Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

#161

Post by FabHK » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 4:19 PM UTC

polynomial wrote: post #26

konschubert wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have centralised signup and identity you may as well run a Postgres DB or a git repo. It could still be a cool idea, but I don’t get how this needs crypto?

Presumably so that the underlying system can be auditable by 'anyone'?

That can still be done by streaming the updates to whoever wants them (can even hash each chunk of updates, and include the hash of the prior chunk in each chunk, to get a linked list of chunks, which would prevent undetected manipulation of prior chunks).

Re: Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

#162

Post by konschubert » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 5:01 PM UTC

93po wrote: post #114

_9omd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think fake iris scanning is the least of the concerns here. The big problem, and likely reason this will fail, is there’s nothing preventing you from selling your account for a small fee after getting your initial scan to set it up. And that’s likely exactly what will happen, because they’re onboarding users in poor countries first. These users don’t give a shit about world coin, they’re simply lining up and being…

The premise is that you can make spam filtering and bot filtering and circles of trust work if you have a finite amount of accounts. Currently on the internet there are infinite accounts. If there's only a billion accounts, filtering becomes much easier.

Yeah, it’s a cool idea, even though it creeps me out.

But why do you need a coin for that? If you have centralised accounts you may as well have a centralised ledger.

On the other hand, if you decentralise account creation - let me tell about my friend, the virtual iris scanner powered by /dev/random

Re: Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

#163

Post by zajio1am » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

fvdessen wrote: post #8

Once again it is completely ignored that the whole online identity thing is a solved problem, in the EU. Millions of Europeans use eIDAS apps daily and enjoy single-sign-on across EU websites, can sign docs, make payments etc. etc. And there’s no privacy issues thanks to the GDPR, which it turns out is not just about cookie popups The tech is there, it works today, without crypto bullshit, and it is extremely useful.…

Are eIDAS identity services even interoperable for private service providers? AFAIK public service providers use national portals that aggregate identity providers, but private service providers must have a contract with identity providers.

> But since nobody became a billionaire out of it, nobody talks about it

Here in CZ, the law was setup in a way that gives advantage to banks compared to other identity providers, these banks created one consortium, which is essentially monopolistic provider, with ~80 % market share, asking private services providers significant money for identity services.

Re: Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

#164

Post by ascorbic » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

blitzar wrote: post #152

ascorbic wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's said that he doesn't take any stock. I don't know why so many people thing this is strange. He's already immensely rich. While this role might not make him richer, but it does give him huge amounts of power and influence.

Richness comes in many flavours other than $$$s. As you point out huge amounts of power and influence - something money cant buy.

Well, tbf it kinda can but I get your point

Re: Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

#165

Post by qingcharles » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 6:39 PM UTC

ttepasse wrote: post #72

hef19898 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people take cyberpunk as entertainment, some as a paraody, some as a warning, some as all of the above. And some take it as blue print worth pursueing. EDIT: The while premise of needing a nin-centralized wax of confirming ones identity is, at its core, deeply un-demicratic. As of bow, government issued documentation confirms anyones identiy. These governments can be democratic, and are. Puting a different syste…

@AlexBlechman on TwiX had this tweet some years ago: Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

I soiled myself laughing. Thank you.

Re: Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

#166

Post by cwkoss » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 10:00 PM UTC

panarky wrote: post #96

_9omd wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying it’s a scam, just that it seems their system isn’t really Sybil resistant due to the issue of account selling. And if that’s the case they either didn’t think this would be an issue, or they expected it but don’t really care, and the claim of Sybil resistance is just marketing. Is this wrong in some way you’d like to explain?

I can't explain anything about this project because I haven't invested the effort to understand it. Maybe I'll spend the 20 minutes to read the 5000 words in Molly White's article, and then another couple hours to read the whitepaper, then another who knows how many hours researching the claims and counterclaims to make my own judgment. But probably I'll never do any of those things, and I'll still have high confiden…

It's weird that you are so confident while literally admitting you don't know what you're talking about.

Re: Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

#167

Post by omnimus » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 11:08 PM UTC

sirreal14 wrote: post #120

kemotep wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What mechanism prevents the government from “un-person-ing” someone if Worldcoin was used as the global identity system?

Obviously the government can stop issuing services to a certain ID, but being run on a decentralized computing platform (plan is an Ethereum layer 2 I believe) means that they cannot stop you from interacting with other governments or with third parties.

Just like nobody could change etherum until DAO hack when it became inconvinient.

You wont solve social issues with technical solutions. But just like the DAO hack you can solve technical issues using social solutions quite easily.

Re: Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

#168

Post by MattPalmer1086 » Tue, Aug 01, 2023, 5:50 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #81

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both already exist. Setting up a direct debit generally only involves filling in a form. Sending money to someone else is as simple as authorising a payment to them with their account details. What problem needs to be solved?

What's needed is a better system for approving who is allowed to make withdrawals from your bank account instead of just "anyone in possession of your bank routing information" which makes customers reluctant to provide it. This would be essentially solved with a standardized system for customers to give each merchant a separate bank account number (or equivalent) which really refers to the same bank account but coul…

I like the idea of per merchant account numbers. Even better if we used some kind of cryptographic binding between the merchant account and your account, so it would not work for anyone else.

Re: Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

#169

Post by 93po » Tue, Aug 01, 2023, 6:30 PM UTC

Atotalnoob wrote: post #141

93po wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam Altman's work on OpenAI is hard to characterize as selfish when he owns none of it and doesn't get paid for it.

He is the CEO, and according to levels.fyi, they give out stock grants. Why on earth would the CEO not get a stock grant when the entry level SWEs do?

Because he chose to not be compensated because he felt it was too big of a conflict of interest given the stakes

Re: Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

#170

Post by tim333 » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 2:28 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #9

> While Worldcoin may have developed an algorithm that reliably distinguishes unique irises among its test pool, it’s not clear that it will work with a pool orders of magnitude larger. This is a really key problem. The main application of biometrics today is in cell phones, and for those we operate on the assumption that we're trying to distinguish between the authorized user and a quite small pool of non-authorized…

I'm not sure that matters. I got scanned yesterday. Once you've done the scan they give you a crypto wallet with a private key and I think that's the last time you have to scan. It's only really there to stop me going up a second time to get more free tokens. If someone with the same irises tries to sign up I guess a human will have to decide if they are genuine or a scammer. Not a big deal I think.