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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

#241

Post by hgomersall »

nomel wrote: post #171
smt88 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I want artificial scarcity in any situation? Scarcity is bad.

> Scarcity is bad. We could just print money and all be rich? If you value money, and you think that compensation for work can be paid with money, then compensating the work that went into creating digital goods seems appropriate. Should compensation for digital goods be through donations?

Banks pretty much can. The only real limit on bank money is the banks ability to find a credit worthy borrower. There's far more of that in the system than central bank money. Of course the issued currency is balanced with a liability. In the case of normal banks this liability is generally taken by a person or entity in the system. For the central bank it's marked up as not-yet-taxed-away money. Crypto currencies are just silly and absolutely rely ultimately on social stability, which essentially means the state.

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

#242

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

cynusx wrote: post #197
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?

It mostly comes down to whether you trust in democratic institutions or not and whether you think it's a good idea to have markets operate outside the control and supervision of regulators and an enforceable rule of law.

Exactly this. All these promises of crypto being "independent" of banks and governments all rely on the relative obscurity and novelty of the technology. If crypto became the default currency, it would have to play nice with existing economic and political structures, and all of those "advantages" would be gone.

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

#243

Post by nathias »

mmmpop wrote: post #223
nathias wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you implying people get rich from doing actual work?

Maybe. If the OP were implying that, what would you say to that?

That it doesn't seem to be generally true, and is incredibly rare... so the real issue seems to be that people outside of the Silicon Valley VC scene can get rich "without doing actual work"?

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

#244

Post by metalliqaz »

andybak wrote: post #181
BeetleB wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ok. We'll see where this end up. I hate it too but it feels too late to turn back the tide.

You might be right. But just like crypto bros co-opted the term, it could very well be co-opted again by whatever tech seems like the next big thing after "everything is blockchain" fades into obscurity

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

#245

Post by ModernMech »

gojomo wrote: post #161
gotaquestion wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for proving my point with perfect irony.

And thanks to you, for demonstrating your flimsy analogy can only be defended with attitude, not reasoning!

The point I think the parent was making is not that they are analogous situations, but that in the reasoning they've encountered (and you helpfully provided to illustrate their point), one could literally just swap the positive aspects for negative aspects, and it would read as supportive of socialism and against crypto.

Here:

  Socialist governments have been a mix of successes & failures, among the very-privileged who can afford to take risks, for just the last ~100y. Everyone involved knows there's a lot of things left to solve, but sees reasons for hope.

  For 13+ years, the most fervently 'crypto' fanboys have promised various utopias but actually delivered scams, fraud, pathologically dishonest companies, and even financial ruin on a larger scale than other technologies.
It's the same exact logic.

(please note I am not comparing genocide and financial ruin as being analogous)

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

#246

Post by throwaway82652 »

gojomo wrote: post #157
throwaway82652 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-destroyin…

I have read plenty about them and it's still possible to track those coins through various means using various pieces of metadata. The worst problem with them is probably that the privacy gains are basically useless if you ever plan to cash out on a legitimate exchange.

>But it's not essentially true, and with education, & software, & further technical advances, far more privacy than we have now is possible

Yeah and that's a huge headache most people don't want to go through, very few even in the privacy community want to have their money tied up in that kind of system forever because it's so cumbersome to use correctly.

>Especially, far more privacy from criminals & abusive regimes that would persecute/imprison/kill people for dumb reasons.

I have seen no evidence that this kind of technology actually helps those people in any disproportionate way, the same technology can be used by criminals and abusive regimes to conceal their activities and in fact it is being used that way right now. Long-term I think it's unwise for them to use it for that purpose, for the same reason it's unwise for others to use it for the purposes of evading them. Remember that the human factor of people making stupid yet honest mistakes is the biggest vulnerability in any system of this kind.

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

#247

Post by zem »

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?

all the very smart people know it's a combination of speculative bubble and pyramid scheme; they're just divided between those who think it's fine as long as they can be part of the group who get to make money off it, and those who find the entire thing repugnant or too akin to gambling.

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

#249

Post by throwaway82652 »

gotaquestion wrote: post #142
throwaway82652 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This statement is false. Zcash's shielded transactions hide both the wallet ID and the transaction via zero knowledge proof.

No it's not false. For practical or legal purposes you will need to have that ID disclosed eventually anyway. And actually it appears that most Zcash users are not even attempting to conceal their wallet IDs.

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

#250

Post by vmception »

digitaltrees wrote: post #234
vmception wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sidebar: I love sentences like this that go on and on but say literally nothing. Nothing in the preceding or following context gives it any clarity. So you don't actually love sentences like that. That's interesting, I don't see it as one of those sentences. I don't know what insight you are missing such that you can't apply it here. Where would you like to start? Do you know what a funnel is? Do you know how convo…

I think the criticism is due to your use of buzz words, broad sweeping claims and abstract concepts that require knowledge of and acceptance of lots of supporting concepts that are highly contested; you then combine these semantic tools in to some apparent theory of how things should be but without a concrete conclusion that is clear in terms of what your recommendation actually is so it feels like a lot was said but…

Thanks for breaking that down from your perspective. It wasn't a reference to any crypto/money ideology at all. It was a reference to how many companies had or have zero revenue but would imagine gaining great valuations based on the existence of users, and their ability to monetize those users, and acquiring those users cheaply. This is pretty much a hallmark of Web 2.0. This had the competing goals of having a funnel or path of users to become interested and follow to merely signing up (or actually paying for something), while also counting how long those users stayed with the goal of increasing how long they stay while reducing the areas they drop off or bounce, investors know there isn't revenue and also are in line with the idea that users will be monetized in the future. A lot of times it never happens, hence illusion. The KPIs are metrics used to woo investors based on the data collected about how users stay in the funnel. OKRs are meetings about how to increase the KPIs. I don't consider those buzzwords, I consider them actual words/acronyms referring to useless drivel in that industry.

Hope that helped you or someone.

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