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What I find fascinating is that the person pushing Jimmy to use crypto for Wikipedia does not seem to fully grasp the technology they are pitching. 1. He pitch

• londons_explore 7y ago
  I'm kinda surprised nobody has posted illegal pornography onto the bitcoin block chain, and then issued legal proceedings against anyone they can identify running a node. Would be a good way to shut down a competing coin.
  • phaser 7y ago
    Already done. https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/02/someone-uploaded-child-pornography-to-a-blockchain-ledger-and-its-almost-impossible-to-delete/ https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/02/someone-uploaded-child-por...
    • Nursie 7y ago
      What I found interesting, though predictable, was that we saw the same wave of "Oh but it's just a set of bits, it's only illegal data if you go looking for the decoder to compile the pieces together". Which could be said about a lot of data formats. I remember seeing these same justifications 15+ years ago when laws were being tightened up around possession and distribution of child abuse imagery, that it's just a stream of bits, you can't criminalise that... You can, and you should. (The extent to which it can be pursued, and to which those who are simply running cryptocurrency nodes should have any culpability for propagating said data is very much open to legal argument, of course.)
      • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        I think the idea that π contains all possible decimal strings in its expansion [which is highly probable but not proven AIUI] provides a little push back. If I present the idea "circle", then hypothetically all (!!) you need is a decoder (substring location within π, and video processor) and you've got every illegal image ever made compiled into a handy video stream. So logically (and I'm fully aware law isn't logic [and probably shouldn't be?]) there seems like you would need something else other than just possession of a number to make that possession illegal. (I'm not arguing that's the current law in any country, fwiw). tl;dr -- at some point it is just a concatenation of bits.
        • Nasrudith 7y ago
          Yeah really it is pointing out that the law is stupidly written conceptually as pi technically contains all of the child pornography in the world once you go out enough digits. In the real world it requires a judge to put a stop to utterly stupid abuses like arresting someone for having enough sources of noise on them which through a series of operations could be transformed into child pornography while not dismissing a 1s complimented video file of the defendant presenting their driver's license to a camera before molesting a child as tampered evidence. Personally I believe the law is long overdue for refactoring but that it would be a twofold nightmare to first actually do it and second getting it approved through the mechanisms of legislation.
        • gowld 7y ago
          Information theory, which the law uses informally and approximately correctly, provides a solution.
        • 2zcon 7y ago
          >you would need something else other than just possession of a number to make that possession illegal. Yes, the index, which would itself be the encoding of the file. It's just Huffman coding optimising for the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter.
        • Nursie 7y ago
          It provides no pushback at all when a picture has been taken, jpeg encoded and then sliced into pieces and inserted onto the blockchain as extra data on a number of transactions, in a way easily recognised and easily re-extracts. Sure, those numbers could have come about some other way, but they didn't. Your hypothetical decoder is actually going to contain a very large amount of very specific data as well, so much so that the 'circle' part of it is more or less irrelevant. You've just defined a (very poor) data encoding scheme.
  • stiray 7y ago
    Why pornography? Magnet links... https://torrentfreak.com/openpgp-keyservers-now-store-irremovable-torrent-magnet-links-180907/ https://torrentfreak.com/openpgp-keyservers-now-store-irremo...
• st_goliath 7y ago
  > What I find fascinating is that the person pushing Jimmy to use crypto for Wikipedia does not seem to fully grasp the technology they are pitching. In my experience so far, this seems to be a fairly regular thing when the word "blockchain" crops up in a conversation.
  • leppr 7y ago
    Don't generalize from such a sample please. BSV is a cryptocurrency forked from Bitcoin by supporters of a businessman called Craig Wright[1] who is widely considered as a fraud, even within crypto. Just like with any nascent, hyped-up field, you will have people who are in it purely for the money. The fact that cryptocurrency makes it trivial to operate and participate in Ponzis exacerbates the issue, but if you went to a random ML/AI conference a few years ago you'd also have been pitched dozens of Ponzis (in the form of nonsensical startups) by opportunists who understand nothing about the technology. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Steven_Wright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Steven_Wright
    • acdha 7y ago
      There’s a key difference: ML was solving real problems from day one - not everything, not as well as some boosters claimed but real products did useful work. Bitcoin a decade in has … ?
