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machinelabo

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machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
I guess the problem is that the author has brought it up in the article. Race has no place in this article and yet it's there.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
Those arguments apply to Python as well. There is nothing special about Julia that warrants your arguments.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
Computer art is not ok as much as paintbrush art is not ok.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
Yes, but if Banksy himself advertises the auction and provides the proof that the NFT is issue by him, then there is no confusion. Imagine if Banksy interviews with CNN and advertises his auction. Or Youtube or in person in an event.

Beeple did just that.

But, I get what you're saying. There is a verification process to traditional art as well. You cannot simply impersonate Banksy and call Sotheby's, they need to verify you are actually Banksy.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
We need to fix the loop holes. Money is also an amazing instrument that keeps us motivated. Without the lure of money and its power, we wouldn’t do anything. Startups? Why bother when there is no money involved.

I really think if there was one thing we got right - that’s money as a civilization. What we need to do is fix the loop holes. That includes taxes, corporation as persons, the whole 2011 movement of Occupy Wall Street.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
Some problems:

a has a larger aperture than c, s, C, S, e, etc.

f, t have unusually sharp overhangs but that's the style you're going for. I am not a fan of IBM's Plex's sharp corners either because it ruins the texture of the font. Either make all corners tight or not. Their argument is "Machine + Humans" or "Tight corners + Soft curves" but your eyes don't give a shit about those things.

a's tail is too long

A, V have a massive opened corners (usually done for small size readability) but Z, X, Y's crotch doesn't. You need consistency here.

Double-story g is hard to justify in a font based on drafting templates and generally doesn't feel like it fits into this type of a typeface. However, its ok to take some liberty here.

Fitting needs work first. S's side bearings need to be cut down by a lot. o, c, e's fitting is much larger than it should be.

There is a lot of work to be done here. I am pretty grumpy generally so don't take this too seriously. Have fun and hope you're enjoying the process!
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
I have a pet peeve about font licensing.

Typographers struggle to make a living in most cases, but yet they don't offer better font licenses. I don't understand why they don't make it simple single license term for all usecases and make a sale. It's masochistic.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
Logomark and Logotype are two aspects of Logos. Some companies decide to do both, some only one.

Regardless, the purpose of a logo is to discern and identify amongst thousands of other similar looking logos. I lean towards Logomarks (Nike, Apple, Starbucks) and less towards (Stripe, CocaCola, Kellogs).

I recommend getting a logomark + logotype designed by a professional graphics designer.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
Don't Google and disregard all advice here - find a good graphics designer at your local artist directory, college or club. Here in USA, it is AIGA and a number of colleges. Find competitions or contests for graphcis design where they can display their work. Find people this way and you will have a better time than buying some stupid crap for $5.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
If we follow your logic, why not just stop dealing with Germany and the Germans all together?

Tolerance and forgiveness is a value we need embrace. You should ask yourself if anyone at IBM today supports the holocaust.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
It’s unfair to compare a college course to traditional TV media. College courses in the 80’s were similar to Coursera too.

I urge you to watch news channels from the 80s. Literally every TV media was degraded from Discovery channel to History channel.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amu2mOsIz-w

There are experts that can verify Picasso. Digital assets are copied verbatim with 100% fidelity and zero error.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
NFT's are a weird thing, it is half scammy (practicality) and half useful (ownership, non-fungibility of the token itself). I am reading up on the NFT standards (ERC721 is the simplest one) [1] and this is the core contract API:

  contract ERC721 {
   // ERC20 compatible functions
   function name() constant returns (string name);
   function symbol() constant returns (string symbol);
   function totalSupply() constant returns (uint256 totalSupply);
   function balanceOf(address _owner) constant returns (uint balance);
   // Functions that define ownership
   function ownerOf(uint256 _tokenId) constant returns (address owner);
   function approve(address _to, uint256 _tokenId);
   function takeOwnership(uint256 _tokenId);
   function transfer(address _to, uint256 _tokenId);
   function tokenOfOwnerByIndex(address _owner, uint256 _index) constant returns (uint tokenId);
   // Token metadata
   function tokenMetadata(uint256 _tokenId) constant returns (string infoUrl);
   // Events
   event Transfer(address indexed _from, address indexed _to, uint256 _tokenId);
   event Approval(address indexed _owner, address indexed _approved, uint256 _tokenId);
  }

It's not hard to understand. This ERC721 NFT token can verify is its owner (ownerOf()), and the actual item of interest (tokenMetaData()). Item of interest is secured either on the blockchain itself or offline using URL reference in the metadata.

All good. But that's all she wrote. Banksy can list his digital artwork on the internet and many people can bid on it. That is actually valuable if you think about it in isolation. The problem is on the auction side, with decentralized bidding - you have no idea if this artwork was pumped up by fake buyers. There is no Sotheby's or Christie's auction house to mediate this.

URL metadata is also weird - now you're passing on the value of the token to whoever owns the Domain Name and the servers responding to the GET request. If the artist decides to sell or forgets to renew the domain name, your NFT is useless unless the data was backed up somewhere. Even then, the next buyer of the NFT would want to access the URL and get their goodies instead of getting it from anywhere else since that's not on the tokenMetadata.

[1] Source: https://medium.com/crypto-currently/the-anatomy-of-erc721-e9...
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
Pay attention to how clearly information was presented in those days. I've not come across any media today that can present information in systematic and concise manner without trying hard to grab my attention, perhaps a handful of YT channels are an exception.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
I feel liberated after reading your comment.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
I am appalled at the level of discussion here. Nationalism, both from EU, US and UK side is tiring, this flame war needs to be shut down. This not what HN is for folks.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
Oh I remember when video games used to be shipped in that they had to finish everything. No patches later. It’s going to get burned on the ROM and off it goes sailing to their customers.

Now a days, shipping to me evokes “Fuck it, ship this shitty MVP to customers because ship ship ship” and then they wonder “Gee, why didn’t my app take off?”.

I understand the need to ship, but I never see anyone daring to challenge the frantic broken shitty app philosophy and maybe wondering if they built them with care, maybe... just maybe customers with actually come? Has anyone tried to go against the grain since the SEGA days? It’s high risk.

Thanks for a great perspective.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
I like those better. Craft is great as well.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
I am not a fan of the term "ship", similar to "sell". It's a horrible term. It evokes the image of a frantic imprudent developer churning away at ball of mud trying to meet their shipping metrics and feature bloat targets.

Does anyone feel the same? If someone told me "I sold stuff, therefore I am", it just leaves a bad impression of them for me.

Build stuff with care and craftsmanship. Strive for excellence, take pride in your work and deliver, not ship.
machinelabo
·5 years ago·discuss
It is actually fast though. Just doesn't produce coherent design over time and creates a huge mess where design langauge is intertwined in symantic layout.

Hey, wasn't that the original intent of HTML+CSS? To isolate markup and design?