Well, that escalated quickly!

Our node is up and running, and I encourage anyone looking to support us to vote @hextech

The easiest way to do so is via:

https://hivesigner.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=hextech&approve=1

You can also:

https://wallet.hive.blog/~witnesses
and scroll to the bottom typing in 'hextech' and approving.

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Or even just open your keychain extension and click "witnesses"

As if you don't know how to vote for witnesses after the #steemhostiletakeover

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Who is "we"?

Well, after writing that post Can I Get A Witness I was contacted by @sn0n & @rishi556 with this opportunity, and I was very keen to accept. Now I have access to a node and custom database functions that were previously holding back some of my projects. I imagine this is going to be a very profitable venture, as I now have a team to share some of the workload and help with debugging down the line.

Origins of HexTech:

So yesterday the guys said that they weren't feeling very creative and they asked me to pick the name. In that brief moment I was actually feeling a bit of pressure because I feel like the name of our witness is somewhat important. It should be catchy and try to encapsulate the goals and politics we are trying to implement.

So I did what any sane person would do:

I rolled the bones and asked the Old Gods to #bless this venture with a title.

The answer came back immediately:

Call it HexTech.
_--Gaia

What is HexTech?
_--Edicted

DO NOT QUESTION A GIFT FROM THE GODS!
_--Ra

Thank you, Earthmother Gaia and Sungod Ra.

I decided to ask Google instead.

Oh, right!

It's a League of Legends thing.
I guess my thousands of hours played haven't gone to waste after all.
Gotta get that 10% spell vamp so Vlad mitigates self-inflicted damage, amirite?

But it can't be just that...

This is a gift from the gods, after all.
There must be many layers and meanings to it.

Ah, you know that is interesting!

Because this is the ultimate goal of new technology looking to gain mass adoption. In the 1990's, many people did not think the Internet would ever catch on because it was far too complex.

H-T-T-P COLON SLASH SLASH DOUBLE-'U' DOUBLE-'U'...
You know what? F this no one is ever going to learn this.
/tableflip

Using the internet used to be difficult. Sending emails used to be difficult. Now the barrier to entry is much lower and these technologies are fully mainstream. With @hextech, we will be looking to do the same as best we can with distributed ledger technologies.

In this analogy, the "wizards" who can manipulate the arcane are the developers that spend years learning the code and slowly attempting to grind out something useful. The ultimate goal is to create these HexTech artifacts; dapps that greatly lower the barrier of entry to the average user and allow them to wield great power and enable them to create synergized value on the network.

When it really comes down to it, the end goal is to create jobs; to free ourselves from these corrupt centralized governance structures and build our own value; putting not people in charge, but the ideals of community consensus.

Sounds like a tall order.

And it is, but at the same time this is also a potentially lifelong pursuit.

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Other meanings and interpretations of HexTech.

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But wait, there's more!

Quite literally, hex means six, or in the case of computer science, hexadecimal is a base 16 number system that stores 4 bits. 2 hexadecimal numbers (8 bits) is a byte.

Please, no math.

I've stated this many times before, and I'm not about to stop now.
The random numbers that POW coins generate (especially Bitcoin) provide us with unhackable random numbers. We can use these numbers to our advantage to host gambling services or even create non-fungible tokens (example: a sword in an RPG game with random stat points determined by a Bitcoin block hash seed).

All of this RNG (random number generation)

happens in hexadecimal. D16 dice are the standard for blockchain dapplications.
More on this some other day.

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Literal meaning of the word 'Hex'

If HexTech must be a curse, let it be a curse on the greed and tribalist attitudes that got us into this situation in the first place. Let it be a hex on the tech companies whose undeserved power only seems to magnify day by day. Let it be the cure to this unsustainable cancerous growth that we're being force-fed to believe is progress.

We are in this together

We are one lifeforce. We are all tied to the fate of what happens here. The Earth is our only home, no matter what outer space thing Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos is spewing.

It is time to stand against greed and corruption. It is time to unite against economic slavery and tyranny. Even now as I write these words we can feel the jaws of this power transference clamping down. The Greatest Depression is upon us and only we can save ourselves from our own broken systems. Will you join us in forging a path to something better?

Shoot! Did I forget to mention...

That the hexagon is the literal symbol of our network?
You see? It all works out perfectly.

We are the great nation of Hive, and @hextech will attempt to forge a path forward that all others may follow.

We must create abundance in our wake.

Conclusion

These are very exciting and terrifying times. The clock is ticking. Time is the most valuable resource. We need to work toward new systems where we stop trading our time for money; allowing these vampires, these time-bandits, to siphon our very lifeforce into their piggy banks.

As a witness on Hive, we will work toward this end: to lower the bar of development so that anyone can work and earn here, not based on the amount of time they spent, but on the merit and quality of work itself. The ultimate goal is to rekindle the fires of true work ethic and get people inspired to work again as hard as they care to without feeling like they're being taken advantage of.

Again, it's a tall order, but I have very high hopes in this partnership. Our Discord is already meshing well and we all have unique skills to bring to the table.

Join us on this adventure, if you dare.

#hiveisalive
#hivewillthrive