Ingress: State Of The Game: New York City

There is no accurate way to measure, but I think right now the city is looking over 50% green. Only a few weeks back the city was the bluest I had ever seen since I started playing the game on February 1. The city looked 66% blue. Bringing about a split between huze and me was a green political move. ("Oh, we have been getting intel from his pictures!") Huze got used.

The green team has major momentum. I have a feeling they will go all the way to 66% green. At that point arrogance sets in and the team starts making mistakes. Then the pendulum swings again.

We all know portals are not for keeps. Portals flip, all the time.

Staten Island, Bayonne, Southern Brooklyn, Bushwick, Upper West Side, Columbia are still solid blue. You can't shift those regions without cultivating local players. Visits don't do tricks in such solid regions.

I am riding out this storm. And I am glad I am.

Instead I have been making portal submissions: over 220 made just this weekend. I think I might have made over 500 so far, most of them in the past two weeks. One day 20 of my submissions went live and that gave me a jolt to submit more. And so I did. Central Queens will look very different in two months.

Once the green team hits 66% -- heck, if they play it right they might even hit 70 -- and there are five times more people playing the game in the city I am going to start building a new Resistance team called The Squad. For now I am on a sabbatical.

It has been my contention derp is the top Ingress player in the world. And AP is the only way to measure it. Right now I want to see if the guy will break that 66% barrier. It is very hard to do.

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• Ingress: L8 Farm Types

Late To The Bitcoin Story

I am running a little late to the Bitcoin story, but the buzz is inescapable. Gold was replaced by the government. Now the government itself is getting replaced. That makes it fundamental. It is Google not America that is leading the effort to take Africa online. That is notable. The nation state is being challenged, and not just by Wikileaks. The Bitcoin is about erasing the national boundaries and making global commerce frictionless, pretty much. The first global currency has been birthed not by heads of state and governments at summits but by anonymous tech entrepreneurs.

Bitcoin Hits the Big Time, to the Regret of Some Early Boosters

bitcoins, an intangible, digital currency that is backed by not gold or any government, but by math...... the cryptocurrency was set to upend the world of finance, perhaps more ..... Scribner, who, after buying large numbers of bitcoins early in their short history, has seen them soar in value ..... he bought his first 100 bitcoins when they were just $3 each, and then steadily amassed more at relatively low prices. A single bitcoin today now sells for just over $120..... ‘What does this do for global commerce?’ ...... easy transactions between conventional currencies, bitcoins, and a math-backed currency of the company’s own design...... CoinBase, the media sponsor of the San Jose event, received the largest venture investment in a Bitcoin business to date earlier this month. The company, which originated in the incubator Y Combinator and helps individuals and businesses use bitcoins, received $5 million from Union Square Ventures, a fund better known for backing Tumblr and Zynga. In San Jose, I also met the founders of BitPay, which enables online stores—including those hosted by Amazon—to take Bitcoin payment. Bitpay recently received $3 million from Founders Fund, led by Facebook’s first major investor, Peter Thiel....... how the company could help ease online commerce across borders ...... “Traditional payments such as credit cards don’t even work in half the world, so companies just choose to not service international customers” ..... could displace the practice of wiring money across borders, which underpins much international trade today and can be onerous ...... “If I’m trying to wire a supplier in China it’s a three- or four-day process with heavy fees,” he says. “Bitcoin transactions can be instant and free.” ...... BitPay, OpenCoin, and others also offer services that make it possible for a business to make sure incoming bitcoins keep their value by having them instantly converted to dollars. “Bitcoin can be used as just a transport network” ...... will enable money to flow as easily across the world, and between people, as e-mails and video do today..... Bitcoin’s earliest adopters were libertarians, cryptographers, and coders attracted by the idea of money that could operate without government oversight. They liked the idea that people could exchange bitcoins without knowing or trusting one another...... he quit a job with Goldman Sachs’s commodity desk in Tokyo to operate a private, one-man Bitcoin exchange business in Seattle. “These companies would be happy for it to just function like Mastercard. That is not what Bitcoin is about.” ....... the potential for a truly anonymous currency like Zerocoin to undermine existing financial and political systems ...... Bitcoin could hit the big time as less an idealistic reinvention of currency and more a technology to move payments more efficiently than today’s systems...... Jared Kenna, a 30-year-old Bitcoin millionaire

