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lori-hime · 5 years ago

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I haven't written much about what I've been up to lately, so here's some word salad updates~ 🥗

NijiGaku Anime

So I started watching the new LL. I hadn't been keeping up with SIFAS' story, but I did read some of it when it first came out. I gotta say, I'm really enjoying all of the changes they decided to make for the anime version of the story, to both the characters and story. It's starting to feel like something coherent. The story in the game was ok, but the main thing that interested me was the interactions with Muse and Aqours, overshadowing the actual "plot" and even Nijigasaki themselves. But the anime really made me interested and excited about the story and characters again. I would be a little annoyed about the personality and dynamic changes, but honestly, I'm used to it by now. LL always ends up doing this sort of thing, and the personalities only seem to become solidified after the anime airs.

A little disappointed in Kasumi's change in some vague ways I don't really feel like describing, but honestly it balances out because Ayumu is fantastic now (previously one of my least cared for of the group.) Yu's personality is surprisingly super gay fun and I'm really excited for her and Ayumu's dynamic in particular. They're so cute. Seriously feel like I'm gonna ship them hard.

I also really like Rina's initial personality in this. Not only is she bad at expressing emotions through her face, but she also seems bad at expressing them through words too. I feel like this is gonna be much more interesting than her already being cutesy and genki like in the promo stuff and SIFAS.

When Karin was first shown, I had mixed feelings. At first I was like oh god I'm gay and she's beautiful. But the whole sexuality flaunting thing kind of put me off for several reasons I don't really wanna get into explaining. I really didn't know how to feel. I started liking her a little more during SIFAS, when she competed against Muse in DDR and lost... started feeling like I was getting a glimpse of her real personality without the whole sexy idol persona. Although not much has happened in the anime with her yet, she's giving me Nozomi vibes and I love it. I actually think if I had gone into this without previous knowledge of the characters, I'd be betting she'd become my fave for sure.

My list has gone from Kasumi > Rina > Kanata / Emma > Karin > Ai > Setsuna > Ayumu > Shizuku to Yuu > Ayumu > Kasumi / Karin > Rina > Kanata / Emma > Ai > Setsuna > Shizuku

Still biased a bit towards characters that have shown up more in the first two eps, so it'll undoubtedly change. But It's really interesting how much the characters I already felt I had good placements for changed so much.

Edit for episode 3, because I didn't post this fast enough. Student council speedrun was fantastic. Yu continues to be incredibly gay. I wonder how this episode will affect the ships people will gravitate towards. LL has always been a fairly monoship fandom, heavily gravitating towards specific pairs. Of course that's largely the fault of canon itself, often pushing and developing single ships. Well, I suppose we saw a big change with Aqours, though, especially with season two. But even then, the ships tended to stay at least between girls of the same year (aside from my rarepair, shout-out to YohaRiko.) Now, I wonder. From the very beginning, before Yu even had a name, it felt like they were really pushing the shippy stuff @ the viewer. I wonder if that’s still gonna be the angle. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it yet. I really want to see more YuAyu rather than YuSetsu, but I can't really be mad at more gay content unless they try to make it a DEEP story and then fail to resolve it but haha they'd NEVER do that, I'm sure!!

As for the others... I'm guessing they're gonna push RinAi, KarinEmma, YuuKasu, and maybe YuuShizu? My original guesses were that AiKarin would be a thing, evoking NozoEli v3. But I guess that'd be too predictable a third time. KarinEmma sounds like it could be cute and sweet, RinAi feels like it has adorable potential, and YuKasu vs. YuAyu sounds like it could have some good comedic rival-y potential, given they don't make Kasumi super serious about it and make it really angsty. Not that a cute idol show would ever do such a thing haha!!!!!

Higurashi Gou

Also started Higurashi. I doubt many people know this, but I used to be a major Higurashi fan before I got into Touhou. It was my main "fandom" I guess, even though there wasn't really that much of a fandom to interact with comparatively. Anyway, despite that, I didn't think I'd get into this remake super hard... but I'm really loving it so far. The art style is really pretty and eye candy, and it turns out it's a direct continuation of the story rather than a remake. Very excited to see where it's going, and also to see a lot of my baby Rena again.

An interesting difference to me as I'm rewatching are my feelings for Keiichi. While I don't hate him, over the years I've really grown tired of the generic male leads (especially in harem anime) like him. Of course, he's definitely not AS generic as they come, or maybe perhaps that's just my bias from when I used to really like him. The me back then found him unique enough to stand beside the girls. Nowadays, I definitely can't say the same. At least he doesn't grate on my nerves as much as most other harem anime protags do, however. I feel like despite lacking the quirks that make the girls so likeable and unique, he still has something going for him... perhaps the fact he's framed as inherently different from everyone else, because he comes from the city, and the way he acts a bit more realistically to the scary things that are happening. Although those things are obviously explained away later, at least for now I still accept him for what he is, old bias or not.

Genshin Impact

Been playing Genshin Impact religiously and loved every second of it. Though I've caught up with the main story content, so sadly it's slowed down. I'd never heard of this game before it came out, so I was absolutely wowed that such a game was f2p. I've heard a lot of people criticizing it because they added gacha in at the last minute, and I definitely understand being annoyed through the pov of someone who was anticipating it. But part of me is still really thankful that the game is free at all. I suppose that full but paid 60 dollar game would still be a better experience, but because of my non-existent budget situation, I may not have ended up playing it at all.

