Nuclear Monster

  • Users of the Chess.com were surprised today to find out that their previously played games could be minted on a blockchain as part of an NFT grift. Chess.com has an announcement about the scam, and the only way to opt-out of having previously played games minted is buried at the end of a support document linked from the announcement (that’s an archive.org link, the live page is here). According to the support page, users are required to contact Chess.com support to opt-out or their opponents can mint their games as NFTs. When I tried to opt-out just now for my Chess.com account, the button to “Contact Us” did not work in the Safari web browser, I had to use Vivaldi.

    According to chess.com:

    Treasure Chess is a place for chess and crypto fans to turn their games into unique “Treasures” to collect, share, trade, and sell. You can mint any of the games you played on Chess.com into a Treasure, which will then exist as an NFT (Non-Fungible Token) on the Polygon Network.

    Any of these things could happen without engaging in cryptocurrency or NFT scams by using a technology invented decades ago called a database. By using a database you can also back up the system and protect against the scams and fraud which happen every day with cryptocurrency and NFTs.

    The Chess.com support site says I’ll hear back in 1-2 business days about my request to opt-out of letting the games I played in the past become NFTs. I’ll be very surprised if they’re able to keep up with the volume of people opting out within that time frame. I didn’t play there much, but now I have no intention of ever playing a game using Chess.com again.

  • Teardown is a blocky destruct-em-up from Tuxedo Labs that was in early access for a long while and has just hit version 1.0 today. It’s a lot of fun and I’ll stream the campaign and sandbox mode a bit tonight to see what’s changed since I’ve last played Teardown.

    Teardown is $20 on Steam for Windows.

  • Reed Albergotti writing for the Washington Post:

    Workers at Apple’s flagship Grand Central Terminal retail location in Manhattan have begun to formally collect signatures to form a union, according to a newly-updated website launched by the organizers, setting the stage for a showdown between the iPhone maker and the employees who sell them.

    The organizers, who have dubbed themselves “Fruit Stand Workers United,” say they voted Feb. 21 to affiliate with Workers United, a national labor union that has supported the successful unionization efforts of Starbucks employees around the country, according to the site. People involved in the organizing effort told The Washington Post that they have endured months of efforts by Apple to convince employees that unionizing is a bad idea, accusing the company of “union busting” tactics. Now, they are handing out signature cards to would-be union members.

    Very exciting news, happy to see these workers countering the anti-union message from Apple and I love the name.

  • Cook, Serve, Delicious!, already has three games in the series and now Cook Serve Forever (maybe it should have been Cook Serve 4Ever?) is on the way for early 2023 with promises of local co-op through the campaign about a food-cart chef who wants to be a celebrity chef like their hero. It looks like Cook Serve Forever is continuing with similar gameplay of combining what the developer says are hundreds of new ingredients to make new recipes. Watch the video above for more on that.

    I reached out to Vertigo Gaming and asked about Linux and an Apple Silicon native macOS port but Vertigo’s Production Manager Erik Johnson said anything other than Windows would have to wait for after Cook, Serve, Forever hits 1.0 some time early next year. Cook, Serve, Delicious!  & Cook Serve, Delicious! 2!! shipped for Linux & macOS, but Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! only released for Windows and macOS, it never got to Linux.

  • The tenth episode of Tim Hunkin’s The Secret Life of Components is up. Linkages & Mechanisms does what it says on the tin as Tim Hunkin shares his knowledge and experience with us about the parts that amplify forces and make his machines move.

    This is honestly my favorite video so far, we get to see Hunkin’s joyful perspective on watching a digging crane at a local scrapyard pick up, move, and destroy rubbish. The crane picks things up using linkages and Hunkin’s happy to just watch them in motion and share that with us which is a little unusual but much appreciated.