This is how I've always felt about it, and its conveniently something you can just shout over people with

it's not that he said something so severely offensive, it's that the attitude is "we can use this"

well that's the tactic. To attack anyone who says the opposite and run them out of the discord, then spread out on places like reddit/twitter and try to push a cartoonish narrative and hope misinformation can just persist

that's always been what's going on, and the Neos team is incredibly efficient at encouraging their devotees to do the purposefully slanted message for them

they've always been good at getting them to say what they really think as well, without having to say it

They used that method to attack NCR early on while having some childish idea that it makes them not responsible

And yeah it's fortunate no one is an actual employee and also everyone is spread out and also no one really uses their real names

Everything points to that it wasn't being operated like an actual company, or if it was the only person really doing so was Karel

As far as thinking in terms of a future, deadlines, operating costs etc

Or so it appears to me

This is fine and all except for the fact that they set up a system for people to invest in them

So there's company obligations... fine and all, they don't have to be obligated to anyone for anything... except that they're trying to take ownership of the company WHILE having no responsibility to the company they want ownership of

Nothing makes sense

What happened with Neos isn't particularly unique. There was an article just last week in The Intercept (pretty left-leaning publication) about how woke activists are destroying non-profits from within, cannibalizing their leadership, and completely immobilizing organizations from their actual missions

https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/ read this and was constantly reminded of the Neos situation

These corporate saboteurs also weaponize and abuse terms like "N4zi" ad nauseam to the point of it minimizing the problem of actual N4zis.

Godwin's law remains a constant of internet arguments in 2022.

I'm wondering... How much do people think complacency and being a bystander to this situation (which is what I believe most people are) cause others who have a louder voice to believe that these people are on a certain side of the discussions? (Basically saying the people who talk believe the people who aren't talking are on their side. Do you think this is the case?)

Mainly asking because I feel bad about not sharing my opinions, and also worried about the responses I'll get if I do share.

The furry community's hostility towards Karel is just too terrible. There will be no reconciliation
It is possible that Karel was forced to fire many of the furs that were working for Neos. If not. Neos won't be able to grow for long

Is it entirely necessary to umbrella all furries into that mix?

Take a look at Discord and you'll see

But. All furries..?

Furry just jealous of karel

hmm.... seems Cloudflare is down. I think Discord uses it so... makes sense.

also means VRC would be offline, along with quite a few others.

Most likely regional outage

Ah that would explain some things

it is back now atleast

Ask yourself if it is worth it before you pick your hill to die on. Demanding intellectual honesty will lose you friends fast.

??? How so?

And I was never trying to demand anything? I'm really confused about what you took away from my message. If you're reading what I'm typing in Discord, I just want to make sure that discussions over a situation that I'm completely sick of, don't turn uncivil (or what I believe to be uncivil. Maybe that's where the disagreement in my actions is coming from?). Or at least try to.

And the friends that I have know me for me, and would not disappear due to doing something like this. If they do, they are not the best of friends.

I may have misinterpreted. But it seemed like you were having anxiety over people being dishonest in their discussions of the situation and that you feared backlash and people assuming you were on one side or the other if you called them out on it.

People who are willing to be dishonest with their take to make themselves feel better or to try to win an argument don't like to be called out. All I was saying is it might not be worth it.

ah okay. It was more fear of not saying anything would make people assume I'm on a side. Probably just me having some irrational thoughts

If you throw no stone you are of purity

https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1536046825047736326?s=20&t=2CejVrX1w1qFA17HtbD0_w

Have to say that NCR s the best crypto at the moment, only one that kept value compared to others

Well Karel needs to get the project running under new dev team first

Can't have people like Geenz poisoning the well

Is Khosumi claiming that stuff doesn't happen? Someone literally sent me a picture of Veer (the CMO) getting their dick sucked in Neos.

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Why would that mater if it's in private between consenting adults? I do not understand this sex scandal mentality. And why are people sending you these things?! I hope they got permission first, that's just rude.

I didn't want to see it, I'm not sure if it was out of spite.

Seriously, what is with people? >.>

I'm against zero tolerance policies, personally. I'd stick with corrective action and if that fails a clear and defined escalation path up to and including removal from their role.

It's too easy to weaponize zero tolerance policies. I'd agree, breach of consent should be a deal breaker, but I'm not willing to extend that to general guideline violation or other ambiguous cases.

I gave you something to react to. You're very good at that! One may even go so far as to say you're a consummate reactionary.

https://imgur.com/a/NbIQjI5

@Jax_TheRedFox🤫

https://imgur.com/a/hLUgmvB

https://twitter.com/deliriousjax/status/1538640676677570560

Inside the fur are the losers and the autistic

We are investors. We have all the money, positions and careers. It's funny compared to the fluffy guys

🙄 I am shocked and appalled by your casual ableism.

lol could you imagine the reaction if Karel had been involved in a nonconsensual sexual encounter on the platform

would we be having the same nuanced discussions about the potential considerations of a zero-tolerance policy?

what ???

The irony is that the so called investors are investing in what was a planned currency for a marketplace system. Effectively, it just means once the market even makes an ounce of progress, they'll pull out, having made their earnings, resulting in the value exchanged within the marketplace to plumet.

C'est la vie

Do miss the earlier days where some people who did invest tried what they were investing in. A small group made a really cool museum devoted to cryptocurrencies, and were pushing the software to some really neat limits.

yep. i did this too. wanted to have a buffer fund for bankrolling future projects on the jobs board. still sitting on 2k ncr actually :P
Elysium got hit hard by this too, as they were operating partly on NCR.

my load up is from patreon funds. Still have roughly 1.5k NCR. Sold some L$ when exchanges looked right, but most of that went to now having basically a healthy storage amount without needing to upkeep a subscription.

that being said, I've been burned on the anticipation system. I lucked out, since what I did put into was hardware for what was hopefully the big VR metaverse boom whene everyone was on that hype train. It did repay itself back and then some, but with how it all worked out, it was not rock solid enough that'd I'd wager like that again.

I'll just keep my stack of L$ where it remains and not risk it all over again.

ok

I've still got a load of NCR from Patreon and CDFT but I didn't bail when it peaked as I was new to crypto and didn't want to screw anything up. So yeah, was nice to see it become virtually worthless after people in the know cashed out at the right time. Especially people that appeared out of no-where...

