drk posted:

this would be a good start

LanceHunter posted:

What is it about the gym that seems to rope in marks for pyramid schemes? At one of my previous gyms it seemed like everyone that worked there was in on the Advocare MLM.

obi_ant posted:

Cheaper to crush them than to sell it to the next person?

Bird in a Blender posted:

All these megacorps quietly realizing that NFTs are a waste of time and money is actually refreshing to see. I hope NFTs are a thing everyone looks back on in 10-20 years and laughs at how stupid it was, like Beanie Babies. Although, I don't think I'll watch the Netflix doc about this one.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

They're crypto mining rigs in an official government seize, the point is to render them unusable because there's no legitimate use for them.

totalnewbie posted:

But NFTs are basically free, aren't they? The start-up cost for uhh, minting? your own NFTs is basically zilch because they represent nothing. You don't even need a fancy mining rig or whatever to do it, do you? If you already have content, just make an NFT pointing to it and hope people give you money for it. If they don't, you're out, what, basically nothing? And if you don't have content, just make a few hats, put them in different colors, and call it content.

Phanatic posted:

They should at least auction off the video cards and use the proceeds to fund social programs.

notwithoutmyanus posted:

We wish.

NFL is apparently gearing up for NFTs and only see $$$$ ahead. So the idea is "if we throw even more money at it surely it'll be more successful!"

my thoughts :

ultrafilter posted:

Video cards that have been used for crypto mining are worthless.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Ironically gym memberships themselves encouraged pyramid scheme type behaviour to sign all your friends and family up for a discount, which might attract the type. Gymgoers tend to have an ambition as above, and also money and free time to be fleeced out of.

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

On top of that, gyms are effectively unsustainable at their pricing model if everyone who paid for a membership actually used it regularly. The only thing that keeps them profitable is BWM people who don't manage their subscriptions.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

On top of that, gyms are effectively unsustainable at their pricing model if everyone who paid for a membership actually used it regularly. The only thing that keeps them profitable is BWM people who don't manage their subscriptions.

ultrafilter posted:

Video cards that have been used for crypto mining are worthless.

quote:

Skepticism, Confusion, Frustration: Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Struggles

quote:

Last October, when Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, announced that the company would change its name to Meta and become a “metaverse company,” he sketched a vision of a utopian future many years off in which billions of people would inhabit immersive digital environments for hours on end, working, socializing and playing games inside virtual and augmented worlds.

In the year since, Meta has spent billions of dollars and assigned thousands of employees to make Mr. Zuckerberg’s dream feasible. But Meta’s metaverse efforts have had a rocky start.

quote:

The company’s flagship virtual-reality game, Horizon Worlds, remains buggy and unpopular, leading Meta to put in place a “quality lockdown” for the rest of the year while it retools the app.

quote:

And Meta executives have butted heads over the company’s metaverse strategy, with one senior leader complaining that the amount of money the company had spent on unproven projects made him “sick to my stomach.”

quote:

On Tuesday, Meta is expected to unveil a new V.R. headset at a developer conference, along with other new metaverse features. The stakes are high for the company, which is racing to transform itself to make up for declines in other parts of its business. TikTok is siphoning younger users away from Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s two big moneymakers, and Apple made privacy changes to its mobile operating system that have cost Meta billions of dollars in advertising revenue.

quote:

In a statement, Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, said the company believed it was still on the right path.

“Being a cynic about new and innovative technology is easy,” Mr. Stone said. “Actually building it is a lot harder — but that’s what we’re doing because we believe the metaverse is the future of computing.”

quote:

The company declined to provide more up-to-date figures for Horizon Worlds.

quote:

Mr. Zuckerberg, determined to recast his public image after years in the limelight for unpopular decisions about political speech on Facebook, has surprised some employees by making himself the innovator face of the company’s metaverse push. Demonstrations and mock-ups of Meta’s latest metaverse technologies feature footage of Mr. Zuckerberg performing V.R. versions of his hobbies, including fencing and a surfing-like watersport called hydrofoiling. The chief executive recently went on Joe Rogan’s podcast, where he told the popular comedian that building an immersive metaverse was his “holy grail.”

quote:

His involvement has backfired at times. In August, Mr. Zuckerberg posted a screenshot of his Horizon Worlds avatar on his Facebook page, along with an announcement that the app was expanding into France and Spain. But the avatar’s flat, cartoonish look was roundly mocked. (One commenter compared it to “a 2002 Nintendo GameCube release.”)

quote:

After that response, Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives directed employees to give priority to improving the appearance of avatars, according to two employees. Mr. Stone, the Facebook spokesman, characterized Mr. Zuckerberg’s reaction to the avatar backlash as “frustrated,” but did not provide additional details.

