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LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

blog.documentfoundation.org

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Re: LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

#61

Post by pyr0hu »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #11
sdiacom wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. The mere mention of "combining existing successful open-source product with blockchain" should get about the same reaction as "combining fruit bowls with metal spikes". This is a good thing, it means that people are waking up to what crypto actually is. There is no successful or interesting combination of "useful thing" and "blockchain", unless your definition of success is siphoning money from technologically…

You just exemplified their point. original post: we're not talking about crypto comment: they're not talking about crypto but people still just say "F them crypto is bad!" this comment: F them because crypto is bad! Crypto (money, nfts) is bad, I think smart contracts are a mistake too, and I don't think LO needs blockchain either, but the objection is more like the one someone else said about, if there's some featur…

Thanks, the person really just proved my point. We cannot talk about it properly and having a civilized discussion.

Re: LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

#62

Post by mkmk3 »

dhdgrygev wrote: post #19
Brian_K_White wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just exemplified their point. original post: we're not talking about crypto comment: they're not talking about crypto but people still just say "F them crypto is bad!" this comment: F them because crypto is bad! Crypto (money, nfts) is bad, I think smart contracts are a mistake too, and I don't think LO needs blockchain either, but the objection is more like the one someone else said about, if there's some featur…

There are no real world use cases of blockchain tech besides crypto. Or can you demonstrate one?

The Matter IoT protocol uses a blockchain for device attestation

Re: LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

#63

Post by sdiacom »

web3isgoing wrote: post #18

You would think a message board called "hacker news" would be more open to blue sky thinking. Zero knowledge proofs and a tamper proof ledger of timestamped cryptographic signatures could open up new use cases that are different than relying on central authorities. One idea, document signing: vitalik.eth signs a PDF, everybody can verify the PDF is signed by his private key. He has to broadcast his public key for thi…

Most of us were very interested in cryptocurrencies at some point in our lives. At some point, we have to accept that things are not what we think they could or should be. They're just what they are.

If I build weapons for freedom fighters, but they're used to massacre civilians, I'm not bravely aiding the people's revolution, I'm just an arms dealer for a terrorist group.

If I build a decentralised cryptographically verified ledger to provide trustable alternatives to traditional banking, but it's used to trick people into spending millions on digital receipts for ugly monkeys, I'm not disrupting the corrupt banking oligarchies, I'm just running an elaborate technological grift.

Re: LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

#64

Post by laserbeam »

_sigh_... If you have a good problem to apply blockchain to, just do it. Make a startup.

If you want us to come up with problems for you to apply blockchain to, just stop. Find problems and apply whatever solution you need for them.

This applies for any single piece of technology one may want to use. The act of reaching out to the community looking for problems and suggesting you want to use hammers is, to me, a sign that company vision is muddy and unclear.

[edit] This is in no way an endorsement of blockchain, especially how it's used today.

Re: LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

#65

Post by glacambre »

web3isgoing wrote: post #18

You would think a message board called "hacker news" would be more open to blue sky thinking. Zero knowledge proofs and a tamper proof ledger of timestamped cryptographic signatures could open up new use cases that are different than relying on central authorities. One idea, document signing: vitalik.eth signs a PDF, everybody can verify the PDF is signed by his private key. He has to broadcast his public key for thi…

>He has to broadcast his public key for this [...] through a public and decentralized ledger.

Yes, but then he also has to broadcast the transaction linking his identity and public key. He could do this on twitter, but that is not a secure and tamper proof ledger. So he creates a second blockchain to advertise the transaction. But then he needs to advertise the second blockchain's transaction in order to link his identity and public key. He could do this on twitter, but that is not a secure and tamper proof ledger. So he creates a third blockchain to advertise the second transaction...

Re: LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

#66

Post by drdrek »

web3isgoing wrote: post #34
Macha wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News has historically been very open to blockchain ideas. I'd wager that without HN's contribution, it would not have been well known enough to get picked up by silk road which is really when it went from toy project to normal people caring. Even after that, I think many of the early blockchain for X startups got good press here and there is a decent chunk of HNers employed in the blockchain. So I don't think…

Most of the negative comments on this thread read like knee-jerk reactions. I'd wager that many of them see blockchain as Bitcoin, and they are not cognisant of newer developments like zero knowledge proofs, verifiable computation, and smart contracts running on a zk rollup.

Zero knowledge proofs have nothing to do with blockchain, verifiable computation has nothing to do with blockchain. You can use Zero Knowledge proof with many things, one of them is blockchain. This inverses the relation of Zero knowledge proof and Blockchain, Its like saying supply chains are an advancement of blockchain. Just because you can do something (poorly) with blockchain does not make it part of blockchain.

