Genderbendin' lulz
Part A of our lulz :
Part B of our lulz :
Part C of our lulz :
There is no part C of lulz. That's comedy.
Also taking bets on how long I last before an angry mob forms a lynch party.
To help things along on that score, and give everyone a sporting chance,
Part D of our lulz (Domine nos lulzy gratia!) :
« Futurology, or the very scary story of how doomed you are.
Euloraleaks »
Category: Rautati si Mizerii
Tuesday, 10 February, Year 7 d.Tr.
Further views from Noesunpaispobre
Spamed Travel is First-Best Travel! De los inventores del alfajor articulado y mucho mas!
Would Willy Wonka win a fight with the Wicked Witch of the West ?
Newton dixit.
Clockeria Maxima
Hay mas futuro por los trabajadoreros y alfajoreros!
Scioli para la Victoria!
I am unauthorized to unveil before you the secret lab of a certain character.
Industria Argentina.
Aclaracion de la Industria Argentina.
Youthful Amorous Confidence In The Time Of The Idiots.
Industria competitiva, deportiva y imaginativa Argentina. Y algo mas!
Los inventadores de la fugazza, fugazzetta, anvelopa y pan tostada. Herramientos completos + seguridad y respeto.
Technologia.
« Internoc24 LLC aka internoc24.com is a scam, or how Milan & Dragan Slatjovic stole ~700 euro from me.
Mixtapin' dat shit »
Category: La pas prin lume
Tuesday, 08 December, Year 7 d.Tr.
Fun with pairs of girls
That's where it's at, huh ? Alrighty, here goes :
Fun with the first pair of girls
A few years ago, I had occasion to drive a freshly acquired bit of bipedal property of United States origin across a number of train tracks. She had never been to Europe before, the action was taking place in a somewhat decrepit looking part of Eastern Europe (perhaps Serbia ?) and generally the whole experience of travel and slavery and so forth had overwhelmed her to the point of permanent bated breath.
So I said, turning, all casual-like, "careful not to step on the actual tracks". Obviously one's not about to ignore what the god damned master tells you to do, but there was more to it here. She had a poor understanding of physics and generally the real constraints of the world around heri which had been recently and overwhelmingly proven in numerous ways, and a good deal of fear of the novel stemming from itii. She gingerly stepped over the actual tracks (which, unlike the ones depicted, were shining fresh from regular use). Months later, feeling a little more at ease with basic science and engineering, she inquired as to the actual cause. And I told her I was just fucking with her.
Because, you know, one doesn't simply "have fun". It has to be organised and everything.
Fun with the second pair of girls
On display above is the coy behaviour, an innate mamallian reflex occasionally discussed here. Both women protect their pudenda iii, except the older one has obviously had her innate behaviours modulated by culture and society to the degree where her shoulders are significantly more relaxed than the young woman's. But apart from that, picture a relaxed spine, picture their respective spines, be amazed and be amused.
I know I am.
PS. Objectifying women doesn't simply or for that matter doesn't at all mean "treating them badly". Objectifying women is treating women as if they were things, that react in certain ways to certain constraints placed upon them, much like a steel bar of so and so thickness bends under so and so load in such and such manner. This stands in opposition to the irrational religious view promoted by US retards that, in continuation of ridiculous Victorian notions of romanticism, aims to present woman as some sort of metaphysical entitty - something it most emphatically is not.
PPS. You wouldn't want to metaphysicize men, either, would you ? So stop doing it to women - the good ones suffer from it, because no fiction can surpass objective greatness, whereas the shitty ones unduly get to insulate their shit from washing.
———Typical for people grown in that particular pen of religious fanaticism, by the way. [↩]Also typical, which is incidentally why US tourists are so easy to pick out anywhere in the sane world : they're insane, they know it, so they feel very insecure with anything outside the routine of their insanity. [↩]In Latin literally "that shameful bit", but be advised that what the Latins mean by "Shameful" isn't "what [the viewer] ought to be ashamed by" but much more practically, and much more positively (like you'd expect of any serious Latins) : that which the female tends to irrationally protect. As if she were - for some reason we don't see - ashamed of it. Apparently it's shameful to her, who knows. [↩]
« Apple : first greatest biggest etc.
Misopiny »
Category: Cocietate si Sultura
Wednesday, 28 January, Year 7 d.Tr.
Full disclosure : 4096 RSA key in the strongset factored.
As you may or may not know, No Such lAbs (trading on MPEx as S.NSA) has been for a while using BISP hardware to run Phuctor, a RSA key factorization service.
As you can see, it employs bleeding edge Greek technology from 2`500 years ago, in the shape of Euclid's GCDi to try and find common factors among keys. Since there's about 4 million keys (a little under) in the bundle of publicly known keys that it is processingii, if you're even vaguely mathematically literate and even marginally aware of what exactly theoretical RSA promises, you would on the strength of this introduction expect a key to be factored just a little before Elvis comes back as the Queen of England. So did we. So did everyone else.iii
Imagine my surprise, and Stan's surprise, and everyone's surprise - including your own once you find that yes, it has broken a pair of keys.
And it didn't even need the whole 4 million set - only a shade shy of 200k. If we were to liniarly extrapolate - which we won'tiv - that'd mean we'll see dozens more before all of this is said and done.
And it's not even an ancient 1024 bit key. No, it's a spiffy, relatively recent 4096 bit key, made 2011-09-22 and owned by someone in all likelyhood you know, or at any rate have heard of. Yes, that's right - the key's in the GPG strong set.
It is our sad duty to inform Mr. H. Peter Anvin (hpa) that his key with fingerprint 51EA B526 D875 4202 2AA1 BC85 E99E F4B4 5122 1121 is factorizable. And the first factor - get a load of this - is 231. Which... yes, 231 = 3 * 77. Way, way, way too small to be appearing here. How exactly it got past Pollard-rho and why exactly is 231 a factor in RSA keys is beyond the scope of this writing and sadly something we had not the time to investigate.
Which brings us to the most bitter part of this entire discussion : the server hosting phuctor suddenly became inaccessible yesterday. It returned, apparently untouched, after the DC rebooted it. While this may be simple coincidence, we have at the present time no way to ascertain whether it is or it is not. Consequently, the originally intended, civilised process of emailing the victim, keeping things quiet for a while to give them time to update and so on is not practicable : for all we know others unknown are at the current time in possession of the same information we have. On the balance of these considerations, it is my decision that all this must be published immediately, with apologies to everyone on the receiving end.
Nevertheless : emergency testing of all deployed RSA key generators must be undertaken now, to verify why exactly they would produce weak keys. Of special interest is, of course, the mechanism employed by Mr. Anvin himself, but one should not limit himself to that alone.
Let the scramble begin!
Update : Another pair was found. This also has one member in the strong set, but its owner is, apparently, luckier.
Update II : Amusingly enough, it seems Hacker News hand-diddled their story list to remove this discussion. Way to go Ydumbinator crew!
Update III : Because half the interest seems to be for some reason along these lines - here, that's how being on popurls, twitter etc looks like :
The server load was never above 0.5 ; Apache (unoptimized) chuggling quietly along, really nothing sensational to report. Even with all the software rot, hardware has progressed sufficiently since a decade ago so as to render "slashdotting" a historical relic rather than a fact of life. So it goes.
