Drones will airlift soylent packets and water to members
May 3, 2016 12:42 PM   Subscribe

 
WASD does nothing, the arrow keys do nothing, the space bar just nudges the page down... that flash game sucks.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:48 PM on May 3, 2016 [6 favorites]


They only seem to deliver packages to two locations.
posted by maryr at 12:50 PM on May 3, 2016


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]


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]


Didn't you know, hermits must gather seasonally in order to reproduce.
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


Is this a bitcoin thing?
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]


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]


Man can not live by soylent, alone.
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]


MetaFilter: A hermit colony ran as a decentralised autonomous organisation
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]


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


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


RUN A hermit colony RUN
RUN
R U N
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:15 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]


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]


* reimagines Berlin airlift as drone-delivered packets of soylent *
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]


Hermitgerd! Drerns!
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]


* 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]


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]


Hermits United?
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:19 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


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]


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


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]


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


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




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