"As a tech person, the word 'blockchaing' is triggering, but the real story here is IBM and WalMart moving more surveillance and monitoring further down the food supply chain, to squeeze more out of farmers at the expense of everyone but them"
Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain
101–110 of 196 posts
Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like another buzzword charged write-once database.
Is it really write-once though? I'm pretty sure there's no PoW involved (didn't bother to read) so all bets are off.
You can replace PoW by a simple signatures, or a quorum of signatures. This is quite centralized, but still write-once.
In any case, with a 'hash-linked-chain-of-blocks' attempted forks are really easy to prove.
Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain
#103There is no reason for a blockchain here. A database would suffice just fine. It's not even decentralized so what's the point?
Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain
#104Unnecessary rubbish. The article even mentions that larger growers already have a similar(one can assume non-blockchain) system in place. This is the product of excited executives listening to buzzwords and the always shameless IBM ready to play along.
Glad I asked these questions in Feburary. Sold my alts, kept my Bitcoin. Im seriously starting to believe in the phrase Bitcoin not Blockchain.
Monero, zCash, Ether and EOS all do things bitcoin can't and are still decentralized.
Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain
#105IBM is quietly brushing its Watson mess under the carpet and now they’re trying to focus on blockchain. However this is just as substanceless and full of marketing fluff as Watson was. There’s nothing being done here that couldn’t or shouldn’t just be handled with a traditional database. Having IBM “run it” also sort of defeats the whole decentralized aspect of blockchain technologies. You don’t need “blockchain” to…
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Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain
#106There are two reasons to use a blockchain: to avoid double spending in an adversarial environment, and to avoid central control of a database.
This application requires neither, and this implementation accomplishes neither.
Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain
#107Make no mistake -- this is nothing but a minimally-cloaked attack on federal food safety regulations. The word "blockchain" is only a distraction / misdirection.
FTA:
> Tests... have produced a more complete view of the food system than under current federal regulations, according to Nestlé SA, Dole Food Co., and other participants in the project. ["more complete" != "more accurate/accountable"]
> As investigators worked , 210 people got sick and five died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [implying blame lies with the regulatory body, not the industry]
> A directive for suppliers to use the Food Trust blockchain will help the industry create a more complete picture of the food system than is possible under current federal regulations, Mr. Yiannas said in an interview. [yet again federal regs are mentioned]
> “Today, the requirement for traceability by law is one step up and one step back. That doesn’t work any more,” he said. [really obvious here!]
> Early this year, as investigators worked to understand an outbreak of E. coli linked to romaine lettuce grown in the region of Yuma, Ariz., 210 people in 36 states got sick. Five people died, according to the Centers for Disease Control. [ditto blame shifting]
> Blockchain establishes authorship or ownership that experts say can’t be faked and eliminates costly middle layers because of its peer-to-peer structure. [if it can't be faked, obviously there's no need for regulators! Garbage in, perfection out! ::eyeroll::]
It's like claiming that ledgers written in pen make the SEC obsolete.
Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> blockchains (as in bitcoin) are about being completely decentralized and trustless. It's an "and" not an "or", if you remove one of these imperatives they're completely pointless. You're completely right, but I want to point out something subtle that I almost missed. For something to be considered a blockchain, it does not have to be distributed (as you noted). There can be a centralized entity (Wal-Mart) controlli…
Is Wal-Mart really the threat in this case? I thought the threat was farmers too cheap to give their workers restroom breaks. This system will catch those farmers, and limit the sale of their produce. Wal-Mart doesn't actually want to sell dangerous lettuce.
I didn't mean to say that Wal-Mart was a threat. If the data is held internally, then it's up to the public to trust Wal-Mart's data. This is more a comment about a blockchain being moot than calling Wal-Mart a bad actor, but I can see how it goes the other way as well.
Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This specific instance grants assurance that neither Walmart or anyone in-between is tampering with the database. We've had this discussion a billion times before on HN so I'll avoid a huge wall of text but it always boils down to the same conclusion: blockchains (as in bitcoin) are about being completely decentralized and trustless. It's an "and" not an "or", if you remove one of these imperatives they're completel…
> blockchains (as in bitcoin) are about being completely decentralized and trustless. It's an "and" not an "or", if you remove one of these imperatives they're completely pointless. You're completely right, but I want to point out something subtle that I almost missed. For something to be considered a blockchain, it does not have to be distributed (as you noted). There can be a centralized entity (Wal-Mart) controlli…
You're right but again, blockchain is not needed for that part either. Just have wallmart publish their signed database publicly at regular intervals this way if they cheat and try to modify existing records anybody with an old dump could prove that something weird happened (since the database is signed simply showing a conflicting entry with a valid signature would be enough to demonstrate that either Wall-Mart did something fishy or that they got compromised. You wouldn't have to trust the whistle blower).
Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the article was talking about Walmart using PKI with business partners, this thread would be grousing about how dumb CAs are. If you look at blockchain as something almost like a cousin of PGP in the sense that you distribute signing operations it’s actually an interesting and novel technology. Fundamentally, you could use clipboards and wet signatures to get the same result. That doesn’t mean that this approach i…
> If the article was talking about Walmart using PKI with business partners, this thread would be grousing about how dumb CAs are. Would we? That seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to me. You have a clear central authority here who could be issuing certificates to trusted third parties. It's a perfect fit for a CA and a bad fit for a blockchain.
The PKI model is awesome for less dynamic environments. Factories and suppliers are a great example of that.
Produce is more dynamic and 100% cost driven.
You have multiple, unsophisticated suppliers that shift based on season, weather, etc. These folks are located in the middle of nowhere in many cases and may or may not have connectivity.
Carting the produce from these suppliers to distribution is performed by any number of trucking companies. Then you have the huge distributed enterprise of WalMart itself, with dozens/hundreds of DCs and an internal fleet of trucks and contractors who cart products to the store.
Bitcoin demonstrated that a large number of unknown parties can successfully store and transfer value. I don't see why this would be a bad fit.