      • rjmunro 7y ago
        Ransomware? That's been quite successful, and mostly enabled by Bitcoin. :-)
        • azinman2 7y ago
          Don’t forget drugs and guns!
      • leppr 7y ago
        What are you implying exactly: that there are no problems with present day currencies, or that Bitcoin doesn't solve any of those problems? > ML was solving real problems from day one No, machine learning developped slowly over decades before it could be fit into practical applications. Bitcoin's launch was more than the launch of a product, it was the first time the ideas in its paper were actually put together. If we put cryptocurrency on the ML R&D timeline, we'd be in 1970 right now. Of course, in the present day it solves more niche problems than ML which everybody uses through Google, but the fact that it's already used by real people at all is remarkable.
• Nursie 7y ago
  I particularly enjoyed (paraphrased) - "What exactly are proposing?" "That you go away and learn more about blockchain" I mean wow, what a pitch. You need to use my thing, I can't explain how exactly, or what it'll do for you, you need to figure that out yourself!
  • bangboombang 7y ago
    I've been on the internet for so long that I genuinely don't know whether this person is serious or trolling hard. Also that person chiming in calling Jimmy anti-capitalist cracked me up. Oh an OT: WTF is a cashtag? I'm not using Twitter, the linkified $BSV in the very first message was new to me, and on hover the URL reveals it's a cashtag. I'm feeling old.
    • reportgunner 7y ago
      It's a tag for tickers, also works with stock market tickers, e.g. $GE
    • acdha 7y ago
      Based on the decade of cult-like blockchain advocacy I’ve seen, I’m going with “dead serious”. There are a few - maybe as high as 1-2% - people in that community who genuinely understand the technology and its relevance but it’s dominated by get-rich-quick types. Once you’ve “invested” the only way you make money is by convincing other people to buy in and that usually means turning into a marketing bot pushing it for every problem — basically the nerd equivalent of joining an MLM.
      • DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
        meanwhile professors in academia teaching students (who came there to learn from an authoritative source) that blockchain is the future and an important skill in the industry. IMO academia doesn't do enough and is very much complicit in peddling this horse manure.
        • 7y ago
• topmonk 7y ago
  > then you have billions of people now able to access illegal content, that can never be removed because it is on a blockchain It's software. A blockchain can be programmed to accommodate your use case. It can also accommodate preventing bias all powerful editors from destroying or manipulating information without the approval of the community, which wikipedia does not.
  • Nursie 7y ago
    How exactly can it do that, while also allowing those same all-powerful entities to unilaterally remove things like illegal content?
    • topmonk 7y ago
      I can give you one implementation off the top of my head. You could, in the blockchain, elect some editors that could remove things, but the effect would be subject to a time delay, such as a month for example. So things removed would still be on the blockchain but would be marked with some sort of quarantine bit that is set later in the chain. When it comes time to remove the offending data, the software that verifies the blockchain would accept in lieu of the actual data, a set of signatures of the elected editors. All nodes would replace the block with banned data with the replaced one. It really isn't that hard.
      • dsr_ 7y ago
        For that month, nobody outside of Saudi Arabia and Somalia could accept updates to the blockchain, because it has child pornography on it. I suppose limiting blockchain updates to one month intervals could help solve the energy problem...
        • topmonk 7y ago
          Jesus Christ, I'm not the poster child for this, ok? Just because you can find something you think is a problem with an implementation I came up with on the fly, doesn't mean the whole concept is bad. Fine, make it instant. People can compare the old data with the new, and notice, and vote out an editor who is abusing their power.
• Shivetya 7y ago
  Oh I suspect the end game here isn't to preserve wikipedia as it is but instead create a system by which they have a wikipedia with facts they approve of and a means to track down anyone who dares correct them. Pretty much the goal of all these fact checking systems that keep getting offered up. We need protecting, facts need protecting, provided it is all approved facts and people and a means to track down those who are not approved or have ideas that are not approved
  • davidgerard 7y ago
    Nothing so complicated. His end game here is to make number go up.
