bothered to .

[hellyeahheroes]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

Those are words of Arthur C. Clarke, but I do not think he was exactly right.

We now live in a world where every one of us has a personal device that allows them to communicate with the whole world, if they wish so, read and research any piece of information, watch from endless well of content. And yet how many of us can actually explain how exactly does it work? If it gets broken, how many of us can open and fix it?

We're now slowly coming to terms with the fact that Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which everyone assumed will be more tech-savvy than Millenials, are technology illiterate, having to learn from the basics any UI that isn't the touchscreen tiles.

Both of those are by design, as the corporations do not want us to be able to repair or tinker with their product, just buy a new one whenever something goes wrong. The way young people have been taught to operate a smartphone and an ipad was purposefully designed to discourage learning past the basics, or they'll "mess around" in the programming or see past the marketing guy's bullshit when he is selling them new one. Hell, so much of grift of NFTs crypto and AI relies on people not understanding how it actually works. This is why AI bros love the "you say AI is bad but can you explain what it actually does?" defense, trying to lord over how smart they are over "the masses", rely on ignorance to push through the scam.

In one of the Witcher stories, I forgot which one, Geralt mocking asks a wizard to explain the difference between menstrual blood of a teenage virgin struck by lightning in an open field of dandelions under clear sky at midnight of the winter solstice, and blood of old peasant matron that drunkinly stumbled and fell off a cliff last thuesday, and what makes the former necessary for magic rituals in the way the latter cannot substitute for. The wizard, smugly, admits he's actually using pig's blood. But if any peasant would know that would suffice, they would be doing magic themselves, instead of paying him. And if too many people would be doing magic, the profession would be far less prestigious. And far less profitable.

Clarke was, fundamentally wrong. It's not advancement that makes technology indistinguishible from magic, at least not on it's own. it's how much work wizard from Silicon Valley put into obsctructing its nature and making sure no one but them understands it.

-Admin

[funkygaypeopleinmyphone]

Nothing gets me into a fiery rage more than thinking about 343 has handled the Halo series after Bungie left it off on such a high note. 1, 2 and 3 were good, ODST and Reach were godlike, and they expanded on the universe quite a few times with books and comics and all that. And then 343 came in and just completely gumbled most of it up. CEA was cool, but basically just kitbashed Reach and upscaled Halo 3 assets together and lost some of the original touch the game had back in 2001.

Halo 4 was, ok? The best part was Cortana's story, going into more depth about rampancy and how it affects AI, especially one that we've known and loved for over a decade at that point. The Forerunners were fucking stupid personally, it's hinted to and LITERALLY SAID IN HALO 3, that humans are forerunners, just after the shitshow that was all the rings firing off. 343 Guilty Spark literally says that Chief is a forerunner, and then they just whipped it around and said "well actually he's a reclaimer because blablabla" ok whatever, they do flesh it out more in expanded works and explain it in Halo 4 so atleast theres that. Del Rio is an asshole to the savior of humanity for no reason. The sudden art style change that makes no sense is stupid, like you could've delayed the change until the Infinity rolled around. The Diadact is just space voldemort turning humanity into NFTs after being on r/nofap for 100,000 years, who then dies pretty unceremoniously to a shit ass grenade in a quick time event.

Halo 5 is.... fucking just Halo 5. The Cortaba story is so bad, why did you bring her back as an antagonist? Why didn't you stick to the marketing that was actually a really cool idea about Chief going rogue and hunting the truth. Where are the Marines? Why do I have to fight the Warden Eternal like 20 times? Better balancing than 4 i guess, but god the plot is just all over the place. And that fight scene with Chief, Chief was abducted as a child and forced into the spartan program and trained to be a cold brutal killer of the UNSC's foes. Without Mjolnir armor he straight up merked 2 ODSTs in hand-to-hand combat. This 7-foot-augmented-out-the-ass man had an equal match in a mass produced Spartan 4? Sure Locke is ONI so he's got some spice to him and he's still a Spartan wearing similar armor to Chief, but come on, you can't tell me a guy who saves humanity for breakfast is on a similar level to Halo Nightfall guy.

