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Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

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Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#151

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #59

Isn't a brutish tweet still a brutish tweet no matter who its from? There have been infinitely more interesting crypto conversation starters on this board than this - I don't care who the author is - I care about the content, of which this has none.

It gets upvoted because it supports a popular narrative which validates people's beliefs, and it allows people to use another point of authority to support their belief that crypto is bad.

I'm not sold at all on the Web3 dream, but I'd be open to being convinced if any true believer wishes to try.

A lot of these Web3 discussions just seem really boring.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#152

Post by ea550ff70a »

metadat wrote: post #12
sprague wrote: post #9

The interesting thing about crypto to me is how there seems to be a deep divide among very smart people, some who think it's the greatest thing ever and some who think it's a fraud. I can't remember when there's ever been such a Bigendian-scale dispute in technology before. Can you?

Where is the divide? Crypto is 99% full of hucksters, and the remaining 1% are the sorry saps. The intelligent people I know want nothing to do with it. Folks I've met IRL who are into it usually aren't all that bright. The traits they do have are affinity for risk taking, and being somewhat technical but not too much so, just enough to be dangerous. They certainly won't be opening any PRs to fix Ethereum bugs. In ot…

Omg your personal experience has finally proved that crypto is a waste of time. Thanks so much. I will share with the CEO of bitcoin and the altcoins.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#153

Post by BeetleB »

andybak wrote: post #16
mediocregopher wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's what web3 is, that's just one direction some are taking it. Web3 is a move away from centralized platforms to ones which are either decentralized or more directly controlled by users (self-hosted, federated). > Like anything blockchain there is no real solution for how to handle records becoming stale over time without a central authority that manages disputes. I don't understand this part. In pr…

"Web3" has been fully co-opted to be blockchain related. Any former meaning is now drowned out by that definition, whether you like it or not.

> Any former meaning is now drowned out by that definition, whether you like it or not.

Random pronouncements on HN don't make it true. If you want to restrict your understanding of the term, by all means do so. But don't expect others to follow suit.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#154

Post by vmception »

gffrd wrote: post #139
vmception wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the market has chosen faux-scarcity many many many times over (at least) hundreds of years. we live in a market based economy, the market doesn't care that your MySQL database can do it, the market is saying "I'll pay you to write to a public access database you set up, so quit with this Betamax technical superiority stuff, we don't care."

It's not about technical superiority … I think it's more about morality/ethics: is it _right_ that we should introduce scarcity artificially when it doesn't exist naturally, with the primary outcome being that a small group will exploit it at the cost of many who can't? Is that healthy? Yes, it is a free market issue, and people will choose what they know, and will choose based on their fears.

there are plenty of crypto (and non-crypto but tech) projects that opted not to introduce scarcity, or simply failed to while they intended to. the market ignores them. you can praise them if you want. the teams ran out of money and did something else for food and shelter and nobody in the community wanted to use their own resources to continue. the survivorship bias goes to the what you see, the high flying things that galvanize participation and the human element well, which is based on current and increasing and sustained scarcity.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#155

Post by lottin »

sprague wrote: post #9

The interesting thing about crypto to me is how there seems to be a deep divide among very smart people, some who think it's the greatest thing ever and some who think it's a fraud. I can't remember when there's ever been such a Bigendian-scale dispute in technology before. Can you?

I don't see any such divide. What "very smart people" think crypto is a great invention?

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#156

Post by moffkalast »

Barrin92 wrote: post #41
sprague wrote: post #9

The interesting thing about crypto to me is how there seems to be a deep divide among very smart people, some who think it's the greatest thing ever and some who think it's a fraud. I can't remember when there's ever been such a Bigendian-scale dispute in technology before. Can you?

I don't see the divide. Among the very smart CS people I know both working in the software sector or in academia I'd estimate 90%+ think web3 and crypto is bullshit.

Idk, my university teaches Solidity and has students write smart contracts. Maybe it's that 10 percent.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#157

Post by gojomo »

throwaway82652 wrote: post #111
gotaquestion wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small correction: some cryptos are anonymous, Zcash and monero for example. Bitcoin and ether are not, and once those have been rolled into something like the Winklevoss's Gemini, it is harder to follow them publicly.

But that's not true, even those privacycoins are still technically pseudonymous because transactions are still done by wallet ID. This fundamentally can't be fixed because otherwise you can't have something like a wallet that stores a balance which is assigned to you and only you. Also I would like to point out that the idea you can ever be fully anonymous on the internet is a lot of bunk. Regardless of what kind of…

You should read more about Monero & especially Zcash, because their tech specifically overcomes this "pseudonymous" false-allegation in your 1st paragraph.

If they in fact worked like Bitcoin, with balances & account-numbers transparent to everyone, I might believe as you do. But I know the tech obscures both amounts & recipients, so I don't.

Your 2nd paragraph, that people are spraying all sorts of privacy-destroying info with every interaction, is mostly true. But it's not essentially true, and with education, & software, & further technical advances, far more privacy than we have now is possible. Especially, far more privacy from criminals & abusive regimes that would persecute/imprison/kill people for dumb reasons.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#158

Post by jbverschoor »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #125
smt88 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For design reasons, no one can delete anything from it. This is factually wrong. 50+% of those miners could collude (or secretly be the same person) and change anything in the database. You would have no warning before this happened.

That's incorrect, you can't "change anything in the database" with a 51% attack. You can block transactions from being processed, reorder new transactions, and reverse your own (but not others) transactions to double spend. You can't just go arbitrarily deleting previous transactions, or modifying balances.

@spyspy You don’t have the keys to sign all of the transactions

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#159

Post by gtirloni »

tquinn35 wrote: post #109
metadat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the divide? Crypto is 99% full of hucksters, and the remaining 1% are the sorry saps. The intelligent people I know want nothing to do with it. Folks I've met IRL who are into it usually aren't all that bright. The traits they do have are affinity for risk taking, and being somewhat technical but not too much so, just enough to be dangerous. They certainly won't be opening any PRs to fix Ethereum bugs. In ot…

I disagree with this. I work at a large US bank and from the conversations I have been apart all the big banks are moving into crypto. So much float is moving out of the banks that they are scramble to catch up to try and control the damage. They are all planning to become crypto banks in a custodial sense to maintain float. Lots of people want to hate the new trendy thing but once this gets mainstream banking suppor…

Could you give us a ballpark number of how much is moving out of banks compared to the reaming that is not? Is it 10, 50 or 90% of the current economy?

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#160

Post by heavenlyblue »

jcbrand wrote: post #130
heavenlyblue wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> threats to very powerful people Same people who also control the hash rate? :)

Hashing power is not the only line of defence. The (non-mining) nodes have the ability to reject blocks that they don't consider legitimate. That's why it's important to the Bitcoin community that the average person can run a full node and that as many people as possible also do so.

There is not mechanism in Bitcoin for the non-mining nodes to somehow agree in the case of a 51% attack though so I am not sure what you are trying to prove here
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