Aside from the arguably shitty monetization practices, however, the game is fantastic. It really is as similar to BoTW as people have mentioned, and I really appreciate that. BoTW, from a gameplay standpoint, is absolutely my favorite game. It's exactly what I want from any given game. So I really appreciated this. The story and characters of Genshin are also really interesting. I really like Qiqi, Venti, Fischl, and Xingqiu, among others. I spent a while rerolling for Qiqi or Venti 5*s, and eventually got an account with Qiqi. Venti on the other hand I've been trying to roll for but sadly haven't gotten. I have 1 roll left before the banner ends, so hopefully.. My friends whaled him for me. I swear I tried to stop them! I owe them my soul...

HoloLive, Pikamee & Vtubing

I briefly started getting into HoloLive a little while ago. After the Aloe stuff, I started worrying a bit about how the company handles these situations as well as the girls' freedoms and how much of their donation money they actually get.. (I made a post about it a while back.) After a while my worries died down a bit, but then came back full force with the Coco and Haachama situation. After that and one too many uncomfortable sexual jokes, I decided to just distance myself from HL. It's a shame, because I really enjoyed their personalities, but it was making me feel uncomfortable more often than not.

I told myself it’s fine, I’ve got Pikamee if I ever feel like watching vtubers again. And then like a week later... Well, it’s not really something I wanna talk about here, but she made some posts on twitter that made me too uncomfortable to continue watching her either.

On a much lighter note... A friend of mine showed us how to use prprlive and facerig to use the Touhou CB Live2D models, and Asa and I played around with Mokou, Kaguya, and Lyrica’s. It was quite fun, and I do look forward to using the Kaguya one for private streams on one of my servers. I’ve actually always wanted to try out vtubing stuff myself, but not really publicly. Of course, the costs for getting a model drawn and made specifically for me are too much for something I’m not really committing to, so this is perfect. I’m excited~

Touhou Cannonball & Kagura Thoughts

It’s been a long time since I talked about Touhou CB on my blog, and I’m pretty sure I left things on a pretty bad note. Mainly dissatisfied with Mokou’s portrayal for pretty shallow reasons on my part, despite they game having just started and having a lot of room to grow. And grow it did. While I quit pretty early in because of that, Asa decided to take over my account. She realized that it was pretty easy to upgrade any given character you had to a 5* without having to rely much on the gacha. She ended up playing a lot with the goal of upgrading everyone we had. I came back to it around July and actually had a lot of fun with it. The cast had gotten much bigger and we really enjoyed playing on multiplayer. It wasn't the best game ever from a gameplay standpoint, but it definitely had it's charm. The announcement of its death, although unsurprising, came at the worst time. Asa and I actually cried a little when we saw the announcement, ngl. The game had such good, wholesome, Touhouy vibes to it. Nonetheless, we made the most out of the last month or so after the announcement. We played a LOT of multiplayer and had a lot of really cute and good interactions with other players. Near the end, we realized that Lyrica was the only character from the normal banner we were missing, so we grinded like crazy (mostly Asa) to try to get her... we ended up getting a number of 5*s but none Lyrica... she eluded us to the very end. It was quite sad, but how hard we worked for it still felt satisfying somehow. We were able to max out our multiplayer level and complete a ton of goals we wouldn’t have otherwise.

So after this bittersweet experience with Touhou gacha, and all the scummy things I've been hearing about Lost Word, I've been thinking like... I'm done with Touhou gacha, at least for now. Don't wanna hear anything else about it for a good while. And then the 25th anniversary hits and they announce Kagura. Ugh. Please, give me a break. Needless to say, I'm gonna have to give it a try. Touhou is my life, I love rhythm games, I love Touhou music, and I love character collecting games. And I've been waiting for something to replace SIF gameplay in my heart for a long time. I'd banked my hopes on SIFAS but it's really barely a rhythm game so.... at least now that I've gone through CB's death and seen how cruddy LW is, I'll have lower standards and not get my hopes up too high.

If you got this far, thanks for reading my rambles and have a good day~

#loritalk #super long im sorry #there's even more stuff i wanted to talk about but it was already long enough as it is

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frances048 · 7 years ago

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My 2017 Summary Of Art by Fran48

