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What are you even talking about? People on Hacker News should be pushing for blockchain voting. You are on a tech news site, where you can post in real-time, bu

What are you even talking about? People on Hacker News should be pushing for blockchain voting. You are on a tech news site, where you can post in real-time, but we are supposed to "trust" a corrupt political institution to have people count our votes, with only about 100 opportunities for someone to compromise the process along the way. No thanks... I'll take my real-time information to make sure that my vote was counted correctly. They can use my SSN for credit worthiness and to offer me money, but they can't use a cryptographic hash to help record my vote?

ithilglin909 9y ago
The average reader here has a much better understanding of the shortcomings of technology than the general public -- particularly with regards to how much of what is perceived as being secure really isn’t at all. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure"blockchains"/whatever the applications run on them isn't necessarily a perfectly secure solution either -- not that such a thing exists.
- braderhart 9y ago
  Still probably 100x more secure the paper ballots counted by an easily corruptible social process, than a mathematical equation that is auditable by the entire world.
  - ithilglin909 9y ago
    Maybe? In general, the advantage that paper ballots has is the primary threat is an unethical human. The potential for widespread tampering is low but the chances it happens at all is high. Compromising an application is (hopefully) difficult to do, but has huge implications. From what I know now, I prefer the former risk, but I’d be open to being convinced otherwise. I’m pretty skeptical of a global audit process of a mathematical equation working well in real life.
  - tdb7893 9y ago
    Firstly, "easily corruptible" just isn't currently true in most western countries. Also the question with blockchain is how you manage identidies and audit it while still having it be anonymous and really easy to use. It's not that you can't solve these problems but to my knowledge solving them requires tradeoffs that make the security situation much less of a simple win

ithilglin909 9y ago

The average reader here has a much better understanding of the shortcomings of technology than the general public -- particularly with regards to how much of what is perceived as being secure really isn’t at all. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure"blockchains"/whatever the applications run on them isn't necessarily a perfectly secure solution either -- not that such a thing exists.

braderhart 9y ago
Still probably 100x more secure the paper ballots counted by an easily corruptible social process, than a mathematical equation that is auditable by the entire world.
- ithilglin909 9y ago
  Maybe? In general, the advantage that paper ballots has is the primary threat is an unethical human. The potential for widespread tampering is low but the chances it happens at all is high. Compromising an application is (hopefully) difficult to do, but has huge implications. From what I know now, I prefer the former risk, but I’d be open to being convinced otherwise. I’m pretty skeptical of a global audit process of a mathematical equation working well in real life.
- tdb7893 9y ago
  Firstly, "easily corruptible" just isn't currently true in most western countries. Also the question with blockchain is how you manage identidies and audit it while still having it be anonymous and really easy to use. It's not that you can't solve these problems but to my knowledge solving them requires tradeoffs that make the security situation much less of a simple win