AutistoMephistoJust ask, "Would Kramer be convinced to get into this?"
jqubedI guess it’s a good thing that I don’t know a couple of the “Bad tech” ideas. I can figure out the metaverse land sales but have no idea what a blind box is.
MajorasTerribleFateThe only blind boxes I know are those little toy collections you purchase in an opaque wrapper or box. You don’t know which one you got until you’ve paid. Generally some kind of licensed product, so movie/TV characters, or whatever else will get a child to talk their parents into spending money. There are others aimed at adults, too, like mini versions of classic branded products (Kitchenaid stand mixer, Kraft mac and cheese box, etc)
ChaoticNeutralCzechMe too but those are not really tech, they’re a classic carnival item
Yeah, that’s why I’m less than sure it’s the right thing. All I can say is that they seem to be more popular as a category in stores over the last five to ten years than before.
There are others aimed at adults, too, like mini versions of classic branded products (Kitchenaid stand mixer, Kraft mac and cheese box, etc)
Those mini verse often contain UV resin, without thoroughly explaining the safety risks of working with resin. It’s kind of amazing how they are able to get away with selling those kits - children certainly by them too.
Resin releases fumes and can cause you to develop a permanent sensitivity. Some of the kits are designed in such a way that the resin isn’t going to fully cure unless you do it in thin layers.
Loot boxes are like a random pack of baseball cards that you can only show to other owners of baseball cards, or someone who is baseball-card adjacent.
Some of them are “rare” in the sense that the card printing company refuses to make more, despite it costing them nothing after the initial card is made.
What’s more is that the printing compamy has decades of psycologic practices to use on their card pack purchasers. For Example:
- Casino-esque animations, enticing younger collectors before that aren’t even allowed to gamble legally, in person.
- Rarity manipulation, making things rarer than listed. If they list anything more than 'trust me bro.'
- Making sure that purchasers are surrounded by pack buyers who have already got the rarer cards, generating card envy.
- Removing entire card sets from purchase wirh the whole purpose of making purchasers feel like they will miss out, right now and forever, if they do not buy more packs of cards.
Finally, there is also the fact that all of these cards are entirely digital, so the existance of the cards depend almost entirely on the whims of the printers.
“Blind box” in the tech context is an algorithm that hides its operations from everyone, even its own creators. You give it an input, and then it produces an output, without showing you how it arrived to that output.
mozingoDo you mean AI?