Blank meme : https://dustbunnythumper.deviantart.com/art/2017-Summary-of-Art-BLANK-718337918 ..Here we go again..Another year is nearly at it's end so I decided once again to do this meme to show how far I've come with my art this year :) Here are previous years' memes if you're interested :D 2012: https://fran48.deviantart.com/art/2012-Art-Summary-Fran48-343638908 2013: https://fran48.deviantart.com/art/2013-Art-Summary-Fran48-422621435 2014: https://fran48.deviantart.com/art/My-2014-Summary-Of-Art-Fran48-503896864 2015: https://fran48.deviantart.com/art/My-2015-Summary-of-art-578886586 2016: https://fran48.deviantart.com/art/Fran48-s-2016-Summary-Of-Art-654040723 This year, like last year has been pretty bad This year in a nutshell..but I'm hoping (and praying) that surely next year can't be nearly as stressful..maybe I'll jinx myself doing that though ^^;..I managed to fit in artwork each month though, maybe I just did it as some form of stress relief this year..idk but seeing improvements and new pieces that I was satisfied with, definitely made me feel a lot better ^^ The resources I used this year included Ms paint, Watercolour paints, coloured pencils, mechanical pencils, fine liner pens, pencils, coloured pens, chalk , charcoal ,crayons, camera, phone, video camera, felt tip pens, and much later in the year, Paint tool sai, which I also used to edit this along with Ms paint.. January That month, I did quite a few paintings using the art set my Grandad bought for me last Christmas...They included the featured picture : , a few other naruto pictures,Painting Hokage NarutoKakashi and Obito painting a gravity falls picture Bill cipher paintingand Ruby rose picturePainting of Ruby Rose RWBY. I also drew some digital pieces and created a Naruto gifNaruto Hokage Gif..I also did traditional sketches and used some charcoal.. We also went to see the comedian Graham Fellows as his character John shuttleworth this month which was so funny and I drew a sketch of him too :)John Shuttleworth sketch February: That month I got into Mirai Nikki and Star wars animated series (recommended by my dear friend :iconkoikii: ^_^ )as you can see by the featured images: I also started watching some of sgt frog and drew art from it:KururuDororo and also finished watching One Punch man and drew a few pieces from it, including a speedpaint:Painting of TornadoSaitama ok colouredSpeed o sound sonic speedpaint I also continued to draw digital pieces and paintings including a Haku and Zabuza reunion piece which I was really proud of :When a person has something they want to protect March: In March, I got into Miraculous Ladybug so drew fanart of it including the featured picture: Marinette-Ladybug I also drew a few sketches that month and Naruto shippuden ended ;w;..Noooooo so I drew this pic..;w;..Naruto uzumaki wedding day- The end of Shippuden I also was thinking of getting to Evangelion in March so I drew Shinji..Shinji Iraki.I didn't draw much around this time as I was extremely busy struggling with my honours degree coursework ;w; April During April I continued to do some paintings and sketches but also continued to create digital drawings such asIva one pieceNarusasu -each other's coloursGiroro Sgt Frog Speedpaint (youtube link)...and the featured pictureTrafalgar law time skip I watched Evangelion during April and finished the main series feeling extremely confused ...I also did a Beamish vlog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SZIAOa7X9k and took a lot of photos May In this month, I got into four different anime series as you can tell by the featured pictures: Kuro blue exorcistYuuri- Yuri on iceShiho Kimizuki They were, Danganronpa the animation, Blue exorcist, Yuri on ice and Seraph of the end (as told about by the awesome :iconrealrockandrolla1996: :D ) , because of this I drew some fanart from the series, mainly traditional pen drawings and ms paint drawings. I also continued to do photography when I could. June That month I turned 23! XD I got up to date with Attack on titan and created a couple of paintings of characters from the series.Ymir and HistoriaAnnie leonhart painting I also continued drawing Danganronpa pieces (two of which are featured :Gundam Tanaka Teruteru Hanamura) I also got up to date with Puella Magi Magica Madoka in June , as well as Kill la kill. So I drew a lot of ms paint, pen drawings and charcoal pieces. I also went to Sunnycon this year in Two cosplays..Mikasa and Konan and produced fanart for Bryce Papenbrook and Jessie and James' voice actors to sign..They loved my pieces which filled me with a lot of pride and made me so happy <33 I also took a lot of photos from Sunnycon so please feel free to check them out in my gallery ^_^ or in my sunnycon journal entry for this year ^^ Sunnycon 2017 :D July This month I finally graduated from Uni with a First Class Honours degree and published paper and not long after that I went on holiday to Scotland and lost my Grandma ...so I did most of my drawings later in the month..^^; I did a few digital pieces including my Mephisto speedpaint : Mephisto Youtube Speedpaint (link below)in July but mainly did Photography and traditional pieces..my traditional pieces were drawn in fine liner pen and mechanical pencil and helped me practise shading techiques I also got through all the Ouran high school host club anime August Did A few speedpaints this month including the Oma one: Kokichi Ouma- Youtube speedpaint :D (link below)and started watching Magi and drew fanart from it..I also continued drawing Danganronpa artwork and a few ms paint drawings too :) and continued writing more chapters for my fanfics. September Continued drawing digital ms paint drawings including the two images featured:Haruhi speedpaint(link below)Yukio Blue exorcist youtube speedpaint(link below) Also continued drawing traditional artwork and started watching Rosario + vampire season 1 properly. I also did a Sarada Uchiha week challenge which I really enjoyed as I love Sarada so much and loved drawing her and coming up with different ideas to meet the themes :3 https://fran48.deviantart.com/gallery/64137303/Sarada-Uchiha-week-2017 Also later in September, on the recommendation of a deviant here, I started trying to use paint tool sai to produce some pieces :D : I also watched the Studio Ghibli film 'When Marnie was there' and drew a piece to show my appreciation for it ^_^ I also tried to incorporate Art deco into one of my pieces October: Through October, I worked on Inktober: https://fran48.deviantart.com/gallery/64332793/Inktober-2017 and Goretober : https://fran48.deviantart.com/gallery/64332822/Goretober-2017 Similtanously. I also did my very first drawing Livestream on instagram which was of K1-B0 from Danganronpa v3 https://fran48.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=%2Fflash&edit=0&q=livestream and started making song covers which I converted to Flash files. I continued to create ms paint and paint tool sai art, one piece was a Mental health awareness piece which I created as I was struggling massively with my anxiety at the time and needed to express it :Ruminiation-Mental health awareness I also did a few speedpaints including the two featured in this meme. I also went on holiday during October and made another Vlog The suprise you guys were waiting for-VLOG! and took quite a few photos :) I also started doing Monthly polls for my watchers to decide on which speedpaints I should do first.. November: That month, I continued to create speedpaints and digital some of which were featured in this meme. Himawari speedpainting (link below).Moka speedpaint (link in description) Madoka and KyuubeyI also finished Rosario + vampire series 1..I started to create some Christmasy themed art as well as some black and white drawings and a few digital pieces. I also saw Paddington and watched Paddington 2 at the cinemas so created the piece featured due to my enjoyment of the film ^_^Paddington I also watched some of the playthrough of Ultra despair Girls and drew some art from it ^^ In addition, I also created an epilepsy awareness picture a day after having a seizure at work to make people aware of how debilitating it can be.. Even though I did a few different pictures throughout November, I started my apprenciceship then and so I drew inbetween work (though very tired) and at weekends so I wasn't as productive as previous months.. December: This month..I continued watching the current season of Rwby and drew two speedpaint fanarts from it, one that is featured in this meme Cinder fall (Youtube speedpaint :D) I drew some mechanical pencil drawings including Danganronpa, Naruto and DC comics pieces, I also saw all of the film Chicken Run all the way through for the first time and drew a picture of its main protagonist.. and finally got around to painting again after breaking up from work and managed to create this canvas piece of Rin Okumura from Blue exorcist:Rin Okumura finished Overall I feel I have got into quite a few different fandoms and series this year and tried different things with pieces such as incorporating art deco style in, using paint tool sai and livestreaming though I don't feel I have improved much this year but hope to do so in the following years.. Thank you guys for supporting me, your help has meant a lot to me ^_^ <33 Happy new year to you all

