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117 comments \ @saloon 18 Nov \ yesterday

Howdy there, partner! Welcome on into the Stacker Saloon.

Saddle on up to a stool and spill the beans about your day, fire away with them questions, or let loose and give us the lowdown on your wild and woolly life. We're all ears, so don't hold back!

We're open round the clock, so mosey on in whenever you please!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Kontext 19 Nov

Kontext on the mic and behind the camera: #1286165

102 sats \ 32 replies \ @k00b 19 Nov

working out the game theory for removing trust from ranking is simple, but tricky for rewards because when you sacrifice enough (via the sybil fee) you may be able to recoup your sacrifice in rewards ... which makes it no sacrifice at all when you self-zap. downzaps are some defense against this if they're incentivized but would lead people to downzap rivals potentially without sacrifice too.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 12h

Can you point me to the code that defines the reward function?

130 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 11h

this?

https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/blob/master/worker/earn.js

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 11h

That's it! Thanks!

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 17h

why do you still keep rewards?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 11h

Because, if they can be done right, I think it makes the site better.

It's a faucet. We want people using their sats. The more sats they have then the more likely they are to use them.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 12h

The alternative would be to pocket the sybil fees and downzaps. I'd be fine with it, but I think many people would find it aesthetically displeasing.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 11h

Exactly. My goal is to take SN out of this part of the loop and not slow down the velocity of sats.

0 sats \ 17 replies \ @optimism 18h

What happens to the model if you take "reward for top post/comment zaps" out?

100 sats \ 16 replies \ @k00b 12h

People have no direct incentive to zap

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @supratic 11h

are you saying that good quality contents are not a good enough incentive to zap?

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 10h

I said there's no direct incentive to zap quality content. There's an indirect, warm and fuzzy feeling for zapping quality content otherwise, and an increase in the possibility that OP posts more, but no direct incentive.

Not having a direct incentive isn't that bad in isolation but there's direct incentive for self/sybil zapping (I want people to see my content more so I zap it), so the goal is to create a direct incentive for zapping other people's content that rivals the incentive to sybil.

102 sats \ 13 replies \ @optimism 12h

Wait there is an incentive to zap?

200 sats \ 6 replies \ @Scoresby 11h

A user must pay to post and they must pay to comment, but they don't necessarily have to pay to see more of what they like on the site. Of the three actions one might do on SN, zapping is the least directly tied to the outcome one might want (more of this kind of content).

Rewards being tied to zapping seems like a way one might encourage more zapping and if there is more zapping, the hope is that the connection between zapping content you like and seeing more of the content you like might become more clear.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @optimism 10h

Rewards being tied to zapping seems like a way one might encourage more zapping

None of the days that I got high rewards the past month did it exceed the amount I zapped. What's the incentive exactly?

100 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 10h

Even if it's not making you whole, it reduces the disincentive some.

I wouldn't argue the way it works currently is perfect. In fact, it's a hacky, lazy stimulus, but I think it can be made better.

200 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 10h

I wouldn't call it hacky and lazy.

I'm not sure it's possible to have both sybil resistance and make people whole on zaps, on average.

Thus, the real net incentives to zap must come from either:

A desire to shape the content on SN
Altruistic desire to support content that you like
Build your trust on SN to enhance your ability to do the above two

Since (1) and (2) cannot easily be controlled by SN, the best lever SN has to play with net incentives to zap is (3). Thus, I don't think the trust system should be removed, though its influence on post rankings could be tinkered with.

The balancing act with trust, I think, is to have a good new user UX, to avoid platform insularity and dominance by a handful of trusted users, while simultaneously providing new users enough incentives to zap content and develop a positive reputation on SN.

We talked about this, but one thing that might help is using a rolling window of zaps to calculate trust instead of the entire history, since it may ossify trust levels too much on a few users.

view all 2 replies

202 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 11h

"see more of what they like on the site" has a free rider problem. free riders need the extra incentive.

100 sats \ 5 replies \ @k00b 12h

Half of rewards go to zappers

100 sats \ 4 replies \ @supratic 11h

where do the other half go?

100 sats \ 3 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 10h

Posters, commenters and referral program. I think!

221 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 10h

Yep, posters and commenters. 10% of anyone's rewards go to their referrer.

view all 2 replies

102 sats \ 6 replies \ @k00b 19 Nov

one solution to this would be randomizing rewards. meaning we'd randomly skew the reward distribution away from the top content by just enough to make recouping one's sacrifice unlikely. but if top content is defined by sats, even skewing away from top content would still slightly reward self-zapping.

another option is to continue using trust but only for rewards.

