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Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

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Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#111

Post by bonestamp2 »

mynewtb wrote: post #38
bonestamp2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would any real business want to use a public blockchain? I think it is only important for a business when public trust is important. For example, a news agency could publish its articles in a public blockchain so the original article and any updates to that article would forever be auditable from that blockchain.

So what if a story or bit of information has to be retracted by law? I second my sibling, newspapers have no interest in transparency.

> newspapers have no interest in transparency

I disagree, I mean... the whole point of journalism is to get to the truth -- in other words, to make an event transparent.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#112

Post by bonestamp2 »

TheDong wrote: post #50
bonestamp2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would any real business want to use a public blockchain? I think it is only important for a business when public trust is important. For example, a news agency could publish its articles in a public blockchain so the original article and any updates to that article would forever be auditable from that blockchain.

Why a blockchain? ipfs [0] already provides persistent immutable links. Creating a torrent with a feed for updates [1] would also provide distributed storage and hashing of the content with the ability to publish updates. Or they could create a git repo and encourage others to mirror the git repo, such that they couldn't rebase away history without those mirrors noticing. Or, and here's a radical idea, they could phy…

> This is blockchain trying to dream up a problem for publishers which those publishers don't think they have.

Fair enough, it was just an example... maybe a bad example of when public trust is needed for something.

But, that level of trust and audibility would be nice in this era of conspiracies and fake news. I remember watching CNN on 9/11 and they reported that Flight 93 was shot down over Pensylvania. Maybe that was bad reporting, maybe it was accurate. But, now I can't find that footage anywhere.

I would love to find that footage now. Find out exactly what they said. Find out who their source was. Find out if it was bad reporting with bad sources, or find out if it was something more. Without that footage, it's just hearse and I'm sure we'll never know the truth about it now.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#113

Post by TheDong »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #112
TheDong wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why a blockchain? ipfs [0] already provides persistent immutable links. Creating a torrent with a feed for updates [1] would also provide distributed storage and hashing of the content with the ability to publish updates. Or they could create a git repo and encourage others to mirror the git repo, such that they couldn't rebase away history without those mirrors noticing. Or, and here's a radical idea, they could phy…

> This is blockchain trying to dream up a problem for publishers which those publishers don't think they have. Fair enough, it was just an example... maybe a bad example of when public trust is needed for something. But, that level of trust and audibility would be nice in this era of conspiracies and fake news. I remember watching CNN on 9/11 and they reported that Flight 93 was shot down over Pensylvania. Maybe that…

If only there was a group of people dedicated to archiving content... I dunno, maybe archive.org (aka "The Internet Archive")?

They even have a CNN section including a full recording of their broadcast on the morning of 9/11 [0]. I'm not going to waste the time watching this to see if they miss-reported some detail or not because I've got better things to do.

I don't see how blockchain helps here still; the problem with storing video is that copyright is complicated and there's a lot of it which costs a lot to store, not that we don't have the means to store and audit it.

> that level of trust and audibility would be nice in this era of conspiracies and fake news

Being able to see changes to articles doesn't actually help with those problems. Better journalistic practices help. People thinking critically helps. Removing the absurd click-bait headlines we've ended up on might help. Making news not be for-profit might help (related to the former). Changing the format of the fake news doesn't make it any less fake.

It seems like blockchain is being used as this idealistic thing which surely, if implemented, would not suffer from as many or more flaws than the status quo, when in reality no blockchain based thing has reached mainstream usability or mainstream users yet (arguably excepting bitcoin).

[0]: https://archive.org/details/CNN_20010911_130000_CNN_Live_Thi...

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#114

Post by topmonk »

arcticbull wrote: post #101
topmonk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know about that. But that is quite a straw man. You could say the same thing about the implementation of the protocols that the banks use, who also store your money as an imaginary balance in their computer systems.

You can’t really though, because traditional banks are regulated, and if anyone tried to do that Theyd be investigated by the FBI and the Secret Service then any fraudulently created currency would be destroyed. Further it’s not a core tenet of Fiat Banking that more can’t exist so follow on effects would be limited. If anyone introduces new bitcoin none of that happens, all holder is just lose because decentralizati…

> You can’t really though, because traditional banks are regulated, and if anyone tried to do that Theyd be investigated by the FBI and the Secret Service then any fraudulently created currency would be destroyed. Further it’s not a core tenet of Fiat Banking that more can’t exist so follow on effects would be limited. If anyone introduces new bitcoin none of that happens, all holder is just lose because decentralization.

Unless a hacker finds a flaw that lets them siphon off bitcoin without anyone noticing, all the holders would have to do is fork the chain with flaw fixed. Bitcoin is just an P2P shared accounting book, after all, and if someone is able to write an illegal entry in there, the entry can be scrubbed and rewritten. As long as over 50% of the miners believe it's the right thing to do, it becomes the new official record. This actually has happened before and played out exactly as I just wrote: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Value_overflow_incident

If a bank is hacked, who can say really what will happen? Because of secret courts and shadowy government agencies, all you really have is blind trust. Could you go and audit the US Dollar and be sure that there isn't more being created than what the government tells us? It would take you years even if you could, and even then, I'd bet you dollars to donuts that if the government was doing something they didn't want you to know about, they'd block you from finding out.

Bitcoin can be audited by anyone at anytime. Just download the blockchain, and run a program to process it, and you'll know immediately. In fact, the official client does exactly this, and won't accept a blockchain that doesn't pass its internal audit.

> It’s almost like in the thousands of years of traditional currency people have thought of this and implemented mitigations. It is fascinating to watch bitcoin replay the entire history of traditional banking in fast forward.

In the thousands of years of traditional currency, no one was able to create a currency that limited the number of coins created in a way that anyone can publicly check, shared with the ability to transmit very quickly and anonymously large sums across the globe.

This makes cryotocurrency unique, and the old traditional ways of handling money do not apply to it.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#115

Post by pfisch »

arcticbull wrote: post #47
pfisch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They eat coal/gasoline which is probably more expensive. Also they worked on almost no terrain at all compared to horses and constantly broke down. The only reason they would even make sense to pursue would be because of how successful the train was. Similar to how this bitcoin stuff makes more sense when you look at the success of the internet/paypal/amazon.

You know you can research this stuff right? Gasoline was a waste product in the refining of crude oil (specifically, into Kerosene [itself a replacement for whale oil] they were making anyways). It used to be considered garbage. [1] It really only became valuable once they realized they could power cars with it. They used to dump it in rivers, making them catch fire. [2] In what - concrete - way is bitcoin related to…

The internet and amazon displaced the old business models with e-commerce. Bitcoin could do that with money/gold.

This is similar to train->car.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#116

Post by FatalLogic »

simias wrote: post #92
FatalLogic wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, instead of paying to implement, operate and maintain that system forever, and also hoping that someone independent will store copies forever (because without that independent third party, the news agency's whole system is irrelevant)... maybe they could permanently store a hash of published revisions on a public blockchain for $0.05 each. It's just another option that might turn out to be useful for some. Althoug…

If I understand what you're proposing you want to store the entire articles themselves in the blockchain. That indeed offers many benefits but it's also prohibitively expensive. In practice people will only store small hashes in the tree which can be then used to authenticate offline data. That means that you need somebody to archive that offline data to really make sense of the signed data so you have exactly the is…

No wonder you have so many "exhausting arguments".... you're not listening to anyone but yourself.
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