That's okay. Back during the bHaptics event in 2021, I attempted to exchange NCR so that I could buy more haptic gear, which would have been a really nice turnaround after the event.
And that's how I ended up speaking with Karel about older stuff and getting the support to fix the transaction as much as possible. Didn't work out too well (RIP ~1500 NCR, will have to check), but no big deal.

Still did get the gear though. Head peice is not worth it, but the arm ones aren't too bad. Need like sweat bands to help hold them in place, but they are fairly immersive

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Are you able to determine autism from text? Because medical diagnosis from text would be a breakthrough

*nods* yeah, i felt that ride too :<

NCR still has future

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I wanna have the same opinion as you, but there's a big divide between that kind of behavior and your company/staff being taken seriously in people's eyes, unfortunately.

I'm gonna generalize but sometimes it feels like furries spend so much time mired in being freely sexual with one another that they seem to not understand a perspective of that being seen as weird by others.

I'd assume anywhere else would rather I did that stuff on an account that's not associated with my company persona.

The devils in the details really, and there's an issue of degree. A more accurate example to your frankly ridiculous ones is if someone was detailing their sex life on the same twitter account they use to talk to their company's customers. With pictures.

Maybe these specific pictures aren't supposed to be made public, if they even exist, but again it's an issue of degree where furries don't see a problem with being hyper affectionate and sexual with one another publicly, and they seem to be so used to it they don't understand why people might find it weird.

comparing it to buying someone a drink at a bar... It's more comparable to a picture getting leaked of you getting your dick sucked in the bar's bathroom, and that pic circulating amongst your colleagues

I frankly don't care that much, but I just question why they wouldn't want to do that stuff under a different persona... and I imagine there's a degree of power at play as well in these sexual encounters.

In that case, it's more comparable to a WoW GM having some cybersex in Deeprun Tram when it's after hours.

While logged into their GM account, and presumably with some regular player.

HAHAHA

It's abit less an issue of "professional vs private life" for me more of a community power dynamic issue. When sex is involved, I don't see how we can't just see issues in that.

Maybe he was hoping whoever's desk it was on might be a furry?

I just like... don't know if these public figures really can be taken seriously when they're yiffing members of their community while under their "company" personas. And I imagine who wouldn't mind maintaining this status quo because it gives quite thrilling leverage in social situations when they have their Developer tag flirting with someone

Then again for all I know this never happens and the instance of this (supposed) picture is between people who've been aquaintences for many years or whatever.

I'm just embarressed people actually take the mentor role seriously.

Honestly that is a legitimate concern. It's also one of the reasons I usually advocate for more decentralization, and why I ultimately want to see the project take on a more federated organization. As long as there is a centralized authority over these maters the threat of favoritism is not easily overlooked.

We can't overlook the weird emphasis that we place on certain kinds of relationships when it comes to considering the institutional effects they have and disentangling those power relations gets weird. I am not sure how to approach that while still acknowledging that the underlying social causes for that emphasis are still things I find wrong. I just try to be consistant in questioning what I view as unjust hierarchies and hope that ends up at a more fair and equitable conclusion.

I want to live in a way that I feel is genuine. I really, really resist the idea that I have to segment out my existence for the benefit of greater social norms. I don't know how to square that with the legitimate point of the power relations of those realms being inequitable. I will have to think on this more :/

That part i'll respectfully disagree with. I'm still quite adamant about pushing to adopt more progressive policies. Marketable or not, as long as they are justified.

It boils down to Neos as a platform being a Theme park, people don't live in here and its not real life. It's an escape from real life. If you work for the theme park you're not allowed to fuck the guests. Because if you hold any kind of authority be it Admin, moderator, or even a volunteer position, then all it takes it to try it with the wrong person and you bring negative attention to the platform or even legal liability in some cases. On top of that there is power disparity.

Like the number 2 reason given for people who have tried neos and never returned is someone acted inappropriate toward them. So I really don't see a down side to zero tolerance other than horny people angry they can't be horny anymore.

Not like you can't take it to other platforms anyway

I mean its fill the position or take the position, you don't get to do both.

This is like a standard policy for any company or platform that deals with a userbase

Honestl;y Neos should just take a page from Meta, and Microsoft and just go full pre-made avatars

IT would solve so many issues

Just partner with readyplayer.me

Nah legless mii's are really the way to go

They are already partnered with RPM but never bothered with nice user interfacing for it

I was being facetious.

Not completely, though. There is a mentioning of compatability, but the full partnership was to allow direct linking akin to how it works with VRC, where RPM uploads on the user's behalf. In the case of Neos, it'd be that the avatar would populate within your inventory from the website actions alone.
Of course, this never was finished because I don't think an API was made for such actions. I forget who I asked about this, but that was more or less the explaination

that being said, RPM avatars do import just fine... but the rigging is in dire need of help, even for pre-made.

Add some detail maps, adjust a few settings, and they're not too bad.

No, I mean like officially. It's just on Neos' end they never bothered actually implementing anything to handle it gracefully.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/629302253768933376/989312645045813308/unknown.png

yeah. I know there was a desire to add the full support, so they appear far higher on the list

Probably because all this non-sense went down around that time

naw. It's been that way for quite awhile, and RPM has been around for a long time

I was talking about the im0plementation because as I understand it the official partnership happened in Dec.

naw. I gave it a try far earlier and that's when I asked why Neos wasn't in the top part with official support, despite appearing in the lower list.

Yeah it was way earlier than December

that being said, totally did revisit their site in December to see what had changed, including seasonal outfits, which was ammusing

Then there is literally no excuse

I mean, if we want to go on the discussion of no excuses, lack of VRM support due to there being no licensing options to match their proposed features... when virtually no one has any integration of said VRM licensing rules... is kind of silly

such integration would mean users can just drag an drop their avatar and not even need to deal with the avatar creator

ok no one was talking about any of that but, ok sure

Sorry, was in a meeting. But yes. I respect other people have different priorities on this though.

Yeah, this pissed a lot of people off, especially as other platforms support it without any matching licence setup.