100 sats \ 4 replies \ @Scoresby 19 Nov

Would another solution be to randomly select one zapper each day who gets the whole days rewards?

This would incentivize creating a multitude of accounts and zapping a little from each, so perhaps there needs to be another qualification: zaps at least a certain amount, or zaps and comments.

I remember when we had the somewhat random rewards function that varied the criteria. Maybe it's that sort of model, but with a random winner function, like a lottery.

102 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 12h

Would another solution be to randomly select one zapper each day who gets the whole days rewards?

I still remember million sat madness where the whole rewards of a month were given to just 64 stackers, including 1 million to the top.

I remember not enjoying that. My philosophy would be that rewards should feel smooth, not lumpy, and that it should be a reliable, and fairly predictable, incentive for consistent participation.

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 12h

MSM wasn't pleasant, I agree. And probably i agree with you that rewards ought to be aimed at being predictable. Yet I wonder if there isn't a short enough time frame, and a small enough reward sum, that makes the random winner mode feel more like fun and less like dreadfulness.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 19 Nov

officer, it'd be nothing like a lottery

also, we wouldn't want it to be random in proportion to their persons (which encourages sybils), we'd want it to be random in proportion to sacrifice (no advantage to sybils).

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 19 Nov

That difference makes sense.

The truly random option you describe in another comment (#1286158) probably makes more sense. But the dopamine lover in me thinks it would be pretty awesome to take home the whole pot.

I suppose it would be possible that someone figures out an optimal zapping strategy that would lead to a reliable gain of sats (thereby defeating the purpose of Sybil fees).

This could happen with a reward spread out over some random segment as well, but not for a single big winner.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 19 Nov

another option is to make rewards truly random - we'd select a subset of content for the day (like the upper quartile or above the median) then distribute rewards across them at random.

55 sats \ 2 replies \ @plebpoet 19 Nov

Went to an art museum today Couldn’t get through the contemporary art. Like didnt stop to glance. It was disgusting

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 19 Nov

What kind of art do you like?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @plebpoet 19 Nov

well I really liked these funny little cherubs I saw from the collection of Spanish works

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 19 Nov

Based on this fabulous article about pennies (#1285999), I'm making my kids figure out if all the pennies in the US could fit in our house - and we discovered it is nowhere near...

50 sats \ 4 replies \ @Kontext 18 Nov

Source: "Sabrina" (1954)

10 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 19 Nov

I went through a brief Hepburn phase once. I watched this one. There's a lot of her work I haven't seen though.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @Kontext 19 Nov

I reckon I've watched the most famous ones but surely there are some I haven't yet. Do you have a favorite?

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 19 Nov

I don't recall any of them. I remember finding them charming. That's about it

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Kontext 19 Nov

Haha, fair enough. I really liked this one, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Roman Holiday.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Angie 18 Nov

Estoy trabajando en una aplicación a la que fui invitada y está genial,te page de 20 a 45 sat semanales solo viendo vídeos, es la mejor minería que he visto hasta ahora solo entras cada 4 h recargas y ya pan comido, me ha generado más ganancias y tiempo ya que así puedo leer y escribir aquí mientras mino allá. Aquí les envío el enlace y el código de referencia, sin más aprovechen, los satélites están en el aire. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.coin.btc.android ACOHEL

0 sats \ 10 replies \ @ek 18 Nov

When you want a skin so badly the first time that you’d pay for it, but you can’t:

literally one of the few skins you can't buy

And why does the default skin look like it came straight out of Fallout:

21 sats \ 9 replies \ @OneOneSeven 18 Nov

Is it locked behind progression? edit, ah quest reward, is it a hard one?

24 sats \ 8 replies \ @ek 18 Nov

I don't know, I don't even have access to that quest yet

55 sats \ 7 replies \ @OneOneSeven 19 Nov

Looks like a lot of fun, I might pick it up soon

29 sats \ 6 replies \ @ek 18h

I can recommend

Planning to save some cool clips of fighting the robots and share them here to show what I mean

121 sats \ 5 replies \ @OneOneSeven 15h

That's really interesting, PvE AI is a pretty big deal for the feel of extraction games. I played Tarkov a little but it just feels so hardcore, punishing and clunky.

