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AWS and Blockchain

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Re: AWS and Blockchain

#571

Post by halpmeh »

worik wrote: post #553
halpmeh wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever implemented a smart contract? If not, I highly recommend you do so before holding an opinion on blockchains. I've never owned crypto, and I've recommended others to stay away from investing in crypto. Yet, I think the computing platform has a lot of promise. Implementing a smart contract for fun helped me see why. The block-chain can be thought of as cryptographically secure state. That is, everyone agr…

> Have you ever implemented a smart contract? No > A smart contract can be thought of as a cryptographically secure program, i.e. it cannot be modified. So you have cryptographically secure inputs (the blockchain), and a cryptographically secure program (the smart contract), which means the output is also guaranteed to be cryptographically secure. The output is not guaranteed to be correct, what you intended, or even…

No, the output is guaranteed to be correct. Correct, as in what you specified in the contract, which may not be what you had intended, but that’s besides the point. Can you explain how the output would differ from the contract specification?

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#572

Post by nathias »

crypot wrote: post #359
nathias wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the original purpose of an invention does not limit the scope of its application

The book How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley changed my perspective on this. Originally I thought all innovation was like the dotcom era. Ridley attempts to show that there are times when it is not always clear what the final innovation will be.

I recommend Mumford's Technics and Civilization.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#573

Post by Karunamon »

dmitriid wrote: post #554
Karunamon wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin/who-accepts/ Apparently, I must be dreaming this entire list. Now, to head off what will certainly be a response absolutely loaded with special pleading and/or strawmen, the claim was "crypto can be exchanged for goods and services on its own". Provided was a rather substantial, yet not exhaustive, list of merchants of various sizes which accept one kind of crypto in exchange for goods…

> Apparently, I must be dreaming this entire list. I'll say this again: "In reality there are vanishingly few goods or services that can be exchanged for crypto." > Provided was a rather substantial, yet not exhaustive, list of merchants So. What started with "money in oppressive regimes" became: here's a list of companies in first-world countries many which at one point played with crypto, but now: - don't accept cr…

An even cursory reading of the list does not disqualify all, or even most of them, so not sure what you're getting at. This is childish nit picking at this point, anyone who wants to actually spend bitcoin will have no trouble finding a place to do so.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#574

Post by GauntletWizard »

everfree wrote: post #187
GauntletWizard wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garbage in, garbage out. Tracking shipments only works if you have proof that the shipment wasn't tampered with. Tracking shipments is only as reliable as the carrier not mucking with it, and we already have tamper-proof tape for solving that one. It doesn't prove anything, though. It's merely a tool in our arsenal of confirming trust, that makes it easier to tell where the problem lies if someone along the chain is…

> It's merely a tool in our arsenal of confirming trust, that makes it easier to tell where the problem lies if someone along the chain is lying. That makes it a useful tool, no? > people trying to create the "feature" of not having that feature are called anarchists Smart contracts are partial to neither law nor anarchy. It's trivial to write token code that allows a centralized service to transfer said token withou…

No, much cheaper and easier solutions to that already exist, in the form of "Every postal tracking app"

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#575

Post by remram »

siftrics wrote: post #550
remram wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that you don't need a decentralized ledger to enable the "financial innovation" we've been seeing, and that it's not permissionless if every meaningful action (buy/sell/trade) happens on good ol' central exchanges.

Truly decentralized exchanges exist and clear tens of billions of dollars in volume every single day.

Within an ecosystem, yes. You can trade Ethereum currency for Ethereum-based tokens.

As for "billions of dollars in volume every single day", I find that hard to believe.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#576

Post by smoldesu »

_8j50 wrote: post #507
smoldesu wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Establishing consensus is more difficult than a single person deciding what to merge, if you need a trustless system then you can add consensus on top of Git.

Yeah and speed up git to commit/push/merge very fast. Or use a blockchain. I feel like there is stigma against the term, shall we call it distributed leger instead?

You can call it a BitTorrent magnet for all I care, it doesn't change the fact that a distributed ledger only has so many uses. Git already has consensus mechanisms baked into it's architecture, and immutability is provided with GPG signing if you care enough about it.