———Incidentally, not that many algorithms over two thousand years old are still efficient, today. Remarkable, isn't it ? [↩]Speaking of which - thanks a lot Gnu PG for making archival retarded. [↩]50:1 odds against is a pretty decent approximation of "never", seeing how what that says is "50 or more". [↩]We won't because liniar approximation never fits this. It's either one exponential or the other : before anything is found, it's exponential one way, but after something is found it becomes exponential the other way. In short, it would not particularly surprise me at this point if we find thousands, not dozens. [↩]
« /btc/, the most recent 8chan board
On how the factored 4096 RSA keys story was handled, and what it means to you. »
Category: Breaking News
Sunday, 17 May, Year 7 d.Tr.
Filth
Filthi paints as good an icon of the final stages of decomposition of the British Empireii as anything by Irvine Welsh ever could.
The first striking thing about it is the incredible poverty. Absolute, chilling, indigestible. A woman kneels by a dying man, and you can tell by the look on her face that what brought her to her knees isn't love, but something infinitely ugly : despair. THAT was all she had, a cardiac schmuck. Some cop makes a perfunctory, miserable attempt at sort-of maybe doing something, driven by the vague perception of some kind of regurgitated duty, barely recognisable in its parts. The woman clings to him, to the degree that she chases this disinterested, impoverished man to his sordidiii place of work, where she throws herself on him, rude, dressed but otherwise completely nude, child in tow. "Here, Tommy, this is the man I am now begging to take me in, look up to him as a father, whether he nods or not. We have nothing else, Tommy. Nothing at all. For Queen and Country, Tommy!" That is all she has. That's all anyone in there has, you get the distinct impression that everyone's wearing their only pair of clothes (mostly because - they do!) and no underwear for lack of underwear. Not in the sense that it's in the wash, in the sense that it's still on the ship. A ship that's not even coming their way.
The second striking thing about it is the incredible, absolutely unbelievable degree of moral decay the once proud empire now takes for granted, confuses for itself, for its own substance. The policeman, the typical policeman, will steal money from his own coworker at their masonic lodge. The same people who lied about the Rotherham enslavement of preteen white trash to the sexual proclivities of invading Asians last year, the same people who forced preteen girls in "refugee camps" at Darfur into survival prostitution, the same people. As Disraeli once said,
Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.
The third thing, but by now we're well dulled and so nothing could be striking, is the visceral unpleasantness, not outright painful but certainly not in the slightest, pleasant of everything. Everything. A young buck participates in the spitroasting of a whore, but it's no cause of enjoyment to any degree nor may he have the achievement : she taunts him. Why ? British. Then another woman bends over begging for the cock only to taunt the previous taunter. Who masturbates, apart, with such mannerisms that it leaves the viewer pondering whether the act is genuinely counter to the common intention - maybe the man is punishing his flesh in a flagellant manner ? The interpretation is plain and obviously possible, in context. His wife, with the mannerisms and accoutrements of a worn out whore, explains with hollow conviction worthy of a magazine piece the key to a happiness that could not conceivably make anyone happy, ever. Even the wallpaper is painful to watch.
Being born British is possibly a worse pox than being born with Noma. And there's only so many knitted scarves to go around.
———2013, by Jon S. Baird, with a bunch of inept, mumbling, ankylosed civillians. [↩]You know, that meanwhile failed mercantile concern of the 1800s that attempted - for a brief period with the appearance of success - to retcon itself into relevancy, cultural and otherwise (such as the rather amusing claim to being "the largest", first being already taken and best being forbidden by the requirements of "irony" as a psychic defense). [↩]Strikingly, strikingly sordid. When I was a wee privileged tyke growing up in poor soviet Romania, the sort of benches these subjects of Her MaJeStY's employ would have only been fit for the losers in the vocational schools. If that.
Twenty years have passed, the pretentious empire can't meanwhile manage to decently furnish an orc hut. [↩]
« Qntra (S.QNTR) October 2015 Statement
How an economy functions ; how the pretense of an economy functions. »
Category: Trilematograf
Friday, 06 November, Year 7 d.Tr.
Fierro, or - Argentina, that very comic country.
It is indeed rare that the general ineptitude, intellectual insufficiency, paste-like composition and universal degeneracy of a people shines through so uniformly and is displayed so ubiquitously as is the case with the mediterranean rejects that compose the population of Argentina.
To illustrate this point, which I expect contradicts whatever preconceived notions you might harbor on the topic (which in turn strictly survive because you do not live here), allow me to recount the story of my first acquisition of a comicbook in well over a decade. Because I saw this on a newstand :
So I ask the man "Fierro, por favor" and he offers me... some indistinct pulp magazine. I don't even remember what it had on the cover it was so unmemorably dull and unequivocally boring. "No ella, la buena" I protest, and he needs no further clarification. He pulls the thing I had seen from the outside window and sells it to me. It was, you see, a back edition. The back edition, no doubt the only time in that thing's existence when it was noteworthy to any degree. But we'll come back to this.
So I look inside, and I see this :
The drawing is obviously not of the same quality, inasmuch as whoever drew it necessarily didn't see a cunt in his entire acneic existence. There's a - very marked! - difference between the deliberate, careful, code-aware and purpose-driven stylisation of human anatomy as displayed on the cover and the haphazard collection of disparate, meaningless, flat items only related to human anatomy through the sheer ignorance and impenetrable darkness clinging to the flat walls in the author's brainbox. Moreover, that advertising page on the left is so broken, both visually and conceptually, it worries you to think they could nevertheless afford the slot.
Yet there's valuable information here, and I quote :
FIERRO (#103). La Historieta Argentina. Staffi : Director : Juan Sasturain, Jefe de Redaccion : Lautaro Ortiz, Diseno : Gabriel R. Minvielle. Editorial La Pagina SA, Solis 1525 CP C1134ADG CABA Argentina.
Impreso en el mes de mayo de 2015 en Kollor Press SA, Uruguay 124, Avellaneda.
Moving on, from the editorial page we find that
Specifically of interest, the lead-in:
Me gusta o al menos no me molesta pensar en la posibilidad de un lector ocasional de Fierro que se clave con la poderosa tapa de El Tomi, una maravilla mas. Quiero decir : que haya un desprevenido que suponga - a partir de esta imagen fuerte e sensual: el literal meter mano - el contenido de una revista alevosa o basicamente pajera (si cabe a la categoria soez), sin entrar en detalles escabrosos.
Uncharitably translated, this lengthy periphrasis comes to "It doesn't bother me to think that we've been doing this for over 100 issues, and we're still in the position where occasional readers submit material that's at its worst way, way above anything we ever produce on our own. We have other things to worry about than quality or productivity. We're Argentines, all we care about is pretense, periphrasis, and finding large bowls of liquids into which to put our faces and blow as hard as we can."
If you're more charitable you might come to formally different, but substantially identical results. Here's what this contemptible piece of pulp, this sorry waste of ink, this offensive maculature unfit to wrap fishguts into contains otherwise :
Confronted with this painfully acute poverty - of image and of imagination, of form and of color, and of content and of hands that aren't muddy feet and of everything else, the 70 yo retard going by the name of Juan Sasturain does exactly what you'd expect of an Argentine : he drones on, meaninglessly, unrelatedly. He drones on, piling piles of the same tired old shit he overheard while waiting tables for some English speakers, a while ago. He thinks that's the greatest thing ever.
He actually imagines, in his very servile but well stretched and well oiled asshole that plays in his case, like in each and every one of his compatriots' cases, the role of "brain" - or at the very least central ganglia - that the real problem here is whether anyone jacks off on his "respectable magazine". That's his issue. Not like Cummings actually made and distributed his cum-stained poetry in limited editions. Not like anything whatsoever happened since about 1880 or so, Britannia still rules the waves in these fucktarded heads, long after anyone who'd even understand what that was all about is even around anymore!