Infinite is strange. They basically drop Halo 5's characters for the most part, give Chief new (remastered Mk.6) armor, bring back older models of guns and stuff with a new coat of paint (Reach AR, Battle Rifle, now the DMR) and blow up Cortana and the Infinity within the first like, 30 minutes of the game. Ooooo the Banished except wait after Atriox's not-death they're pretty incompetent and are gettinf roflstomped by Chief and are really only good at killing UNSC off screen. The open world shit was ok, but for Halo i dont think its entirely the best idea to go for whatever Far Cry ass shit they pulled. Bringing back the old designs was really cool and much better than the sterile, clean, sharp edges of 4 and 5. Their armor and weapons looked like brand new toys while Infinite's look more realistic and have a bit more wear and tear to em. But its also missing a ton and just kind of ends off on a weird half note for the story. Like where are they gonna go with this? Idk, its just weird.

343, make more stories without Chief. I know Chief is the figurehead of the franchise, but for god's sake please please please make side stories in the universe. I want to see how humanity recovered after the war, how the different species in the Covenant took the end of the war. Exploring Forerunner sites? Side stories in the human-covenant war with ODSTs and Marines! You could totally make the Harvest campaign into a game! Give us the origin story for Sgt Johnson and how he and others did during the opening months of the conflict! Give us more on the Insurrection! You've done it before, Halo Forward Unto Dawn was actually a really cool movie, why don't you do some more stuff like that??

Idk, I love Halo but 343 gotta step their game up

[cryptoolivia]

What Exactly is Cryptocurrency? A Comprehensive Guide to Get You Started!

The term cryptocurrency has been gaining increasing attention over the past few years, capturing the interest of both investors and the general public. But what exactly is this emerging digital asset? How does it work, and what does it mean for someone new to the world of crypto? In this guide, we’ll walk you through the basics, from the core concepts to real-world applications, offering a complete insight into the rapidly evolving world of cryptocurrency.

What is Cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is a digital asset built on blockchain technology. Unlike traditional currencies, it is not issued by central banks but is created and managed through decentralized technology. The key characteristics of blockchain are its openness, transparency, and immutability, which allow for secure transactions without the need for intermediaries like banks or other financial institutions.

Bitcoin (BTC), created in 2009, is the first and most well-known cryptocurrency. Its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, aimed to leverage blockchain technology to build a new financial system that operates independently of traditional banking institutions. Since then, countless other cryptocurrencies have emerged, including Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and many more.

Different cryptocurrencies have different design goals. Some are used for payments, others for executing smart contracts, while others are primarily investment or store-of-value tools. In essence, cryptocurrencies emerged to address issues in the traditional financial system, such as high transaction fees, long settlement times, and lack of transparency.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain: The Relationship

To understand cryptocurrency, it’s essential to grasp the underlying technology — blockchain. Simply put, blockchain is a distributed ledger where all participants can view transaction records, but no one can arbitrarily alter them. Each time a transaction is completed, it’s added to a "block," and these blocks are linked in chronological order to form a chain — hence the name "blockchain." This setup ensures that every step of the transaction is traceable and nearly impossible to manipulate.

Another critical feature of blockchain is decentralization, meaning that no single entity controls the system, which, in theory, enhances its security and transparency. The reason cryptocurrencies are so popular is largely due to the independence that blockchain technology provides from traditional financial systems.

Beyond Payments: Cryptocurrency’s Other Use Cases

Although cryptocurrencies were initially designed as digital payment systems, their applications have grown exponentially over time. Here are a few common use cases:

Payment Systems: Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are widely used as global payment tools, especially in regions where traditional payment systems are inaccessible, such as countries with unstable political or economic conditions.

Smart Contracts and Decentralized Applications (DApps): Ethereum, beyond being a cryptocurrency, is also a platform for developing smart contracts — self-executing contracts that automatically enforce terms without human intervention. These contracts have broad applications across industries like law, finance, and logistics.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi): DeFi is one of the hottest trends in the crypto world. It aims to create a decentralized financial system where users can lend, borrow, trade, and earn interest on crypto assets without intermediaries like banks. DeFi is seen as more transparent and efficient compared to traditional banking systems.

NFTs and Digital Art: NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are unique digital assets stored on the blockchain. Each NFT has a unique identifier, making it impossible to copy or divide, which has led to their popularity in digital art and collectibles markets.

How to Buy Cryptocurrency?

For beginners, the most common way to buy cryptocurrency is through a crypto exchange. These platforms provide a convenient interface for users to convert fiat money (like USD, EUR, or TWD) into cryptocurrency. Popular exchanges include Binance, Bitget,OKX，Gate·io， Kraken and Bybit. These platforms typically support various payment methods, including bank transfers, credit cards, and third-party payment systems.

Here’s a basic guide to purchasing cryptocurrency:

Create an Account: Choose an exchange and create an account. Most exchanges require identity verification to comply with KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations.