• sho 7y ago
  What you have to know is that there are thousands of people out there who made windfall gains during the rise of bitcoin and the others. Say you bought or mined 100 bitcoins back when they were a dollar, and somehow didn't sell - they're worth a million today, on paper. If you can talk up BTC/blockchain in some public place such that someone notable agrees it's useful - Wales qualifies - the crypto press would go nuts. "Wikipedia founder looking into blockchain!!" - anything to get it back in the press/public consciousness. If you can get it up just 10%, that's on paper $100k. For thousands of people, this is their motivation. Talking up bitcoin is literally their full time job.
  • netsharc 7y ago
    I remember reading an article about Bitcoin where the author pointed out: when you buy some bitcoins, you're buying because you're hoping it will go up and you can sell and make profit in the future. So automatically, you're going to be cheerleading and promoting it, in hopes it rises in value...
    • jraedisch 7y ago
      Same with every asset, I would think.
      • eru 7y ago
        Yes. And that's why short-selling is so important.
        • lr4444lr 7y ago
          Wow, never thought I'd hear such a good defense of short-selling, but you're right.
          • eru 7y ago
            Thanks for the compliment. It's pretty much the orthodox standard argument, so no stroke of genius from me. Orthodox economics is severely underrated. Oh, and bitcoin got a decent short-selling facility with the futures trading a while back. (No clue why you are getting downvoted.)
• ce4 7y ago
  What I really hate about digital currencies is that people call it "crypto" all the time, especially in your context someone can misread it as "cryptography" instead of crypto-money... this is often highly misleading and casts a bad shadow on cryptography (for people who aren't knowledgable in these fields.
  • veidr 7y ago
    This bugs the shit out of me, too, but it is in some sense correct. Cryptocurrency enjoys a much, much higher mindshare among humans than cryptography. I guess because it's money. And also because it's been this weird but actual bubble, not to mention countless ponzi schemes and debased ICOs and Floyd Mayweather in a private jet and whatever. I've resigned myself to saying all the syllables and typing all the characters of "cryptography" when I discuss it because I don't think you and I are going to win this one.
  • davidgerard 7y ago
    sadly, it's pretty much accepted finance jargon now. You can always think of it, every time you see it, as meaning "cryptosporidium"
    • BenjiWiebe 7y ago
      I live on a farm. When we talk about cryptosporidium we always just say crypto.
  • snowwrestler 7y ago
    Unfortunately I think this fight was officially lost when noted cryptographer Matt Blaze gave in and sold the crypto.com domain to a blockchain company. (I don't blame him for doing so, I just think it's a noteworthy event.) What I mean is: I agree with you, but I think the crypto ship has sailed. For what it's worth I started backpacking in the 1990s and back then "crypto" to me meant cryptosporidium, the 2nd biggest concern about drinking backcountry water (after giardia).
    • Slartie 7y ago
• jagged-chisel 7y ago
  > ... pushing Jimmy to use crypto[currency] ... But to your point, there are hangers-on in the technology space advocating every day for the use of things they don’t understand. It becomes wearisome trying to deal with them. They can never truly explain, beyond market-speak, what they propose. It’s really only troublesome when they’ve sold their snake oil to someone with clout in your company ...
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • maushu 7y ago
    I've noticed that at work about microservices. No, Bob, you don't need microservices for this internal application with a userbase of 20.
• leppr 7y ago
  > 2. Why would anyone want people to post illegal material on a blockchain when it is immutable? Let's assume the culprit goes to jail, but then you have billions of people now able to access illegal content, that can never be removed because it is on a blockchain Obviously he was proposing storing metadata, not the content itself. Typically this kind of system works by storing a checksum of the content, or a link to the resource in an external decentralized-but-mutable store like IPFS. The illegal files would be dropped but there would still be an undeniable record on the blockchain. I'm not defending the nonsensical use case (decentralizing the attribution part in an otherwise centrally controlled system wouldn't benefit anyone), but you might want to look more into crypto yourself if you care to learn. EDIT: As expected, anything that's not bashing crypto (preferably with unrelated arguments) rakes in downvotes. Aah the lovely HN hivemind.
