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

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 316 posts

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

#301

Post by ahtihn »

reflexco wrote: post #261
ahtihn wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Why? I don't see anything concrete coming out of web3 that would threaten the established big tech companies.

The whole selling pitch is about replacing intermediaries, and that's what most tech giants are. P2P payment systems and P2P collateralized loans are already there more or less working with a clear path to scaling. If they gain adoption they directly obsolete existing fintech companies. I'm not saying there's much concrete stuff there yet, but web3 has a clear MAGMA hostile discourse, so it's natural that reactionary…

Big tech isn't fintech and that's about the only thing that could be threatened.

Even for fintech there's a lot of value in providing a streamlined user experienced on top of crypto so there's still room for intermediaries. See how many people primarily use CEXs.

> Web3 has a clear MAGMA hostile discourse

I really don't see it. There's nothing in web3 that threatens any of these companies.

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

#302

Post by nathias »

mmmpop wrote: post #289
nathias wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

I don't think it's incredibly rare, I've known plenty of people to start with nothing and get "rich", as in, worth enough to retire by 40. Unless your idea of rich is like 7 zeroes.

I'm sure it's possible if you live in a place that pays you much above the costs of living, but such places are very rare and the rest of us are barely keeping up with costs (especially if you are poor and have more costs).

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

#303

Post by tremon »

cynusx wrote: post #227
slowmovintarget wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The Semantic Web produced some interesting technologies that lost their cool factor and dissolved into the background (SPARQL, graph DBs... etc.). Ontology everywhere simply never caught on because it wasn't worth it. This co-opting of term by blockchain-backed everything is for something actively dangerous as opposed to simply too little bang for too much buck.

To be fair, the semantic web was also very much bullshit It completely ignored "trivial" things like the cost and benefits of maintaining machine-readable general compatibility with unknown consumers of said data. Companies and people are rational in their self-interest and the semantic web is just an academic utopia that was never meant to be. I personally think it's very fitting that web3 is now hijacked by crypto,…

Aren't most new technologies academic utopias until we find a way to make them affordable/monetize them?

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

#304

Post by Lordarminius »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #102
Lordarminius wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The intelligent people I know want nothing to do with it. Eric Schmidt is president of ChainLink Silvio Micali professor at MIT created Algorand Emin Gün Sirer creator of Avalanche is a professor at Cornell Nicholas Szabo holds a honorary professorship etc. etc. etc I guess you either don't know these people, or they don't count as intelligent to you. On another note, Web3 technology will soon be everywhere. Individ…

Or maybe they count as "hucksters". All of these people you mentioned seem to be quite invested into the ecosystem and therefore stand to gain quite a lot from crypto going to the moon. It's in their self interest to do everything they can to ignore or dismiss any negative arguments, and convince as many people as possible that their hustle is legitimate.

Hucksters. Ok.

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

#305

Post by nurettin »

tremon wrote: post #303
cynusx wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the semantic web was also very much bullshit It completely ignored "trivial" things like the cost and benefits of maintaining machine-readable general compatibility with unknown consumers of said data. Companies and people are rational in their self-interest and the semantic web is just an academic utopia that was never meant to be. I personally think it's very fitting that web3 is now hijacked by crypto,…

Aren't most new technologies academic utopias until we find a way to make them affordable/monetize them?

Aren't most new technologies discarded once we realize that they are just a waste of time and money unless they deal directly with the financial system, sports, religion or the law in which case we cherish and protect them with great zeal?

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

#306

Post by throwoutway »

TimPC wrote: post #4

For those who don't know web3 is the idea of building a web on a decentralized blockchain. I think more specifically the idea is to replace the need for name servers with a blockchain protocol. 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 find it ridiculous that this idea even got to occupy the name as I thin…

The blockchain pumpers co-opted the word “crypto” so it’s not too surprising they tried to co-opt the next generation of terms as well

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

#307

Post by stiltzkin »

searchableguy wrote: post #228
paxys wrote: post #213

I've reached a point where I'm tired of discussing the possibilities/potential/revolution of crypto and blockchain. Is there anything I can use today, or must I keep waiting for this hypothetical future?

Try headline https://viaheadline.xyz/ which uses ceramic for storage, unlock for payment and membership, ipfs for pinning, and a bunch of other protocols for decentralisation. I can walk you through some of the useful stuff going on if you want to have a chat. Offer valid for anyone else.

Also mirror.xyz

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

#308

Post by gotaquestion »

gojomo wrote: post #279
ModernMech wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

Thanks for at least trying to explain! Of course you can always do a MadLibs-style search and replace on rhetoric. But are the resulting linguistic similarities relevant in the real world? Isn’t all the real impact on people - who aren’t mere language models - dependent on the relevant magnitudes, & other salient distinctions? We real people suffer financial losses, or bleed, or starve, or die in revolutionary purges…

The reason I didn't try to engage with you is your awful and misinformed reasoning in your original reply, and your post history, which indicates you aren't worth the time. If you had a history of intelligent comments and not trolls, you would be worth engaging with. Maybe clean up your act a little and people will take you more seriously?

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

#309

Post by gojomo »

hervature wrote: post #121
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.

Building on this, what does that tell you about the state of crypto when the coins that actually have libertarian values built into them (Zcash and monero) have not exploded in value? That crypto is generally dominated by marketers and pump and dumps.

It tells me it's still early. Many still think Bitcoin offers anonymity. It takes life experience to fully appreciate privacy, & there's tons of naive enthusiasm in crypto that will "grow up" into better, more-private options. Still, over a number of time periods – including the last year – Zcash's value appreciation has outperformed Bitcoin. The real contest, and shake out of true value, is a multi-decade marathon.

If your impression, based on what you've seen, is that "crypto is generally dominated by marketers and pump and dumps", well I suppose you're the expert about what's in your junk info-diet.

But even if most email, by count, is spam or promotional, people with good filters see little of it, and it'd be a total misreading of the transformative social/economic value of email to say it "is dominated by marketers".

I have good filters against seeing, or spending any attention, on the carnival-barker & naive-speculator froth. (And, any truly momentous economic shift is often wrapped in a phalanx of such pretenders & hangers-on. I don't mistake the lampreys for the whale.)

And looking at tangible measures, like total market cap, real innovators with interesting tech & growing histories of stability are a comfortably majority of all value.

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

#310

Post by gojomo »

gotaquestion wrote: post #308
gojomo wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for at least trying to explain! Of course you can always do a MadLibs-style search and replace on rhetoric. But are the resulting linguistic similarities relevant in the real world? Isn’t all the real impact on people - who aren’t mere language models - dependent on the relevant magnitudes, & other salient distinctions? We real people suffer financial losses, or bleed, or starve, or die in revolutionary purges…

The reason I didn't try to engage with you is your awful and misinformed reasoning in your original reply, and your post history, which indicates you aren't worth the time. If you had a history of intelligent comments and not trolls, you would be worth engaging with. Maybe clean up your act a little and people will take you more seriously?

I'm quite comfortable with my 15+ year comment history, associated with my real name – especially as compared to a 55-day-old anon account that just expresses peeved attitude, above as here, instead of reasoning.

But hey, thanks for at least describing Zcash's privacy-protecting-qualities accurately in a sibling thread.

Post reply on HN