That and there's no way to really enforce it. If I have the file, I can just load it into an editor and remove it. The group working on the format, which is supposed to be universal and open source, never really got that all finished. It is no more than a checkbox, honestly

You can build an avatar picker for people to use. That's the beauty of Neos, you can build anything on top of it

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Hi everyone! I've been involved in crypto / VR since DK1 days and a neosvr user for a few years. I work on public research, webxr, and metaverse interop, can see projects on xrdevlog.com. Nice to meet ya'll here :)

I see ya'll talking about VRM, if you google "avatar interoperability" you should see my dev logs as one of the first results

Oh yeah! I remember seeing your article about that. It was one of the reasons I began looking more into VRM as a result

Holy hell I was being facetious, and I was commenting on how ridiculous the NSFW furry brigade is being over Karel not wanting staff to engage in that activity. This chat, I swear to god.

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😂

Maybe they shouldn't be pulling a Weinstein.

I googled this and got references to the mpeg-v standard which I didn't know existed. On a related note: why is there an Mpeg standard for this? XD

just looked it up. It's pretty interesting if I'm reading it right:
The general idea is that it doesn't just store traditional media, but also sensory response information and additional data. In short, you can store that a recorded virtual scene had a heat response in a specific location and be able to replay it back with that exact information.
A bit like the brain dance stuff from Cyberpunk 2077, if you will.

Karel

Someone's clearly not done their research...

Only Elon can take my business to outer space

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This is generic spam if I have ever read it

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4 new members so far today. what's happening?

Probably nothing? Some join from hearing about the crypto stuff some find it from the website. Some might get invited or just random bots? Not aware of any recent happenings otherwise

something happen soon?

Probably not

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Next Metaverse bullrun is going to be crazy

Neos still the leader in Metaverse tech

Despite the almost yearlong developer strike

Looking forward to clarity on the whole situation, so we can move forward

somethings happening? And I was just getting cozy too.

Board meeting?

Nope, private.

Board of Advisors meetings were canceled as of February and I was told that March would not occur either, so I dropped off the board. Afaik, there has not been a meeting since as I was not asked to rejoin or attend a rescheduled meeting from February.

Hmm, I guess not that then.

Board of Advisors were not present at Neos Team meetings or any other meetings.

Maybeeee, but not likely :)

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Any news?

Quiet lately

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Twitter account fudding team silent

But CEO silent too

Close to 4 months since last CEO statement

Many holders would like new statement

Geenz clarified that he was asking for $50k for 10 hours a week (some people thought it was a miscommunication, so putting this here to clarify). https://www.reddit.com/r/NeosVR/comments/vi8sul/are_they_still_working_on_the_crypto_token_or/ie0bkes/

He also confirms he was looking for equity in the company. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640736570047201281/991795813485383720/unknown.png

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We're nearly 9 months in and everyone's still at each other's throats. Whatever eventually happens isn't going to be good. Unfortunately Neos has become an emotional, monetary and time write-off for me, I see almost no chance of anything going well.

I just go wherever and try to enjoy myself. Neos is interesting to me because of the ability to spin up blank canvases and just do whatever. I've figured out some handy stuff because of it

Where's the strawman? https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/670831631778709514/991823569816399922/unknown.png

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/713853893951356998/991895681205813349/unknown.png

Numbers continue to slowly drop

The fact that there is *still* a need to smear this fantasy all over the internet is truly bizzare and the first message is simply a hogwash, pardon my language.

Possibly the only valid part of that comment is that Karel had no part in routinely “bonding and hanging out”. Since he was far to busy to actually run the company - businesses don’t just emanate from the thin air and run themselves, despite of what some people think.
And moreover, it’s quite hard to even accomodate all timezone differences, if you still want to have at least some personal life left, outside the platform. (Yes, it exists, trust me).

I won’t go into the debate about this further as I feel like a broken record.
If people feel the need to still harbour such hatered, that is their choice. We keep going and there is no intention of “dropping” the project.
We love Neos, we love our users, we feel their frustration and that is why we just keep on going rather than wasting energy on endless debates and arguments.
Announcements will be made when the time comes. In the meantime there are endless ways how Neos continues to give joy its users, it provides much sought after innovation to businesses, educators and we are doing our utmost best to make sure that they can carry on with their activities, despite of how difficult that is to even communicate with the current team, that has somehow made it their lifetime quest to fight “Evil Karel”.

If this sounds to you like some very long bad comedy, rather than a business development, you are right.
However that won’t be the case forever. Any business is built on culture and people that you can trust. That is possibly something we can agree on. It’s just sad we were not able to see head to head on much else, including keeping timelines, work progress and task management. The normal things that every business needs in order to scale up and grow.

I have understanding and patience for people and their somewhat rich personalities, god knows we all have things to work on when it comes to social interactions, but it makes incredibly difficult and challenging to work with someone who can lash out at the slightest instance. So while I had no personal issues with Geenz, I would not necessarily build a team around them, no matter how genius or gifted that person is.
Ed Catmull puts it wonderfully - “My job as a manager is to create a fertile environment, keep it healthy, and watch for the things that undermine it.”
I can only agree as even just one person who is not a good fit can disrupt the whole dynamic. That is nothing against them personally. I am sure they are lovely and actually from those few interactions we had, I thought they are a really nice person. But it’s about professionalism in business. And I don’t want people who use threats, bad languade and agression as a part on their normal communication on my team. (Again nobody is a saint here before you jump on this, I am just saying that there is a level of what is acceptable and this is too much.)

Imagine the CEO wanting to be in control of his own company. Holy hell...

To me at least I feel this situation now boils down to whether people believe in Neos, the platform, or the people currently behind Neos. And who follows who after this whole thing. Because people who follow the platform are very uncertain about whether it'll ever continue past its current existence, and people who are following the current team are worried about that team not having a platform to build.

I could see some outcomes where if Karel gets his way, the direction of the platform could be more certain/concrete (although I haven't seen him in action very much, so I'm not fully sure if that could be the case). Also there could be another outcome where if the team gets their way, the team might snap back in to action and form a concrete business strategy.

And then even if either situation occurs, and the respective party is successful, the people who are following what they beleive in would be what matters the most, due to that being a majority factor in what drives a platform AND community like Neos's.

Looking at the Steam analytics, it only bled users starting around February 2022, 2021 was the best year for Neos and the growth happened year long, not just during the NCR boom.

My point being, the platform was growing and releasing features regularly, BEPUv2, the LNL upgrade, new Logix Nodes, performance and hardware support, stability etc - all improved significantly in 2021.