  • dpark 7y ago
    > EDIT: As expected, anything that's not bashing crypto (preferably with unrelated arguments) rakes in downvotes. Aah the lovely HN hivemind. I’m guessing you’re getting downvoted because 1) you’re assuming a lot about what this guy intended and giving him a lot of credit when he clearly didn’t understand the topic, and 2) you end with “you might want to look more into crypto yourself if you care to learn” which almost seems like trolling because it’s essentially what this guy told Wales.
    • leppr 7y ago
      Thanks for the explanation but: > 1) you’re assuming a lot about what this guy intended and giving him a lot of credit when he clearly didn’t understand the topic I'll quote Daniel Krawisz's tweets with added emphasis on the points which indicate he wasn't proposing storing content on a blockchain: > It would be so cheap to record [enough information] about all @Wikipedia interactions on the $BSV blockchain [...] Key word "enough", suggesting "not all". > My point is just that because because Bitcoin transactions always leave records, someone who uploaded illegal content would leave you with more [contextual information] that you could track on the blockchain than you would have if there weren't payments associated with their interactions. "contextual information" == "metadata" > 2) you end with “you might want to look more into crypto yourself if you care to learn” which almost seems like trolling because it’s essentially what this guy told Wales. That was more about noticing the irony in GP chastising the tweeter for their ignorance and then showing seemingly greater ignorance about the same topic.
• vinniejames 7y ago
  The sad part is he's not even pitching Bitcoin. He's pitching a forked version created by a guy named Craig https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Steven_Wright https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Steven_Wright
  • inoop 7y ago
    Pitching Bitcoin would be just as sad.
    • vinniejames 7y ago
      It wouldn't even make sense, the Bitcoin blockchain is intended to be used almost exclusively as a distributed transaction ledger. If you want decentralized storage look at the IPFS or Storj projects
• simias 7y ago
  That's very frustrating when arguing against blockchain/cryptocurrencies on the internet (and even in places like HN). For every blockchain enthusiast that has a good understanding of the technology and interesting arguments you have a dozen of people who have barely any understanding of how it works and what it can really do and will spew all sorts nonsense, sometimes even self-contradicting themselves in the process. I suppose that some of them argue in bad faith because they're invested in the technology and want to get rich. This particular issue of the privacy of the blockchain is one of the best examples, I very commonly see discussions in CC circles where it's both argued that blockchain respects its user's privacy and at the same time that we shouldn't be worried about bad actors abusing an anonymous, unregulated system to fuel corruption or highly illegal stuff because "everything is public on the blockchain, it's completely transparent". I guess that's why many of them have this obsession about quantum resistance, there's clearly a state superposition at play in there somewhere. An other favorite of mine is "what do you mean cryptocurrency is unpractical? I use it to pay everyday using <centrally operated credit card service provided by a centrally operated cryptocurrency exchange using an off-chain ledger that may or may not eventually be settled in bulk on the blockchain>". Sounds like Visa with extra steps to me.
  • SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
    > I suppose that some of them argue in bad faith because they're invested in the technology and want to get rich. And some of them argue in what they would call good faith, for they have drunk the koolaide, want to believe, for this allows them to believe that they hold a valuable asset, were clever in getting in early, etc. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
  • throw0101a 7y ago
    > ... you have a dozen of people who have barely any understanding of how it works and what it can really do ... NIST has a really good document, Blockchain Technology Overview (NISTIR 8202): * https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8202/final https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8202/final Chapter 8, Application Considerations, has a good yes/no flowchart that asks a series of question before saying "maybe Blockchain" * Do you need a shared, consistent data store? * Does more than one entity need to contribute data? * Data records, once written, are never updated or deleted? * Sensitive identifiers WILL NOT be written to the data store? * Are the entities with write access having a hard time deciding who should be in control of the data store? * Do you want a tamperproof log of all writes to the data store? If the answer to any of the above questions is "no", NIST suggests something else.
