Drones will airlift soylent packets and water to members
May 3, 2016 12:42 PM Subscribe
Well it is a hermit colony. You know, where all the hermits get together to... herm.
posted by pipeski at 12:54 PM on May 3, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by pipeski at 12:54 PM on May 3, 2016 [7 favorites]
I prefer my soylent delivered by katana-weilding hackers, possibly via skateboard and/or JDM hybrid conversions, thanks.
posted by bonehead at 12:56 PM on May 3, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 12:56 PM on May 3, 2016 [11 favorites]
Didn't you know, hermits must gather seasonally in order to reproduce.
posted by exogenous at 12:56 PM on May 3, 2016
posted by exogenous at 12:56 PM on May 3, 2016
From the page source: "H E R M I C I T Y. A hermit colony ran as a decentralised autonomous organisation on the ethereum blockchain. Powered by vapor. Loved by the great one Vitalik."
There's also a link to a strange image with something in Japanese(?).
posted by daniel_charms at 12:59 PM on May 3, 2016
There's also a link to a strange image with something in Japanese(?).
posted by daniel_charms at 12:59 PM on May 3, 2016
Is this a bitcoin thing?
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 1:01 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 1:01 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
I emailed to ask what happens if I burn the woods down by accident. I'll let you know if I hear back.
posted by maryr at 1:02 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by maryr at 1:02 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
There's a "vow of soylent" joke in there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to find it.
posted by Think_Long at 1:03 PM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Think_Long at 1:03 PM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]
Man can not live by soylent, alone.
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:04 PM on May 3, 2016
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:04 PM on May 3, 2016
When you hear the drones coming, that's the sound of Soylents.
posted by maryr at 1:05 PM on May 3, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by maryr at 1:05 PM on May 3, 2016 [8 favorites]
MetaFilter: A hermit colony ran as a decentralised autonomous organisation
posted by furtive at 1:09 PM on May 3, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by furtive at 1:09 PM on May 3, 2016 [7 favorites]
Things that make you go herm...
posted by Kabanos at 1:10 PM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Kabanos at 1:10 PM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
maryr: "They only seem to deliver packages to two locations."
Well, there aren't that many hermits.
posted by boo_radley at 1:11 PM on May 3, 2016
Well, there aren't that many hermits.
posted by boo_radley at 1:11 PM on May 3, 2016
why is this more alone that paying with a credit card online? what does the ethereum doodah add?
posted by andrewcooke at 1:14 PM on May 3, 2016
posted by andrewcooke at 1:14 PM on May 3, 2016
What would I have to have to understand this? Because I don't have that thing.
posted by cjorgensen at 1:18 PM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by cjorgensen at 1:18 PM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]
The horror movie that comes out of this will be excellent.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:23 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 1:23 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
* reimagines Berlin airlift as drone-delivered packets of soylent *
posted by phooky at 1:32 PM on May 3, 2016
posted by phooky at 1:32 PM on May 3, 2016
The horror movie that comes out of this will be excellent.
I have a dawning, numb suspicion it will actually be a comedy starring Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin.
posted by maxsparber at 1:39 PM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]
I have a dawning, numb suspicion it will actually be a comedy starring Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin.
posted by maxsparber at 1:39 PM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]
Hermitgerd! Drerns!
posted by chavenet at 1:48 PM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 1:48 PM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
Nobody goes there anymore; there's too many hermits.
And soylent.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:52 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
And soylent.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:52 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
* reimagines Berlin airlift as drone-delivered packets of soylent *
West Berliners tear down wall, beg Russians to move in.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:00 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
West Berliners tear down wall, beg Russians to move in.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:00 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
Honestly, if between this and the whole Further Future thing, we can convince the techno-libertarians to go off to isolated locations and hopefully die stay there, I'm probably OK with it.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:07 PM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:07 PM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]
Ok, in all seriousness, let's try a YYN style explaination of this.
Ethereum is a bitcoin-esque blockchain platform. "Ether" is the currency on Ethereum. Ethereum supports other things besides just currency including "smart contracts."
Hermicity let's you make a smart contract to send money in the form of Ether to ????? who will then arrange for Soylent and water to be delivered by drone to your chosen location.