The mental inadvertency, the cultural irrelevance, the completely autistic derealisation of this schmuck is not merely a sad comment on the eventual fate of any one individual, and it's not simply the story of "what it's like to be 70 and not have a clue anymore". This entire country is 70, in its head. And has been, for nigh on a century already.
Yes, it's this bad. The one thing that may prevent foreigners from comprehending the true spirit of Argentina is those foreigners' disinclination to actually believe just how fucking stupid Argentines are, collectivelly and individually.
But hey, at least we won't think they're sucking cock, you know ?
———Seriously. Because they didn't JUST lose the Falklands to the Brits - they also lost their anal virginity. Willingly. Multiple times. [↩]
« That one with the eons.
So the broomstick fired. »
Category: La pas prin lume
Tuesday, 18 August, Year 7 d.Tr.
Female Trouble
John Waters' offeringi has, over any other film you may have watched or may have liked in the period, an undisputable advantage. The advantage is that when females struggle around the erect penis, some end on their backs, and when struggling females end up on their backs there's cunts in plain display. These are facts of life, indisputable. That some cultural constructs fail to handle some facts of life leaves them short and ugly, the direct equivalents of Windows - inept, useless, unappealing. Even if they have other features which you may have liked.
The entire film is constructed as a direct counter to mainstream culture, which is not exceptional for Waters. Moreso than in any other film of his, however, certainly moreso than in Pink Flamingos for instance, this dialogue is consistent and productive. Yes, the things you believe and center your life around come out with two black eyes and (deservedly) as laughingstocks. This is because that's what they are - scarcely a reason to dislike the messenger, so to speak.
Here, get a load of this phone conversation :
Is Earl Peterson there? This is Dawn Davenport. Dawn Davenport. You made love to me Christmas morning.ii Well, I just wanted to tell you... that I'm pregnant. And I want money.
You stole my wallet, you fat bitch!iii
So what if I did? I want money.
You'll never get any money from me, cow.iv Just 'cause you got them big udders don't mean you're somethin' special. Get the hook. Go fuck yourself for all I care. Yeah! Go fuck yourself!
It isn't... what isn't it. Is it not truthful ? Is it not proper ? Is it not how what, how you feel ? How everyone ever feels ? How most everyone mostly feels ?
There's a lot your mommy never told you, and only part of it is about Christmas. You'll find it here, if you know where to look, if you can read, if you're not entirely a vapid idiot. That's what art is, and that's what's important in the world. By comparison, fifty thousand other films Hollywood churned out in that decade scarcely register.
———Female Trouble, 1974, by John Waters with the usual suspects. [↩]She had run away from home after trampling her parent's gifts because no cha-cha heels. Classic hitch hiker fuck, complete with the strategically placed matresses. Oh, what you know of what you've missed of the original route 66. [↩]How did ~you~ think she knew the name ? Ah, what you don't know about how to be a tramp... there's a lot of life out there, baby. [↩]You think she should ? Cow ? [↩]
« Eulora News Bulletin of today.
Mouse / Keyboard Automation for Linux »
Category: Trilematograf
Thursday, 09 July, Year 7 d.Tr.
F.DERP March - April 2015 Combined Statement
F.DERP incoming and outgoing
Incoming
Outgoing
Description
Value
Description
Value
Stock sales
1.26900000
--
Total
1.26900000
Total
0
F.DERP assets
Account
01.03.2015
Net change
30.04.2015
Cash
7`511.50787766
1.26900000
7`512.77687766
Tangibles
0
0
0
Intangibles and goodwill
0
0
0
Total assets
7`512.77687766
F.DERP liabilities
Account
01.03.2015
Net change
30.04.2015
Coverage
121.64647625
1.26900000
131.94686211
Shareholder equity
7`380.83001555
0
7`380.83001555
Total liabilities
7`512.77687766
F.DERP has a total of 227`452`389 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00003245 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00003245 BTC.
F.DERP realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is thus 0 BTC.
Miscellaneous
Given the very poor operational and even poorer financial situation of the various DERPs, the constant dillutive issuances, as well as the butchering established tech sector symbols are taking on the fiat markets, there's unsurprisingly very little demand for F.DERP's wares.
« MPEx (S.MPOE) April 2015 Statement
The Fetlife Meatlist - Volume VIII »
Category: F.DERP
Saturday, 02 May, Year 7 d.Tr.
F.DERP January - February 2015 Combined Statement
F.DERP incoming and outgoing
Incoming
Outgoing
Description
Value
Description
Value
Stock sales
9.03138586
--
Total
9.03138586
Total
0
F.DERP assets
Account
01.01.2015
Net change
28.02.2015
Cash
7`502.4764918
9.03138586
7`511.50787766
Tangibles
0
0
0
Intangibles and goodwill
0
0
0
Total assets
7`511.50787766
F.DERP liabilities
Account
01.01.2015
Net change
28.02.2015
Coverage
121.64647625
27.09258396
130.67786211
Shareholder equity
7`380.83001555
0
7`380.83001555
Total liabilities
7`511.50787766
F.DERP has a total of 227`452`389 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00003245 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00003245 BTC.
F.DERP realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is thus 0 BTC.
Miscellaneous
Meanwhile D.CBSE issued a massively dilutive C series, which is of course horrible news for previous holders, but otherwise nothing unexpected.
I had hoped to be able to publish some juicy details about its missing B series (you recall, Coinbase loudly raised 31.7 million USD at an 79 mn valuation, then silence, and now raised a further 75mn through a C round at a 470 mn valuation claimed for EOY). Good stuff as to "who put up the extra 400mn, when exactly, and just how dilutively for (unprivileged) A series participants. Apparently all this will have to wait.
« MPIF (F.MPIF) February 2015 Statement
One. February. Three. »
Category: F.DERP
Saturday, 07 March, Year 7 d.Tr.
F.DERP December 2014 Statement
F.DERP incoming and outgoing
Incoming
Outgoing
Description
Value
Description
Value
Stock sales
27.09258396
--
Total
27.09258396
Total
0
F.DERP assets
Account
01.12.2014
Net change
31.12.2014
Cash
7`475.38390784
27.09258396
7`502.4764918
Tangibles
0
0
0
Intangibles and goodwill
0
0
0
Total assets
7`502.4764918
F.DERP liabilities
Account
01.12.2014
Net change
31.12.2014
Coverage
94.55389229
27.09258396
121.64647625
Shareholder equity
7`380.83001555
0
7`380.83001555
Total liabilities
7`502.4764918
F.DERP has a total of 227`452`389 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00003245 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00003245 BTC.
F.DERP realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is thus 0 BTC.
Miscellaneous
It is a matter of great consternation to me that in spite of continuing depreciation in the BTC/USD pair, the volume of these shares bought on the open market increases at a glacial pace : barely 20% over last month. If you think about it, the BTC trades today for less than half what it did back when these contracts were created. So : either the BTC value as presented by the "exchanges" carries virtually no weight in the eyes of investors, or else the perspectives of a Bitcoin company scale more or less directly with the exchange rate. Or who knows, other factors. I would be interested to hear other takes on this topic.
In any case, since the present low price levels fail to attract much business if at all, I will increase the asking price across the board by 100%, to more or less reflect the "value" of the original "investment" in these things. Curious what that does more than anything.
