Who’d have thought BoredApe NFTs would be such an actual eyesore?

  • PeleSpirit
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    2068 months ago

    Shit, this isn’t really that funny when you find out what happened. Welder’s Eye can make you permanently blind.

    Some ApeFest attendees posted on X (formerly Twitter) after seeking medical attention, with one person reporting that they had been diagnosed with Photokeratitis — aka, “welder’s eye,” a condition caused by unprotected exposure to ultraviolet radiation — and another saying the issue was a result of UV from the stage lights, leading to speculation that the injuries were caused by improper lighting used at the event.

    “I woke up at 04:00 and couldn’t see anymore,” said @CryptoJune777. “Had so much pain and my whole skin is burned. Needed to go to the hospital.”

    • @Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I’ve experienced this, though I aquired it the old school way; from welding.

      Mine was luckily a minor case and went away in a day. Quite literally feels like you have sand in your eyes. Moved from safety squints to welding mask after that.

      • @CountVon@sh.itjust.works
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        378 months ago

        When I took welding shop class in high school, our shop teacher literally called it “sand eye” when he explained why wearing a welding mask was not optional in his shop or in general while welding. Sure enough, there was that one kid who thought he could get by with his squints while teach wasn’t looking… He was out for days with sand eye and had quite the cautionary tale to share when he returned. Everyone got downright religious about the welding masks after that.

        • @LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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          138 months ago

          It would be nice if we as a species could get from one generation to the next without needing to see an example of every failure first hand.

            • @LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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              18 months ago

              I wish. But the wilful ignorance and deliberate belligerence of their parents would prevent you from showing such useful gore to their crotch smear.

        • kux
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          68 months ago

          blockchain verified proof that you own a link to the location of some unique slices of raw potato is as good if not better

    • circuscritic
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      8 months ago

      Thank you for saying this, it’s what I was coming here to do.

      I was laughing, until I read the article. It’s fucking horrifying. Schadenfreude should be proportional.

      NFT morons losing their money? Hilarious.

      Losing their eyesight? Not funny. Not proportional. Just horrific.

      Now, if the Nazi fetishizing scam artist asshats that run Bored Ape were blinded by the light at their own convention? That, in my view, would be proportional Schadenfreude.

        • circuscritic
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          8 months ago

          They used UV sterilization bulbs as lighting for a convention. It does not sound like a quick flash of an ARC or TIG welder.

          There is also a broad range of medium to long term effects that aren’t just temporary inconvenience, and permanent blindness.

          But yeah man, you do you. My comment was simply my own perspective. I’m not here to moralize about what you should, or shouldn’t feel.

    • credit crazy
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      288 months ago

      You’d think they were already blind with all a crappy art they are shilling for

    • @naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      38 months ago

      Something can be both sad and funny.

      Like it really sucks for the victims but it’s also darkly hilarious that every single time these libertariany scammy I’m smarter than everyone types do a thing they get an abject lesson in why communities have like safety rules and “red tape”.

    • @DJDarren@thelemmy.club
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      18 months ago

      As a former welder, I’ve had arc-eye and it’s really unpleasant - like someone put sand in my eyes and I couldn’t get it out.

      However, it heals pretty quickly, so I’m gonna carry on thinking this is pretty funny.

  • @harry_balzac@lemmy.world
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    1618 months ago

    “All 5 attendees were treated on scene. Paramedics were originally very concerned about brain damage but were relieved when they saw the name of the event. ‘Can’t fry an egg that’s not there,’ stated one.”

  • ryan
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    1058 months ago

    Yuga Labs says it’s currently investigating reports of impeded vision and skin/eye injuries believed to be caused by unprotected exposure to UV lights during ApeFest 2023.

    Jesus Christ.

    Anyway, I’m… Actually somewhat impressed they’re still having Monkey PNG meetups. I kind of assumed every NFT was a scam but this one is just a very expensive buy-in to a cryptonerd club, I guess.

    • @BURN@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I also kinda figured the people who are into the Monkey PNGs aren’t exactly the ones who go to meetups

      • sab
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        208 months ago

        I think it’s more that they tend not to get invited to non-monkey PNG meetups. Possibly in part due to their habit of turning any meetup into a monkey PNG one.

