Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 404 posts

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#361

Post by qeternity »

jancsika wrote: post #300
qeternity wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Open your wallet to purchase something? I just don’t see that there’s any legitimate boasting to be had there: any damn fool with the same money could do it. The item isn’t the brag. The purchase is. People don’t buy Rolxes because because it doesn’t anything radically different than a $50 watch. They buy it because it tells people they have money. That’s what art is. That’s what NFT is.

> That’s what NFT is. Yeah, but who gives a shit whether it's centralized or not? If some intrepid reporter figured out that NFT has a backdoor that means it is being controlled as a-- god forbid-- centralized service, what bad thing happens to the dipshit who paid a million dollars for Rick and Morty digital art?

I agree with you 100%.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#362

Post by pmlnr »

asiachick wrote: post #303
pmlnr wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think nobody wants the bragging rights of owning that? It would be nice to believe that eventually we evolve beyond bragging about being an idiot. > I certainly do ...

I don't like NFTs but your comment triggered a counter argument in my head. People buy and collect all kinds of worthless tuff. I know several people that spent between $3k and $10k on Magic the Gathering cards. From a non-player's perspective it's ridiculous. The cards are worthless and you could just print out images of the cards on a printer or copy machine if all you cared about was playing the game itself. And y…

Collecting is fine, buying is fine - as long as the goal is not bragging. The problem is bragging.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#363

Post by madrox »

mouldysammich wrote: post #184
madrox wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you play video games, then? Because arguably it isn’t NFTs that consume power...it’s the GPUs. GPUs do way more than NFTs, and there is data that shows that gaming consumes way more than blockchain. If my mom is any indicator, many consider video games stupid and pointless. Value is in the eye of the beholder.

Maybe this is a the case, however there are, I would guess at least a billion people on earth who play games. there is nothing even close to that using blockchains. If blockchain energy usage is even vaguely in the range of games it can still be considered an enormous --possibly-- unnecessary usage of power

Maybe this is the case, but when we start judging what constitutes unnecessary usage of power, we get in the business of telling people what they can and cannot do with hardware they own. Last I checked, the HN crowd really doesn't like that kind of thing.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#364

Post by qeternity »

AshWolfy wrote: post #338
qeternity wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Open your wallet to purchase something? I just don’t see that there’s any legitimate boasting to be had there: any damn fool with the same money could do it. The item isn’t the brag. The purchase is. People don’t buy Rolxes because because it doesn’t anything radically different than a $50 watch. They buy it because it tells people they have money. That’s what art is. That’s what NFT is.

I cant think of anything more depressing than saying art is showing off you have money.

I am not saying that all art is like this. But I am saying that a large part of the fine arts world is like this.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#365

Post by madrox »

kllrnohj wrote: post #211
madrox wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you play video games, then? Because arguably it isn’t NFTs that consume power...it’s the GPUs. GPUs do way more than NFTs, and there is data that shows that gaming consumes way more than blockchain. If my mom is any indicator, many consider video games stupid and pointless. Value is in the eye of the beholder.

A quick search finds that a single bitcoin transaction consumes around 773.80 kWh. That's enough to power a video game console, like a PS5 for example, for around 3100 hours. So the simple act of buying the video game to play would cost vastly more electricity than playing it ever will. Whether or not gaming as a whole consumes more power than crypto as a whole isn't the question, it's whether or not crypto would con…

I honestly don't know where the power is better spent. There are quite a few industries I personally find superfluous in the world according to my personal set of values. Ironically for this context, I consider bitcoin to be among them.

But I also don't think judging the industry on power consumption is particularly fruitful, unless we want to look industry-by-industry and weigh utility vs energy, which we do not do. We do this for blockchain because calculating this is easy. We don't even have these numbers for, say, the stock market, so we don't even know how good or bad that is. We can't answer the first questions that arise from this kind of analysis.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#366

Post by Jetrel »

Igelau wrote: post #256
xyzzy123 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People doubting that a thing is actually art at all seems to be a fairly consistent marker of something being good art. It's fresh, it's pushing boundaries, it's making people think and wonder, it's generating snark and discussion. If readymades are art, if a blank canvas is art, then art is just a scam! Not sure if it will stand the test of time though (I mean technically in terms of the artifacts persisting, and co…

> People doubting that a thing is actually art at all seems to be a fairly consistent marker of something being good art. Survivorship bias. The successes are highly visible, and we never hear of the failures. > If readymades are art, if a blank canvas is art, then art is just a scam! Ceci n'est pas une pipe. All art is a kind of deception.