What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters

In 2008, a programmer known as Satoshi Nakamoto—a name believed to be an alias—posted a paper outlining Bitcoin’s design to a cryptography e-mail list. Then, in early 2009, he (or she) released software that can be used to exchange bitcoins using the scheme. That software is now maintained by a volunteer open-source community coordinated by four core developers....... “Satoshi’s a bit of a mysterious figure,” says Jeff Garzik, a member of that core team and founder of Bitcoin Watch, which tracks the Bitcoin economy. “I and the other core developers have occasionally corresponded with him by e-mail, but it’s always a crapshoot as to whether he responds,” says Garzik. “That and the forum are the entirety of anyone’s experience with him.” ...... Nakamoto wanted people to be able to exchange money electronically securely without the need for a third party, such as a bank or a company like PayPal. He based Bitcoin on cryptographic techniques that allow you to be sure the money you receive is genuine, even if you don’t trust the sender...... The existence of a public log of all transactions also provides a deterrent to money laundering, says Garzik. “You’re looking at a global public transaction register,” he says. “You can trace the history of every single Bitcoin through that log, from its creation through every transaction.” ...... If the Federal Reserve controls the dollar, who controls the Bitcoin economy? No one. The economics of the currency are fixed into the underlying protocol developed by Nakamoto. Nakamoto’s rules specify that the amount of bitcoins in circulation will grow at an ever-decreasing rate toward a maximum of 21 million. Currently there are just over 6 million; in 2030, there will be over 20 million bitcoins. ...... if more than half of the Bitcoin network’s computing power comes under the control of one entity, then the rules can change. This would prevent, for example, a criminal cartel faking a transaction log in its own favor to dupe the rest of the community...... “The combined power of the network is currently equal to one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world,” says Garzik. “Satoshi’s rules are probably set in stone.” ..... “Elaborate controls to make sure that currency is not produced in greater numbers is not something any other currency, like the dollar or the euro, has” ..... “In a Bitcoin world, everyone would anticipate that, and they know what they got paid would buy more then than it would now.” ..... even limited success could allow Bitcoin to change the fate of more established currencies. “Competition is good, even between currencies—perhaps the example of Bitcoin could influence the behavior of the Federal Reserve.”

Big-Name Investors Back Effort to Build a Better Bitcoin

OpenCoin, a startup with a new digital currency called Ripple...... digital currency called Ripple and tools for making transactions in other currencies, including Bitcoins ..... Ripple, the currency developed by OpenCoin, is similar to Bitcoin in that it uses math to prevent counterfeiting and fraud ..... transfers made with Ripple can be confirmed in seconds; Bitcoin transfers take, on average, 10 minutes to be confirmed, and many sites that accept Bitcoins make users wait an hour for confirmation ..... The company’s website for Ripple is more polished and easy-to-use than most sites built for Bitcoin users. As well as sending Ripples to other people, users can also send and exchange U.S. dollars, Euros, Bitcoins, and other currencies using the site. Ripple’s design has those transactions automatically routed through exchange companies that are working with OpenCoin. Tools are also available to allow others to offer software or websites that make use of Ripple....... Transferring Ripples is free, while transactions that involve converting between currencies involve small transaction fees—typically 0.02 percent. That’s significantly less than the fees levied by existing financial companies, such as PayPal, credit card issuers, or banks ..... “You can send e-mails for free, but not payments,” says Larsen. “Finally we might get finance to the place where e-mail or social networking has taken communication.” ..... OpenCoin plans to hand out some 50 billion Ripples in coming months, and more in the future, in an attempt to get the currency to function independently..... his company aims to turn a profit by retaining a chunk, likely 25 percent, of the total 100 billion Ripples that will ever exist, in the expectation that the currency gains value...... large Internet companies are starting to accept payments or donations in Bitcoin, including Expensify, Wordpress, and Reddit

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Ingress: Legitimate Secrets

The venue and time of a planned L8 event is the only legitimate secret I can think of. But as soon as the first L8 portal pops up you are on the map. And the event is no longer a secret. If you are lucky the nearest high level enemy agent is at least 40 minutes away so you can hack to burnout. L8 Farms don't survive.

The concept of L8 farms and how it is done: no secret. People are doing it everywhere, and I get the impression they are doing it bigger and better everywhere else. NYC is in a clam, sort of.

The biggest mistake being made by both teams in NYC is the whole secrecy thing. And so NYC Ingress is nowhere on the global Ingress map. I think both teams should actively blog about their exploits and adventures.

A L8 Farm is not worth global attention. It is routine stuff. But when you create a cluster of 380 L8 Portals, that is worth global attention. And that did not happen in NYC. I think it would be impossible to create more than 100 simultaneous L8 portals by either side in NYC.

