100 years of whatever this will be • Hacker News Board

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#91

Post by AlexanderTheGr8 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #64

Ignoring the first couple questionable true-isms, a lot of these bullet points are just choices the author locked themselves into. The author is painting a picture in which AWS is the internet, or somehow representative of pricing. I don't have half of these problems. I have run services for $6,000/year on bare metal servers that would have cost $240,000/year on AWS at the time. Likely the author is unwilling to make…

replace AWS with and every bullet point is still True.

Every website (the Internet) needs to be hosted. If not on a cloud provider, you are going to have to host it yourself, which is a ton of more work and more points of failure. For cloud providers, point of failure occurs if you don't pay them. When you are hosting yourself, there are tons of points of failure (electricity, maintenance, etc.)

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#92

Post by _9omd » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

You make a good point about software development in general, but I don't think it applies to things as fundamentally revolutionary as crypto. Sometimes system _do_ have to be completely re-thought from the ground up. I don't believe it's possible for our current financial systems to morph into an open network for storing and transmitting value (the internet of money as some call crypto).

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#93

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

Invictus0 wrote: post #45

List of general malaises: > Rich, powerful, greedy people and corporations just get richer, more powerful, and more greedy. > The most reasonable daycare and public transit in the Bay Area is available only with your Big Tech Employee ID card. Seriously? These problems are not remotely in the same ballpark. I don't even know what is the point of this article. A handwavey call for better regulation of "Western society…

[deleted]

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#94

Post by all2 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #68

cowl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By every measurable metric, Humanity has gotten better. Longer lifespan, lower child mortality, better education, easier access to basic life neccessities and goods, (ironic to say at this time but yes even) better health, etc etc etc. We live in an age where every problem is weaponised and we are hyperaware of the problems now so that we don't see all the progrees that is done. https://www.openculture.com/2020/05/16…

>By every measurable metric Every measurable metric? How about median wealth? How about levels of debt? How about job satisfaction? How about median income per household? Per person? How about access to healthcare and cost? How about suicide rates? How about drug overdose rates? How about corruption? How about cost of higher education? How about homelessness? I mean cmon, you're looking at thing with rose colored gla…

As long as we're "howaboutin" let's talk about genetic diversity. DNA is self-replicating, self-repairing, etc. But what it doesn't do is create new information. With human procreation methodologies we lose bits of data, and just living life our data undergoes entropy. The outcome is less genetic information available every generation.

And one more "how about testosterone levels in men?" These have been falling for the last 60 or 70 years. Men in the West will be impotent by 2040ish at current rates of decline.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#95

Post by cblconfederate » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

Markets have existed without empire overlords thoughout history though. Egyptians did not have to enforce trade rules to their neighbours, and despite whatever clashes everyone traded with each other in the mediterranean. It is exogenous rules that required the protection of an empire, such as the raids of pirates, or the threat from another empire. Since our current world order started after WW2, the governments have grown, but so have the monopolies, and we ve never seen them split, we just take them for granted after a while (e.g. mastercard/visa). In fact, if anything, government's role has been to pick the winners that better cooperate with them in order to ensure their mutual survival. It may be true that markets eventually do grow their own hierarchies, but this does not mean that imposing rules externally a priori is any good.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#96

Post by nouveaux » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

uniqueuid wrote: post #20

Avery is such a treasure trove. What's hard about this particular situation, and what we often don't recognize enough: - We regularly overestimate the power of "traditional" systems such as government, courts, civil society. To a large degree, we've just been lucky that they work, but it's neither obvious nor guaranteed that they will continue to do so. - One of the hard problems is that we don't have any clue how ne…

"To a large degree, we've just been lucky that they work, but it's neither obvious nor guaranteed that they will continue to do so."

While I agree that it's not obvious our current systems will continue to work, I don't think the system is born out of luck. The system is largely based on trial and error in the pursuit of what the majority wants. Yes, there are those with outsized influences and corruption at every level. However, if we look at history, we are moving slowly towards what we all want.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#97

Post by betwixthewires » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

So aside the link to "the tyranny of structurelessness" (which I am about to read) the article is basically supporting it's own premise: distributed systems always go awry. I hate to be that guy but there's no proof of this at all. I can see it theoretically, you can never predict all behavior in a system, chaotic systems are unpredictable, etc. But there's no proof of the claim, and the article basically argues that it is true because it is true.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#98

Post by moistrobot » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

Code doesn't actively resist your attempts to improve it. Our broken institutions are fighting to protect their kingdom

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#99

Post by cyber_kinetist » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

To put it in more clear terms, the problem right now we have with society is not centralization vs decentralization, global vs local, or even authority vs freedom. Rather, the configuration between the two opposites constitutes the totality of the whole system, and not just one side is either the poison or the cure. We need to change the whole system, both in terms of centralization and decentralization.

Our current neoliberal system allows for “freedom” as in freedom of the consumer, but in the most authoritarian, dehumanizing ways as possible. We have freedom as in which person to vote or what things to buy, but that freedom is frankly put, meaningless. The whole liberal framework of how we think about freedom has to be questioned and challenged, or else we are going to have more of those “freedoms” that rob ourselves more and more of actual human agency.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#100

Post by zapataband1 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

I agree but it's one of these crazy sounding ideas that could actually have a use case. Like the author says these are just distributed systems and 'decentralized' 'web3' is really just a sophisticated way of coming to agreement. I think there's a lot that people can build with tech like this, but it's no silver bullet.