Patreon earnings reduced 3 months before Neos experienced a reduction in the average daily users on the platform.

IE, the NCR dropping and uncertainty was the reason Patreon decreased, and it wasn't until February when a reduction of daily uses occurred

Oh, I think I interpreted users in your message as platform users and not patreon users. Yes, in that case Patreon did bleed users starting December 1st, but the platform didn't experience a reduction in daily users until February 2022

But I very much agree with your comment about Neos succeeding, no matter who is leading the effort, someone very strategic with very good leadership qualities and business expertise is needed to drive the product.

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Thought funny docs man should be here, seeing as I get mentioned a bit.

Expect to get called out on hypocrisy. There were plenty of cryptoshills creating puppet accounts on the Discord and engaging in circular logic loops while disregarding people putting holes in their reasoning.

So if your takes seem like that and you don't have reasonable arguments backing them up, you should expect being grouped up with them.

Also this is the natural outcome of dividing the community on different channels and platfofms and ostrasizing the original Discord group by zvoiding any meaningful discussions and giving reasonable answers.

I don't think we should be justifying tendencies to stereotype. I genuinely do not agree with @morolian on quite a lot, but they do at least deserve pointed and specific criticism: Like making me want to scream every time I saw their name for like two months because they managed a Unicode among us reference.

There are, I'm sure, other points of criticism but that one seems the most agredious.

I'm not trying to justify it or say it's the right thing to do.

I'm just pointing out the reasons it happens and why you should expect it if you can't engage in a discussion with good arguments defending your points.

I'm sure this whole debacle has played a role in raising tensions on both sides and thus lead to a lot of short fused blaming.

But that doesn't justify letting actions or inactions slide. There will be consequences like loss of Patreon subscibers and trust until we see action to mend the situation.

Until then expect the tensions, distrust and short tempers to stay.

Pretty obvious the team just want money. Sad to see them sabotage the project after Karel didn’t give in to their demands

Hey, I don't want Money.

I've never asked for money.

This dispute is NOT about money. Please stop on the money track.

Sure, the announcements detail the things you can blame, everything else is speculation.

It definitely seemed like it was about money with Geenz. With some incredibly unreasonable requests for such a tiny project with so few members supported almost entirely by Patreon.

I really disagree with you on this.

Geenz explained his position in reddit well enough.

It isn't unreasonable for the ICO money to have gone to proper fulltime employment of the current team, rather than buybacks.

But apparently following what was stated in the original whitepaper isn't something a tiny project can do.

This was WELL before there was any ICO money, this was a year or so before the NCR boom.

Keep in mind the *entire* grant that Solirax got to run Neos on in the first place was only like $250k and Geenz wanted $200k A YEAR!

he split that to 1/4 for 1/4 of the work

so 50k a year

For 10 hours a week. Which is still an outrageous request for such a small project supported entirely by users on Patreon!

So basically they couldn't afford to hire him full or part time at the market price he was receiving at his current employment.

Yet he still worked on color spaces and bothered to learn Froox engine on a volunteer basis in his free time.

So it's unfortunately all that means is they couldn't afford to hire him at the time.

No one was obligated to accept that price from both parties involved.

Beingoutraged over a price tag while ignoring all the other details is silly.

Not at all, I think it speaks to the character of the person. To me it seems like he was trying to milk the project for all he could. The fact he then jumped to equity makes me even less trusting.

I can't speak for him about the equity part, for all the good that would do him as Froox can attest.

It could be him having a big enough interest in the project to try and steer it's direction, but you can't divine if his reasons were entirely selfish or selfless.

Do you think equity in the project is worth the risk of it failing and yoh not getting anything out of it?

I'm sure if you asked any Patreons that cancelled their subscriptions they'd agree the current situation is too precarious to invest.

My point is that it was negotiating in the wrong direction. You can argue for equity when putting a *massive* investment into the project. Both the 200k request and the request for equity for dev work on a project which was almost entirely volunteers at the time and entirely user donation supported are both madness. Requesting equity also gives the impression of trying to control the business in some way.

I'm sure people would also question their Patreon funding if they found out such a massive amount would have been going to a single person in a project that liked to flaunt how grass roots it was a lot of the time.

🤷‍♂ this situation is a mess and I'm waiting for a joint statement from Froox and Karel.

Without Geenz explaining his reasoning or someone else on the team backing him up and his character I can't be certain of his intentions. But I doubt he'd have stayed to work for free if he wasn't interested in the project itself rather than the $$

The only thing I can reasonably sure is that without Froox there wouldn't have been a Neos, and he still has kept Geenz part of the team.

Also the segregation of the community in Discord and here has led to some serious tribalism. It was a big mistake creating this Telegram.

As it stands people from both sides can't defend themselves or have a civil discussion and we've ended up with quoting each other and isolating ourselves in our respective groups.

That's no way to reach any agreement or see the other side's point of view.

The Discord is a waste of time, it's full of mindless zealots who've lost any ability to think for themselves. It was painful to be in there any longer with a complete lack of critical thought. But it's not really surprising given that the people that remain are die-hard Neos users who don't go or use anything else, there's zero objectivity.

Splitting the community and refusing to provide answers to the place where the majority of users communicate is hardly conductive to being more objective.

Are you surprised Karel just ignored the Discord after 99.9% of the comments directed to him there were just insults? Why would anyone bother with it at that point. He did continue talking there for a while after it became almost entirely insults for a while at least. I'd be surprised if anyone would stick around at that point.

Also I wouldn't say this channel is "splitting the community" when there's like 5 active users, most of which are in the Discord anyway and the remaining ones are NCR holders who don't seem that bothered about the game anyway.

I'm not surprised at all. That doesn't mean it was the right call to further the divide. It has only exacerbated the situation when the main complaint was lack of communication and announcements in the proper channels in the 1st place.

Karel and Andrea are the ones who have decided that this place is their main point of contact.

It's their choice, but I see it doing more harm that explaining their decisions so far and offering their perspective on events.

At the very least it is a showing that they don't want to be a part of the social platform where the majority of the community of the product they run are.

It's not their main point of contact anymore, they disappeared some time ago. God knows what they're doing at this point.

I'm fully expecting to get banned here just for asking too many questions or just stating my point of view.