Simultaneous L8 farms, consecutive L8 farms: no secret. Neither team has enough active L8 agents to bring them about.

Attack events involving multiple agents to sweep specific sections of the city multiple times on the same day: that was an event idea I had. But I did not feel unique in coming up with it. Once there are more active agents on both sides we will see more such attack events.

Getting together to farm L7 and L8 portals is the most popular group activity. But both groups still leave attacking to solo action items. You go, you attack. Why do you need more than one person? That is the thinking. I don't agree with it. Larger the number of agents involved, more complex the attack event, greater the fun.

The concept of attack events involving many agents: no secret.

What is holding the game back is there are not enough agents in the field. Niantic, I want you to issue 10 more invites to all agents Level 2 and up.

And good sportsmanship is important. The mark of good sportsmanship is that you truly enjoy meeting agents from both sides. You play as hard as you can, but you then truly enjoy meeting the people you play against.

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Ingress: That Dosa Thang!

Today was supposed to be the Inter Faction Jackson Dosa Interaction, src's brainchild. But my Co-Host chickened out! SRC is like, tomhuze says you revealed the NYC Resistance secrets through code heavy photographs you shared publicly on Google Plus, and so I can no longer talk to you!

Part of the plan was that both src and I would take about five minutes each to make fun of as many agents in the city as possible. If you deprive me the opportunity to do so at a Dosa place, I am going to do it at a blog post, and so here goes.

Mutex yesterday went to a mental hospital (true story) to make portal submissions. What makes Mutex think derp is not going to end up at a mental hospital?

As one of the top agents of the global Resistance, I truly appreciate what tomhuze and rmazzara do for Bedstuy Resistance and College Point Resistance respectively. That low level stuff is also important.

Kimon finally got his long coveted job as the Night Watchman for the Grant's Tomb. He will no longer teach.

I have never seen KeyserJoze in person.

samps is out there on the Upper West Side, or rather Upper Upper West Side.

exussum owns some green portals in Jackson Heights. chicory just pays rent on them.

Henrock was last seen in Long Island City. Wait, Corona. Wait, Astoria. Wait, Flushing. Wait, Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Wait, Forest Hills. Wait, Elmhurst. .... Henrock was last seen riding a bus.

No, mugu does not live in Williamsburg, he just farms there.

Das is so deeply biased against Astoria and Queens in general that when he shows up in Astoria (two times) and the Flushing Meadows Corona Park (one time) he makes news.

kogent and Muevelo have been talking.

MeyB will finally capture the American Natural History Museum, maybe.

putch pushed lighthouse0 into the East River. It was accidental.

DrOctagon has been getting on Henrock's nerves.

AbuSalem is on vacation, hence the Level 5 green portals in Long Island City that used to always be Level 7!

And you thought R2Detour was a human being.

I bet you mispronounce sma. It is NOT s-m-a!

314159265358979 is half Indian like me. But his Pakistani half battles with my Nepali half! That confuses exussum.

TIM3PORT went to New Jersey, to return another day. The first agent to have a baby on the COMM!

evondosha knows what mugu's handle means. It is an inside joke.

PaulineParker and MissParker stole each other's name. It does not help that both are not on the same team.

Gladly QueensTiger and BronxLion are on the same team. Or you could only imagine.

RedJava is rumored to be red hot! She is supposedly into The Art Of War.

MzDemeanor knows how to carry herself.

slomar took five hours to sweep through Forest Hills. He is slow like that. Kruxoli on the other than can sweep in four hours 60 minutes! And both want L8 farms there!

JPNasty1 does the Ingress version of masturbation. He plays on all of Staten Island all by himself, all weekend long!

Arbitrage arbitrarily RSVPd for the Dosa event before he realized it was in, wait, is it in Queens! I am not going THERE!

I don't claim to know district. He claims otherwise.

Mexecutioner, you guessed it, killed a few agents on his last mission in Mexico.

Gellean would be that white haired white guy who cusses in Spanish. He likes to retire from the game every few weeks.

WW4 thinks Ingress will give him World War IV. Redneck!

Sonik was last seen in Bayonne. If anyone knows of his whereabouts please call the following number.

Eck has been eeking out ingressing far out on Long Island. He howls every now and then.

BeaKay organized a Flash event.

Hightwr is tall, so is TinyA.

Avumede claims he doesn't "care" about the blue portals around him.

Related articles

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• Ingress And Complex Strategies
• Ingress: 300K In 2 Hours 15 Minutes
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• Ingress: The Game Changes
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• Ingress: Team? What Team?