« No Such lAbs (S.NSA), November 2014 and December 2014 Joint Statement
X.IDIFF retirement »
Category: F.DERP
Wednesday, 07 January, Year 7 d.Tr.
Facebook sends traffic!!11eleven
pete_dushenski: o.O mp has representation on facebook. nuts.
Of course I do. It's cheap, pointless and ineffectual. Just like the rest of social media.i That said, it is not particularly difficult to "succeed"ii by the various meaningless metrics "available".iii
As an illustrative example : a recent "campaign"iv produced
$ grep -c "/fb/" 'trilema.com-Oct-2015'
111
That's 111 website clicks in ~8 hours, and because of the particular way your mind is broken I can almost hear you go "not bad".v Then I could mention Facebook aims to sell these at 26 to 52 cents each, as it quoted me, and your eyes light up even if you "don't understand this web stuff", ie, your mind is broken but not in this particular way : "That's almost 50 dollars!". No, it is not. "And you made it while you slept." No, I did not.
But in any case, let's look deeper into it :
$ grep "/fb/" 'trilema.com-Oct-2015' | awk '{print $1}'
190.55.116.88 ; 66.220.156.100 ; 66.220.156.96 ; 66.220.156.99 ; 66.220.156.97 ; 66.220.156.121 ; 66.220.156.106 ; 66.220.156.115 ; 66.220.156.103 ; 66.220.156.122 ; 66.220.156.113 ; 66.220.156.101 ; 66.220.156.121 ; 66.220.156.115 ; 66.220.156.113 ; 66.220.156.115 ; 66.220.156.101 ; 66.220.156.101 ; 66.220.156.115 ; 66.220.156.120 ; 66.220.156.118 ; 66.220.156.119 ; 66.220.156.98 ; 66.220.156.103 ; 66.220.156.115 ; 66.220.156.98 ; 66.220.156.103 ; 66.220.156.112 ; 66.220.156.123 ; 66.220.156.114 ; 66.220.156.111 ; 66.220.156.104 ; 66.220.156.107 ; 173.252.102.116 ; 66.220.158.109 ; 66.220.158.109 ; 66.220.158.114 ; 66.220.158.100 ; 66.220.158.119 ; 66.220.158.105 ; 66.220.158.116 ; 66.220.158.116 ; 66.220.158.123 ; 66.220.158.114 ; 66.220.158.121 ; 66.220.158.112 ; 181.174.106.249 ; 114.108.217.117 ; 114.108.217.117 ; 103.246.39.212 ; 112.210.15.14 ; 177.207.117.65 ; 192.249.130.61 ; 98.239.27.122 ; 201.102.173.228 ; 31.185.220.102 ; 216.4.56.160 ; 177.221.23.51 ; 223.196.16.220 ; 189.120.42.53 ; 189.93.186.79 ; 105.182.88.108 ; 223.196.76.62 ; 41.228.58.237 ; 200.85.80.122 ; 36.77.159.191 ; 213.55.25.27 ; 107.167.109.99 ; 66.220.145.243 ; 202.69.11.23 ; 117.74.121.3 ; 112.215.36.143 ; 179.131.35.19 ; 185.81.141.79 ; 103.25.13.77 ; 103.246.38.196 ; 122.52.65.160 ; 39.43.59.250 ; 191.247.226.24 ; 39.34.182.5 ; 176.44.244.31 ; 94.122.89.213 ; 175.110.218.183 ; 180.251.16.221 ; 180.251.16.221 ; 191.202.229.17 ; 177.79.33.24 ; 8.37.227.21 ; 175.143.184.196 ; 5.109.0.224 ; 5.109.0.224 ; 187.56.23.211 ; 39.55.186.8 ; 185.15.63.24 ; 186.153.197.69 ; 189.40.81.96 ; 189.40.81.96 ; 189.40.81.96 ; 189.106.200.73 ; 39.41.95.152 ; 118.137.10.198 ; 109.129.103.118 ; 109.129.103.118 ; 188.247.74.232 ; 185.88.24.27 ; 168.235.197.210 ; 14.195.185.19 ; 14.195.185.19 ; 41.36.33.133 ; 105.106.55.220 ; 31.31.180.152
I wonder who that 66.220.0.0/16 is, don't you ? Easy enough to find out
$ whois 66.220.156.101
NetRange: 66.220.144.0 - 66.220.159.255
CIDR: 66.220.144.0/20
NetName: TFBNET3
NetHandle: NET-66-220-144-0-1
Parent: NET66 (NET-66-0-0-0-0)
NetType: Direct Assignment
OriginAS: AS32934
Organization: Facebook, Inc. (THEFA-3)
Awww. Strike half of the "traffic", it's directly self-generated. So what of the remainder ?
Nothing.
Yeah, that's right, read that again : nothing.
A previous "campaign" running for three days a week ago resulted in... 6`058 clicks. (Hey, That's almost three thousand dollars!!11). It included a call to action. It got 0 actions.
The call to action wasn't for someone to buy something, it was for someone to get paid, to do something trivial. Something in the spirit of that time when a guy was claiming in #b-a that he is running a rental business, but then NOT A SINGLE ONE of his supposed renters was willing to take a picture for fifty dollars. Because people don't clip coupons to save fifty cents, that's all a dream, it never happened, it was hallucinated retrospectively.
If not a single one out of 6k "uniques", "visitors", "people" and what else you might wish to call these empty numbers to delude yourself (worth 3k!!1) was interested in picking up fifty bucks lying on the ground, what chances do you think you have ?vi
No, seriously, what chances do you think you have ? Oh, that's right, I forgot, you've just not found the exactly correct arrangement of electrically isolated knobs, if you straighten the plates just so then who knows, maybe your real life suddenly begins, with an audible pop.
Good luck, buster, keep arranging those plates. I hear it tenderizes the asshole.
———One quote :
ascii_field http://btcbase.org/log/?date=13-10-2015#1297760 i huckster set lives.
assbot: Logged on 13-10-2015 16:16:53; mircea_popescu binaryatrocity that's not what it does. What it does is, it allows keybase.io to PRETEND like they're relevant, based on your own work.
ascii_field 'I'm on arsebook, but I have a brain!' 'Good work, now arsebook can say, 'some of our users have brains!'' lubing up the chumpatronic intake hopper.
mircea_popescu Aye. Just for my own amusementii, I had a subreddit created ; and seeded it with a coupla posts. One week later traffic on it ? 0. "Reddit is relevant". To what ? "Well if you're already there it looks like there's people there". Sure. Same is true of Grand Central station.iii
davout What's the subreddit?
mircea_popescu "No you don't understand, reddit drives traffic!!1" Orly ? It drives exactly 0, on its own.
mircea_popescu davout no, because "irrelevant" MP is going to accidentally by an apropos drive 50000% more traffic than reddit and then reddit will go "see ? REDDIT DRIVES TRAFFIC!!11".
———
He means Sillicon Valley. Yes, all of it.
By the way : do you know its name comes from the fact that at some point they used to make silicon ? [↩]
That's right : you might not be interested in things. The things are interested in you. Only one of these two sides actually has any power, and it isn't you. [↩]
Think about it : the fact that it rains now and again does not mean the ridiculous derp sitting in a conference room he can't afford, alone with a burn rate that's splitting his ass open "drove rain". He drove nothing, rain is a natural phenomena.
