What is the magic ending that the Kickstarter refers to - something special when finishing the last piece? They don’t answer, just hint. Is it worthwhile?
Answering it here would take some of the surprise away. But I will say it's totally worthwhile to get one of the puzzles if one enjoys puzzles in general.
The mechanism of the ending seems to be the same in all the 6 puzzles, so you can just get any and see if you enjoy it. Even without it, the puzzle I did (Forest Feast) would have been my favourite out of the 20 or so I did in the last 3 years. The artwork on the puzzle has a ton of small details, which made it very enjoyable. And the unique shape of some puzzle pieces (e.g. a rabbit shaped piece which has a rabbit drawn in the middle of it) added on top of it.
When you are paying customer you are also getting the privilege of contacting the support.
I think it is fair that Google does not want to directly talk to billions of people using their services and not paying a cent for it. You get it for free? It is up to you to make sure you don't loose access.
>It is up to you to make sure you don't loose access.
The problem in my case was that Google changed the rules halfway through. I kept my username and password perfectly secure in my password manager. But one day they suddenly decided that I can't log in until I respond to an SMS code they sent to a phone number they somehow got from me 12 years ago that I no longer have access to. It would be fair for them to not suddenly force SMS MFA without the user's consent.
Yes, free account. And having lost the ability to do 2FA I probably won’t be able to upgrade it. I’m fine paying for support, but that is not even provided as far as I know (for free accounts).
It is a bit as with insurance. You pay insurance in case something happens. The insurance model is based on the assumption that a lot of people will be paying for it without getting the insurance back, otherwise it does not make financial sense.
The cheapest paid workspace account is cheap enough that it probably costs less than processing a single support ticket. Remember, when you loose access you are probably looking at multiple touch points and multiple people on their side to get you back. You wouldn't want any single person to be able to just change whatever they want?
So if they allowed it, people would just pay for the privilege once to get the problem resolved and then downgrade themselves back after one month.
The issue here is that the ratio of free accounts to paid accounts is so high that if any support was allowed for unpaid accounts it would absolutely deluge the system and paid accounts would have to pay a lot more to cover the cost of support for unpaid accounts.
But I do think they could provide a paid support ticket where you can pay an amount that would cover their costs (and of course then some) for a single support request.
The issue with this is that somebody could do this to "recover" account that does not belong to them. Paradoxically, there is some extra security in not allowing any social hacking by just not allowing any manual work on the account.
>The issue with this is that somebody could do this to "recover" account that does not belong to them. Paradoxically, there is some extra security in not allowing any social hacking by just not allowing any manual work on the account.
That's the problem. The more flexible you are with helping a customer, especially just over a phone or computer, the more open you are to social engineering attacks. At least in the US, there are various processes involving notarized/Medallion signatures and the like. But at that point some not insignificant number of people will complain the processes are too onerous, they don't have a local bank, etc.
I have seen so much fuckery with the stock price and ridiculous headlines in het media about GME that can't really believe that we have seen the actual squeeze. Furthermore, the SEC report said that the price run-up was because retail bought in, not because the hedge funds closed their positions. So when did they do this and went from 200% to 20%? Besides all of that, the fundamentals for GME are great. They are hiring great people and seem to be working behind the scenes with some of the biggest companies to, what seems to be, create a NFT marketplace linked to gaming, that will be 'carbon neutral'. all-in-all a good investment on that end I think. time will tell.
I don't necessarily believe in MOASS happening anymore, but I do have a strong believe that introducing an NFT marketplace and what else GME has in store will make sure the long term view for this company is optimistic. Wallstreet might have "won", but it seems that SEC is introducing new bills to prevent some of the stuff that was going on.. Hopefully they will start enforcing it as well.
A more jaded individual would see the introduction of elements like an NFT store to be less long term planning and more capitalizing on its new fan base which is heavily jaded with the current system and so prone to accepting opportunities to upset the market, regardless of actual merit.
a company shoehorning in NFT's is not a "long term" plan, it's a dying brand capitalizing on the latest craze that will almost certainly die out alongside it.
Precisely. Many, many retailers have gone out of business in my country in the last ten years and a lot of them died painfully. Trying desperately to turn things around- unsuccessfully.
Valve essentially stopped making games because selling virtual items is so insanely profitable. Being able to sell digital rights to items and then take a sellers fee no matter what platform that item is resold on later could be a huge deal, if that's what they're building.