101 sats \ 4 replies \ @ek 15h

I played Tarkov a little but it just feels so hardcore, punishing and clunky.

Yeah, that’s why I never even played it. Just watching other people play made me realize it’s way too sweaty. Games should be fun, not feel like work.

I saw people joking that ARC Raiders is "Tarkov for employed people," haha. ARC Raiders was also originally supposed to be exclusively PvE, but they noticed it's not fun, so they made it PvPvE. People hated the decision at the time as you can see in the comments here:

Coming from a big fan of your studio (I'm so excited about what you guys are doing with reinforcement learning for animation and natural language), I am disappointed by the change in plans for ARC. PvE was a bold direction, but I'm convinced that you guys were going to deliver an experience head and shoulders above the current trends; something that would justify its defiance of genre fashions.

This move to an extraction shooter is lazy. I'm sorry to be rude, but that's what it is. If what I've read about Embark is to believed, you are a studio of leaders, not followers. Your excellence justifies your creative risks.

I hope you reconsider this decision, and if this was imposed upon you by investors... show them your track record and convince them otherwise, and if that doesn't work, what's the point of Embark Studios? The industry is stagnant. Stick to your original vision, shake up the scene, and stand out!

But I think it's not even close to Tarkov. However, I'm also worried it will get sweaty over time and more and more people will kill on sight, instead of collaborating against the ARC. They can easily kill you if they catch you off guard or swarm you.

But I think that there's PvP is important. Looks like they made the right decision by adding it. Huge respect for sticking to it despite the negative initial feedback and delaying the game by three years to release it this good.

Btw, fwiw (and if that means anything to you), Embark (the studio behind ARC Raiders) was founded by Ex-DICE people.

100 sats \ 3 replies \ @OneOneSeven 12h

Loved DICE, their Battlefield: Bad Company games are probably my favorite pvp shooters ever.

It's funny they kinda followed Fortnite's dev plan, which was originally a PvE game called Save the World, then their little half-assed PvP mode they threw in just blew up in popularity.

The extraction game I've played the most (not as much lately) is Dark and Darker. Tarkov + Dungeons and Dragons. They have some cool concepts that I hope other games explore more, i.e. multi-level raids where you can choose to leave or progress deeper in the dungeon to a new map.

view all 3 replies

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 18 Nov

11 sats \ 5 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

Interesting. Its now down to 14.8k after resetting.

111 sats \ 4 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

If you do not open so often Zeus, I suggest to keep the option "reset EGS at startup" always on. Yes, it will take a bit more time to get ready, but you always have a fresh LN graph and ready to make payments.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

I'll try that! Thank you.

111 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

Fun fact: many users think that this EGS thing is a weakness for Zeus and they always compare it with Phoenix that is always ready when you open it.

But they do not think what actually does that graph sync at startup or they do not care too much. The graph sync locally on user device is a big difference than Phoenix model where the graph sync is on the Acinq server side. That's why Phoenix knows all the txs where/from are going.

Is well explained here: https://docs.zeusln.app/for-users/embedded-node/privacy#client-side-path-finding

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 18 Nov

I think it works the same in blixt. It's slower there, but my channels are more functional (which may be because I currently only have a private channel with SN on Zeus, not sure) and it does a better job at keeping the background service properly working on graphene.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

Yes Blixt works the same. In fact in Zeus you can switch the EGS server between Olympus and Blixt node.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Akg10s3 18 Nov

It's not possible ⚡⚡ It's going straight to the 🌚!!

613 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 18 Nov

Two things I'd like to write about:

determining the optimal minimum viable product/feature
how much time to spend researching a solution relative to the estimated time for implementing it

32 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 18 Nov

For #2, is technical debt what you have in mind?

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 18 Nov

not exactly but doing more research does lower technical debt. there are diminishing returns for research and research costs you time that takes away from customer feedback. though, LLMs truncate the time required to do basic research by a lot, so it's something i almost always do now.

with both (1) and (2) it feels more like art than science and historically i've leaned on my intuition which is hard to share with others. that's why i need to write about it - there's probably some kind of guide one can use without all the pain required to build intuition.

we often say bad code has a smell but these dimensions of product/feature development can also smell. in either case there are probably rules for odor fighting that i haven't bothered to articulate.