I expect any criticism brought up here to be ignored, and the silent standstill to continue.

But I think you'd agree with me that Karel has dropped too many balls to take him seriously, at least when it comes to explaining his actions and reasoning.

The buybacks and some of the other things were very questionable, but when it seems like all the people that work for you and their entourage are against you and are sabotaging their own project, then I expect things to get very messy, very quickly.

I think the crux of it comes down to Karel not knowing how to handle a lot of the scenarios that came up, and the people that "worked" for Solirax being a band of random people and friends that at no point treated it like a business or job and appeared to turn very hostile when anything was treated like an actual business. A lot of what I've seen screams that most the people involved have never worked a real job, never worked for a company and I'm not sure would ever last doing a normal job. It's like those shows you see about startups that implode the moment anything gets serious.

But who the fuck knows what's going on behind closed doors. All I know is that members of the team hate each other and the team have cut off their nose to spite their face, basically killing the platform in the process. Leaving me both very upset and very angry.

The way I see it, it would have happened no matter what. It's better that it gets resolved now and we have a transparent discussion on how we're moving forward or end it here and restart.

I'm not sure anything's been transparent here, lol.

The same chance as Karel offering Neos users to cash out their in game NCR via PayPal.

If you haven't minted or got NCR via Patreon you should be glad there are so many buybacks funneling the value of yhe ICO back so tjat you can cash out.

I'm not either. When this is resolved I want it to be or I won't bother with the platforms anymore.

He already Ignored the Discord long before, or to be more precise. He was not to be seen at all in the community.
I were already wondering who Karel is when I joined neos back then, because we never saw any message of him (except the NCR posts when it began to take off) or any activity inside neos too.

I mean, he was the CEO, not a player. Why would he play Neos? You think everyone that works on VRChat plays VRChat?

he was the second 50% shareholder*

Karel was approachable back then, I spoke to him on several occasions, he just had no reason to talk in the Discord normally.

Ok, and?

As far as I know, yes.

Only via direct messages

Right. What other reason would he have for interacting with a bunch of furries and let's be honest, a lot of strange people in the Discord of a platform that he doesn't use? I don't see why this is a negative point. Froox didn't chat in Discord much and it even got to the point where the team were isolating him so much that I would get TOLD OFF by the team for even trying to talk to Froox about things that literally only he knew.

Froox were quite often in the livestreams, in public, made announcements and devlogs and more on

Dev logs by the dev, seems pretty explainable there.

I'm not going to lie, this argument feels like pettiness for the sake of being petty.

What I would have expected from Karel is something more that ICO minting batch updates. (which haven't been updated in yhe last 3 months or more on the site).

Isn't it reasonable to expect more progress and news about NCR automation and stability, when working on the crypto side was one of his main responsibilities?

He still labels anything that quesions how well NCR has done it's job at providing funds for development from the ICO or as a stable currency for trading as FUD.

Nevermind that it's a reasonable question how something so volatile and linked to outside exhanges can be used in a marketplace without negatively affe ting it.

I was expecting this before the strike.

A volatile currency being used for a marketplace was something I raised before the NCR boom and was shouted down by the Neos diehards. Of course they turned on a dime to "NCR bad!" as soon as the Karel event started and rewrote history to be "the team never wanted NCR, it was all Karel, no-one else ever supported it" which was obviously not true and is one of the main reasons I don't trust any of them anymore.

Both the sum and, when a company can't afford that sum, taking the option of a mix of salary and equity is pretty normal in startups. By contrast volunteer development work for a for profit enterprise is basically unheard of. Mostly because it's not actually legal.

I can see where you are coming from. I don't expect people to spend time on a platform that can dissappear at any point, no matter how much promise it has.

I'm surprised we're bleeding only around a 100 Patreons per month.

None

None

None

I'm confused by this argument, given he was at the table it seems obvious he was seen as a contributor. But it's ultimately immaterial. The quoted compensation was scaled for his level of experience. He showed the expected level of flexibility in methods of compensation. I find the position that this is somehow unreasonable to not be grounded in an expectation of fair labor practices.

Which, I will point out, seems to be the core issue for the team. Not salary per say, but the practices that gave rise to these confrontations.

It wasn't scaled, he wanted $200k a year which he quoted as the going rate for Seattle (despite the fact that Neos is based in Czechia, not Seattle...). The "scaling" was down to $50k, but that was at 1/4 the hours. So that wasn't scaling. He didn't drop his price at all.

That's like saying I'll pay you 1/4 the price for 1/4 of the product. That's not a reduction at all...

Why would he? You ask for what you are worth and factor in intangibles when you set your own bottom line. That's like the basics of salary negotiation.

At a normal company. Why is Neos/Solirax being treated like a normal, solid business with hundreds or thousands of employees and not a project limping along on Patreon donations and a skeleton team?

A for profit is a for profit. Why should there be an expectation that their relationship with their employees is allowed to be exploitative because they are not doing well?

Reasonable, not exploitive. If I'd have learned that a single person on the dev team was being paid $200k a year, I'd have pulled all my Patreon funding immediately.

Because we're trapped in a timeloop since the beginning of the year and no one is willing to admit fault to break it?

Seriously though. Money is just part of an employee needs to put up with a job. You have to factor in treatment and working conditions and in this case since it's a project based on vision, compatible views on where you're supposed to be headed , discussion and compromises.

Enverex, getting free labor for your for profit business is exploitative. Balking when you are asked to compensate the workers you are illegally already receiving work from is just indicative of other issues.

Who said free?

Are your options $200k p/a or free and nothing inbetween?

You can't volunteer for a for profit institution.

Er, the moderators are all volunteers (except Veer).

You can't in the us. It violates the Fair Labor Standards Act.

THIS ISN'T THE US

Sorry for shouting but Americans thinking their rules and laws apply outside the US *constantly* is something which has worn me down so much over the years, it's really, really annoying.

Is Geenz banned here, because I'd like to hear his take on why he would have accepted equity? Can you even pay for your expenses with that?

But anyway, he wasn't asked to work for free, he was offered $1500p/m wasn't he? That's far from free.

And given that it's a project where most others are volunteers and the project has little cash, seems reasonable.

None

None

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/39/section/44 this is the case in the UK as well.

True, and it's a major issue IMO.

And Czechia?

