I need you to do me a favor: please keep an open mind and reserve judgement until after you've thoroughly digested the ideas I'm presenting here. These are not my ideas, and I have no connection to this project. I hope to do them justice in representing them accurately and as clearly as I understand it all.

Please don't be dismissive. Please don't jump to conclusions. I would not be posting about this if I did not believe it has tremendous potential to reshape the digital economy, and therefore everything that governs how civilization progresses in the next century. Dramatic, much? Yes, but I hope I have your attention.

I'm not posting this as a plain link, because the website looks incredibly sus. Just trust me for a few minutes. Links are at the end.

(No generative AI was used to write this post.)

What is PrizeForge?

PrizeForge is a financial service that can be best thought of as "Representative Crowdfunding" (my term, not theirs). Like direct crowdfunding (e.g. Kickstarter), it lets people pool their money to support expensive projects that would otherwise be impossible to fund. Similar to Patreon, it can also be an effective tip jar for much smaller things that would otherwise go unrewarded.

The innovation is two-fold: first, contributors never move alone. As a contributor, you set a ceiling on your weekly payment. This is the "enrollment" amount. However, the actual amount of money disbursed each weekly cycle is the amount that is successfully "matched" with other contributors. In the simplest example, if I wanted to enroll for Tildes at $20/week, and one other user enrolled at $5/week, the disbursement would be the sum of the matched funds: $5 + $5. In this way, nobody ever pays an unfair proportion of the total, and small donations become an integral part of funding allocation. Additionally, like how philanthrophists often match charitable donations to meet a fundraising objective, matching provides a powerful incentive for individuals to contribute by making individual contributions feel more significant, since any money you part with can be doubled by another contributor. The more you put in, the more others will too. (PrizeForge calls this algorithm "Elastic Fund Matching". The full algorithm gets considerably more complex, but they have a neat visualization on their site and videos.)

Second, unlike existing crowdfunding and patronage systems, creators and companies do not receive fund disbursements directly. Rather, representatives ("Delegates") send the money to the people and organizations that should receive funds to deliver value to the stream's contributors.

"Won't delegates just siphon funds to themselves?" you ask. Well, yes, that will 100% happen at some point. Corruption is a human problem that can't be solved with technology alone. PrizeForge aims to provide mechanisms to allow the community to be very dynamic, so contributors can easily switch to a new representative—for any reason. Additionally, tools for transparency in how the money moves would go a long way in keeping delegates accountable.

In the context of open-source software, delegates should be experienced power users who are well equipped to evaluate features and bugfixes, and then can award the prizes to developers according to their best judgement.

The use of a representative has many advantages over direct crowdfunding. Someone highly invested in a software product has valuable experience and would be more effective at setting priorities for features and bugfixes. An experienced and trusted delegate would save developers time having to parse the requests (...demands?) of individual users who may not be able to articulate what they really want. Also, if a developer or company stops doing what people want (providing value to the people who care), then funds can flow to competing alternatives in a very granular and dynamic way, as the delegates shift funding and/or new delegates arise.

If we could pick a delegate here for Tildes, would anybody really object to @cfabbro?

These trusted delegates already exist, everywhere! We just haven't been able to cooperate in the right ways to delegate our individual power, so they can truly move the needle on funding the projects we care about. PrizeForge is, I believe, the first truly sustainable funding model for community-owned and directed open-source.

Addendum

Watch this video first! Before you get scared away by the terrible scammy-looking website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO46oEdlkY8

The FAQ: https://prizeforge.com/faq

The company's github page: https://github.com/positron-solutions

Looks like just two people, with Psionikus doing all the promotion and running accounts. The company is incorporated in South Korea. They've got a bunch of emacs tooling, and I believe the PrizeForge concept originated out of a desire to improve the funding/development process of emacs, then the lem editor. They also apparently have a bit of beef with the FSF due to emacs politcs. Check out the last FAQ for a fun easter egg.

