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Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

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Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#151

Post by bayesian_horse »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #122
bayesian_horse wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very point is that you can't tag the plant from the original producer to the individual consumer all the time. For one thing, you'd need to collect a whole lot of tags and carry them on. That would be the traditional solution. The blockchains record transactions. Where for example a batch of soy beans and a batch of wheat go into a batch of animal feed. Then a few batches of animal feed go into a pig (or rather m…

> Point is: There is useful information even if certain steps can't be perfectly traced. Yes (and no), but that's not what IBM is selling with their blockchain. They're selling trust, but only providing a digital trust solution while completely ignoring the physical and human side of trust. > There is value in not having to connect to a central database all the time. Problem here is IBM's blockchain is still a centra…

"At some point" is not the same as "eventually". Think of it as "eventually consistent" to the extreme.

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#152

Post by darawk »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #118
bayesian_horse wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, a blockchain is a decentralized database which does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity and perfect trust all the time. I can see why that would be something worth doing in a food chain. To trace, for example, a particular load of soy beans to a customer eating a steak, there are a couple of completely autonomous companies/sole proprietors involved. From the original…

> does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity and perfect trust all the time. The blockchain does not solve the trust issue in this scenario. Blockchains only work there is a verify unit entirely enclosed in the system - including the origins of any "unit" on the system. * Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc - "coins" are a completely digital concept fully enclosed by the system. "coins" are generated in…

No, you can't verify the food itself. But you can verify that a digital signature owned by the company in question signed the chain of custody for that food item, and using the blockchain, you can verify that that signature was made at a certain, retroactively immutable point in time.

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#153

Post by bayesian_horse »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #118
bayesian_horse wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, a blockchain is a decentralized database which does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity and perfect trust all the time. I can see why that would be something worth doing in a food chain. To trace, for example, a particular load of soy beans to a customer eating a steak, there are a couple of completely autonomous companies/sole proprietors involved. From the original…

> does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity and perfect trust all the time. The blockchain does not solve the trust issue in this scenario. Blockchains only work there is a verify unit entirely enclosed in the system - including the origins of any "unit" on the system. * Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc - "coins" are a completely digital concept fully enclosed by the system. "coins" are generated in…

There is no such thing as "an item" moving through the food chain.

In the EU we have a somewhat traditional system for cattle, created after the BSE crisis. Each animal has two ear tags which contain a unique ID. This ID will be carried through to the table if necessary. But it has to be "copied" along, for example when the animal is processed.

The idea behind block chains in food processing is to record the transactions between individual parties. The blockchain does not verify the food, but rather the belief that they passed on a certain product. A malicious party will now have much more problems creating, vanishing or forging material. It also doesn't matter that much, because after a malicious transaction the following transactions are perfectly traceable again (if at least those are honest...).

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#154

Post by bayesian_horse »

tveita wrote: post #139
bayesian_horse wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, a blockchain is a decentralized database which does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity and perfect trust all the time. I can see why that would be something worth doing in a food chain. To trace, for example, a particular load of soy beans to a customer eating a steak, there are a couple of completely autonomous companies/sole proprietors involved. From the original…

> blockchain is a decentralized database which does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity Only because in the case of a fork it has a defined way to choose whose work to throw away . You cannot meaningfully operate on a blockchain like bitcoin while disconnected from the majority. Each fork will be internally consistent, and you can continue to work on it if you like - you probably wouldn'…

That would only happen if the two forks contain inconsistent information, right?

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#156

Post by bayesian_horse »

ceejayoz wrote: post #90
bayesian_horse wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting data into a blockchain is something different from making a TCP/IP connection to the internet. In a blockchain system, a particular piece of information has to eventually reach all interested parties, of course. But it can do so through a chain of potentially untrusted intermediaries, which also don't have to be connected through an internet connection. For example a truck servicing multiple farms or multiple…

My phone's Instagram app lets me "publish" images without a data connection. It queues them up, then POSTs them off to Facebook's API once I'm back online. None of this requires - or even benefits from - a blockchain.

Yes, but your phone will eventually get back to the internet. An endpoint on a farm may potentially never be able to connect on its own.

Also, your phone is able to store the images. In IoT there is the problem that a lot of devices can only deal with very little disconnectivity before losing data. In those cases it's better to pass on the data to anyone rather than lose it, even if that someone isn't the central server.

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#157

Post by dnautics »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #131
lmpostor wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent response. Though here is another perspective I thought of. What the usage of blockchain would allow is a chain of liability to exist among different companies in the supply chain. If you are signing off on a product, you are verifying the authenticity of the item, and if it arrives defective at the next location you assume liability. As a customer, what you would really leverage, is the incentive of every i…

But since it's working with legal liability there's no need for blockchain. That can be done through standard contracts and having companies certify that their items are authentic. You still need such a contract with a blockchain, all the blockchain adds is some complexity.

It also adds latency.

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#159

Post by toast0 »

duxup wrote: post #60
code4tee wrote: post #18

IBM 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…

IBM really seems stuck in their old systems / and at some level doesn't understand what to do with new systems. I was talking to someone who was using the "IBM cloud". They went to spin up some servers and etc and IBM was all "that will take a few weeks, we have to install them". At least to me "cloud" includes the ability to spin stuff up on demand.... IBM was operating it like you were ordering from a very old co-l…

How many servers were they spinning up? My understanding (which could easily be wrong) is most of 'IBM Cloud' is really SoftLayer rebranded. Softlayer has virtual machines they can spin up for you within minutes, and they can spin up a small number of servers pretty quickly if you don't spec the hardware too weird, but if you want like 50-100+ servers with different specs than they usually do, they often have to order or cross ship parts to the datacenters you want them in. Waiting a few weeks seems out of the norm though.

(I work for a SoftLayer customer)

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#160

Post by wmf »

module0000 wrote: post #149
Milner08 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to defend IBM (I used to work there and have nothing good to say) but its likely they were using the "Private Cloud" which is exactly what you say, co-location in the IBM Datacenter. Its just marketing rubbish.

"IBM Cloud Private" - it's a fascinating product that can be summed up as "We package kubernetes for you, and you pay us 2 million dollars. If you are a huge customer, we'll discount that to 1.6 million dollars." Trying to keep from maniacal laughing during their sales pitches is always a fun game.

It has been noted that an on-call staff with five years of k8s experience will also cost around $1.6M though.
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