But as a wider reaching question - aren't community moderators unpaid on most platforms? How is that legal then?

I guess in those cases it's because no-one is actually employed, they don't officially work for anyone.

Unclear. The translations of the relevant law I can find do not give a clear exemption for volunteer work from their minimum wage statutes, nor do they define volunteer labor as a category. (https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/74435/81657/F933037295/CZE74435%20Eng.pdf)

https://ia902808.us.archive.org/24/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.314303/gov.uscourts.nysd.314303.54.34.pdf

I remember the context of this statement. It was in regards to Veer et al. stopping sending in their invoices when the strike started, not suggested remuneration to the unpaid development staff.

I do not know. You would have to ask them.

I do not. Though I consider it community service, there is an argument to be had that I should seek compensation.

Arguably :) I considered the mentor program meaningfully separate from Neos' organizational structure until recently TBH. We still do operate mostly independently but there have been some things that have made me draw a clearer dotted line in the mental org chart.

I mean fair.

YES YOU CAN, it's called working pro Bono and there are even tax exemptions for it in multiple countries like the entirety of the EU and North America, parts of east Asia, you can't provide the same duties as other full time employee or act as replacement for one who was let go, or perform duties as an intern in that regard that don't offer full benefit of training and education, but you for sure have the individual right to make the decision as a contractor to take a job offering or not, or do provide your services Pro Bono. But you very Much can volunteer your time for a profit company. I

YOU ARE NOT AN ATTORNEY (barrister in this specific case) . you neither have the skills, knowledge or appropriate training to interpret the law, so please stop trying to because there are probably a dozen or so other relevant labor laws based on geographic interpretation and the amount of work. On top of that the PROVISION you citied here https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/39/section/44 applies to VOLUNTEER WORKERS AT NON-Profits and covers what they are and are not entitled to. Nothing more and nothing less. It's more to prevent people from seeking undue compensation from non-profits than it is to punish for -profits for labor exploitation. In fact nothing of the latter is even related in that provision or covered. And completely skipping In fact if you had read that law in its entirety fact that in that very same Law, there is a provision covering exclusion of of certain classes of person, one of which is Agency workers (that's Brit talk for Contractor).

Its a disingenuous narrative and your spreading misinformation. Please stop googling and cherry picking things like this. It only makes you look foolish

It's not spicy, it's just correcting blatantly wrong information, it was neither an attack on them or their opinion. But making claims that there was a violation of law then presenting a law that has little or nothing to ddo with the situation needs to be called out.

or pointed out rather

If making legal points were as easy as googling something we wouldn't need lawyers.

Pro Bono work is volunteer work. I'm not sure what your tirade is about, but what is the last time someone pro Bono represented a for profit business? That's the exemption from the minimum wage laws. If you'd like to find an exemption from the minimum wage laws that applies to for profits, go ahead. I am not a lawyer, but this is the consistant interpretation from pretty much every resource I have found or been handed as a volunteer organizer.

Pro bono work IS NOT VOLUNTEER WORK. People work pro bono at FOR_PROFITS ALL THE TIME. It has nothing to do with Non-profits. PRO Bono just means IN MANNER WITHOUT A FEE.

Not to mention there is literally case law regarding this situation with AOL and several early MMOs, including Ultima.

YOU ARE NOT AN ATTORNEY. STOP.

I can read. Just because that's inconvenient for your position is immaterial.

Yeah, and you don't understand what you are reading, because YOU ARE NOT AN ATTORNEY

Are you?

No, which is why I am not making baseless accusations and spreading misinformation and false narratives and attempting to back said info up as an am chair attorney. But am an independant contractor, I have been for ten years and I have done pro bono work for people and businesses that are for profit, and had those contracts for said pro bono were written up by an attorney. So having that I have made my living for tens years doing such and have experience with it, I can tell you first hand, you don't know what you are talking about. With Pro bono. \

The fact remains the only responsible for deciding if they are working for free as a contractor is the contractor. THEY CHOSE TO DO THE WORK.

👀🍿

The bearing of opinion here is opinion, legal or otherwise. If you do not have a claim to authority then you must argue from the same grounds. We are, in fact, blessed with rational faculties and while there are arguments of professional hermenutiecs: https://www.bakerdonelson.com/volunteers-at-for-profit-companies-bad-idea-even-if-for-a-good-cause, https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/how-to-guides/pages/volunteeroranemployee.aspx, and finally https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Pro+Bono
"As members of a profession, lawyers are bound by their ethical rules to charge reasonable rates for their services and to serve the public interest by providing free legal service to indigent persons or to religious, charitable, or other non-profit groups. A lawyer's free legal service to these types of clients is designated as pro bono service."

Did you jsut assume my gender?

just realized that?

At this point, it's basically an impromptu soap

not to say that's what I was hoping this would become, since honestly it's kind of depressing

Troll needs bans

Nothing you posted has anything to do with what we are talking about. You posted an opinion article talking about people working for civic partners and volunteers working for tips which doesn't apply here; a link that requires a login and signup which is useless on its face and just as valuable to the conversation as a rick roll, and a definition for pro bono from a random dictionary site mostly just covering the special dispensation of lawyers and pro bono work in a profession that has its own legal requirements and and a bar association that governs it for said Pro Bono. Literally cherry picking things you think will on its surface back up what your saying but does not because what you're saying does not mesh with reality. And have anything to do with what was being discussed.

We are not talking about lawyers other than the fact you are not one. Any profession can do work pro bono, this is an undisputed fact. That doesn't criminalize the entity that the work is being done for, also a fact. A carpenter can offer their labor to anyone anywhere for any price if they are a contract worker, including pro bono for any reason. The same goes for any skilled profession. At the end of the day Pro Bono just means an agreement to do work without a fee. Pro bono work involves providing free services, rather than cash or goods, most of the time to those in need, but you can also do it just to help a friend ( like in this case) or because you owe someone a favor, or for any reason whatsoever, charity is not a requirement. And the State doesn't enforce that, its not a crime to choose to work for free, nor is it a crime to allow someone to do some work for you for free, in the case pro bono.

But if you want to keep pushing the narrative that Karel somehow in violation of the law for Geenz to knowingly make the decision volunteer their time and skillset for a for Profit company, And you want to insist that pro bono work requires non-profit then you are wrong.