The sub-reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/PrizeForge/

The Hacker News comment that took me down the rabbithole: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45036360

Bonus thoughts:

• What's really crazy is that this is not a crypto or blockchain project. You can do a simplified version of the elastic fund matching with just money, pen & paper.
• This financing scheme is basically an idealized utopian voluntary tax system. I can imagine a granular delegate system being extremely effective at making politics incredibly boring. Imagine electing a local representative only to have potholes fixed in your area, using only the funds earmarked for fixing potholes. It would be so much simpler to keep them accountable. Either the roads are crap or they aren't! Where's the money, bub?! Why've you got a fancy new lawnmower?! I want my $2 back!
• If this reaches critical mass, it ends surveillance capitalism and digital feudalism. I don't want to live in Black Mirror, and this seems like the way out of that future.
• I would really love it if we can establish a funding stream for Tildes. I know I can donate to Tildes directly, but it would be a great test run to help PrizeForge get operational and build credibility. I only need one other crazy person. Isn't the internet great? (My credit card has not been stolen btw)
• The password login is still in development, so you have to login via Google SSO. I absolutely hate using Google SSO but I get it from a developer perspective. Proper auth is hard and companies like Tailscale took the same path and still don't support password login. (My google hasn't been hacked either fwiw)

Hi all. I need to set up an outdoor CCTV camera and since there seem to be a hundred different brands and as many pitfalls I'm wondering if anyone here can help me navigate that minefield. I have zero experience.

I have the following basic requirements:

• Waterproof: It's outdoors, it will be rained on, plus there will often be high humidity, pollen and dust. It should not get fogged up. (IP66 or higher I think?) This also means there shouldn't be exposed plugs, otherwise it's not really waterproof.
• NOT battery powered. If there's a battery power option, battery degradation shouldn't prevent the camera from working, since otherwise that will massively impact longevity. I'm looking for something that can be wired directly to AC power.
• Wifi support: Comms cannot be wired in this installation. Norm will probably be n (2.4ghz) but ac+ should ideally be supported for future proofing.
• I probably can't buy it if it's not available in Europe (this often excludes some american startups).

With regard to what happens to the footage:

• I think IP streaming would be ideal?
• Abso-fucking-lutely no "cloud" based services. I have no interest in having to bounce footage through the US or china, or paying a monthly fee for unnecessary nonsense. I'm afraid of brands not being clear about this being a requirement before I spend my money.
• Some brands seem to have their own "server"/hub hardware? Why? No! I already own computers, so I don't need to waste money on a proprietary unitasker for talking to my camera.
• I think there are some open standards for camera streaming and open source software for handling the cameras. Support for these would be great. I'm accepting software recommendations too.
• I'm not in theory opposed to SD card support, but I'd rather not have to use local storage at all, and don't mind if it's not an option. If a setup requires storing in an SD card and then reading from it that's not the worst, I suppose (it's not that expensive to replace dead SD cards once every few years).

Optional bells and whistles:

• There is some illumination in the location at night, but some form of night vision would be highly desirable. Optional built in lights are probably also a good idea.
• Microphone is a nice plus.
• Motion detection and human tracking are a nice plus. The camera doesn't have to rotate 360 degrees; probably a ~60 degree angle of vision would be plenty. At the extreme, I'd say more than ~120 degrees is literally useless due to obstacles. (Obviously if an ideal solution has full rotation, I'll just take it.)
• Resolution+framerate (bitrate) can be as high as wireless-n can comfortably handle, but I don't really think I need more than 1080p.

Thanks in advance if anyone knows enough to be able to help.

My mom was interested in a smart doorbell to let her know what’s going on at the house when she’s not there, if a package gets dropped off or if someone tries to in. She does have a number of Google Pucks and an Android phone with some smart plugs set up with Google Home, but also has Roku TVs if that ecosystem is a major value add. I’m not super interested in yet another subscription service, but if it’s a “monthly fee to make the problem go away,” I can be convinced. Are there any must have recommendations or considerations I should keep in mind?

Edit: As far as I can tell, there’s no wire leads on or around the doorframe. The old setup had a chime wired to the wall of the foyer, but that was uninstalled and the wall was repaired, so I don’t think there’s a lead if that changes recommendations.