150 sats \ 6 replies \ @Scoresby 18 Nov

source

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 18 Nov

also check out the donut bags:

source

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 18 Nov

source

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 18 Nov

They made a nice website too: https://btcismoney.xyz/

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

no, that site is not nice, it's a fucking shame

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

hahaha nice name

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

@Blocks @CompassCoffeeDC giving out free BTC + coffee to push for a de minimis tax exemption

Here have some free sats with your free coffee.

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

Interesting how EUR currently has buy orders 2x the depth of and 3x more numerous than USD on Robosats.

111 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 18 Nov

Huh.... is there more bitcoin demand from europe in other platforms too? or just robosats

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

Honestly no idea, but good question!

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Car 18 Nov

strawberry fields forever

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 18 Nov

11 sats \ 12 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 18 Nov

How about giving a badge to the territory owners? Like, ‘sheriff’ for the full owners and ‘deputy sheriff’ for the ones who pay monthly. ~meta

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 18 Nov

I support this message

133 sats \ 10 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

I'm not the popo

111 sats \ 7 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 18 Nov

Wild West Sheriff is way better than popo!

33 sats \ 6 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

Politia -> popo Shire + Reeve -> sheriff

Same difference!!!

111 sats \ 5 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 18 Nov

Don’t kill my vibe! Let’s just call them (territory owners) an independent vigilante, then! ~lol

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @supratic 18 Nov

"territory founders" is the right wording, they own nothing

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

I didn't even found mine - just "those that pay the fixed part of the rent"

111 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 18 Nov

i've been using "territory owner" instead of "founder" because founder implies they created it. "Owner" is fine, with the understanding that they own the rights for the duration of the lease. Good enough for me

view all 1 replies

33 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

Sorry, didn't mean to kill your vibe! lol

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 18 Nov

I'm glad you use the term popo.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

I'm not sure what that qualifies me as. haha.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SHA256man 18 Nov

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 18 Nov

Reddit denied me access to their API because "the request did not come from a university email address", yet it did and they literally sent the denial letter to my university email address...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 18 Nov

They suck

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @BlokchainB 18 Nov

The menu bar is no longer moving in the PWA!

Thanks @ek

69 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 18 Nov

I didn’t do anything. Maybe @sox?

55 sats \ 0 replies \ @sox 18 Nov

Neither, Apple did

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @guerratotal 18 Nov

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

When half of internet is down... who is coming?

8 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

I lost my Bitcoin in a Cloudflare outage...

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @south_korea_ln 18 Nov

SN not affected by the ongoing Cloudflare issue, yay...

In the simplest form of the internet, a computer asks for a website and is provided the data by a server, which is then loaded on the screen. But in those simple setups the servers may become overwhelmed by requests, and run slowly or break entirely as a result.

Cloudflare and similar companies instead sit between the computers and the original websites themselves. Those internet infrastructure providers can then use their more resilient data centres to provide websites quickly and reliably.

From here.

Maybe SN will become affected in the future when receiving more traffic?

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @SHA256man 18 Nov

12 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

SN is using OP_RETURN to post all items on the blockchain LOL

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 18 Nov

You just broke the time chain with your 11MB video: #1285349~~

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

Let's add a big gif also

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @guerratotal 18 Nov

102 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

I like that SN do not depend on Cloudflare. It just work. Today we have some disruptions in websites that use Cloudflare.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln 18 Nov

Great minds think alike. Yours just a bit faster.

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 18 Nov

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

See? That is the wrong perception of people that buy BTC only to hold it as "reserve". People that just earn, spend, save BTC, will have a different perception of that meme.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Now_Singularity 18 Nov

Surprised to see a Bitcoin cartoon make it into the New Yorker. Not sure a 16th of the audience would get it.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @cryotosensei 18 Nov

I asked my fifth graders to write about their favourite memory this year. I even used the trending term core memory for good measure.

This boy wrote: Mr Heng shouting (favourite theacher) and camp. 🙂

I’m honoured to be mentioned in the same breath as the Primary 5 camp aka the supreme highlight of their primary school existence. Zero mention of his on-again, off-again girlfriend!

His spelling error also broke my heart a little bit and reminded me of the purpose of us public school educators. To work for the benefit of average children coming from typical households.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 18 Nov

Where did the term core memory come from? It almost feels like a gamer term

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scroogey 18 Nov

Pixar movie Inside Out.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 18 Nov

Oh, now I remember. I was thinking Assassins Creed because I think it used similar terms ...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Nov

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @AG0RA 18 Nov

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