#my artwork #meme #improvement meme #annual meme #artwork #ms paint #paint tool sai #paints #mechanical pencil

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evanvanness · 5 years ago

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Annotated edition of May 10 Week in Ethereum News

I’ve started thinking of the annotated version as aimed at Eth holders. There’s a large group of people who hold ETH who want to stay up to date on what is happening, but also have jobs outside of the industry and may not understand all the tech nuances nor have time to spend. So the annotated edition will try to give you more narrative, more context, some opinion, maybe some 🌶️, as well as pointers to what might you want to read

Fun fact: you can find the #MostClicked and #MuchClicked on Twitter by just searching the hashtags. The usual caveats apply: the things most clicked are the things people hadn’t otherwise seen (not necessarily the most important), and my tweets auto-delete after a month or two, so the data only goes back a couple months.

Before clicking send, I knew for sure which would be the most clicked item this week. I was right.

How did I know it would be the most clicked? Because even among Ethereum enthusiasts it’s an undercommunicated thing how low eth issuance will be. It is planned to sustainably be so low that it might at some points go negative (and perhaps be negative over long periods of time, which worries me a little!). Perhaps part of the reason we don’t communicate this that loudly is because we just aren’t there yet. But unlike Bitcoin which has no path to long-term sustainability, Eth has a logical plan to have very low issuance.

As I said, I forgot this last week, but if I were clicking a few things this week:

chart of ETH issuance over time

A review of hardware for eth staking

MyCrypto’s history of Eth hard forks to celebrate 10m blocks

I might also check out the stuff about personal tokens, because personal money is an interesting subject to think about, even if you’re skeptical like I am. The idea of “what is money” can take you down some fun intellectual rabbit holes:

75 interesting uses of social money by Roll

Personal tokens were the topic du jour, check out this overview from Dan Finlay

A little light this week on the high-level stuff. The chart of Eth issuance I already discussed. The hardware for Eth staking is a worthwhile jumping off point if you’re planning on staking. And the hard fork history is worth knowing, or if you know it, then it’s a fun trip down memory lane.

Eth1

Step by step guide to running a Hyperledger Besu node on mainnet

Nethermind v1.18.30 query the chain and trace transactions within minutes with Beam sync

A primer on block witnesses

Installation guide to running eth1 nodes (or eth2 testnet) on RaspberryPi4

So this week we have a guide to running the ConseSys’s Besu client (part of Hyperledger) which is a Java client aimed at enterprise, but which can run mainnet. More Nethermind and Besu nodes are good for client diversity. So is OpenEthereum (formerly known as Parity), which had a release yesterday.

And if you like running nodes on RaspberryPi4, check that out.

This newsletter is made possible by Celer!