They even said that " I backed off of it after talking to other team members. Largely because looking back I generally felt that Froox' vision for metaverse was worth working on more than a short term salary." That is literally doing work pro bono. Both in the definition your using and the I am using. So I fail to even see any point in what your doing.

They felt the work they were doing was more important than compensation, according to what they said. End of Story. They said that publicly. And you you're still

On top of that, all I was doing was calling you out for just blatantly making baseless accusations of labor exploitation, and criminal conduct. Lets say for arguments sake that you are right, and any of the devs working for free or volunteering are in fact under the law being exploited.

Froox is the CTO and project lead. He holds equal equity in the company and is the co-founder. He was directly involved in working with dev team. He was the one telling the dev team what work to do, and when, he was also the one, actively teaching the devs about the engine and directing them on what he needed done. He was the one who went out and asked the members of the dev team to come work with him in the first place. As far as I am aware Karel didn't proposition the dev team to come work for Neos. Froox did. And He would be equally implicit in the labor exploitation you are insisting is real.

So making that (baseless) accusation and pointing the finger only at Karol is not only hypocritical, its disingenuous, and its just conversation and debate done is extreme bad faith. On top of being ablatant falsehood.

On that note as far as I am am aware, there is nothing stopping Froox from saying, "hey, I think you guys should have equity, take some of mine" but you don't me sitting here ranting about how the CTO won't give his team members equity in the company. Because that would be disingenuous.

I don't know if it is even legal for either of them to give away their personal equity in that matter. I don't don't even know if there is floating equity and I don't if that equity is ear marked for investors exclusively and equally unavailable to assign as compensation. I am not privy to that information, because I don't know how they set their company up and neither do you. I don't know what their agreement regarding equity was. So I am not going to go around start to accuse either of them of exploitation because equity wasn't offered, or because any one of them, didn't agree to specific terms. Because that is disingenuous, and its morally wrong in my opinion.

Just about as edgy as quoting caps used for emphasis on a planform where you can't italicize a small portion and saying "Jesus Christ man calm down lmao" in some feinged attempt I was yelling

And if you want to discuss further, feel free to add me on neos and conversation in person, but I'm not going to do this with long texts and posting links its not reddit, and I don't time for it.

NCR going 💪 💪

I'm not accusing them of exploitation because equity wasn't offered, that's silly. I'm accusing them of exploitation for accepting volunteer labor as part of their core product. I am, specifically, accusing the legal entity of Solarex <or whichever entity thus associated> of doing so. I find that wrong on it's face, without any of the additional hoops.

I just happen to also be able to point to pretty clear language that supports that position. I don't find it morally defensible to imply it is okay to profit from uncompensated work. I am not particularly interested in adding you on Neos XD Our interactions have been unpleasant and I don't have much faith they'd improve.

Naw, I'm just stuborn.

Search the discord for the word strike...

👋

Idk why they can’t just admit it’s about pay. Pretty obvious from their actions

IT IS NOT ABOUT PAY

Actions speak louder

Ok cool, reading speaks louder

https://i.probableprime.co.uk/220630-9RlWPphzF7vMwjVTg3dq.png

Team blackmails Karel for extra pay then says it’s not about pay. Lul

I have never asked for money

Please see beyond capitalism for this dispute, it might help you.

BEHAVIOR

is not pay

It was not, it was the behavior around the conversation about pay

Your inability to read is the issue.

As much as you like to live in your fairytale bubble, you live in a capitalist society. Please see beyond your fairytale, it might help you.

it is not about pay

I agree 100%, I just don’t know why they are not direct about it. It’s this miscommunication that has caused so many issues

sorry, you're ignoring me

So i gotta repeat myself

I'm an expert in wikipedia thank you

Oh who's being rude now.

Is about sending a message

That ncr will prevail

Btc falls

Its clear we can't have a polite conversation here, so i'll just exit the conversation with.

Apologies, if I offended you but this issue is not about pay. If you'd like to have a conversation i'd be up for it. But i'm not talking aobut pay again. This is not about pay.

Thank you.

@ProbablePrime you’re the kind of guy that would probably be fun to hang out with but you are missing the point of Neos. Karel has big ambitions for Neos to be a big player in the Metaverse space and have a huge impact shaping it. With your fun-first, small community approach, it will never get there

Oh everyone is replacable

Including you

Imo Karel just needs to bite the bullet and hire new people

have a nice day

Can’t even have a discussion, they get triggered immediately

Naw i'm good

I'm just chilling, I'm happy to converse

That particular one ;)

Your words often contradict your actions. Perhaps this is why there has been so much miscommunication?

Naw, the miscommunication is from many factors.

Why heckle others instead of building up our own we will prevail dint seem insecure

Ncr is the future

No point wasting karma nature will balance

I am the opposite of a narcissist.

Positivity breeds success , negativity only breeds evil divide pain and heathenism

The best way to fight your enemy is to assist your brothers and sisters

This is how we will start a new world

Free of inequality and poverty

@ProbablePrime do you care about Neos?

of course

Karma will correct nature will solve the bad do not become the evil you seek to purify

There will be a new dawn

🧘

I wonder who decides which emojo get the close up treatment in telegram.

if its by itself, it'll be big. otherwise its small

Usually artists will draw them at their large size and then down scale them to the smaller size. So yeah some lovely artist drew that one. They probably loved doing it though

👌

Oh i get that, I just posted the meditation emojo on it's own before and it's like, a fourth of the size of the pea soup one.

oh some probably don't have a big version drawn maybe

Is all small for me

its also a settings thing

That on its face dishonest, now your just jumping though hoops and not even acknowledge that by your definition Froox himself, was exploiting them. Again he brought them on, he assigned work, he assigned tasks, and he did to help develop his engine, which has his name for christsake, and to be clear I am not accusing Froox of this because that is ridiculous.

You can't have it both ways. Sorry. And no one violated the law. No one was exploiting anyone under the law, if you have moral issues with it you need to assign everyone involved otherwise your disingenuous. accusing the legal entity of Solarex is pretty just cop out and you trying toavoid the double caught yourself in.