This kind of inversion of relations stands in the base of why people with subject matter knowledge are opposing Blockchains/Crypto. Its a tower of badly constructed arguments standing on top of each other.

Private money is not a blockchain advancement, Supply chain management is not a blockchain advancement, Consensus algorithms are not a blockchain advancement... and zero knowledge proofs are not blockchain advancement. Each and every one of this things can be done better not using blockchain.

Re: LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

#67

Post by chriswarbo »

web3isgoing wrote: post #18

You would think a message board called "hacker news" would be more open to blue sky thinking. Zero knowledge proofs and a tamper proof ledger of timestamped cryptographic signatures could open up new use cases that are different than relying on central authorities. One idea, document signing: vitalik.eth signs a PDF, everybody can verify the PDF is signed by his private key. He has to broadcast his public key for thi…

Why introduce a ledger into such a system? There's no need for global consensus on a total ordering of events.

Just use a DHT, like we've had for decades.

Re: LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

#68

Post by alphager »

web3isgoing wrote: post #13
Phelinofist wrote: post #4

What possible use case could this be for?

Document signing: vitalik.eth signs a PDF, everybody can verify the PDF is signed by his private key. He has to broadcast his public key for this, and probably also a content hash of the document so that we can be sure we are verifying the correct PDF. He can broadcast this on Twitter, but that is not a secure and tamper proof ledger, and it is centrally owned, and it's not a great storage mechanism for this system t…

> Another alternative is these messages are broadcast through a public and decentralized ledger.

There is no such thing as free computing and data storage. Involving the group of strangers that run public decentralized ledgers requires paying transaction fees. Decentralization in itself is a dubious benefit.

A centralized service would be way cheaper to run (so cheap that it could be free for the end-users) with perhaps a one-time fee for identity verification purposes. The technology exists since decades (X509), is proven in the field and usable today.

Re: LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

#69

Post by piva00 »

miohtama wrote: post #59
piva00 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would think a message board called "hacker news" would be more open to blue sky thinking. And as you can see all over HN, most of us are quite tired of this diatribe... This appeal to HN requiring us to be open-minded about a technology that had more than a decade to prove itself in a real world application is tiresome. I mentioned in another comment just this week, I was really excited about Bitcoin in 2012 an…

It is incorrect to say nothing has happened during the last 10 years. Zero-knowledge proofs, as discussed in the potential research collaboration between Ethereum Foundation and LibreOffice, are more recent. The most useful, or compact, zero-knowledge proof systems have been created during the last few years. This can be partially contributed to the blockchain research. You can more about the history of zero knowledg…

Sensible, I'm gonna wait for real applications of ZKPs though, it's an interesting piece of technology, just like a decentralised ledger. When it gets applied I can form a better opinion if it was worth the US$ billions poured into blockchains that enabled more research of it :)

Re: LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback

#70

Post by maccard »

emptysongglass wrote: post #9
h4kor wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are no use cases for blockchains. Humanity spent billions (trillions?) of $ on this technology and there is no use for it. Now the people who sank their money into this, desperately try to find some fools to pass the hot potato to.

That isn't true. A blockchain powers Secure Scuttlebutt, Jami, Urbit, and has use anywhere a verified supply chain is needed. Because some people have politicized it, now all blockchains are scams or "useless". But this is demonstrably not true. It's just a technology and people have misused it but that doesn't render the technology itself useless or a scam.

> has use anywhere a verified supply chain is needed.

Sure, in the same way that a hammer can be used for a screw, or an HGV can be used for commuting to work - i.e. it _will_ do the job, but there were plenty of other alternatives available. The thing that a blockchain does is a _decentralised_ verifiable supply chain. A verifiable supply chain has existed since we've been doing digital signatures, and RSA has existed since the 70's.

The problem with using blockchain for supply chains is what happens if someone claims that the original source is wrong? Say I'm Maersk, and one of my ships says "no, I did deliver that". Are Maersk's customers going to say "no, we believe that guy, we're forking the blockchain?" Or are they going to say "That sucks, guess you shoiuld have delivered it" and claim the loss on their shipping insurance? We both know it's the latter.

> But this is demonstrably not true.

Is it? I've yet to see a demonstrable use case for blockchains that actually solves a problem. We've been doing this for almost 15 years now, and we're still waiting for it.

> It's just a technology and people have misused it but that doesn't render the technology itself useless or a scam.

People misusing technology doesn't make it useless, but if the _only_ use case is useless or a scam, then the tech is useless.

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