      • @radix@lemmy.world
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        128 months ago

        Have to go out there and put in the work to proselytize their Lord and Savior Blockchain.

        • @db2@sopuli.xyz
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          78 months ago

          Blockchain and NFT are not synonymous. All Camrys are cars but not all cars are Camrys.

          • @fubo@lemmy.world
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            38 months ago

            Eh, the relationship isn’t quite the same as that one.

            It’s more like the relationship between a video game framework and a video game. Pygame, Unity, or Godot are not games you can play; they’re tools for programmers to build games with.

            Similarly, blockchain is a technology for implementing scams; NFTs are one specific scam.

            • @db2@sopuli.xyz
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              98 months ago

              Similarly, blockchain is a technology for implementing scams

              By that logic the US dollar is a means for facilitating crime. It’s certainly used for that, a lot, but that isn’t what it is for. A blockchain is for keeping an immutable and verifiable record by way of cryptography. That there are a lot of scams doesn’t change what it is.

            • @abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              blockchain is a technology for implementing scams; NFTs are one specific scam.

              No. Blockchain is a technology where you generate a hash of an event that happened - e.g. garage door opened at 7:00am, and then you hash another event - garage door closed at 7:02am, continue doing that for years, hundreds of thousands of garage door movements, and just by looking at the last hash in the event chain, you can verify, in less than a millisecond, that two copies of the blockchain are identical (e.g. the working data set and a backup copy of it).

              It’s just a simple and efficient data integrity checker and it’s shit for scams - because there’s no way to hide your tracks when the feds investigate you… as Sam Bankman-Fried just learned.

              Pretty soon the scammers will realise they’re better off with cash and paper books which can easily be doctored (or simply misplaced - “sorry your honor, we can’t find records for July 2021 anywhere!”).

              • @LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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                18 months ago

                Yep. It’s hard to feel sorry for anyone who got grifted, who knew that buying the equivalent of a graffiti’d up CVS receipt would turn out to be worthless.

      • @db2@sopuli.xyz
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        38 months ago

        Sure they are, they’re just always nervous Chris Hansen is going to be there already.

    • @ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      128 months ago

      I kind of assumed every NFT was a scam

      This one hasn’t yet proven that it isn’t, just that the people who bought in had a lot of disposable income to begin with.

    • IndiBrony
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      88 months ago

      Sunken cost fallacy at this point. They have to keep believing it’s a thing otherwise they have to face the reality that they were duped.

      • Stantana
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        28 months ago

        Or the opposite, they know it’s dropping like a stone so they try to keep it relevant for potential buyers to offload it to?

      • ryan
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        78 months ago

        The thing about the jpg ones is that the jpgs can’t be stored in the blockchain, so what is actually stored is a URL to some server (and that URL endpoint could be redirected elsewhere, the server could go offline, etc).

        The other major use case I see touted is “own your game objects and bring your objects to different games” but 1) why would a company spend resources supporting an object they did not sell you and 2) could this not be handled more simply on e.g. Steam? (yes, locked into a service, but that’s just the way the industry is and I don’t see why it’s worth the time and effort for them to change that)

        I do see how potentially a blockchain that stored actual data, e.g. some JSON, could be of more use. However, I struggle to find cases where just a regular database wouldn’t be more practical. I guess it would be limited to cases where auditability and visibility of changes are topmost concerns, and where it’s important that anyone can have a local backup copy at any time.

        If you have some examples of where this technology could be one of the best solutions, I’d love to hear them. The blockchain does fascinate me but I feel like it’s often a solution in search of a problem rather than the other way around.

        • jungle
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          28 months ago

          I have an example but it’s not necessarily the best and most practical solution, it’s just one very good solution to a problem that not everyone experiences, so it’s generally shot down as unnecessary.

          In countries where buying a car or house involves an asynchronous exchange of money and keys or signing of documents, with all the trust issues involved, having an NFT represent ownership (which requires recognition and acceptance by the state) is a perfect use case, where you transfer ownership and receive payment in one atomic operation.

        • @agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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          18 months ago

          Smart contracts are the most obvious. There are a lot of applications. Like jungle said, it’s a good fit for ESCROW-type asset exchanges, but also for recurring transactions like royalty payments or dividends.

