Don't be a cog in the machine of an unethical company? Everybody's trying to act like it's soooo difficult, and every FAANG SWE is like some Obama-platitude "single working mother with 3 kids working 2 jobs"
Same way in my city. There are dozens and dozens of parking structures that are just absolute blights on the area, ultrawide streets that discourage and make miserable any form of walking, unmanaged homeless and addict problems, and awful zoning (even mixed use needs to ensure that there are many small tenants, not one massive tenant).
???? I'm not sure what you're implying but look up the idea of the modular blockchain and educate yourself. Ethereum won't be the main execution layer for most transactions.
What you said about price action is basically completely wrong, but regardless it's not like you're forced to pay in ETH. Any asset can be represented digitally.
Ethereum isn't free, but L2s and L3s will cost cents or even fractions of cents. 2.9% + 30 cents per tx is a MASSIVE amount. Consider that a profit margin of 10% is considered good for a business.
I bought a bunch of skins in League of Legends. I no longer play the game. As a former player, I would love if I could sell those skins on the open market.
Many times while playing the game, I changed my main character, but had skins for other characters I no longer played (maybe they got nerfed or something). It would be great if I could exchange those skins for other skins of equal value for the character I switched to.
Yes, the company itself could implement all these different features, but at that point you're re-inventing the wheel. We have a set of standards regarding digital assets, and the technology already exists to do the things I mentioned seamlessly. The only thing the company needs to do is implement their assets as part of that (ERC721) standard.
All of those things you mentioned can probably be solved with Account Abstraction and Application Specific Rollups. These technologies are still in the early stages but are moving along. Not trying to attack, but like a lot of people here, it seems that most people's understanding of Blockchains is stuck in like 2014. There are levels of trustlessness, and levels of irreversibility. None of the things I mentioned (when fully implemented) are going to be happening on the main Ethereum chain.
"why not let customers pay with real money via Stripe or another payment API"
Because stripe takes a massive cut?
"the end-user UX is lightyears better so you'll probably sell a lot more skins"
for now
"This Instagram NFT shutdown demonstrates again that the mainstream has no appetite for crypto despite the breathless claims of the past ten years."
Everybody in the community already knew this. Like you've said, the UX isn't there yet. That's obvious to anyone that is in the space. Nobody was sitting here applauding Meta for their obvious bandwagoning onto the latest thing. Maybe if they actually wanted people to adopt NFTs they should work on improving the UX or build some fucking infrastructure instead of just leeching off the community trying to make a buck. If you want people to display their art as NFTs on instagram, then create an Oculus App that's a virtual art gallery, allow people to display their instagram NFTs in that gallery. Interface with other technologies that already exist in the space. Use your billions and billions of dollars to make the experience better for everyone. They didn't even fucking attempt to build anything.
Common problem for many corporations, especially in times like these. They basically put it on life support the moment it is released so it never has a shot
The killer app of Ethereum already exists, and it is the set of standards being built on it that allow you to easily interoperate with other financial applications. NFTs are basically what the name implies, whereas "tokens" represent something fungible (e.g. stocks in a company), NFTs are a new standard (ERC721 or others) for representing non-fungible digital goods (deeds for houses, collectibles, game assets, etc.).
Suppose I'm a small indie game studio. I create a game, and this game has skins for characters, weapons, what have you. I want to build a real money economy around these assets, but don't have the manpower to deal with payment processors, build a marketplace, etc. My company could just represent the skins as ERC721 tokens and instantly have access to the wealth of infrastructure that already supports the ERC721 standard. People can buy and sell on a marketplace of their choosing (Opensea, Blur, etc.), they can manage their assets using a wallet of their choice (Metamask, Rainbow, Frame, Coinbase Wallet, etc.).
This is just one example, but can be applied to literally any non-fungible asset that be represented digitally. And although the application I mentioned is primarily a financial one (because Ethereum is the internet of finance), there are certainly non-financial use cases for having a fully interoperable, decentralized representation of a digital good.
It's important to understand that NFTs didn't invent digital scarcity. This is an idea that's existed for a long time. Downloading a song I have to pay for, League of Legends issuing a limited edition skin, even the notion of a privileged role on a website (e.g. moderator) implies some sort of digital scarcity. People value having status, people value having scarce things, NFTs didn't invent that idea, they just make it much easier to represent these things in a very standard way and plug into mechanisms that allow for price discovery of these things (which I repeat, already are deemed to have value, but have extremely high friction to trade).
Maybe you don't understand because you aren't a digital native. I grew up playing World of Warcraft, and even from a young age I understood the power of having something other people didn't have. When I saw other players with their Naxxramas gear and I'm sitting there in normal Uncommons, it implied a difference of status. There was value in getting this gear because it made you feel special and important, or part of a certain community. The entire premise of the game revolves around the idea of scarcity (people have to work to get the best gear). If people had the best gear from the start, they wouldn't show up to raid every week, they wouldn't spend hours and hours farming materials or gold. That's digital scarcity, it's always existed.
Yes but cutlery that actually feels good in the hand, has proper sizing (fork length, spoon capacity) and also proper weight balancing is much harder to find. Personally I really like Oneida, I found a set with spoons that IMO have the perfect balance and capacity.
I also think there is a common problem that people are addicted to stimulation and novelty. As soon as something doesn't give that dopamine hit of being new or interesting, something else has to be found to replace it. I think this addiction is very common in society today and manifests in internet and device addiction
This is the kind of thing that is obvious for people who are good test takers. When you know the context of the question, then you know exactly what answer the instructor is looking for.
I don't think they actually want you to respond as if you work there. I think most students probably know that. Most likely this question was in a unit about certain types of statistical biases. A is very clearly the correct answer.
It's not about the consumer. The price is listed before tax to manipulate you into feeling like it's cheaper. If they add tax while you check out, you're basically already committed to purchasing the product.
I just had it write me code in a language I've never used before in my life, and actually create a script to automate something I needed automating. Pretty useful if you ask me. Might have it write me a few discord bots since I'm not familiar with the API.