Both of those features have been available in Git since the 90s. You're not revolutionizing anything by proposing a migration to an even less ubiquitous protocol than HTTP or SSH.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#577

Post by splix »

notamy wrote: post #520
splix wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what is "solving a problem that actually exist" means? I just looked around and I'm not sure I have anything that solves an actual problem. Like the HN right now, it doesn't solve anything, right. In the morning I bought stuff on Amazon, but it also doesn't solve any real problem. Not sure AWS is solving anything since we can rent servers directly. I used Zoom for a call, but it solves nothing, I gues…

Not the original commenter, but here's my stab at it: > In the morning I bought stuff on Amazon, but it also doesn't solve any real problem. Sure it does. It solves the problem of "I need something, I have money, and I don't have the time/ability/car/... to go to a physical location to buy it." > Not sure AWS is solving anything since we can rent servers directly. AWS gives you you - The ability to spin up MANY class…

I would disagree with all the reasons. I understand that it's some real problems the mentioned services solve for you, but I can easily point to a person who has none of those problems. Like my grandma. She doesn't see any point in any of the mentioned products. Even the coffee maker. So we must agree that it depends on the person and is not an objective criterion. Same for blockchan/defi/evm/etc. Some people argue that it solves some of their problems, and you may disagree with them, but it doesn't make their point invalid.

I can go with refusing the points you said about the mentioned products. Not because I want to argue, but because it's really not the reason and problems it solved for _me_. I just question myself why I use them and have no answer.

1) Rel. Amazon. I can go to the seller's website directly. I guess I used Amazon because they are so good at marketing, so they are the first to go. But I kind of agree that it solves the problem of simplicity/easier access because a seller's website may have a clumsy website. Some people say that something similar is solved for them by Defi.

2) For AWS, I don't use anything you mentioned. It sounds interesting, like spinning many instances, but I never witnessed it being used like that. Except for instances where someone was playing with the tech (and you can apply it the exact same way to EMV). Also, recently I played with Kubespray, a tool to easily roll out a Kubernetes cluster on a bare metal, and now I don't see a reason to use AWS or another cloud provider. Bare servers + Kubernetes is a way to go imho. Maybe the real reason people use AWS is b/c they simply don't know alternatives?

3) For Zoom, I disagree because I am not even sure we always needed to call, honestly. I mean, we have an email and slack, so what's the point of wasting everyone's time on a call. It's just a routine now.

Again, not arguing. Just trying to say that there could be multiple points of view. And if something works one way for someone, it may be completely useless and even stupid for others.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#578

Post by mosdl »

pjkundert wrote: post #468
pjkundert wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I’ve always considered these types of questions as disingenuous. But, enough people seem to disagree. So, at risk of stating the obvious: - Avoid risk of accidental/malicious deplatforming - Personal control of all data, avoiding incompetence/malfeasance presenting faulty data - Deploying enhanced presentation of existing functionality and data cannot be restricted - Reuse of existing functionality in private env…

A specific application I'm working on right now involves using Crypto for direct payments between software Licensees (end users) and the App developer. Presently, there is a high risk of loss of income (see: every small individual Russian or Iranian software developer. Their families are now suffering because their income has been shut off, even though this is a textbook example of "Group Punishment" under the Geneva…

Someone still has to convert the Eth to local currency for the person to have an income no? The dev has to find someone willing to exchange local currency for the eth - same as if someone had gifted a video game skin and now has to find someone to exchange it to local currency.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#579

Post by primax »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #268
runeks wrote: post #167

Blockchain was invented to solve one particular problem: distributed consensus on a sequence of transactions, where the choice of which transaction to include from a set of conflicting transactions is irrelevant. The latter property here is key to understanding where blockchain is useful. It was created to solve the "double spend problem", ie. two transitions that spend the same coin but send it to different recipien…

I used to think this, but working with DeFi on Ethereum for a while I've realized the killer feature is actually permissionless composability. Which is why enterprise block chains make little sense. Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing. We've never had this before, and it's incredible how fast the…

The main problem is when weighing these things is not blockchain advocate honestly asks the question: "why is this better than using a simple relational database, in a way that makes all the extra complexity worthwhile?"

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#580

Post by tbrownaw »

smt88 wrote: post #107
tbrownaw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blockchain has been around for more than 10 years. If it had any valid use cases, we'd see them in use already I think modern darknet markets use smart contracts for escrow, so that you don't have to trust the escrow arbiter to not run off with your cryptocoins.

This isn’t any difference than traditional escrow SaaS companies. They’re fully automated unless you have a dispute. In your stated case, “smart contract” means software. It can’t verify that both sides of the transaction have met their obligations unless both obligations are on-chain, in which case there’s no added value.

But with these darknet markets everything's hidden and anonymous, so there used to be (?) something called an "exit scam" where they'd just disappear with whatever funds were currently waiting for a decision. If things are set up so that the cryptocoins can only go to one of two places (seller's or buyer's wallet) that can't happen.

That situation that it's avoiding is less of a concern with legitimate things where everyone knows who everyone is and law enforcement actually exists.

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