          Your gaming asset example is also a valuable use. While industry inertia is indeed a relevant factor, consider: why would a company spend resources creating an object if it’s cheaper to support the framework for customers to supply their own? There’s a break-even point where it’s more profitable to outsource asset-creation and trim your staff. What’s better is the nerds who care about that sorta thing spend a lot on games.

          And there are certainly others, cases where transparency is a topmost concern. Gaming seems like a fantastic proving ground for the technology: customers expect excellence, it’s a thriving and diverse market, but ultimately, a failure of the technology won’t have serious consequences in the grand scheme. If it proves secure in that arena, it might be a useful technology to incorporate into more serious applications.

        • @abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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          08 months ago

          Blockchains can absolutely store a jpeg. There’s no data size or format limit on an entry.

          They chose not to store it.

          • ryan
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            28 months ago

            Oh, fascinating! I wonder if it’s more concerns about the size of the blockchain itself then. I had assumed, clearly incorrectly, that it was a platform limitation itself. This makes the ways NFTs have been implemented even dumber. 🙃

            • @AnAngryAlpaca@feddit.de
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              38 months ago

              It’s just impractical and expensive to store more than a Textstring in a Blockchain, because everytime the Blockchain is updated with new data, you have to send a copy to all the other databases that share this Blockchain. This will get very resource heavy I’d you get 100000 10MB files each day and must keep them in sync with 200 other databases, who also received a similar amount of data from different users.

  • @nutsack@lemmy.world
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    898 months ago

    the event’s DJ later discovering lighting used mainly for disinfection purposes had been installed at the venue

    idiots

    • @pivot_root@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      This was referring to a different event at a different venue. While it seems likely that they made the same mistake, it’s best we wait for more info before jumping to conclusions.

      Similar symptoms, which include sunburn and waking up to severe, burning eye pain, were reported in 2017 by partygoers who attended a Hypebeast event at The Landmark commercial complex also in Hong Kong, with the event’s DJ later discovering lighting used mainly for disinfection purposes had been installed at the venue. The Landmark venue did not feature on the ApeFest event plan, and the two incidents appear unrelated.

    • @derpgon@programming.dev
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      28 months ago

      Read the full paragraph:

      Similar symptoms, which include sunburn and waking up to severe, burning eye pain, were reported in 2017 by partygoers who attended a Hypebeast event at The Landmark commercial complex also in Hong Kong, with the event’s DJ later discovering lighting used mainly for disinfection purposes had been installed at the venue. The Landmark venue did not feature on the ApeFest event plan, and the two incidents appear unrelated.

  • TimeSquirrel
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    8 months ago

    Regardless of what you think of NFTs, somebody needs to held accountable for this. It could happen at any show or production. Someone clearly chose the Aliexpress special over safety. This is one of those things where fundamental trust in public infrastructure engineering is destroyed.

    • @whileloop@lemmy.world
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      158 months ago

      Right? I don’t know anything about Welder’s Eye, but I know ultraviolet light is invisible to humans, so I’d imagine that most people present wouldn’t notice anything wrong until hours later. Once you know this can happen, you just have to trust that all the places you go aren’t putting your health at risk. Insane.

    • @Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      78 months ago

      Though I’d say that this is completely on brand. Goes and does something without understanding exactly what they are doing, causing damage to others who had even less of an idea of what’s going on.

      And a chance someone actually knew exactly what they were doing and did it to deliberately fuck over the attendees.

  • @kautau@lemmy.world
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    348 months ago

    The funniest thing is the embeded tweet in the article that still has a stupid boredape avatar, has the “i simp for elon” blue checkmark, and the classic “[username].eth” username so you know they are really fun at parties while they try to grift their friends and family

    Cryptobros are such a strange cult

  • @demesisx@infosec.pub
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    8 months ago

    For anyone confused by the low-hanging-fruit NFT comments that don’t actually talk about what actually happened: The event was in Hong Kong and

    here’s my speculative opinion about what the likely cause of the burns was:

    UV disinfectant lights, accidentally used by ignorant, budget-conscious event lighting staff.

    • ElleChaise
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      298 months ago

      I like that you came to set the record straight, then just guessed. Confidence is sexy.