If your expressing a moral opinion on the matter thats fine, I don't any reason to disagree with your personal opinion if its morality based. That's your right. a And I would partially agree with that. But that's not what you were doing. You were making a blatant criminal accusation that baseless and trying back it up by posting laws that don't apply and failing miserably at using legalese to make your accusations look legitimate. Not only that you didn't apply it equally to all parties involved and extremely biased That's what issue with. and thats you getting called out on. Also its libel. Just FYI

peace out

Big rant text

Libel hard prove

Libel is literally the easiest thing to prove, you're thinking of defamation.

I know

I just thought it was ironic considering they were making legal accusations.

Anyway I'm loggin out have a good day everyone

>.> <.< Libel is written defamation, slander is spoken defamation. Look, please stop being wrong on the internet, at this point ti's a reflex.

No need for law the future is paved with strength and cooperative

congratulations that's the joke!

Obviously your not a golfer

bye

Stop argue be positive

😕

Your place gives you the 4th and 5th off? Awesome :D

Ah-hah, the 4d chess move of the longest weekend. Nice, nice.

I could only find one for the animated emoji :< but like, no process of nomination or anything was outlined. I still just wonder who's job it is to choose which emoji to lovingly render into pea-soup fountains.

hollllyyyyyy shit this is fucking bonkers

from a startup that wasnt profitable. What a fucking clown, toxic piece of cancer, and a goddamn moron

I used to slightly wonder if there was some sort of point he had I was missing but daaaayum

Well that says alot to me about the stuff they didnt want us to know

And he goes on to say "we never said no one was paid" and " we repeatedly clarify that" when FOR MONTHS THE COMMUNITY HAS BEEN DOING NOTHING BUT ACCUSING KAREL OF NEVER PAYING ANYONE EVER

and they have NEVER stepped in and corrected then

We've corrected them a few times btw

Yeah right you fucking creep

What the hell Orc?

you are so goddamn full of shit.

Naw fuck him, that little slimeball

after reading this shit

I have ZERO respect for these people or anyone defending this

What are you reading that's got you up in arms?

Im reading the stupidity that Neos had to die for

And to see Prime pop in to agree that they ever corrected the community. Ive fucking never seen that out of hundreds of times Ive seen their unhinged community throw that slander around

Its in some of our announcements.

Naw you just said "its not about pay" as if to imply that youre just virtuously above that being a concern when actually yes it absolutely was one of the primary concerns. And to make yourselves look better, much like every disingenuous action you take in this matter.

That's not an announcement. Pay is not a primary concern of mine. Please do not put words in my mouth. Thank you.

You look like a joke trying to talk like you have any respect or air of superiority here. You let your community rot with stupidity from the inside for such petty reasons

Never clarifying things and keeping details shrouded was always to your advantage, as the Neos team has operated in the sleaziest of ways possible. Don't pretend you ever really corrected anyone or ever behaved with fairness.

can yal slow down. I'm 150 messages behind and this cancer of a discussion isn't slowing down

He cares about this being the first time in his life he's ever had some position of slight authority

I care about Neos and Cheese.

I'm trying to catch up too and I'm losing it with the ridiculousness I'm reading

sorry wish we were the suckup children over at discord who pretend you're charming

That's ok, I don't need that.

oh find a cliff and try to hang glide with a broken umbrella

Geenz just casually demanding $50k salary for 10 hours a week from a startup that isn't profiting.... my sides

Reading burn's discussions were lengthy, but were interesting nonetheless

Can't squeeze that much blood from a stone so you know, why not do the reasonable thing and contribute to blowing up the whole project for everyone?

sounds like something an adult would do

bruh, you are an insult to yourself. I don't need to reason with you what so ever

I gave up on that 2 weeks ago.

anyway, any new news or is this still the double face club?

Still no news sorry. check announcements for any news that might come in

You can always count on one of the gold names to show up in here for damage control when something ugly gets out.

eh alright. BTW, still tinkering with it, but noticing some weird LAN issues if I VPN to the network. Most likely my openvpn config so I'll update the github if I find something

>.> <.< Look, can we bait each other a little less?

that's all this chat basically is anyway. It's a joke.

So we have to tolerate this useless leech for awhile. as if he actually gives a damn about anything other than the image of their childish self-destructive plundering of a project.

I wonder where everyone thinks Geenz's $200k salary would come from after they remove NCR. Patreon and people paying for more storage, right?

like, come on. Now that I"m able to relax and see things from a different angle, this whole thing is one pathetic disappointment. Any talks about NCR is just "Oh, the currency is strong! Yus! Mindless jargon" versus "Hmm, perhaps we can talk with some groups about how to best make use of the systems and employ it on the platform." or anything useful.
It's called "Neos Metaverse - Neos Credit" and yet the primary topics are "Team is full of idiots and greedy furries, oh wah! We want new team yet have no clue how to do jack."

For 10 hours? And hmmm maybe they coulda paid out that kind of money with a dev team that wasn't sabotaging their own funding scheme, lol.

I'm actually pleased to see how their childish expectations killed the project for them

pretty much...

I don't know if anyone had the mind to actually think of this as an ambitious startup aside from maybe Froox and Karel themselves. You know, the actual forethought and patience needed to actually bring about huge future benefits to the company. But the others, their idea is more to treat it like the all should be paid like Seattle tech leads BEFORE the startup fires off.

and the first adversity the project faces leads to an ugly, bitter demise. It's poetic.

yeah... I think one of them kept saying they were involved with some major talks. Can't remember who, but eh...

I mean, you can only hire people you see, and Karel doesn't see much of this chat anymore. It's gone to the dogs, as one could say

The chats fine. Some of the talks are abrasive I will agree, but we atleast have actual discussions

the one time we had issue with the one person spamming an eloncoin, all it took was me messaging Andrea and she cleaned it up immediately.

I don't think anyone's getting hired until this stuff is settled

has he even made a page looking for hire or even an email address like "newhire@neosvr.com"? I mean, that'd be a strong usage of the new site and all...

@morolian you confuse me, genuinely. :/ I actually kinda forgot how meanly you treat people sometimes. You do have productive conversations sometimes, and at others you show pretty developed empathy. The juxtaposition sends me for a bit of a shock every time it happens.

considering how much of a pain in the ass you are, I'll do as I damn well please

No. You have a point.

this entire conversation is just a fucking joke

ugh. can't wrap my head entirely around this. i guess you've had some shitty experiences and i'm sorry about that on behalf of the fucked up events that won't give you that.