That's a really inspiring story to me. Do you have any more info about your business e.g website or blog? (I realise these are computer things and exactly what you were moving away from.)

s/w? Does that mean sidewalk?

Pointy bit on the bridge of the nose.

I find this more meaningful when I think of the numbers as arbitrary unordered labels rather than familiar natural numbers. For example, if they were words like “cat” “tree” “nut” etc then the exercise feels more like it's constructing something new, rather than trying to retrofit an axiomatic definition onto a pre-existing structure.

I'm making a conscious effort to do more things that have no extrinsic objective, to do things just for their own sake. This is a familiar concept, it's a hobby (or art?). I feel I'm missing some of the joy and satisfaction that life has to give by always needing a stated tangible objective.

This is made by a16z, ostensibly for business reasons. I am asking what their angle is.

As far as I know, they don't have much history in making things with "no extrinsic objective" - I could be wrong though.

You misunderstand what a16z-infra is. This is built by Convex, the game engine being used.

Convex is in a16z’s portfolio. https://a16z.com/2022/04/27/investing-in-convex/

That GitHub org is a16z.

Their other repos are also showcasing various AI toolings, often the tools are also startups they invest in.

I think you're providing ways to describe deception that are themselves deceptive.

Not deception. Suspension of disbelief ;)

I think "mandatory tips" is just another name for a bill.

Is this where cryptocurrencies come in? The convenience of a cashless transaction without the tracking.

If any of them worked sensibly as currency, maybe. But end result would probably be "the crypto transaction processor" most companies taking crypto use getting all the info needed to link person with their money anyway.

Uh? I got bad news for you. Crypto is by far the LEAST private method.

But it's not a monopoly skimming off my purchases either.

And? Not relevant to the discussion

true, it's a vast decentralized system skimming off your purchases.

Cryptocurrency exposed thousands of pedophiles a few years ago. It stores a record of every transaction. They just had to connect the dots starting from the wallet of the CSAM website.

Blockchain sleuthing had become much more commonplace since then.

If you have a public ledger, you don't need names to identify people's wallets.

I use Bitpay for some small-ish things. For small transactions, though, cash or credit card works best.

Lol the simple mention, and not even favourably, of crypto in an extremely relevant context gets a DVote. It's like mentioning Joe Rogan.

Crypto is a permanent distributed transaction list. I’ve never understood how that was marketed as private

People do tip in Australia, it's just not expected. Tipping a genuine act of generosity to reciprocate exceptional service.

The correlation between service quality and tipping is an interesting one, why does anyone do a good job in any role without some kind of incremental reward for effort. Do office workers always revert to 'just enough to not get fired' or are they playing a longer game for promotions and bonuses?

What is this "exceptional service" people are talking about? Take the order without forgetting stuff and then bring dishes from the kitchen? Isn't that just a normal baseline for this profession? Or does it mean not spitting in the food (I'm joking)? I sometimes leave tips, but not once have I understood why, because there is no such thing as "exceptional" in the waiting service imho. I only do it due to the social pressure, like a monkey in the story about water hose and a ladder.

I absolutely think that exceptional service is possible - for example, when I visit a restaurant with my elderly grandparents who have some extremely particular dietary restrictions, and the wait staff patiently discuss our options, help them create a meal that satisfies their preferences and remains interesting, I find that exceptional. I've had wait staff give us genuine recommendations on the menu, with honesty, indicating the dishes they don't like (much more rare) as well as those they do resulting in a good meal - I enjoy that candor and am happy to tip for the recommendation. I've also had staff stay late and keep a restaurant open because we were on the last train into a station with nowhere else to go and eat and didn't speak the local language - I found that exceptional as well.

Agreed, you don't have access to a phone at all while in remand. Bail conditions can restrict who you live with, where you live, interstate travel etc. These are all huge losses of liberty that we accept as a society the same way we accept prison as a loss of liberty.