He provably has absolutely NO power to make it rain in an arbitrarily chosen spot at an arbitrarily chosen time, which is how these sorts of claims are evaluated by sane people. The fact that "it rains now and again" and "he's the one working on rain" does not create a relation between the two. Thinking otherwise is known as the attribution error, which is how chimps and very stupid people "think". [↩]
[↩]The account we're discussing is a week old and has ~1k friends. It uses a Trilema picture for a background which happens to depict a woman in a red dress and heels on her knees with a shiny metal cuff on her wrist.
This is enough to attract MULTIPLE daily chat requests, from horny males who wish to go through the following checklist : "hi" "how are you" "where are you from" "are you looking for a dude". It diverges around the 3rd spot formally, but not substantially. Because yes, this is what God put women on this earth for : 5 billion instances a day of "hi" "how are you" "where are you from". That's why they're here, to appreciate the smooth-as-butter variation between 4.89765976 "are you married" and 4.90932897 "do you have big tits ???". Someone somewhere actually has time for this shit, someone somewhere actually is interested in what random derp on social media has to say privately, and that someone somewhere is supposedly ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE. ALL THE TIME. Insanity.
"Feminism" in the monstrous, mayogendered shape it occupies today is not sent down by aliens to destroy you, it's not a conspiracy by the illuminati to oppress you. It is nemesis, a righteous infliction of punishment. It's for your sins.
You suck, people. And the ones that "don't suck" actually suck even worse. [↩]Here's the problem with meaningless metrics : not only do they deliver no actual benefit, they actually hinder thought and the accumulation of knowledge.
Just because they're available doesn't mean they should be used. Whether they should be used or not is predicated upon whether they're meaningful, not upon whether they're shiny, or accessible, or lend themselves to easy processing with the sorts of tools you're familiar with.
"Analytics" in the web sense of that term is roughly speaking fast-food, and that a generation of derps spend their time between "metrics" and "pizza" seems to me particularly amusing. [↩]Here's an idea of what I mean by "campaign" : Ask.fm laid bare, or what's half a million uniques to you ?
As I said, just because you're not interested in things doesn't mean things aren't interested in you. In point of fact all social media, not just Fetlife, not just any one example of the day is incredibly vulnerable. A few engineers' few hours away, a coupla scripts later, a few boxes' labour spent one can just write his own numbers. And one sometimes does - but most of the time one does not. Because here's the thing with meaningless metrics : even if you steal them, you're still losing.
If a metric is merely bad, like for instance the US Dollar is a bad metric for wealth, then getting a million dollars a thousand times easier than your greengrocer may not be a wasted exercise. It may well be true that the million is not worth a million, but it is probable it is still worth something, and it is also probable you might trade it to the greengrocer for more paltas than you'd have been able to grow on your own in the same time.
Meanwhile, if a metric is actually meaningless (like ALL web analytics, without exception), then you having stolen the million puts you in no better position than his. This is the great difference between multiplying by epsilon and multypling by zero. It matters.
The very easy error to make is to imagine that "there's no such thing as zero in nature", and then apply this to the web. The problem with this is that we're not actually discussing nature. Yes, it is improbable to have a potato, no matter how rotten, old, stale, dry, that is actually worth zero. Nevertheless, it is not merely probable, it is an absolute certainty that if you spend an entire day, or the entire remainder of your days satisfying the "hi" "how are you" "where are you from" checklist of a billion derps you will be no further along than if you just watched TV. Which is why people watch TV instead of "communicating" or whatever. [↩]Hey, at the currently seen 0.01% CTR, this would be equivalent to a display ad campaign running over one million impressions, which is roughly speaking what Gawker does in a month or two.
So it's basically... I just borrowed Gawker's ad space for a while. Go me. [↩]Yes, I am in the fortunate position where I can afford to spend my own money to find out the truth, and then publish it as a public service.
It's not merely that you aren't - it's that you aren't actually taking any steps to protect and promote the functional mechanism, and to discourage and defund the dysfunctional mechanisms. How many letters to your senator did you write pointing out that he should force the SEC to apply to be a MPEx subsidiary, on the grounds that MPEx actually polices the fraud in its space whereas the SEC is the principal driver of fraud in its space ?
Ah, none ? Cool.
I guess the world just sucks by itself, then. It must be.
The thing is, though : I will regulate you whether you want to or not. The only thing that's at stake is how I look upon you, nothing more. [↩]
« The Aviator
Carnita... »
Category: Meta psihoza
Monday, 19 October, Year 7 d.Tr.
Ever heard of Ion Iliescu ?
We find from the November 2015 edition of Raices del Deporte Argentinoi that
There are also some unsubstatiated, unflattering rumours that a character by the same name stayed home and involved himself in the workings of the communist party. Nevertheless, curva volant, scripta manent.
———Una publicacion mensual de distribucion gratuita made possible by the efforts of Adolfo Resnik (director) ; Diego Resnik (vice-director) and Celia Sidelnick (secretaria de redaccion). [↩]
« MPIF (F.MPIF) October-November 2015 Statement
No Such lAbs (S.NSA), November 2015 Statement »
Category: Trilema Presei
Friday, 04 December, Year 7 d.Tr.
Eulorean Crafting - The Pickaxe Illumination
Suppose we wish to make one of those spiffy Stone Pickaxes all the cool kids use to save their hands from going raw on the lush, verdant bare rocks of Eulora.
First off, we'd need a recipe. Fortunately, the merchant's got one. It says :
From that list we readily identify Solid Branch as something we've dug up before, and consequently the merchant also has a supply. The Improbable Oil and the Pointy Clump of Slag have to be crafted in turn. Let's look at the first :
5 Slags, Improbable Oil. Let's check with Mr. Electron Spirover, Merchant Extraordinaire (he's the guy that looks like an animated fruit box).
Oh look at that, the Improbable Oil Schenectady is probably what we need! Gee, I wonder what all those Confabulations do...
Wooly Mushrooms, Spicy Moss was at the merchant, Boulders are definitely a common find, what of that Leaky Treebark Flask ?
Ouch. So... Coarse Frangible Thread, Indistinct Bark Shavings and Disgusting Goop. Which... all are crafted, aren't they ? Yes, yes they are. Well... alright then, one at a time :
The... the... the bark shavings are McGuyvered out of flotsam and rock with the use of one's trusty Bandar Toolkit and... Chair For The Head ? But we don't have either of these! Does it mean we will have to craft them ?
Actually... yes, it does. To cut a long story short, here's a diagram :
/SB / 5 F
SP - PCoS - 5 S - 3 SR
\ \ / CFT - 3 CoG
\ \ / WM /
\ \IO - 3 SM / / 2 F
\ \ LTF - IBS - SR
\ \
\ \ / 3 RF
+----------------\ DG - SM
\ CR
And this, of course, doesn't get into the details of how to craft the toolkit or the peculiar hat. And don't get me started even on what it takes to make a bottle of Widow's Whisp Berry Tincture (which I made, by the way - as well as make my own Multifunctional Samovar and... other things. You'll see).
Here, some samples of ready made ingredients :
Engineering complexity aside, admire the claim wall someone made, and the altar to keys he graced it with :
Remember chitlins : follow the claim wall!
« Eulora client Freenode patch
Butterfield 8 »
Category: Trolloludens
Tuesday, 09 June, Year 7 d.Tr.
Eulora's largest trade to date and assorted teologico-socioeconomic considerations
span.blink {text-decoration: blink;}
Obviously, this is barely half the value of The Auction so what the fuck am I talking about "largest" ?