Deposit Funds: Once registered, you can deposit funds via bank transfer or another payment method.

Choose a Cryptocurrency and Place an Order: After depositing, you can select the cryptocurrency you want to purchase, set the quantity, and place an order. Most exchanges offer market orders (buying at the current price) or limit orders (setting a target price).

Transfer to a Wallet: Once your purchase is complete, it’s recommended to transfer your cryptocurrency to a private wallet for safekeeping. Wallets can be online, hardware, or paper-based.

Security Concerns Around Cryptocurrency

While blockchain technology itself is highly secure, cryptocurrency transactions still come with significant risks. Some of the most common include:

Market Volatility: The price of cryptocurrencies can fluctuate wildly in short periods, offering high returns but also posing substantial risks, especially for newcomers.

Scams and Hacking: Fraudulent schemes, like "rug pulls" (where project creators disappear with investors’ money), are common. Exchanges are also frequent targets for hackers, making it crucial to choose a reputable platform and store assets in a secure personal wallet.

Regulatory Risk: Cryptocurrency regulations vary widely across different countries. Some nations ban crypto trading, like China, while others, like the U.S., Singapore, and Hong Kong, are more open. Investors need to be aware of local regulations, especially regarding tax reporting and asset management.

The Future of Cryptocurrency: Opportunities and Challenges

While cryptocurrency has seen significant growth, it still faces several challenges, including market volatility, regulatory uncertainty, and the need for improved user experiences. Stablecoins, like USDT and USDC, have emerged to address price volatility, offering a more stable investment option. However, as governments increasingly seek to regulate the sector, the industry’s transparency and legitimacy are likely to improve over time.

On the technological front, high-energy consumption is a critical issue for some cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin. However, projects like Ethereum's switch to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model, which is more energy-efficient than traditional Proof-of-Work (PoW), signal an environmentally friendly future for blockchain. With continuous advancements in technology and growing mainstream adoption, cryptocurrency is poised to become a significant part of our daily lives.

Conclusion

Cryptocurrency represents a transformative financial tool, offering new possibilities through decentralization, transparency, and efficiency. From Bitcoin to Ethereum, and from DeFi to NFTs, the scope of cryptocurrency’s application continues to expand, offering unprecedented opportunities for investors, developers, and everyday users.

Despite its potential, investing in cryptocurrency carries risks, particularly in terms of volatility, security, and regulatory uncertainty. However, for those willing to invest time in understanding the landscape and remaining patient as the technology matures, cryptocurrency presents an exciting frontier to explore.

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned crypto enthusiast, understanding the fundamental concepts and future prospects of this rapidly evolving field is key to thriving in the industry. As technology continues to develop and mainstream applications grow, cryptocurrency could become an integral part of our financial system, reshaping our understanding of money, transactions, and assets.

[surfboardfinance1]

Introducing Surfboard Finance: Revolutionizing Blockchain Asset Management

Surfboard Finance: Revolutionizing the Future of Blockchain Asset Management

In the rapidly evolving landscape of blockchain technology, managing digital assets across multiple networks can be a complex and fragmented experience. Surfboard Finance has emerged as a game-changer, offering users a seamless and comprehensive platform to manage a diverse portfolio, from cryptocurrencies to NFTs, all within a unified interface.

Bridging the Gap in Blockchain Asset Management Blockchain enthusiasts and investors often face a significant hurdle: managing their assets spread across various networks. Each blockchain ecosystem, whether it’s Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, or others, operates independently with its own protocols and systems. This decentralization, while innovative, creates silos that complicate asset management. Users are left juggling multiple platforms, wallets, and interfaces to track and analyze their assets, leading to inefficiencies and potential errors.

Surfboard Finance addresses these challenges head-on by aggregating data from various blockchains into one user-friendly platform. Its unique ability to provide a holistic view of assets in real-time empowers users to make well-informed decisions quickly. No more switching between wallets or interfaces – with Surfboard Finance, everything you need is at your fingertips.

The Power of AI in Blockchain

One of the standout features of Surfboard Finance is its use of AI-powered insights. In the volatile world of blockchain, timing and data-driven decisions are crucial. Surfboard's AI analyzes user portfolios and market trends, offering predictive analytics that help investors strategize effectively. This feature enhances user experience by delivering actionable insights, recommending when to buy, sell, or hold assets.

