Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

psl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 319 posts

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#241

Post by matheusmoreira »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #73

Not going to lie, I thought and still think that the whole Web 2.0 thing was clever marketing and window dressing on top of fairly pedestrian but useful technologies. It was actually less of seismic shock than mobile first which despite being a bigger shift didn't actually get a number. As far as I'm concerned, Web3 is beyond this. It's what happen when you let Ponzi schemers write the marketing material. I can't for…

> trying to avoid the eyes of the state

Nothing wrong with that. Everyone agrees cryptography is a good thing, worldwide warrantless surveillance is bad, privacy is good. So why is it acceptable for the government to pry into people's finances? Total surveillance is already the norm there. If a blockchain is what it takes to defeat that, then so be it.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#242

Post by meheleventyone »

Uehreka wrote: post #229
djohnston wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to a web3 site and use your wallet as your identity without any signin flow, don't click on any asinine cookie prompts, and you'll see it's already bringing improvements. Or you can just write comments like this.

OK, NOW WE’RE TALKIN. In years of talking to blockchain people about this stuff, no one has ever given me a use case description that succinct and concrete. A decentralized SSO is the kind of thing that would seem useful on it’s own, even without the other stuff. So let’s say I want to try this out this weekend. Do I just download MetaMask and make a wallet? Do I have to go somewhere or pay someone to inscribe my use…

You can also do this with other decentralized tech like PGP for example: https://webauthn.guide/

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#243

Post by rbanffy »

vletal wrote: post #220
danjac wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When upward mobility has been stymied for generations (the US has the lowest upword mobility among Western nations, outdoing even the class-ridden Brits) and insane house prices, student loans and cost of living increases have cut all the bootstraps, people are looking for anything - anything - that offers the slimmest of opportunities, because education and hard work don't cut it any more. Hence the crypto nonsense…

I can clearly see a strong correlation between both education and hard work vs. social status and income. I come from Europe though. Is it really not the case in the US? Is it because of student loan barrier?

How hard did Boris Johnson work again? Or Priti Patel? Or Don Jr? Or Jair Bolsonaro?

I'm Brazilian, but I live in Europe, and everyday I see that I was privileged to be able to focus on studying hard (and didn't, most of the time) and still managed to be quite successful when compared to the average European. In Brazil, my skin and eye color was a ticket to some very restricted spaces I simply wouldn't have access to with the wrong colors.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#244

Post by rbanffy »

Do we even have a generally accepted usable definition of what Web 3 would be?

I see cryptocurrencies and ledgers being mentioned and, at the same time, comments mentioning the concepts aren't central to it. It seems we are the proverbial blind men describing an elephant.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#245

Post by denton-scratch »

practice9 wrote: post #228
KallDrexx wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how web3 solves any of your bullets? If you are trying to say that web3 will prevent platform holders from banning you from their platform, then good luck with that. Any platform can and will ban you and have complete control over their platform. Thinking web3 is going to prevent that is naive for many many reasons. If Facebook bans me then web3 isn't going to allow me to post on Facebook still. Same…

Sure, I'll try to explain the Gmail point: - Setting up a separate domain for mail is a good idea, but access to previous emails and/or photos, docs, Drive files will be not recovered. Also non-technical person would probably skip this step. The issue of not really being in control of your data can be solved by: - regulating Google to let you access your data irrespectively if you are banned from their frontend or no…

> Setting up a separate domain for mail is a good idea, but access to previous emails [...]

Fetchmail?

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#246

Post by beepbooptheory »

blatchcorn wrote: post #238
dgb23 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who put their hope into blockchain and crypto currency technology are missing a fundamental point that would have _catastrophic_ consequences on social mobility, exploitation and oppression in the long term: You don't actually want a decentralized, persistent log of all transactions, especially if that also includes credit and debt. The financial market is going out of hand because since the 70's/80's it i…

You make a large assumption that people don't want a permanent log. If the system works then you do want it to be permanent. The only reason why you propose forgetting the transactions of the current system is that it is distorted by politicians. Politicians cannot distorted crypto markets in the same way they can with the USD, therefore is no need to ever forget crypto transactions

I think you give politicians too much credit, they have influence, but at the end of the day we all have one master in this world. There is something importantly impersonal and algorithmic about the circulation and allotment of capital and currency, and that is the ultimate reason we live in the unjust and unforgiving world we do. A persistent totalizing ledger would only reify these systems more. It would absolve the system of any traces of humanity it might incidentally have, leaving nothing but transactions.

There is not a more egalitarian capitalism hidden under the machinations of corrupt politicians, it is itself a dark, destructive thing. I am confident that money will save no one at the end. Money is not the salvation you are looking for.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#248

Post by MarkPNeyer »

afavour wrote: post #81
bko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which isn't replicating an existing financial instrument [available to the developed world] while trying to avoid the eyes of the [benevolent] state Not everyone has access to Venmo or free checking accounts. And not every behavior the state is trying to restrict is nefarious.

Sure, and if “web3” was sold as “banking for those who cannot use normal banking” and “worthy transactions you want to hide from the state” then I think a lot fewer people would have a negative perception of it. But it isn’t.

Who is doing the selling?

Since nobody is in charge you should expect most sellers to be full of nonsense and misinformed. That’s the nature of any decentralized movement - especially one as directly antagonistic to the status quo.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#249

Post by pcthrowaway »

phire wrote: post #172
aspenmayer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible you’re thinking of Chia, IPFS, or FileCoin, all of which are “live” and “deployed” currently.

IPFS isn't blockchain. and Chia doesn't allow people to rent out storage space, it just lets them mine with HDDs instead of GPUs. The other one I'm aware of is Sia.

Arweave is the big one I know of
Post reply on HN