Well, you see... that was an auction. Official business of the MiniGame, which is the publisher of Eulora, which therefore owns it. Conducted, of course, through its representative here on earth : me. Whereas this was ... a trade. Private business among Euloran citizens, as it were, one of which happens to be... me. So very not alike different things altogether, right ?i
We interrupt this discussion to bring you a selection of quotes.
neverming, this fucking game brings out the worst in me
~ jurov
Lately it's been taking up the majority of my time -- the game is that good.
It's the most capitalist game that ever has been and I can't get enough of it.
~ danielpbarron
The balance sheets and similar shenanigans seem to indicate the game's shaping up to come out as a commercial successii, but of much greatest interest to me (for reasons) is how the game's shaping up to be a cultural success.
It's not just the quotes sampled above that suggest Eulora manages a very deep and very personal connection with its player base - exposing for their benefit and writhing-in-horror-curiosity facets of their own self that, for lack of a sane environment, have not had an opportunity to stretch out or take in the sun in years, maybe decades. Maybe forever. Yet no, there's nothing wrong with one's own greed, per se. It may be scary to meet the tortured, sad remains of a part of one's self that was kept chained in a dank cellar "nobody knew about" somewhere deep deep under the conscious earth. And yet ... it means you no harm, or at least didn't, back in the day it was still a thing of you, and a thing of yours. I believe the exercise to be deeply liberating and fundamentally helpful in the manner of healing, provided the trampled bit is approached like all abused kittens are to be approached : kindly.
But it's not this fulminant, seemingly bottomless capacity for personal interest that interests me first of all. It's moreover the exceptional field of actual research into topics that are rarely ever considered, and generally when considered they're utterly fuseriteiii. Let's look into two of these.
First off, nascent economy. Originally there wasn't anything in Eulora, and then there were some things, and now we're on our way to widespread shortages of various kinds, which means we have a lot of things!iv. How do you go from nothing to something ?
Theft.
Yes, that's right - motherfucking THEFT. The only way.
So yeah, originally the game "was broken" and huge finds extremely common. People took home tens of thousands of basic resources with qualities of 500, 700, 900 even. Remarkable claims were by far the most common find in all the land. Such is unheard of today, of course, and in all likelihood will stay unheard of. I have to work my butt off today for maybe one day reaching q 200 eventually, an eventually which seems every day more dubious.
What did they do with them ? Plenty ended up sold to the merchant, plenty rotted out where they stood, at least some made into storage, to be slowly ground downv. Can you smell Americavi yet ?
Fine. But what once that's over with ? What happens once the wild early days of capitalism come to a close ? I think you'll never guess.
Command Economy.
Yeah, that's right - motherfucking command economy. Except, and here's the incredible part - Eulora command economy was not forced by use of violence and from the top down! It emerged naturally! You see, as the resources are scarce now, and the needs ample and the fear that we may end up stuck for having used all X to make Y and now not having any to make Z which turns out to be critically required, people tend to talk. And to work together, cooperatively, towards a very common goal : getting the economic cycles to cycle.
Money is not that meaningful currently, and I'll quote an absolutely fine example to illustrate this. One of the many "needed but no supply known" ingredients was TLC (Two Leaf Clover, aka Diana's Doifoi). This thing was recently found, by Daniel Barron, through the application of his monopolistic skillset and tools. How much should he charge ? He asked me for 20k, and I passed - but I must underline that I do not begrudge the man the asking in the slightest. He has spent large piles of copper to obtain this, and has a good position which he should exploit in order to ensure his very own survival. And he should survive, because he's valuable - he's the guy that got us the clover at all after all!
Yet I also can't pay that much. Clover is needed for two things - I found a coupla ordinary Rotten Fruit claims which need it, in substantial quantities. So have other players. Yet we can find Rotten Fruit in other ways, they're not stuck on using the clover, so it's not worth paying 2`000% on it. We'll just get all the fruit we need out of tinies and smalls, with the comparatively abundant LBNs and CFTs. The other thing is, you need Alchemist's Cheap Gin to do a whole swath of things, including... making ink. Which is needed to pen Supplications, which is the paperwork powering Daniel's own skill. It stands to reason that since he has the only engine making TLC, and we know of no other equally important use of ink atm, he should get it. In which case, the pricing problem is readily resolved :
mircea_popescu: anyway what i think i'll do is take the clover and deliver alchemist cheap gin on a labour & materials billing basis. how about that danielpbarron ? not like anyone else actually needs it atm.
So yeah, since TLC happens to be 1/7.5 of the base cost of an ACG, he gets a 13.5% discount off the final price and now is free to set the price for TLC to any arbitrary value he wishes. If TLC is 100k then ACG is 100k + whatever he paid me for it and that's that. Prices, as you can see, do not predate economic activity, and price formation, as you can see, is not actually the driver of economic activity. These results are not only earth shattering to this so called discipline of "economy" - but they are actually backed by actual experimental data, which is fundamentally different from anything else ever attempted in that sad, sad field.
There's a lot more to be said in this line, but we're running long, so let's move on to
Second off, nascent society. In practical terms, Mircea Mircescu is a byword for Messiah in Eulora. Ipso definitio, a man that has immediate access to the divinity whose logos spawned the whole shebang is Messiah.
How do you have an argument with the man that knows the world behind the world ? And understand that "an argument" does not mean, bickering. An argument means life. Suppose MM asks you for 1.5 mn for a so and so craft table. How do you say no ? As Diana Coman pointedly (and, I suspect, at times bitterly) observed - it's not even a meaningful question, what alternatives are there ?
Practically speaking, one faces the lopsided dilemma of either participating in the Messiah-driven command economy, or else trying to work independently, sort-of like mining an alternate blockchain by hand. And so yes, here we have discovered the prerequisite for command economy to work - have you got Messiah walking along with you ? No ? Forget about it then.
This situation is decidedly innerving for most participants, and perhaps for good measure - men weren't made to walk around in such nonsense. Yet all the kids think and in their heart of hearts most adults also think that they would love a world with magic in it. Would they ? Really ?
Obviously, the elephant in the room is that the situation is rife for abuse. What's to keep me from you know, simply tipping the table this way or that ? Not like I couldn't - by definition I can, and for this reason formalist defenses of the nature of "do not say X Y Z words and you'll go to heaven" do not actually work. I do have better things to do with my time than turning Eulora into a parlor trick, of course, but then again there's no way to prove that, is there. So it turns out the entire Messiah arrangement actually requires faith! Isn't that a conundrum - one can trivially insulate himself from this corrosive world by simply not playing this game. But then again - isn't this the superlative point of a game in the first place ? "It's too good a game to play!", seriously ?
Players generally think that it sucks when the devs don't play the game. Yet when they do...
So there you have it - my current fascination of the moment. The Economy, Sociology and Teology Experimental Laboratory. It's a thing, it exists. Fascinatingly.
In closing, I leave you with an icon of hard work and Indus-treevii :
———Here's a fun sidepoint : where does this article go, in "S.MG" or in "Trololudens" ? If it goes in the former it gets picked up by the bot, of course, but then again such isn't a consideration for me.
The same distinction applies, is it a case of player enjoying a game (trololudens), or is it a case of lead dev making pronouncements about his ideal game (ambiguous) or is it a case of head suit (ie, Nick Denton, not that anon derp that quit w/e his name was) telling it how it is ? Hard call. For what it's worth, the article started as the latter, and ended up as the former. Hopefully I'm right.