Celer has just released a new state channel mainnet upgrade enabling everyone to easily run a layer-2 state channel node and to utilize the low-cost and real-time transactions enabled by Celer. Game developers with no blockchain knowledge today monetize their games through CelerX gaming SDK that leverages the underlying layer-2 scaling technology with ease. Celer has also released the world’s first skill-based real money game apps where players can join multi-player game tournaments and win cryptocurrency prizes, Follow us on twitter, blog, discord and telegram.

Yay, thanks Celer!

Eth2

Danny Ryan’s latest quick eth2 update – bug bounties doubled, latest IETF BLS standard

PegaSys’s Teku client is now syncing the Schlesi testnet – which has been much more stable than expected

Latest Prysmatic client update – reducing RAM usage, slashing protection

SigmaPrime’s Beacon fuzzer update, struct-aware, bugs found in Teku and Nimbus

Latest Eth2 networking call, gossipsub v1.1. Ben’s notes

Python notebook to simulate a network partition

Apostille, an Eth1x64 variant

Scoping what is necessary to port eth1 to an eth2 shard and turn off proof of work

Lots of talk of go-live this week. Is it July, q3, or q4? We need to get audit reports and have multi-client testnets running long-term, though last I checked the Schlesi testnet has been quite stable. And since publishing the newsletter, now PegaSys’s Teku client is fully validating on Schlesi.

Layer2

Demo of Synthetix on the OVM includes paper trading competition with 50k SNX prizepool. The details of how the Optimistic Virtual Machine enables EVM-in-EVM

Gods Unchained building an NFT exchange with StarkWare

Exit games in state channels

Celer Network’s Orion upgrade makes it easy to run a state channel node

I’m going to set up a Celer node later this week if I have a chance.

Also check out the Synthetix trading competition and help stress test the OVM.

Stuff for developers

Solidity v0.6.7, EIP165 (standard interface detection) support. Also survey results on what devs love and hate about Solidity

Solhint v3 – Solidity linter removes styling rules and recommends prettier Solidity instead

Open Zeppelin ethers.js based console

Etherplex: batch multiple JSON RPC calls into single call

Time-based Solidity tests with Brownie

MythX now has 46 detectors

Quiknode has an online tool to test endpoints

Reading Eth price from Maker’s medianizer v1

Build an app with Sablier’s constant streaming tutorial

Building a bot using MelonJS to automate your Melon fund

StarkWare found a vulnerability in Loopring’s frontend where passwords were being hashed to only 32 bit integers

Even the frontend bugs can get you!

Ecosystem

A chart of ETH issuance over time. The best I’ve seen

Ethereum Foundation’s q1 grants list

A guide to bulk renewing your ENS names

ethereum.org looking for Vietnamese, Thai, Danish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Finnish, or Ukranian translators

A review of hardware for eth staking

A reminder that many ENS names have now expired and need to be renewed! There’s a 90 day grace period, but do it before you forget.

Enterprise

PegaSys’s Hyperledger Besu suite available on Azure Marketplace and Microsoft’s blockchain devkit now supports Besu

Quorum v2.6 – breaking database schema changes, update to geth v1.9.x

Microsoft continues to make the Ethereum dev experience better, with their VScode extension.

Governance, DAOs, and standards

How to start a MolochDAO

Options for delegated voting in KyberDAO

EIP2633: Formalized upgradable governance

EIP2628: Header in StatusMessage

I oppose any sort of “formalized upgradeable governance” and I think most do.

Application layer

Use POAP for sybil-resistant voting or to determine Discord channel access

Yield: a revised implementation of Dan Robinson’s yTokens for fixed rate, fixed term loans that give a yield curve

Comparing total value locked in DeFi to unique active addresses

75 interesting uses of social money by Roll

Personal tokens were the topic du jour, check out this overview from Dan Finlay

Strike: perpetual swaps with 20x leverage

POAP as a quasi-KYC layer is pretty interesting to me. Seems like there are some good uses in Ethereum land.

i’m excited to hear that DeFi will get a yield curve!

Tokens/Business/Regulation

Nic Carter: are stablecoins parasitic or beneficial?

OpenRaise: a continuous offering fundraiser for DAOs

dxDAO’s kickstarter using OpenRaise sold out before public announcement – though the curve is still live, plus a secondary Uniswap market

dxDao’s token is an interesting bit. Most of the token supply goes to the DXDAO, but it’s an interesting experiment in building completely decentralized apps as a Dao with a community that lately has been burgeoning. It’s also a bit of a check on rent-seeking because it is a credible threat to excessive fees.

One fun note is that the Uniswap market occurred almost immediately and (almost by definition) trades at a substantial discount to the main market.

General

Aggregatable Subvector Commitments, the future may not involve Merkle trees

This week, Ethereum mined its 10 millionth block.

Here’s MyCrypto’s history of Eth hard forks to celebrate 10m blocks

IPFS releases Testground suite for p2p networking tests

PayPal blocked tokenized real estate startup RealT despite a lack of chargebacks, so they’re switching to Wyre

10,000,000 blocks of Ethereum mainnet!

Capricious censorship in web2 and payments! I’ve been in PayPal’s shoes managing a card not present merchant account, and so I’m somewhat understanding to them. You’re trying to keep your fraud rate down in a system that sometimes seems rigged against you. In RealT’s case, they likely also had large amounts coming through which combined with crypto seems scary to Paypal, even with a low chargeback rate.