      • @demesisx@infosec.pub
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        118 months ago

        The article also came to no conclusion, though they did point to an event that also happened in 2017 where this happened and the culprit was… what I “guessed”. I’m sexy and I know it. 😜

    • @thorbot@lemmy.worldOP
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      118 months ago

      That’s not actually true, if you read the article more closely that’s referring to a different event where disinfectant lights were used. Not at this event.

    • @abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Far more likely they just used ordinary stage lights where “huh, if I set channel 4 to full intensity I get a pretty purple, lets use that one”. The manual probably included a safety warning with specs like “21.7 mW/cm² at 5cm and 8.9 mW/cm² at 25cm distance”… but who reads the manual? And even if they did would they know what those numbers mean?

      What it means is a “safe” exposure time of about 11 seconds (per day)… and that’s if you only have one of them. They might’ve had 20. And by the way I took that number from real equipment you can buy for events like this one. Professional operators would be very careful using them.

      Pro tip from someone who works in the industry: if you see the white or fluorescent colours glow really bright… get the fuck out of the room unless you have absolute faith in the OH&S chops of the venue and lighting operator.

      • @towerful@programming.dev
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        88 months ago

        I’ve never encountered lights that don’t have UV filters in them.
        There’s no way to control the UV filter via DMX/Artnet/sACN. It’s a fixed dichroic filter in front of the discharge lamp. It’s an extremely cheap filter, as well, so I doubt it would be excluded from cheapo knock-off brand lights.
        Certainly on any light available in the US and EU. It just won’t get certified for sale.

        Besides which, I haven’t used a discharge lamp in years. It’s all LED now, even the cheap stuff.

        There is no way “set channel 4 to full” would disable any safety features in a moving light that would allow it to output damaging UV light. And the only other way it would hurt someone is if it was focussed on them, and they actively stared into it. Like, staring at the sun kind of level of staring at a light.

        So, get rid of that “ordinary stage lights” pish.


        This is absolutely a case of “we should get UV lights”. And instead of getting safe UV cannons for fun florescent paints, they got UV disinfectant lights. Probably still makes florescent paints glow, but it’s the wider band UV stuff designed to kill biological cells (ie disinfect). Which is exactly what it did to people’s skin and retina.

      • @demesisx@infosec.pub
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        8 months ago

        Nice. Thanks for the insight.

        I work in the film industry side of lighting and we use HMI’s all the time (sometimes without the UV protective glass if the gaffer is a cowboy…). I’ve never really run into this with theatrical/event lights when we do use them…but then again you seem to know about situations like this.

        There are so many old gaffers who have cataracts now because of all of those years looking directly into the hot spot of a carbon arc.

        You’re probably correctly blaming the board while I think it was Aliexpress lights with actual UV emitters.

    • @AnarchoDakosaurus@toast.ooo
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      68 months ago

      UV disinfectant lights were likely used by ignorant, frugal event lighting staff.

      That’s some really low tier event planning. That would be like if you went paintballing and the owner included a few live hand grenades amongst the paint ones. It’s almost impressive how badly they fucked up.

      Atleast the onion writers get a break from writing headlines. Job is done for em already.

      • @towerful@programming.dev
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        18 months ago

        It’s more like using some “long distance extra penetrating paintballs” instead of the usual bursting paintballs.
        It’s most likely “let’s get UV lights for fluorescent paints and stuff”.
        Except getting disinfecting UV lights (probably popularised due to COVID) instead of safe UV Cannons.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍
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    208 months ago

    I have a feeling the internet is going really enjoy sharing the “Crypto fans have eyes burned by NFTs” headlines. It’s a perfect storm of schadenfreude

    • sab
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      8 months ago

      It is perfect. I feel bad for these idiots, but not quite bad enough to manage not to laugh at them.

      “‘I woke up at 04:00 and couldn’t see anymore,’ said @CryptoJune777.”

      The guy with the red cap ape profile picture casually asking if anyone else ended up in the ER.

      crypto_birb thanking for “great apefest logistics”, while encouraging his peers to seek medical attention ASAP.

      Comedy gold.

    • @apinanaivot@sopuli.xyz
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      8 months ago

      schadenfreude

      Damn I just learned this word today from the latest Tom Scott video. Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in action.

  • Pxtl
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    68 months ago

    Libertarians gonna libertarian.