So -- I guess the sign-up form is to say, "hey, I'm willing to spend $xxx for a membership, so I can go find my Walden's Pond and have you drop non-assembly required Blue Apron packaged on my head"?
Am I right? did I win an internet?
posted by sparklemotion at 3:39 PM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
Ethereum is a bitcoin-esque blockchain platform. "Ether" is the currency on Ethereum. Ethereum supports other things besides just currency including "smart contracts."
Hermicity let's you make a smart contract to send money in the form of Ether to ????? who will then arrange for Soylent and water to be delivered by drone to your chosen location.
So -- I guess the sign-up form is to say, "hey, I'm willing to spend $xxx for a membership, so I can go find my Walden's Pond and have you drop non-assembly required Blue Apron packaged on my head"?
Am I right? did I win an internet?
posted by sparklemotion at 3:39 PM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
Also, you can't convince me that this Wikipedia page wasn't authored by some kind of Markovian bot. Tay...is, is that you?
posted by sparklemotion at 3:43 PM on May 3, 2016
posted by sparklemotion at 3:43 PM on May 3, 2016
The idea behind Ethereum is that you can pour some money onto a blockchain, attached to some code. If people run that code, they get some of the money. It seems an extraordinarily bulky way to pay for people to run your code, but... cool, I guess?
Exactly how this code is supposed to make things happen in the Real World is unclear. Like, it could transfer some money on a regular basis to someone who sells Soylent, but it can't possibly actually verify that that person physically put some Soylent in a box and mailed it on receipt.
I guess if someone works out how to make USPS tracking available to programs running on the Ethereum distributed system, you could query that? But if it doesn't get sent, the piece of code can't really do anything other than possibly sending nasty messages, or maybe ring up the hermit's mom and tell her "Hey, Joe's package didn't get sent, maybe you should check to see if he's running out of food."
I'll admit that the prospect of lawyers being hired by pieces of code running on a blockchain nominally attached to an offshore corporation gives me the willies, though. You could fairly easily write an autonomous DMCABot that searches for DMCA violations and sends takedown notices... completely divested from any physical infrastructure other than the ad-hoc network computers executing its code for money.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:51 PM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
Exactly how this code is supposed to make things happen in the Real World is unclear. Like, it could transfer some money on a regular basis to someone who sells Soylent, but it can't possibly actually verify that that person physically put some Soylent in a box and mailed it on receipt.
I guess if someone works out how to make USPS tracking available to programs running on the Ethereum distributed system, you could query that? But if it doesn't get sent, the piece of code can't really do anything other than possibly sending nasty messages, or maybe ring up the hermit's mom and tell her "Hey, Joe's package didn't get sent, maybe you should check to see if he's running out of food."
I'll admit that the prospect of lawyers being hired by pieces of code running on a blockchain nominally attached to an offshore corporation gives me the willies, though. You could fairly easily write an autonomous DMCABot that searches for DMCA violations and sends takedown notices... completely divested from any physical infrastructure other than the ad-hoc network computers executing its code for money.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:51 PM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
I misread this at first and thought it was about hermit crabs, and thought we had finally made Accelerando real.
posted by ymgve at 5:24 PM on May 3, 2016
posted by ymgve at 5:24 PM on May 3, 2016
Those drones look like crabs, and that scuttling around they're doing sure looks like herming.
posted by Lyme Drop at 5:58 PM on May 3, 2016
posted by Lyme Drop at 5:58 PM on May 3, 2016
John Dummett, 18, is from a town near Melbourne, Australia. He refers to Hermicity as a distributed autonomous organization (DAO for short), which is what the cryptocurrency Ethereum was built to support. I asked him how long he’d been working on Hermicity.
“Honestly, only since last Thursday,” he replied via email. “But to be in the position to undertake a project like this has taken a lifetime.”
posted by hot_monster at 7:05 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
“Honestly, only since last Thursday,” he replied via email. “But to be in the position to undertake a project like this has taken a lifetime.”
posted by hot_monster at 7:05 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by Halloween Jack at 12:48 PM on May 3, 2016 [6 favorites]