It’s not really anyone’s fault. The system sucks, and this is why Ethereum matters.

Final note that you can see below in the calendar: RAC’s $TAPE dropped yesterday. It’s a tradable ERC20 token sold on Uniswap (ie, a pre-set price curve). Of course the price went from $20 to $1000, as the token is redeemable for a limited edition cassette tape of RAC’s new album Boy.

Housekeeping

Did you get forwarded this newsletter? Sign up to receive it weekly

Permalink: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-may-10-2020/

Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):

May 11 – RAC’s $TAPE

May 12 – MakerDAO Sai shutdown deadline

May 22-31 – Ethereum Madrid public health virtual hackathon

May 29-June 16 – SOSHackathon

June 17 – EthBarcelona R&D workshop

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gadgetsrevv · 6 years ago

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Just how bad are Tottenham? Arsenal will test Man United’s defence

All you need to know about this weekend’s Premier League action, all in one place.

THE WEEKEND’S BIG QUESTIONS

Just how bad are Tottenham?

It was instructive to hear Mauricio Pochettino’s response to Tottenham’s defeat at Colchester in the Carabao Cup this week. His postmatch comments basically waved a broad hand of blame at these unnamed malcontents in the squad and the club’s failure to buy more players in the summer, as if the reason his side lost to the team 10th in League Two was because Christian Eriksen fancies a move to Real Madrid or they didn’t get the Paulo Dybala move over the line, rather than anything to do with him.

Pochettino may have a point in the wider scheme of things, but the result on Tuesday and their general performances throughout the season have been so devoid of inspiration and direction that it’s impossible to think there aren’t deeper problems at Spurs. Like water collecting on a flat roof for months before eventually the ceiling falls in, Tottenham allowing their squad to go stale could ultimately manifest itself in a spectacular collapse this season, unless they really turn things around. That needs to start at Southampton on Saturday.

Will Liverpool use some sensible rotation?

Liverpool are currently in the middle of a run in which they play seven games in 21 days. Then it’s the international break, which is fine in theory, but most if not all of their players will then embark on long trips with their countries. After that it’s another seven in 21 days before the next international break, then we’re into late November and before you know it, the madness of the Christmas schedule.

Liverpool have a good enough squad now that Jurgen Klopp can afford to rotate a little, to give his most overworked stars a bit of rest, but he will have to choose the times to do that judiciously. So will he regard a trip to Sheffield United — a newly-promoted side but one who have proved ticklish to say the least so far this season — as a time to do that, or does he play it safe and use the big guns, in the knowledge that there might not be another good time to rest them on the horizon?

Will the return of some first-choice defenders boost Arsenal?

Not many reliable conclusions can be drawn from Arsenal flexing aside Nottingham Forest on Tuesday, given the performance of their Championship opponents. But one plus from the game was the return to fitness of Kieran Tierney and Hector Bellerin, the latter of whom set up a goal within a minute of coming on as a substitute.

Admittedly, neither man can do much to solve the chronic issues the Gunners have in the centre of defence, but Arsenal can only benefit from the addition of what could potentially be the best full-back pairing in the division outside of Liverpool. Against a fragile Manchester United, even that could be enough.

THE GAME YOU’RE NOT PLANNING TO WATCH … BUT SHOULD

If you’ve got room on your DVR or in your busy schedule for one match this weekend away from the title race, we’ve got you covered.

Wolves vs. Watford

Broadly speaking the reason we watch Premier League football is to see good quality play, to witness the sides at the top of their games display their skills. But sometimes you also want to see a couple of desperate sides scrapping away for whatever they can get, and that’s what you’ll find at Molineux on Saturday afternoon. The last two sides without a victory meet to see who can clamber out of this spiral of incompetence, with the very real possibility that whoever loses will graduate from “poor start” to “actual relegation battle.”

A TEAM THAT NEEDS A BIT OF LUCK

Luck is everything in sports. Get acquainted with ESPN’s Luck Index as we pick out the team most desperate for good fortune amid a difficult run. Here are the big takeaways from the 2019 edition as explained by Gab Marcotti.

Everton: It wasn’t so long ago that Everton watchers were purring after their side beat Wolves, but two avoidable defeats in their last two games have awoken discontent in the Goodison Park stands. Questions are inevitably being posed about Marco Silva’s tenure, about his selection and balance of his team, so they could really do with a straightforward game to get their heads right. No such luck: Manchester City are in town on Saturday, fresh from sticking eight past Watford last weekend. If Everton get a bit of luck, maybe they can sneak a result against City…but they will need that luck.

FANTASY TIPS

Kieran Darcy has some tips for the weekend action. Read his full preview here and set your team line-up!

Must-have player: Sergio Aguero, Tier 1 forward

Last week Aguero became the first player to score in each of the opening six games of a Premier League season. He only notched one of Manchester City’s goals in their 8-0 thrashing of Watford, but he deserved more, hitting the woodwork twice.

Worth considering: Raul Jimenez, Tier 2 forward

Wolves are 19th in the table, but they host the only team below them in Watford on Saturday. Raul Jimenez has just two goals so far this season, but had 13 (and seven assists) last year, and could break out this week.

