Localhost: Nolen Royalty

The Recurse Center’s first Localhost of 2025 will be on January 28th!

Localhost is a series of technical talks in NYC given by members of the Recurse Center community. For every event, we set aside seats for the public.

January 28, 2025: One Million Checkboxes and making internet strangers play nice with Nolen Royalty

One Million Checkboxes (OMCB) was a website with...a million checkboxes on it. But the checkboxes were global - checking a box checked it for everyone in the world, immediately. In the two weeks that the site was live, over half a million players checked over 650 million boxes. Keeping the site online was a challenge, and Nolen will cover how he managed it.

But the site also had social challenges - some people like to be jerks on the internet! Nolen has built several online social experiments - from a site that lets you hold eye contact with a stranger to rock paper scissors played over the phone. He'll discuss how he tries to constrain those interactions to bring out the best in people, and how those constraints lead to his favorite stories.

Snacks and refreshments will be available at 6:30 pm. Nolen’s talk will begin at 7:00 pm with a subsequent Q&A session. More snacks and refreshments to follow.

If you're not an RC alum, RSVP here: https://lu.ma/re1bot0d