As blockchain ecosystems grow more complex, AI integration will be key in managing risk, identifying opportunities, and optimizing asset allocation. Surfboard Finance’s forward-thinking approach in this area solidifies its position as a leader in the blockchain space.

Empowering Users Through Decentralization

The ethos of decentralization remains a core principle for Surfboard Finance. Through its DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) governance model, users have a direct say in the platform’s evolution. From proposing new features to voting on key decisions, Surfboard's community-driven approach empowers users to shape the future of the platform. This level of transparency and involvement fosters trust and enhances user engagement, setting Surfboard Finance apart from other platforms in the market.

Surfboard Finance’s Vision for the Future

Surfboard Finance’s roadmap is packed with exciting developments. As part of its vision for the future, the platform aims to introduce advanced analytics for deeper market insights, enhanced AI capabilities, and a mobile app for on-the-go portfolio management. Furthermore, multi-language support will expand its global reach, making blockchain asset management more accessible to users worldwide.

Strategic partnerships with key players in the blockchain and financial sectors are also on the horizon. These collaborations will enhance the platform’s capabilities and open up new opportunities for investors.

Conclusion

As blockchain technology continues to evolve, Surfboard Finance is leading the charge in simplifying and transforming asset management. By providing a unified platform with AI-driven insights, decentralized governance, and a clear vision for the future, Surfboard Finance is poised to revolutionize how users manage their digital assets.

Whether you're a seasoned blockchain investor or new to the space, Surfboard Finance offers a comprehensive solution for efficient and informed asset management.

Call to Action: Ready to take control of your blockchain assets with Surfboard Finance? Visit our website to learn more, stay updated on new features, and be part of the community shaping the future of blockchain asset management.

Website: www.surfboard.finance Twitter: @SurfboardFinance Telegram: Surfboard Finance Group

[lawbyrhys]

The Logan Paul v. Coffeezilla Lawsuit: Part One

Here's a situation I never thought I'd be talking about, but here we are! Let's dive on in to Logan Paul's huge defamation suit against Coffeezilla.

This post is going to be Part 1 of the story; I will cover the background information and set the scene for what led up the the suit being filed, then cover the actual suit in another post.

Part 1 does not contain any of the actual lawsuit itself; this is just everything that led up to it. That said, though, I think it's important to offer something of an opening statement before we get into the real meat of the situation. That said, though, I'll keep this to a brief summary.

Check back for updates as the case goes on; I will publish them when I have time to write them. Let's get into the events that led to this crazy ass lawsuit.

If you don't know—lucky you—Logan Paul is an infamous internet personality, getting his start on Vine before moving on over to YouTube. Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffezilla, is a fellow creator in the YouTube space, though to my knowledge, he's not nearly as infamous. Now that the players in this case have been identified, let's get into what I'm here for: breaking down this mess of a case. Essentially, Paul promised CryptoZoo, his online gaming crypto-NFT business, would make users hard cash without actually having to lift more than a finger. Findeisen has been on Paul's trail for the better part of two years now; he's been tracking Paul's rise in income, his fans loss thereof, and the fall of CryptoZoo as a whole—calling it out for the scam he saw it is. That's where Paul comes in and slaps Findeisen with this defamation case, citing the latter "maliciously and repeated published false statements about [the former], accusing him of being a scammer," and these claims have "hurt [Paul's] reputation and caused him significant emotional distress."

You know, the standard defamation lawsuit shit.

What exactly is CryptoZoo, anyway? In short, the game was Pokemon-inspired and required users to buy coins to breed digital animals; the rarer of these animals would then earn the user cold, hard cash. Naturallt, the allure was there, and Paul's fans ended up spending over $2.5M on the game. This was excellent news to Paul since he claimed his team was out $1M on the project, and this led ro Paul gaining legitimacy on the crypto market, valued at nearly $2B for his so- called Zoo coin.

That was three years ago, though; as of 2024, the game is not playable, and all the money spent on it was essentially wasted. Just a month after launch, the development team behind the game jumped ship, alleging Paul and his team stole coins from its investors and lied to the world that he'd paid them their $1M back. Paul really had nothing to say, though, until Coffeezilla started talking about the alleged scam in 2022, and that's why we're here now.

What came between then and now was a series of Paul and his team pointing fingers at one another, casting blame for why the project failed and trying to dodge any and all accountability for where all of his fans' hard-earned money is. There is more frivalous drama to the story here, but I have a lot on my plate, so I'm skipping over the filler detail. The gist of it is Findeisen called out Paul enough times that the latter got pissed and sued him. Now, to the actual lawsuit!