Unexpectedly participated in a class action lawsuit in the USA
Recently, I unexpectedly encountered a justice system in the USA.
- In 2017-2018, when there was a crypto boom, I invested a little in a mining startup: I purchased their tokens and one hardware unit.
- The startup went up and began to build a mega farm, but it didn't work out — the fall of Bitcoin coincided with their spending peak, the money ran out, and the company went bankrupt. It's funny that a month or two after filing for bankruptcy, bitcoin played back everything. Sometimes you're just unlucky :-)
- I had already written off the lost money, of course. I acted on the rule "invest only 10% of the income you don't mind losing."
- Since everything legally happened in the USA, people gathered there and filed a class action lawsuit.
- I received a letter stating that I would be automatically among the plaintiffs if I did not refuse. I did not refuse; when else would I get an opportunity to participate in a class action?
- Everything calmed down until 2024.
- In the spring, another letter came: "Confirm the ownership of the tokens and indicate their quantity. We won and will share the remaining among all token holders proportionally, minus a healthy commission to the lawyers."
- But how do I confirm? More than five years have passed. The Belarusian bank account is closed, the company's admin panel is unavailable, and there was no direct transaction in the blockchain—I paid in Bitcoin directly from some exchange (although it is not recommended to do so).
- I found an email from the company confirming I bought tokens (without the amount) and printed it as a PDF. I attached it to the application with screenshots of the transactions from the exchange for the related period. I gave the address of my current wallet, where these tokens lie dead weight. I sent everything.
- Today, I received $700 in my bank account. Of course, this is not all the lost money, nearly 25%, maybe slightly more.
What conclusions can be drawn from this:
- Sometimes, you just don't get lucky in your business.
- Keep all emails. You never know what and when will come in handy.
- Class action lawsuits work and do it in an interesting way.
- Justice in the USA works slowly but, apparently, inevitably and unexpectedly (for me) loyally to minor participants in the conflict. At least sometimes.
Grainau: hiking and beer at 3000 meters
How it all looks from the ground.
For her vacation, Yuliya decided to show me the beautiful German mountains and took me for a couple of days to Grainau — it's a piece of Bavaria that's almost like Switzerland. At least, it is similar to the pictures of Switzerland that I've seen :-D
In short, it's a lovely place with a measured pace of life. If you need to catch your breath, calm your nerves, and enjoy nature, then this is the place for you. But if you can't live without parties, you'll get bored quickly.
What's there:
- The highest mountain in Germany plus a couple of glaciers.
- There's skiing in winter. If you really need it, you can find a place to ski in summer, but the descent is short, and the lifts are turned off.
- A large clean lake and a couple of smaller ones.
- A huge number of trails for hiking.
- A huge number of waterfalls, streams, and a couple of mountain rivers.
- Restaurants with beer.
- Beautiful fallen trees in the forests, private property, fences, cows with bells, and "racing tractors" (I don't know how to name this phenomenon better, but tractors are moving fast there :-D).
This is briefly, and now in detail.
«Slay The Princess» — combinatorial narrative
My favorite version of the Princess.
It's hard to impress me as a player and even harder as a game developer. The last time it happened with Owlcat Games in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, when they added a timer to the game's plot.
But Black Tabby Games managed to do it. And they did it not with some technological complexity but with a visual novel on a standard engine (RenPy), which is cool in itself.
I'll share a couple of thoughts about the game and its narrative structure, while I'm still under the impression. I need to think about how to adapt this approach to my projects.
ATTENTION: SPOILERS!
If you haven't played Slay The Princess yet, I strongly recommend you to catch up — the game takes 3-4 hours. You'll not regret it.
Simulating public opinion in a game
The demonstration (in Russian) of a technical prototype of manipulating public opinion and explanation of how it works.
I continue participating in World Builders school. For the last month, I've created a technical prototype of game mechanics for manipulating public opinion.
You play as the chief editor of a news agency, who sends journalists on quests and publishes articles based on the results of investigations focusing on themes that you want to promote.
The top video is in Russian, so I'll go through the main points below.
Procedural news headlines without complex text generation
A screenshot of the interface for selecting a news connotation (from the prototype of the game about a news agency). News: the arrest of a teenage witch for drunk driving.
From the player preference survey, I gradually moved on to working on a game prototype.
The game will be about a news agency. You will be the chief editor, and your task is to manipulate public opinion by investigating events and choosing a connotation of news: where to draw the public's attention, what to hide, in what tone to present themes, etc.
Therefore, the whole game will be around the text of news.
Creating large blocks of detailed text for each news item looks pointless — the game is not about reading news but about managing them. Therefore, it makes sense to build interaction only around headlines.
But how can we make the displaying of news both interesting and simple?