I'd point out that one thing about "con job" art like that is that, compared to craftsmanship art, where there's a steady paycheck for skilled work, "con art" is, well, the lottery. Tons of people try, and the vast majority make absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, in craftsman's art fields (all of the many ingredients that go into filmmaking, videogames, etc), if you're merely competent at what you do, it's like being a programmer - you learn the skills, and you get a job doing it, and my goodness - it pays a salary. There's no lottery involved. If you're a good matte painter, concept artist, 3d modeller, et cetera, illustrator, figure artist, etc, etc - people gladly pay money for it.

--

Anecdotally, as someone in the games industry (and knowing some folks in film), the difference between these two fields (con art and skilled art) is pretty stark. Every person I've know who's tried to do con art has failed to make a career out of it, and every person who's gotten a degree-equivalent level of skill/effort into skilled art has earned a living doing it (in much the same way they would in programming).

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#367

Post by Jetrel »

Talanes wrote: post #352
Igelau wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you're saying that the authenticity and the connection have some value. That value is intrinsic to the object itself though. NFT is asking us to pretend that that "intangible connection" can be parceled out for speculators as collectible magic numbers while the real lightsaber hopefully sits in Lucasfilm's warehouse.

Sure, but this NFT was specifically valued for the interaction of the sale of this NFT. Just like buying Dorsey's Tweet is. It's just pure commoditized interaction without a base good under it. I do agree that it's completely ridiculous, but I feel that way about the stock market.

The main (and dangerous) difference with the NFT stuff is that society doesn't agree any of this stuff is valuable. It's a bit like what happens when a conquering power comes in and existing land titles become meaningless. A good example of this was real estate moguls in prewar Japan, many of whom had spent centuries gradually accumulating land tenancy over tons of other people - but as soon as WW2 happened, one of the big changes that transformed that country was that all of those land titles were simply dissolved.

Just, -poof-. Gone.

Ownership of that land was simply taken from them, and evenly divided amongst their tenants.

There's a very similar danger with i.e. property rights inside of videogames and stuff - until and unless there's case law about it, I can go into my buddy's proverbial minecraft server, wreck all of his (potentially months of) work, and there's really nothing he can do about it. I might lose a friend over it, but I won't lose a lawsuit.

The illustrative bit about the minecraft server is I'm at the mercy of "the community of people who agrees that thing has value", and in this case, it's one person.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#368

Post by chrisco255 »

insert_coin wrote: post #333
chrisco255 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Bitcoin solved this problem 12 years ago. You can't copy and paste a BTC. You can't copy and paste an NFT.

I can totally copy and paste a bitcoin. I may not be able to put it back in the same blockchain, which is a different issue, but if I only care about the bits that make up the “coin” I can absolutely copy them. I could even copy the entire blockchain. AND the problem is not with the token, you can own all the original tokens for an image you want, you still don’t have anything different than a jpeg.

> I may not be able to put it back in the same blockchain

Look, if you can figure out how to double spend BTC, go for it. There's $1 trillion on that chain right now just waiting for the first genius with a copy-paste button to come along and take it.

It's not a different issue at all. A Bitcoin is not a thing you can copy. The UTXOs only exist on the chain and only mean anything in terms of the chain.

> you still don’t have anything different than a jpeg.

Yes, you do. You have verifiable providence of a unique digital signature (not unlike an autograph). You have a programmable, pluggable, leverageable, tradeable, asset that interacts seamlessly with hundreds of different applications (and rapidly growing).

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#369

Post by insert_coin »

chrisco255 wrote: post #368
insert_coin wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can totally copy and paste a bitcoin. I may not be able to put it back in the same blockchain, which is a different issue, but if I only care about the bits that make up the “coin” I can absolutely copy them. I could even copy the entire blockchain. AND the problem is not with the token, you can own all the original tokens for an image you want, you still don’t have anything different than a jpeg.

> I may not be able to put it back in the same blockchain Look, if you can figure out how to double spend BTC, go for it. There's $1 trillion on that chain right now just waiting for the first genius with a copy-paste button to come along and take it. It's not a different issue at all. A Bitcoin is not a thing you can copy. The UTXOs only exist on the chain and only mean anything in terms of the chain. > you still do…

You are confusing value with data.

Copying the value is a different question, but I can copy the data all I want.

> Yes, you do. You have verifiable providence of a unique digital signature (not unlike an autograph)

You have a signature that a token is valid on the chain, cool. As long as it stays on the chain of course. But that’s all it is, it does not make one jpeg the original and another one with the same bits the copy.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#370

Post by 74ls00 »

saltminer wrote: post #175
runeks wrote: post #37

Honest question: if I were to buy this, how would I prove to everyone I meet that I am the owner?

Does being the winning bidder on this actually make you the owner (i.e. transfer all associated IP rights to you) or do you just get a higher res version of the image if you win? Both? Neither?

Neither. All you get is in effect a certificate that says you “own” it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Post reply on HN