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Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

zdnet.com

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Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#221

Post by dale_glass »

alisonkisk wrote: post #219
dale_glass wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github is a completely optional thing though. If it were to die tomorrow, everyone still has the code locally, and code sharing is still very much possible.

You were the person who wrote "Eg, on github."

Yes, it just didn't come out quite right.

The main reason to mention github at all is that it gives me stats. There's probably a bunch more repositories out there just from people doing git clone, but I can't count them.

Also, while github helps it's not a critical part of the whole thing. If it disappeared it wouldn't be a critical problem. Everybody would still have the source, and could figure a way to reconnect again.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#222

Post by ipaddr »

bob33212 wrote: post #204
Godel_unicode wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> classroom where the first one to get the answer wins. Why on earth would you need a blockchain for this?

If you didn't trust the teacher. The distributed ledger would prevent them from editing the database of timestamps. But then the question is, if you don't trust the teacher why are you in their class?

This is more about trust between peer groups like students vs students or larger groups like departments vs departments.

Imagine a schoolwide project like a fundraiser. Everyone is selling chocolate bars to fund new uniforms. Whoever donates the most gets to decide which team gets a bonus amount. The proof is money received. The coins are distributed.

Why do you need a teacher to manage this?

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#224

Post by htrp »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #112
tnzm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments A and B meet and discuss some deal. Their agreement is recorded on a public append-only ledger, which is hosted by participants worldwide. If any party reneges on the deal, that's remembered by the public record too, where no amount of propaganda can erase it. Parties confirmed to be less trustworthy are subsequently afforded fewer compromises during negotiations. A NFT could also be minted, where people…

> Governments A and B meet and discuss some deal. Their agreement is recorded on a public append-only ledger, which is hosted by participants worldwide. If any party reneges on the deal, that's remembered by the public record too, where no amount of propaganda can erase it. You can do this with paper. Signed paper documents. You have invented the "treaty". It has been a thing for centuries.

A "signed paper document" or a "treaty" is also meaningless without robust enforcement mechanisms.... or the instant it's in either side's interest to ignore.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#225

Post by [deleted] »

ipaddr wrote: post #222
bob33212 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you didn't trust the teacher. The distributed ledger would prevent them from editing the database of timestamps. But then the question is, if you don't trust the teacher why are you in their class?

This is more about trust between peer groups like students vs students or larger groups like departments vs departments. Imagine a schoolwide project like a fundraiser. Everyone is selling chocolate bars to fund new uniforms. Whoever donates the most gets to decide which team gets a bonus amount. The proof is money received. The coins are distributed. Why do you need a teacher to manage this?

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#226

Post by Godel_unicode »

bob33212 wrote: post #204
Godel_unicode wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> classroom where the first one to get the answer wins. Why on earth would you need a blockchain for this?

If you didn't trust the teacher. The distributed ledger would prevent them from editing the database of timestamps. But then the question is, if you don't trust the teacher why are you in their class?

A useful exercise in determining whether you need a blockchain is asking yourself "why would a Google sheet with track changes not work here".

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#227

Post by reificator »

ipaddr wrote: post #220
reificator wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A classroom has a trusted central authority. Even assuming some kind of educational benefit from students racing to be first, how on earth does blockchain accomplish anything there? I really really hope that all the blockchain hype is from people who got in early and want to pump up the value before they get out. Because otherwise the invented solutions and worse invented problems are too absurd for me to handle.

We see examples already where a central authority is not necessary like peer grading. The race condition could work in a bonus question where the first person to answer correctly takes the bonus marks. Students would have the opportunity to submit answers, get confirmed correct without the teacher needing to manage this. That central authority is a bottleneck and at times corrupt. We don't trust central authority in…

> That central authority is a bottleneck and at times corrupt. We don't trust central authority in government so three different levels of government have to reach an alignment for a law to be passed. Police powers are separate from judigical powers for a reason. Decentralization balances interests.

That is a hell of a lot to write about checks and balances to try to defend the absurd concept of a blockchain classroom quiz. This is exactly what I mean when I say I hope people are just trying to pump up the value and don't actually think this is a solution that provides any value.

If you have a corrupt teacher that can't be trusted/abuses their power somehow, the blockchain is not going to magically improve your education. The concept is absurd.

If you're writing a classroom quiz where students race to finish, a server to handle grading and track scores is the way to go. Or if the device is locked down do the grading there and just take a timestamp.

Hello dystopian future where I get quoted like the famous Dropbox post. I hope I'm not still there amongst you.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#228

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

htrp wrote: post #224
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments A and B meet and discuss some deal. Their agreement is recorded on a public append-only ledger, which is hosted by participants worldwide. If any party reneges on the deal, that's remembered by the public record too, where no amount of propaganda can erase it. You can do this with paper. Signed paper documents. You have invented the "treaty". It has been a thing for centuries.

A "signed paper document" or a "treaty" is also meaningless without robust enforcement mechanisms.... or the instant it's in either side's interest to ignore.

That goes double for blockchains.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#229

Post by guenthert »

throwawaygh wrote: post #141
mumblemumble wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am coming to think that it's precisely the "distributed" bit that nobody really wants. For example, distributed version control systems are often held up as an example of some form of precedent for blockchain-type technologies. But I've never actually seen a truly distributed (in the blockchain sense) deployment of Git. It's technically possible, but it just doesn't seem to happen. Similarly, I'm not sure people ac…

Git is used almost exclusively in a centralized fashion. The use patterns really aren't all that different from SVN, even if having a local copy is kinda nice. But, like you said, having a local copy isn't really the same thing as decentralized. "master" is still a thing. More importantly, the next big shift in version control technology is/will be back toward centralization . You already see this with eg Google Docs…

> You already see this with eg Google Docs. Far inferior to Word, but preferred by many because of the free and highly functional live-multi-collaborator-editing feature.

Only for those in (roughly) the same time zone, which appears to be less often the case today.

I've seen a lot of different VCS, all the way back to RCS. I don't want to go back to the awful scheme of versioned virtual filesystem like the one of ClearCase. You can pry git from my cold, dead fingers.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#230

Post by remeq »

rajin444 wrote: post #93
rodiger wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a weird insistence (especially here on HN) that if blockchain isn't doing something that can't be done in another way then it is useless. In reality just doing normal, established processes in a distributed way often is the value-add. See decentralized finance[0]. All these tools and primitives exist in traditional finance, but when it's decentralized all market participants can get a cut of the rewards inste…

The only interesting aspect of blockchain is decentralized trust - trust being the key part. If you don't need decentralized trust you don't need blockchain. And outside of a global currency, there isn't much that needs that. DeFi is just unregulated speculation / ponzi schemes. People came up with new systems (supposedly faster than bitcoin) to send currency back and forth. People are flocking to it hoping to get ri…

I agree with you that the only interesting aspect of blockchain is decentralized trust. But decentralized trust is a big thing. It is actually such a massive thing and people will sooner or later realize that. The magnitude of this thing is actually on a level of invention of democracy in social systems. It will change everything. And the application of decentralized trust (read - institution-less systems) goes far beyond decentralized finance.

If we look at the tendency of every single centralized system or organization to end up being either sub-optimal or evil or screwing individual we really have to ask whether there isn't a better way. Consider evolution of centralized political powers, dictatorships etc., consider evolution of big tech companies like google or facebook, consider evolution of big products.

If blockchain provides decentralized trust this can be used for almost evertyhing. And it doesn't really mean that you will run your trustless version of AWS directly on blockchain. For many applications the blockchain is there for trust and system of economy incentives for the actors in the systems (as these two things go hand by hand). The blockchain is not there to do the "business logic"

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