I wouldn't agree with that, but even accepting that premise as true, why would gamestop be in any position to benefit from this? If you're, say, activision, why would you possibly sell your digital content on gamestop's platform where you owe gamestop a cut rather than on your own platform where you get the cut? Why would you put it on a blockchain at all? Just use your own boring db.
More than that, it is taking a decentralized tech and centralizing it. The point of this benefitting GME is because it would be a market they absolutely control (so they can get a cut of the profits). What's the point of a crypto tech in that case?
There are facts out there amongst the near constant stream of BS on reddit. GameStop filed a SEC form [0] about disclosing a partnership with Immutable X, which is in the NFT space for games, not art.
The market for in-game purchases (like every mobile game for crying out loud) is huge. Epic games' Fortnite is 100% free to play but has a store for purchasing cosmetic stuff (and a lawsuit with Apple over this). There was $3.7 Billion dollars of revenue associated with Fortnite in 2019 [1]. Billion with a B. All cosmetic, in-game items.
What is reported as being built would be a marketplace for gamers, and possibly content creators (people that build mods, skins, maps, etc. for games if allowed) to buy/sell/trade these in-game items. Not $10k GIF's of apes or whatever nonsense. Instead of spending $5 or $20 on something and it sits on a gamers account, think of it as they could spend that and later on they could re-sell it or trade on a marketplace.
I don't think any of this requires blockchain or NFT. I think the companies involved are using that because it ticks a lot of requirements boxes for basically Digital Rights Management with sales/resales built in (I think via ETH/smart contracts).
As silly as buying pixels for a game may sound, it already is a large market and a company like GameStop getting into that could capture a reliable subscription-like revenue stream not tied to game console refreshes or used physical games.
What would be sad is if this is a revolutionary type of change to an industry (i.e gamers own the digital sword they bought, maybe take it from one game-world to another like in Ready Player One?) but is squashed by the volume of noise about "hedge funds r bad, boo wall st" every time the company is brought up.
Please don't park any money behind this narrative unless it's literally money you'd burn in a campfire for just as much amusement.
There is zero chance of GME of all places becoming some sort of market for NTF game cosmetics. None of that blather matters if you don't have a user base, and there's no way GME is going to get one.
Why would Epic, Valve, etc go along with GME's scheme? If they want to offer unique to a single player items they can do so essentially trivially with their existing platform. They don't need to partner with anyone, just put a dev team or two on it for a short bit. They certainly don't need to partner with anyone like GME, let alone a bunch of shady cryptocoin operations running out of tax havens.
Basically no one cares about this utopia you're imagining to start with, and even if they did, there's no pathway to create it in the form of GME.
Don't you love it when the once in a lifetime opportunity for generational wealth is also a great fundamental investment? In case the biggest short squeeze the market would have ever seen, with the potential to crash the US economy, somehow doesn't happen (damn hedgies!). With all of that that, it doesn't matter that physical sales of video games are dying and that the company is bleeding out money with a loss of $100 millions in Q3 2021 alone.
I think the Q4 earnings report will show massive improvements, furthermore, them moving away from just being a brick-and-mortar store will help valuation in the long run. MOASS is unlikely to happen, but I think in the long term the valuation of GME will keep increasing considering their new plans and their new following/customers. They definitely gained in brand-name in the last year.
This whole saga seems to at least introduce some new rules and regulations. Although enforcing them will be the real game-changer.
I think the Q4 earnings report will show us quantitative reasons to believe the company is turning around to a profitable company. Furthermore, their move to a NFT marketplace will also move them away from just being a brick-and-mortar company to more than just that.
The speed of the turnaround on GME's public perception is crazy. In the beginning of the pandemic they were constantly excoriated for refusing to close stores and let employees go home. But then the squeeze happened and everyone's opinions did a complete 180.
I typically combine a TODO list with an overview of my (next) high-level steps in the flow that I had in mind to implement/work on. Also noticed that typically, after a day/night of rest, your thoughts get re-aligned and you might even come up with a better approach for one of the problems you encountered.
"Surprisingly, we have also seen this issue connected to gas lift office chairs. When people stand or sit on gas lift chairs, they can generate an EMI spike which is picked up on the video cables, causing a loss of sync. If you have users complaining about displays randomly flickering it could actually be connected to people sitting on gas lift chairs. Again swapping video cables, especially for ones with magnetic ferrite ring on the cable, can eliminate this problem. There is even a white paper about this issue."