A new version of Mr. Zuckerberg’s digital appearance was fast-tracked, the two employees said, along with updates to other Horizon Worlds avatars that had been in the works.

quote:

Four days after Mr. Zuckerberg’s original post, he shared that upgraded digital version of himself, conceding that his first avatar was “pretty basic” while the “graphics in Horizon are capable of much more.” One Meta graphic artist claimed in a LinkedIn post, which has since been deleted, that he and his team had designed roughly 40 versions of Mr. Zuckerberg’s face over a four-week period before a final version was approved.

quote:

Mr. Zuckerberg’s zeal for the metaverse has been met with skepticism by some Meta employees. This year, he urged teams to hold meetings inside Meta’s Horizon Workrooms app, which allows users to gather in virtual conference rooms. But many employees didn’t own V.R. headsets or hadn’t set them up yet, and had to scramble to buy and register devices before managers caught on, according to one person with knowledge of the events.

quote:

In a May poll of 1,000 Meta employees conducted by Blind, an anonymous professional social network, only 58 percent said they understood the company’s metaverse strategy.

quote:

As Meta has struggled to grow its metaverse, some at the company have suggested unconventional ideas for bringing in new users. This summer, three Meta employees proposed marketing V.R. headsets to Americans who received student debt relief from the Biden administration, believing it could boost sales of headsets by 20 percent, according to an internal post viewed by The Times.

“This is an opportunity for Meta Quest growth, as there is evidence that past Federal Stimulus spurred growth,” the analysis read. It does not appear that the company acted on the advice.

quote:

In a podcast interview in August, Mr. Carmack said the scale of Meta’s metaverse bet — last year, it reported a $10 billion loss in the division housing its A.R. and V.R. units — made him “sick to my stomach thinking about that much money being spent.”

quote:

As the pressure grows, Mr. Zuckerberg has sent a clear message to Meta employees: Get on board or get out. In a June meeting first reported by Reuters, the 38-year-old billionaire noted that “there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here” and that he’d be “turning up the heat” on expectations and goals, according to copies of his comments that were shared with The Times.

quote:

But the transition has been rocky. Earlier this year, Mr. Bosworth tried to lead a staff meeting inside Horizon Workrooms, according to an employee who was present.

The meeting was thwarted by technical glitches and the team ended up using Zoom, the employee said.

quote:

In the year since, Meta has spent billions of dollars and assigned thousands of employees to make Mr. Zuckerberg’s dream feasible.

quote:

Meta didn’t hold back with their announcements at Meta Connect this year.

This year as Meta focuses more heavily on the metaverse, the company made a big addition to their updated higher-detail avatars: legs.

Zuckerberg was very excited about with his avatar jumping for joy during the keynote.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The full NYT article on how the company has wasted billions on the metaverse and achieved nothing that people want to use is pretty wild too.

The only thing that may be more BWM are the non-Meta companies that have already spent billions preparing Metaverse content.

Bird in a Blender posted:

The world is cruel, so I doubt my dream of Elon Musk and the Zuckster ruining both twitter and facebook is ever going to come true, but drat they're both trying.

Elysium posted:

Honestly I didn’t even realize that Meta had products out that people could use. I thought it was all just “well we’re working on some stuff and maybe we’ll release it when VR actually becomes a thing.”

quote:

Meta also announced that there will soon be an avatar store where people will be able to spend real money to buy accessories for their Meta avatar.

Elysium posted:

Honestly I didn’t even realize that Meta had products out that people could use. I thought it was all just “well we’re working on some stuff and maybe we’ll release it when VR actually becomes a thing.”

Another thing I don’t understand is that, if SecondLife already existed, and VR headsets already existed, where did the 10 billion dollars go? Isn’t the meta concept basically just that?

Elysium posted:

Honestly I didn’t even realize that Meta had products out that people could use. I thought it was all just “well we’re working on some stuff and maybe we’ll release it when VR actually becomes a thing.”

Another thing I don’t understand is that, if SecondLife already existed, and VR headsets already existed, where did the 10 billion dollars go? Isn’t the meta concept basically just that?

njsykora posted:

Honestly the Quest 2 is an excellent piece of hardware and all signs point to the Quest 3 being even better. Hardware is not the issue, the issue is Facebook and specifically Zuckerberg doing everything in their power to make VR look like the least fun and cool thing ever.

Elysium posted:

Honestly I didn’t even realize that Meta had products out that people could use. I thought it was all just “well we’re working on some stuff and maybe we’ll release it when VR actually becomes a thing.”

Another thing I don’t understand is that, if SecondLife already existed, and VR headsets already existed, where did the 10 billion dollars go? Isn’t the meta concept basically just that?

Ham Equity posted:

I think the problem is that from their perspective, the biggest issue with the Internet is that it wasn't commercialized from the very beginning, so now they're having to figure out ways to profit from it now, and it's hard. Their solution to this is to build the Metaverse around commercialization from the start. What they don't realize is that a fully commercialized platform holds next to no interest for most people. It's the non-commercial content that attracts people, so no one is interested in spending time in what is essentially an extended television commercial you can log in to.

RPATDO_LAMD posted:

Their only successful product, the Quest, was a separate company that already existed and was successful before they bought it. It used to be the Oculus Quest instead of the Meta Quest.
All they've done is taken the best-selling, best-value-for-money VR headset on the market and add mandatory facebook login to use it (and remotely brick yours if you don't have a fb account).

MEIN RAVEN posted:

It tickles my loins whenever I read about billionaires being terrible with money.

quote:

So… my good friend purchased an 8,000 sq ft vacant lot a couple months ago. He was having a property line dispute with the neighbor so he decided to get a survey (I already told him to never purchase property again without first getting a survey) turns out he doesn’t even own the property that he thought he did. He owns the neighbor mentioned above’s property, and the neighbor unknowingly owns the property that my friend thought he bought. The neighbors property has a single wide mobile home, septic system, city water supply and a storage building (which pretty much straddles the middle of the property line) what are his best options here in you guys opinion? I told him that step 1 is to get a lawyer