Avoid at all costs: Bernardo Silva, Tier 1 midfielder

Silva was promoted from Tier 2 to Tier 1 following his hat trick against Watford, but he only scored seven goals in 36 appearances last season. There are much better options in this tier, including teammates Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne, and Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah.

ONE THING THAT WILL DEFINITELY HAPPEN

Manchester United’s defence will get a chasing from Arsenal

Despite spending north of £130 million on defenders this summer, Manchester United’s backline has hardly been watertight. Even a 16-year-old from Rochdale got the better of them in midweek, and while the personnel will be very different for the visit of Arsenal on Monday, you can be sure that they will be in for a difficult night against whoever plays in attack for Arsenal. Alexandre Lacazette won’t be around, but Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Nicolas Pepe will provide a handful enough for the likes of Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof: if United can keep them quiet, that’s half the battle.

– ESPN Premier League fantasy: Sign up now! – VAR in the Premier League: Ultimate guide – When does the transfer window reopen? – Premier League winter break: All you need to know

STATS OF THE WEEKEND

Information provided by ESPN Stats & Information Group

– Liverpool have a 15-game winning streak in the Premier League, tied for second longest in English top-flight history. Only Man City has a longer streak having won 18 in a row in 2017. The Champions League holders have outscored opponents 42-13 during the streak and last dropped points in the league on March 3 vs Everton.

– Chelsea have won all eight of their league meetings against Brighton. A win on Saturday would set the English record for the most wins against an opponent without a loss or draw since the Football League began in 1888.

– Tottenham have won seven of their last eight Premier League home matches against Southampton, losing the other 2-1 in May 2016. Meanwhile, Southampton are looking to win three consecutive away road matches in the top flight for the first time since February 2015, when they had won four in a row.

MAN TO WATCH

Christian Pulisic: Admittedly, Frank Lampard was not involved in Chelsea’s decision to buy Christian Pulisic in January. It’s nevertheless slightly odd that the £58 million signing has only thus far made three starts under Lampard, especially when you would think this is a team that needs all the inspiration it can get. Pulisic stayed on the bench against Liverpool last weekend and started in their 7-1 thrashing of Grimsby Town. But he could play against Brighton on Saturday, and with Callum Hudson-Odoi returning to fitness with a fat new contract in his back pocket, might this be Pulisic’s last big chance for a while to make his case for more regular selection?

OUR BOLD/RECKLESS PREDICTIONS

Sheffield United 1-3 Liverpool: The Reds train should keep on rolling Tottenham 2-2 Southampton: This draw will feel like a loss to Spurs Wolves 1-2 Watford: Hornets will be buzzing after shipping eight to City Aston Villa 1-0 Burnley: Villa will climb out of the relegation zone Bournemouth 1-2 West Ham: In-form Hammers will continue to rise Chelsea 3-2 Brighton: Elusive clean sheets continue for the Blues Crystal Palace 2-1 Norwich City: The Man City win seems a long time ago Everton 1-4 Manchester City: The holders will pile on the Toffees woes Leicester 3-1 Newcastle: No shock to see the Foxes stay in top four Manchester United 1-3 Arsenal: Further proof of United’s poor form

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gadgetsrevv · 6 years ago

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Harry Kane has declined over the past year. Should Spurs fans be concerned?

If you had to guess, you could probably get most of the names. Over the past 10 years, who would be on the top 10 for most shots attempted in a single Premier League season?

The list doubles as a pretty good summation of the most impactful players in the league over that span. There’s Luis Suarez, who is on there twice. Wayne Rooney is on there. So is Cristiano Ronaldo. The two defining Chelsea players of the era, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba, both make appearances, as do Gareth Bale and Robin van Persie. All legendary figures, able to prop up the attacks of some of the best teams in the league, all on their own.

You know who else belongs in that group? Harry Kane — or, at least, he used to.

– ESPN’s Ultimate XI: This team would win everything – Ian Darke: What could derail Man City and Liverpool this season? – Graham Hunter: The legend of Samuel Eto’o

In 2017-18, Kane took 184 shots. Since 2008, which is as far back as TruMedia’s dataset goes, only Suarez (187 in the 2012-13 campaign) attempted more. Like Suarez, Kane is the only player with two seasons that fit into that aforementioned top 10, as his 158 shots in ’15-16 rank exactly 10th, and that’s without even mentioning the year in between.

A couple of weeks ago, I picked Kane as the best attacker in the league for the ’16-17 season. That year, he became one of only six players this decade to break the 1.00 non-penalty-goals-plus-assists-per-90-minutes mark. Had Mohamed Salah not put together the best non-Luis Suarez attacking season in Premier League history, I would have picked Kane for the next year, too. With his 28 non-penalty goals, Kane has been surpassed by only Suarez and Salah (31) in this decade. His two-season total of 52 from 2016 to now is the best back-to-back run of the past 10 years; the same is true if we extend it back to a third year. He scored 72 non-penalty goals from 2015 through 2018, and no other three-season run comes even close.