Because if I'm not, "bad things will happen", supposedly. Not to me, obviously, but let's imagine I were someone else - then! [↩]BTC revenue from copper sales is > 6 BTC so far this month, a 157% increase over last month's 2.32661832 BTC. Moreover all usage metrics are headed straight uphillmountain, players be burning three digit satoshis per second these days. Think about it - transaction fees of the entire Bitcoin network are not that high! (Support larger blocks ftw! So a multi-billion dollar p2p thing makes less revenue than a two month old MMORPG!) [↩]Romanian word, chiefly describes homework when it wasn't actually done. The homework equivalent of a table the termites had their way with, or of a Sillicon Valley "company". Such as this crap. [↩]Elementary : to have a shortage you must have other things to compare with. There can be a shortage of toilet paper in the Soviet Union, because they had plumbing and toilets. If you look at it, the plumbing and toilets is the larger part of all this. There can be a shortage of jet fuel in Nazi Germany, but because they had the jets! Meanwhile in the country of Africa nobody had either the jets nor the toilets, and so there were no shortages whatsoever. [↩]My recent SR find being a fine example of this grinding down. [↩]Not the geographic shithole. The fundamental human dream, before turning into the present shithole. [↩]That run was actually a loss, ~480 grass for 180 CFT in the ground and that's not even counting the two Cruddy Hoes I burned down. [↩]
« Night Falls on Manhattan
Oracle Sunday on Eulora »
Category: S.MG
Thursday, 23 July, Year 7 d.Tr.
Euloraleaks
I broke into the S.MG secrets factories and all I got is this lousy pic :
So : crafting was done already, mining is already pretty much done. The way it works is that there are some skills involved, which you may or may not manage to get. If you get at least one, you can mine. There are also tools involved, which obviously you can craft, provided you can find the materials and recipes - but you don't need them. You can dig shit up with your bare hands, at a cost of health.
Whenever you find something, you get a claim in the ground, a key in your pocket and (for now) a recipe for developing your claim. Developing your claim is a building process that takes a recipe, building materialsi and at least one relevant skill. Once developed, the claim essentially turns into a chest holding a quantity of whatever it is you found.
You can also sell your claim, by selling the key. Whoever buys it will be able to develop it as if he had found it himself. There are two, entirely separate rolls involved : when you go looking for materials you roll to establish what size and type of material you find, and no more. At this point, any two claims of the same size and type are exactly equally valuable. Then, when you develop a claim you roll again, to see the exact find you get. This roll depends on the relevant skills and the stats of the developer, so trading out claims to specialists is a rational move - if only it can be figured out what actually makes one a specialist.ii
As you can see, qualities are a complicated matter in this game.
In any case : mining is insanely complicated an activity. I do not believe that anyone will manage to figure out how it actually works within my lifetime. (I am also very curious as to how this prediction will fare.) Honestly from what I've seen so far, I'm willing to say that this game beats everything available today on the strength of mining complexity alone.
You know that old story about how Explorer types of players are never catered to, because creating exploring content is the most expensive activity, so everyone just caters to the Growth demographic as much as feasible to build a Social (ie, PVP) demographic out of it and maybe make some money ? Yeah, well... I warn you, if you're the obsesive-compulsive explorer type, stay away. If you make the mistake of trying to go mining in Eulora, you'll never, ever, ever find your way back out again.
You were warned.
PS. Did you notice the spelling ? Yeah, that means you.
———Function of the claim size. There's seven of those : Tiny (under 10k satoshi, 0.0001 BTC) ; Small (larger than Tiny but under a bitcent) ; Ordinary (larger than Small but under a Bitcoin) ; Remarkable (larger than Ordinary but under 10 Bitcoin) ; Sizable (larger than Remarkable but under 100 Bitcoin) ; Ample (larger than Sizable but under 1`000 Bitcoin) and Exceptional (larger than 1`000 Bitcoin). [↩]Note that the find sizes are not linearly distributed, so it is not correct to say that a Remarkable find is worth ~5.5 Bitcoin. It will be definitely closer to 1, but exactly how close is left as an exercise to the players.
Moreover, because raw materials will be found randomly but consumed according to set recipes, necessarily there will exist situations of shortage and oversupply. In these circumstances we expect items to sell at all times at a mark-up over their "value", which will vary by type, and obviously over time. Thus Iron may be worth say 135%, so that 100 BTC worth of iron actually fetches 135 Bitcoins, whereas Bottled Queef Gas may be worth 755%, meaning that a quantity of gas nominally worth two Bitcoin actually trades for 15.1 on the market.
Since NPCs will always buy anything in exchange for its nominal value, it doesn't ever make sense to sell anything under 100%. However, since crafting evolves, it does make sense to store various materials, if overabundant. Within some limits, of course, as storage also has its own fixed costs (gotta build a chest or warehouse or something). [↩]
« Genderbendin' lulz
Latino perspectives. »
Category: S.MG
Tuesday, 10 February, Year 7 d.Tr.
Eulora!
The first Sunday event concluded. Anne Arky, Grundin Goldskull, Hodor Goatnipples, Daniel Barron, Mod Seis and Foxy Foxster each received a magically enchanted bezzlebagi and then we threw a beach party in a ravine.
Here's a look upclose to Anne's bag :
Here's people lining up to receive teh itam :
Here's a minirave :
Eulora broke all records of attendance today : 8 people online at the same time! In fact, here's a stat :
> SELECT sum(time_connected_sec) FROM characters WHERE id > 260ii
474566
That's right : people who aren't me played a total 131 hours and change this week!iii Yay.
Eulora also realised the first revenue for Minigame today - Grundin Goldskull won an ad-hoc auction to establish the official game currency seller, with an offer of 0.1 BTC for 10000000 copper coins. So if you want some coin, talk to him.
Other than that... I made myself a Bandar Toolkit and a Multifunctional Samovar (as well as the Chair For The Head & Demeaning Urabhis Harness to go with them) and so now I can craft everything. I think in a future installment I'm going to illuminate the path Flotsam, Shiny Rock, Disgusting Goop scl take to become a Stone Pickaxe! Which can then be used to dig up ... Flotsam, and Shiny Rocks, and so on.
Ah, by the way : next Sunday we're going to have another event. It could either be
a special tool, though I'm not sure exactly what yet, or
a special trip to all the six locations that spawn magical skill itemsiv.
Which would you prefer ? Cast your vote below.
———This thing produces 1337 satoshi per day, every day. The mother of all Bitcoin faucets, safely inside one's robe folds. Not so bad for a vanity item, eh. For my curiosity, how much would you think such a wonder is worth ? [↩]So excluding all sorts of test chars, and... myself! [↩]Which is kind-of amazing considering that the game server is down right now, for instance, and was down last night for a few hours as well.
In spite of spending about six months testing and bug squashing, in the week since the launch we've been finding (and mostly disposing of) bugs at the rate of about one per hour! It's incredible what differences lie between testing done by the team and testing done by the userbase. One always knows this sort-of theoretically, and then one can hardly believe it before his eyes. [↩]There are three skills currently accessible in game - and each has a dedicated item which increases it up to a certain level. [↩]
« Subject: Important notice from SEC
The Pawnbroker »
Category: S.MG, Trolloludens
Monday, 08 June, Year 7 d.Tr.
Eulora update
So earlier the updated files were copied over from the test to the main Eulora server, compiled there and the server was restarted.
No particular surprises were expected, and so consequently a notification immediately popped that Jurov had looted 706 BTC. Notwithstanding that this was mathematically impossible for a number of different reasons and nigh-on impossible for others, the server was immediately brought down and put into audit mode.
