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

271–280 of 319 posts

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

#271

Post by vletal »

rbanffy wrote: post #243
vletal wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are cherry picking outliers to argue against a claim about a general trend.

It really does not matter how hard this or that particular individual worked. What matters is statistics which describes the opportunity of an anonymous Joe in the society.

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

#272

Post by skybrian »

DreamWalker1 wrote: post #182
skybrian wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, worse price than what? In the US you’re supposed to get at least the best price quoted at any stock exchange, the “nationally best bid and offer” (NBBO). Surprisingly, you can often do better, but this is still a good price. I don’t think you can easily do that with cryptocurrency where you normally only trade at one exchange? Maybe relying on a third party is useful if they can get you better prices…

Actually you can do it for cryptocurrencies as well. There are a lot of aggregators that execute or split your order across different exchanges. As you said yourself, brokers may offer somehow better prices. My point is just, it is not possible to interact directly with the exchange, even if it maybe for some people more convenient to use a broker. There is no free lunch, more third parties means in my opinion worse…

You'd think that, but apparently retail customers get better prices because market makers are more likely to lose money trading against a professional who knows something is coming, and the smaller spread from lower risk for them is enough to pay for the business model. They still make money on the spread but it's lower.

It's a bit weird that it works that way, but there is a logic to it. Price discrimination can work in your favor.

(And having gotten many literally free lunches from an employer, there is no harm to it if you know why they do it.)

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

#274

Post by echelon »

bawolff wrote: post #196
echelon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. They can't even get their numbering scheme right. This would be "web4" Disregarding the semantic web throws out the history of the tech that sought to build p2p knowledge graphs before the social giants pushed it aside. They care little for these concepts given their blatant disregard.

Honestly i think its perfect. Both are big ideas that sound very impressive to an outsider but problematic once you get into the details.

In a world without the concentration of development to venture capital-backed tech firms, semantic models of data create a web of rich APIs and data that are interlinked and that can grow and evolve.

You have schemas for representing people that you can download as contacts. Schemas for representing articles that can be linked to people. Schemas for comments and upvotes... Fully distributed Facebook / Reddit / Twitter that anyone could extend.

Venture-backed startups grew faster than the Semantic Web. That's the reason it didn't materialize.

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

#275

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

hathym wrote: post #232

Am I the only one shocked at the 9k$ price tag for an avatar?

Aren’t most of these actually “wash sales” paid in funny money by sellers pumping up the prices? If not, there are many more crazy people in this world than I hoped.

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

#277

Post by rbanffy »

vletal wrote: post #271
rbanffy wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are cherry picking outliers to argue against a claim about a general trend. It really does not matter how hard this or that particular individual worked. What matters is statistics which describes the opportunity of an anonymous Joe in the society.

It really depends on what kind of mobility we are talking about. The wealth and influence of the individuals I mentioned is pretty much impossible to reach unless you have optimal initial conditions. As the saying goes, the easiest way to become a millionaire is to be born a billionaire. Even if you are born a mere millionaire, you can make many more attempts at becoming a billionaire than a person who needs to work in order to have dinner.

There is a lot of statistics that point that current levels of social mobility are on par with feudal England and, while a modest improvement in conditions is very achievable for those who aren’t born in the most unforgiving situations, the remaining possible paths are very much closed.

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

#278

Post by koboll »

luhn wrote: post #111
koboll wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It doesn't help that I personally have yet to see a use for a blockchain which isn't replicating an existing financial instrument while trying to avoid the eyes of the state. I mean, there's a domain name system. There are various games. There was recently a high-profile crowdfunded attempt to buy an artifact at auction. Feel free to be skeptical of all of these, but what's the point of posting that you "haven't see…

> I mean, there's a domain name system. You mean ENS, the .eth domain registrar incorporated in the Cayman Islands? It doesn't matter what the blockchain says, my .eth domain is only good as long as the registrar agrees to honor it. Sounds like GoDaddy with more steps. > There are various games. What's the point of a distribute ledger that can only be used within a game controlled by a centralized company? > There wa…

So when I point out that there are other use cases beyond "replicating an existing financial instrument while trying to avoid the eyes of the state", instead of walking back your claim that no other use cases exist, you simply move the goalposts and attack these use cases in other ways.

They're all perfectly legitimate complaints. But the fact that you have to resort to them, rather than defending your original claim, shows how weak that claim was.

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

#279

Post by wpietri »

askonomm wrote: post #269
wpietri wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there actual data on cryptocurrency use in Argentina? Last I lived in an unstable Latin America country with inflation issues, the common solution was just to buy dollars. So much so that the country, Ecuador, eventually just switched over to using dollars entirely. So I can believe it's possible that people are trying to do similar things digitally when they don't trust the local currency. But given the user-host…

I don't have any data points, but my own social circle, of which the majority uses Binance to buy crypto and uses Binance P2P to sell it to ARS (Peso). And since the transfer will be reflected on your bank balance as some regular person sending you money locally, it's not taxed either. The whole process of buying stablecoins USDC or Tether to it being sold to ARS and actually landing on my local bank account takes ab…

Thanks for the details. But I'm not quite following this bit: "The whole process of buying stablecoins USDC or Tether to it being sold to ARS and actually landing on my local bank account takes about 5 min maybe"

This sounds like you are going from pesos to pesos in 5 minutes, but I assume that isn't the case. What are you buying the stablecoins with?

Also, if I understand the use case directly, there's nothing here that requires a blockchain at all. The same thing could happen with dollars and another centralized company like Binance, yes? It seems like the novel technical part is the person-to-person transactions used to hide that it's a centralized company. Did I get tha right?

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

#280

Post by notafraudster »

aaronax wrote: post #166
necubi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's an improvement how? At least with Google there's a chance you'll be able to get your account back. If it's "decentralized" (which in crypto land is apparently synonymous with "run by a cabal of miners in China") and you lose your private key, you're completely out of luck.

If you lose some cash you are also out of luck, yet cash is still useful and even had some valuable properties.

I'm actually not sure this is true. I lived in the US 2014-early 2021 and don't think I used cash after about 2017; I've lived in Europe since and just got touched cash for the first time today because my Christmas tree delivery guy doesn't take Revolut. A few months ago I had lunch at a restaurant whose terminal went down and I asked what they wanted me to do and they said "sure, don't worry about it, come back later today and pay, or whenever you can" (so I did, obviously.)

No doubt there are people for whom cash has valuable properties, but I'm just saying I don't think I'm one of them and my use case seems pretty normal as far as people go.

Post reply on HN