At the end of the ’17-18 season, Kane was just 25, with years left of his prime. Although Tottenham hadn’t won a trophy, Kane’s ascension coincided with Spurs rising into the Premier League top four and staying there. He’d already become a legendary, talismanic figure, winning two Golden Boots in a row. The season that snapped his streak doubled as one of the best individual goal-scoring seasons in league history.

Kane’s doing just fine for England, but goals and impact have been much harder for him to come by at Tottenham, especially in 2019.

Kane was a bona fide superstar with the potential to get even better. Like Lampard, Rooney and Steven Gerrard before him, he’d become the kind of player continental giants like Real Madrid and Barcelona would soon try to pry away from the Premier League.

Except Kane hasn’t been that player since the 2018 season ended, and perhaps even before then.

Last season, Kane scored 13 non-penalty goals, a total that’s been matched by the likes of Yakubu, Gabriel Agbonlahor, Andy Carroll, Peter Odemwingie and Grant Holt. Given Tottenham’s lackluster performance in the second half of the previous Premier League season and their struggles to start the 2019-20 edition, there are plenty of questions surrounding the future of their manager, Mauricio Pochettino, and ever-present stars such as Christian Eriksen, Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld, who all have just a year remaining on their contracts. But the most important question for the club going forward might actually be this one: What are they going to get from Harry Kane?

Here is Kane’s season-by-season goal and expected-goal production, per 90 minutes:

And here’s his shot output:

What can we take from this? Outside of 2017-18, Kane’s underlying performance has remained impressively consistent. In his four other full seasons as a starter (not counting this partial season) he took around the same number of shots of roughly the same quality. The reason that 2016-17’s goal-scoring efficiency matches, and actually improves on, ’17-18 is that Kane couldn’t stop picking out the corners.

According to TruMedia’s post-shot xG model, Kane’s shooting (i.e., where he placed the ball on the goal frame) added a whopping 0.2 xG to his shots per 90 minutes. Finishing, though, is unpredictable from year to year and most players regress toward their xG numbers, so Kane was able to reach the same heights the next year because of the massive increase in shots. The year before produced world-class results on an unsustainable process, and it seemed as if he’d figured out a way to make the results stick.

That, of course, hasn’t happened.

Just look at the massive drop-off after the 2017-18 season. Last season, Kane posted the lowest non-penalty shot, goal and xG rates of his career. Per 90 minutes, he took the fifth-most shots in the league, registered the ninth-most xG and scored the 12th-most goals. He has played only 360 minutes so far this season, but they haven’t provided any signs that the trend lines will start pointing in the other direction, as his shots and xG per 90 are both significantly lower than they were last year.

This is Kane’s shot map from the ’17-18 season. Green dots are goals, and the bigger the dot, the higher the xG:

And this is how last year and this year have looked, combined:

Translating the above, Kane has cut down on the shots from outside the box, which is probably a good thing given how few of them have gone in. And he’s still getting a healthy number of chances from the edge of the six-yard box and in. Except, superstars can’t subsist on a “tap-ins only” diet. So many of Kane’s shots between the six- and 18-yard box have disappeared. Those shots are hard to get, given how that area is always packed with bodies, but basically every elite goal scorer consistently finds a way — whether through intelligent off-ball movement, tight-area footwork to create space, a quick release to get off a shot or all three — to produce a high volume of attempts from that space.

For reference, take a look at Robert Lewandowski‘s shot map from last season in the Bundesliga:

The most hopeful explanation for Kane’s decline is injuries. Normalizing his production to per-90-minutes should eliminate the effects of lost time, but Kane has arguably been playing through injuries for the past 18 months and it has affected his performance even when he has made it onto the field. (Worse still, his fitness hasn’t always lined up with teammates, with Dele Alli battling injuries and Eriksen having endured a tough start to the season.)

More from Ryan O’Hanlon: – Sergino Dest is proof of U.S. Soccer’s progress – Who has been the Premier League’s best attacker, 2010-19? – Why being good at set pieces can win you trophies

In March 2018, Kane injured his ankle in a game against Bournemouth. He’d scored 24 goals in his first 28 games of the season but managed only six more after missing two games because of that ankle knock. Then, rather than resting for the summer, he played a full slate of World Cup matches for England. Last season, he missed eight games with a torn ankle ligament in January and then another nine with another ligament injury in April. He rushed back to start the Champions League final and was completely ineffective, registering just a solitary attempt on goal in garbage time after Liverpool had gone up 2-0.

With two Nations League games with England this past summer, Kane hasn’t really had much time to heal. If he ever gets that, maybe we’ll see his numbers start to tick back up for his club.

However, when asked, Tottenham have been quick to insist that Kane isn’t hurt, and with each passing game, the best version of Kane gets further away.

Kane did add four assists last year to make up for some of the decline in scoring. However, all of his non-shot production — chances created, through balls played, passes completed in the final third — has remained relatively stable or declined slightly. It’s possible that the succession of injuries means the old Kane will never come back. It’s also possible that Kane just experienced two career years in succession — one via his finishing and one via his overall performance — and his true level is somewhere around what we saw last year. A very good Premier League player, but not an all-conquering, world-class attacker.

Given the financial resources of their closest competitors, in England and in Europe, Tottenham must have worried about losing their superstar one day. It’s doubtful, though, that they ever envisioned it would happen quite like this.

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