This is a process that takes a while (frankly, it's the first time it's actually used, so who knows), but preliminarily it would appear that a shortcut which was put in place to allow testing the congratulations system without using large loot values was inadvertently left in, and so the game coins (=satoshi) value was converted to BTC by division with 10`000, instead of the more commonly employed 100`000`000. As a result Jurov's seven Bitcent minihof was misreported and paniced everyone.
A couple other minor bugs were found, unrelated to the looting. The plan currently is to have a call tomorrow noonish to decide if the server goes back up, in which case the announced event will proceed as planned, or if more work is needed, in which case the event will be moved to next Sunday, and the server will come back online sometime in the interim. An announcement will be made at that time.
Unrelatedly to all this, as part of chasing that obscure OpenGL bug : as an ad-interim solution, if you're getting the tell-tale flickering and low FPS after getting close to the fish fountain thing, what you need to do is open the world.zip archive in the art folder, and edit the Island file to comment out the <meshobj name="fount_object"> and <meshobj name="water_object"> elements. Let me know if that fixes it for you.
« The Birdcage
Slutennis »
Category: S.MG
Sunday, 14 June, Year 7 d.Tr.
Eulora third event - Sunday, June 28th
This Sunday's event is going to be quite simply : Bring A Friend!
Help a friend register their GPG key (hey, best thing they could do anyway!), show them around Eulora and then come meet me between the usual 19:00 and 23:00 GMT. I'll gift both you and your friend a little something - exotic spices, rare herbs, strong liquor, whatever I may have handy around in the bits depot.
Since we're such a small and well knit community I readily trust that you're actually going to bring a friend, as opposed to you know, drive two computers or something. So see you there!
Also in the news, Minigame website got a little facelift.
Further also in the news : the rate of play has been just about fabulours so far, you've blown right through the goalposts and so an expansion to the set of available items, including a new harvesting tool, will be available soonish!
See you in game.
PS. Originally the title was "June 21st." Lol.
« Ok, so what is Eulora disrupting ?
On the Elaine Shi and Andrew Miller scam ring »
Category: S.MG
Thursday, 25 June, Year 7 d.Tr.
Eulora Sunday Event - July the 19th
New content has been added to the game tonight. Chieflyi it consists of an entire new activity line, under Faith, with its own skill, craft table, recipes, unique loots scl - a total of > 80 new items have been created.
As it stands right now there are a total of 11 different skills that players can develop. A total of 6 of these may be acquired through particularly lucky activity - it's your job to find out what exactly. Success in this line is not without its reward - above and beyond actually getting the skill, as follows :
The first skill found receives a prize of 12 Slithy Toves (base value > 61k).
The second skill found receives a prize of 5 Chetty Divining Sticks (base value > 101k).
The third skill found receives a prize of 7`777 Crumbly Rock (q=50, base value > 283k).
The fourth skill found receives a prize of one magical blessing, raising the quality of any wearableii item to 999k (base value, 999k).
The penultimate skill found receives three copies of any recipe he wishes to ask for. In order to claim the winner is required to ask by the recipe's full proper name, no referencing permitted.
The ultimate skill found receives a prize of one magical bit of nothing, one million times the normal quality (base value, 11mn).
Any one player may receive only one prize from this list. Once this happens, the respective prize will be struck out and the name of the winner and his lucky item affixed thereto.
Players are not required to turn in their finds immediately - they can wait as long as they please (but obviously in so doing they run the risk of someone else discovering the item and claiming the prize). Prizes can be claimed at any point I'm online, by trading me and showing me a skill item from the selected list, bearing their crafter mark, that hadn't been found yet. Note that items which were created prior to today, July 15th, are not eligible for this contest. Attempting to pass off an old item will result in cruel and unusual punishment. Further note that I will ask you how you came by your item, and if you do not know the right answer I will confiscate it.
As far as the remainder 5 skills are concerned, they can only be obtained through using the new activity line. As the set of five actually includes - in a bonanza of self-reference - the skill required to use the newly introduced line, we will be holding an auction on Sunday, July the 19th, starting at 20:00 GMT, to decide who shall be the toecurlingly happy recipient of a starter kit consisting of :
One instance of the relevant skill granting item (base value, >994k).
One instance of the relevant equipment, normal quality (base value, >374k).
One dozen recipes for the lowest cost craft in the line (base value, >5k).
One recipe for the 7th cost craft item in the line (base value, >3k).
This glorious package will be auctioned by open outcry over something like a quarter of an hour (expanded so the auction closes ten minutes after the last bid). The auction will be starting at 1`376`000 copper coins, with increments of no less than 5% rounded to the highest two digit value are permitted (so the first bid may not be less than 1.445m, a 69k increase). The winner of this auction is thereby also excluded from participating in the aforementioned 6 skill contest.
The winner may at his option publicize the names of the recipes he receives (thus opening them to copying via prize 5 above) or not - I won't be spilling the beans. Ulterior auctions dealing in these same items may be held at later points, but in no case before August 20th, 2015.
See you in game!
———Secondarily it also consists of a major revamp of the Bouquinize line, as well as minor additions throughout all the other craft lines to support and integrate the new mechanics. [↩]This excludes anything going in your hands, because "wieldable" is different from "wearable". [↩]
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The lulz of today, or "you think it's only some kids that will exhaust their resources soon?" »
Category: S.MG
Wednesday, 15 July, Year 7 d.Tr.
Eulora skills update
Up until this point, Eulora had a foramen ovalei in the skill calculation. It worked very simply : take whatever the experience required for the next skill should be, do a modulo 65536 operation on it, and that's that. This resulted in very easy skilling (I know I managed 160ish to 470ish Tinkering in about a week of light play), which obviously has its benefits.
Nevertheless, it can't last forever. In fact, it can't last past today.ii
Obviously, it wouldn't be very fair to let early players keep the skills they acquired at potentially a huge discountiii. Consequently, skills in Eulora have been rebased, which is to say : the experience you had before is the experience you have now, but the skill level that gives you is different from the skill level that gave you before, since the actual cost per skill is different.
Also obviously, this measure won't affect all players - in point of fact skill level 75 is the first point where the modulo had any work to do whatsoever. Consequently, skills under 75 are not affected.
Finally, things being too fair is the least fair situation conceivable, and so players that are in fact affected by this will receive a one million coppers reward per skill affected, in cash. Here's a schedule :
Mircea Mircescu :
Tinkering 470 -> 203
Foxy Foxster :
Tinkering 254 -> 121
Gathering 118 -> 78
Building 116 -> 77
Congrats to the winners!
PS. Also in this update, what we believe to be a definitve, permanent and complete fix to the disappearing locked claims problem, and other minor fixes. Next time.
———Newborn humans have two of these, in the head and in the heart. They're essentially bypasses allowing for the cramped situation of gestation. In the cardiac case for instance, since the fetus isn't breathing, the lungs don't need irrigation to the degree they will later in life, and so they're mostly shunted out.
Eulora had a number of these : for instance originally the mining was shunted, so people commonly got q > 500 items, and remarkable finds were anything but remarkable. As I said at the time and as should be obvious, this wasn't going to last. As the game progresses they're slowly being taken out. [↩]To be honest, I wasn't expecting this to happen so soon. It happening at all is, in my eyes, a major sign that Eulora has actually started, much like the various infant shunts begining to close up is a sure sign of a birth. This makes me very happy. [↩]The cost I actually paid for skill 445 is roughly speaking 1% of the true cost of that skill. [↩]
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The situation of Greece »
Category: S.MG
Monday, 06 July, Year 7 d.Tr.