互联网与文化blogs.valvesoftware.com
一切都始于一封奇怪的邮件
It all began with a strange email
2012 — 2015，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这是经济学家雅尼斯·瓦鲁法基斯（Yanis Varoufakis）在 Valve 博客上的开篇文章，讲述他如何因一封陌生邮件受邀加入 Valve，研究 EVE Online 等游戏中的虚拟经济。他把虚拟世界视为研究真实经济问题的天然实验场，探讨货币注入、通胀等经济学问题。
为什么经久不衰：作者后来成为希腊财政部长，这篇早期文章记录了他对虚拟经济的独特思考，是理解虚拟经济与真实经济关联的经典入门。
HN 评论精选
以亲历者身份证实 CCP 曾认真研究游戏内经济，并推荐其季度经济报告
我在 CCP 工作时他们聘请了 Eyjólfur。他入职时对游戏世界了解不多，第一件事就是尽可能学习这个世界实际如何运作。我当时是住在冰岛的外国人，晚上没什么社交生活，也是少数在高级玩法（0.0 星域、帝国战争等）中真正活跃的员工之一。Eyjólfur 花了很多个晚上坐在我旁边看我玩太空游戏，问了大量问题，逐渐了解这个宇宙。CCP 曾发布季度经济通讯（QEN），是了解 EVE Online 经济细节的绝佳资源，可惜后来停刊了。
xb95查看英文原文
I worked at CCP when they hired Eyjólfur. He came in without really knowing a lot about the game world and made it his first job to learn as much as he could about how the world actually worked. Given that I was a foreigner who was working and living in Iceland, I didn't have much of an evening social life. I was also one of the relatively few employees (sadly) that were really active in the game in the advanced levels of play -- 0.0, empire wars, etc. Eyjólfur spent a bunch of evenings sitting with me while I played internet spaceships. He asked tons of questions and really got to learn the universe, or at least my corner of it. It was really interesting to work with him and hear him talk about his thoughts as he was putting them together. CCP used to publish the Quarterly Economic Newsletter, like this: http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/QEN/QEN_Q3-2010.pdf They've since stopped doing that, but you can see from that example that it used to be a fantastic resource. If you wanted to know the nitty-gritty details about the universe of EVE Online, the QEN was hard to beat.
介绍瓦鲁法基斯在希腊债务危机中的公共角色与加入 Valve 的背景
背景补充：瓦鲁法基斯在希腊颇有名气，是最早、最直言不讳地反对欧洲处理希腊主权债务危机策略的经济学家之一，他的预测迄今不幸言中。他在危机中于雅典大学建立的经济学博士项目被解散，还因观点收到死亡威胁，之后逃往美国加入 Valve。左翼政党 SYRIZA（周日选举胜算约五成）据称已请他担任经济顾问。
katsaroles查看英文原文
A bit of a background: Varoufakis is something of a celebrity in Greece for being one of the first and the most vocal economists to speak out against the European strategy for resolving the Greek sovereign debt crisis. His predictions have proven to be tragically spot on so far, although it remains to be seen whether his proposal for renegotiating the European bailouts, a proposal that the left-wing SYRIZA political party (which has about 50% chance of winning in the Sunday elections and has allegedly asked Varoufakis to be its economic advisor) has stood behind, is actually a realistic one. He fled to the US and Valve after the doctoral program in Economics he had built in the University of Athens was dismantled during the crisis and after he started receiving death threats by people who weren't particularly thrilled with his opinions.
指出打金行为导致虚拟经济恶性通胀的机制，期待看到应对方案
这实在太迷人了。我记得虚拟经济中金钱可以随时通过打金等方式注入，因此本质上不稳定。一旦出现打金工作室在 eBay 上卖金币，就会造成恶性通胀——虚拟金币的创造无限且毫不费力，打金者只要能换到真钱就无所谓卖价，金币变得一文不值，虚拟商品价格全面上涨。我很想看看虚拟世界如何解决这些问题。
steve8918查看英文原文
This is truly fascinating. I remember hearing about virtual economies where money can be injected at any time through gold mining, etc, and that they were inherently unstable. Once you got the gold farming schemes that sold gold on e-bay, it created massive hyperinflation. And it totally made sense that hyperinflation would occur since the creation of virtual gold was limitless and effortless, so the gold farmers didn't care how much gold they sold it for as long as they got real money. That rendered the price of gold worthless, and it drove up the prices of virtual goods across the board. I would love to see how these problems are tackled in the virtual world.
指出作者已出任希腊财长，并对其'非正统'救国策略表示担忧
他现在是希腊财政部长。有新闻说他（或可能是总理）计划采用一种'从未尝试过的非正统策略'把国家从烂摊子里拉出来。一方面看看结果如何会很有意思，另一方面这听起来很像赌博——只不过这次赌的是真实经济。
huhtenberg查看英文原文
Currently the Finance Minister of Greece. It was in the news that he (or possibly the prime minister) said that they are planning to employ an "unorthodox" strategy that "have never been tried before" to pull the country from the mess it is in. One one hand it's interesting to see what comes out of it, but on the other it sounds quite a bit like gambling. Except this time it's with the real economy.
历次讨论
同类还值得读
如今电脑上几乎所有操作在感知上都比 1983 年更慢（2017）
Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
2017 年的推文串认为，尽管计算机硬件比 1983 年快得多，日常操作的感知速度却常常更慢：启动、界面响应和网络应用被层层抽象、动画、后台检查与网络依赖拖累。
互联网与文化上首页 5 次 · 2017–2020twitter.com网站肥胖危机
The Website Obesity Crisis
Maciej Cegłowski（idlewords）的经典演讲文稿《网站肥胖症危机》，批评现代网页越来越臃肿：动辄数 MB 的 JavaScript、追踪脚本和广告，把本可以轻…
互联网与文化上首页 5 次 · 2016–2021idlewords.com编辑精选亚马逊那本标价 23,698,655.93 美元的苍蝇书
Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 book about flies
博文讲的是亚马逊上一本关于果蝇的二手书被标到 23,698,655.93 美元。
互联网与文化上首页 5 次 · 2011–2022michaeleisen.org浏览器 User-Agent 字符串的历史
History of the browser user-agent string (2008)
2008 年的经典文章用戏谑的“创世纪”口吻，讲述浏览器 User-Agent 字符串如何从简单的标识演变成层层叠加的伪装：浏览器为了绕过按 UA 分发的网站检测，纷纷把自己伪装…
互联网与文化上首页 5 次 · 2012–2022webaim.org编辑精选最后的问题——艾萨克·阿西莫夫
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
阿西莫夫最著名的短篇科幻小说《最后的问题》的在线全文。
互联网与文化上首页 5 次 · 2009–2019multivax.com编辑精选