• There's helium in them there hills: Researchers drilling in northern Minnesota have struck squeaky gold - which is to say, helium.  (MSN)
  
  Possibly a lot of helium.  They're still confirming the size of the find, but as an indicator, a 0.3% concentration of helium is commercially viable.
  
  This well is yielding 12.4%.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Polya's conjecture for the eigenvalues of a disc has been proven.  (Phys.org)
  
  Nope, no idea.  I've heard of Polya's conjecture.  I just don't know what it is.
  
  
  
• A company called Taiko has raised $37 million to build a truly decentralised social network using Web3 - which is to say, blockchains.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Is this actually possible?
  
  Eh.  Maybe.
  
  A simplistic decentralised Twitter would require each node to hold the entirety of Twitter, which is obviously impractical.
  
  But something structured like Reddit, where you can pick just a dozen of the thousands of subreddits to replicate to your node, that might work.
  
  The upside is that nothing you post to such a social network can ever be deleted no matter who takes over the company.
  
  The downside is that nothing other people post to such a social network can ever be deleted either.
  
  
  
• Ish.  You can fork a blockchain, rewind it to repudiate data, and try to convince all the other users that your fork is the one true fork.
  
  This happened with Ethereum in 2016...  Which is why we now have Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.
  
  
  
• Adevinta, Beonex, Blockchain.com, Cafeyn, Deezer, Epic Games, iconomy, Mustang, Paddle, Parula, Proton, Schibsted, 37signals, SkyDemon, Spotify, Threema, Uptodown, Vipps MobilePay, Alliance Digitale, Association Européenne des Radios (AER), Classifieds Marketplaces Europe (CME), Digital Content Next (DCN), Digital Music Europe (DME), European DIGITAL SME Alliance, European Games Developer Federation (EGDF), European Fintech Association (EFA), European Magazine Media Association (EMMA), European Newspaper Publishers' Association (ENPA), European Publishers Council (EPC), France Digitale, Internet Economy Foundation (IEF), News Media Europe (NME), Sveriges, Tidskrifter, and Tidningsutgivarna have complained to EU Bookburner General Thierry Breton that Apple is cheating.  (Thurrott)
  
  Can everyone mentioned in that list please just fall in a hole and stay there.
  
  
  
• You should have been ionised then: See the moment YouTube laid off 43 unionised workers.  (MSN)
  
  It turns out that the one thing communists really can't stand is other communists.

• Most of the talents from the soon-to-be defunct Prism Project have confirmed they will be continuing as indie vtubers.
  
  Sara Nagare plans to quit her part time job to focus on it full time, since without corporate backing she'll have to do all her own management - and will also make twice as much money.
  
  Kou Tsubame is the only one so far that will be suspending streaming after the end of March.
  
  
  
• Can I offer you a Banpire in these trying times?  Hololive's Yozora Mel is returning to her personal channel in about an hour.
  
  She was fired earlier this year for an NDA violation; basically she discussed her job with a trusted friend...  Who turned out to be not at all trustworthy.
  
  
  

Why Do They Do It Video of the Day

Two of the talents from Prism Generation 7 mentioned in streams today that there were three thousand people auditioning for just three spots in their small vtuber agency.

Why do it?  Why try so hard?

Because if you do make it into the big leagues, stuff like this can happen:

Mumei offered to hand-draw the avatars of anyone who sent in a donation of $50 or more.  (After YouTube and Hololive, but before taxes, she keeps about a third of that.)

She opened donations for one minute.

She got $27,000.

Posted by: Frank at Sunday, March 03 2024 08:25 PM (cARBX)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 04 2024 06:34 PM (PiXy!)

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