• raverbashing 7y ago
  "the person pushing...to use crypto... does not seem to fully grasp the technology they are pitching" This is a summary of 99% of "blockchain will solve your problem" pitches. Nor they understand the existing state of the art in DBs and other information storage systems. (Technology that's been around since the 70s)
• wayoutthere 7y ago
  In all fairness, the OP seems young -- I remember when I was naive and idealistic too and that the technology I had invested time in learning was so obviously going to be the backbone of everything to come. It's a classic case of starting with technology and trying to shoehorn a use case into it rather than starting from a use case and molding the technology to fit. Jimmy's reply is basically "you don't understand the use case"; which the OP does not because he's trying to find a use for the cool tech he learned. What I don't understand is why Jimmy is publicly arguing with someone as green as the OP...
• loa_in_ 7y ago
  > 2. Why would anyone want people to post illegal material on a blockchain when it is immutable? Let's assume the culprit goes to jail, but then you have billions of people now able to access illegal content, that can never be removed because it is on a blockchain I guess that's the whole point of it: illegal doesn't mean it's immoral, and no content could be silenced. But then another issue is who is going to pay for storing terabytes of copies of communist manifesto in-between legitimate edits to articles.
• tmountain 7y ago
  All the while throwing out phrases like "byzantine fault tolerant" to add a sprinkle of esotericism to his proposal. The blockchain is cool technology, but it's odd how many people try to force-fit it into domains where it just doesn't belong. I have to wonder if the "investor" side of equation is causing this kind of desperation regarding technical use cases.
• SkyBelow 7y ago
  >2. Why would anyone want people to post illegal material on a blockchain when it is immutable? Let's assume the culprit goes to jail, but then you have billions of people now able to access illegal content, that can never be removed because it is on a blockchain >What a sales pitch. Makes sense to me. It hampers government censorship by making something illegal. While I'm sure people have exceptions they think should be illegal and inaccessible, the end result with technology is you either have a technology that is resistant to censorship for everything or nothing, and I prefer everything. It is the same thing with encryption. You can give the government a backdoor just for the super illegal stuff you really want to stop, but the backdoor will exist for all material and thus compromise encryption in general, even if the government super duper pinky promises to only use it on the original illegal stuff. Too much of this is all or nothing and I think the powers that wish for censorship keep pushing for 'just one exception' for a specific kind of illegal material to get public support for compromising the system for just that one thing, betting on the average individual not realizing that the compromise compromises the whole systems resistance against government censorship at any level.
  • Jasper_ 7y ago
    That's not necessarily a good thing for Wikipedia, run by a well-respected organization that very much wants to remain legally operating and retain the ability to deal with infringing or illegal data and remove it. Just because you want this does not mean Wikipedia does. If that now means you need to convince Wikipedia that, no, they actually want to be associated with this content for eternity, that is the worst sales pitch ever made.
    • SkyBelow 7y ago
      I get that organizations want to avoid the association because of the current social view of the technology. I wanted to give a different view of what the sales pitch could be (for that particular item, my response isn't for the other issue called out). I don't see why it is considered such an inherently bad sales pitch. It is a sales pitch that involves taking a stand. Just because the cost benefit aren't in line with current organization goals does not make it the worst sales pitch ever. Is it any worse than trying to convince a group to run a tor node, giving all the sorts of illegal things that happen over tor? There are social and legal ramifications, but that is also true of using tor, and if certain government officials get their way, of using encryption without the government being given a backdoor. Currently data stores that can't forget have a worse view, but I don't really see why people treat it as such a difference of kinds instead of just a difference of degrees.
• the_gastropod 7y ago
  > What I find fascinating is that the person pushing Jimmy to use crypto for Wikipedia does not seem to fully grasp the technology they are pitching. I find this pretty perfectly describes the majority of crypto enthusiasts.
• jkoudys 7y ago
  #2 is the weirdest for me. You want a fully immutable, distributed widely by design, system for exploiting children? wtf? I'm much more concerned about the damage done to kids than about providing an additional, likely ineffective, way to identify a distributor. They're also not seeing the flip-side of paying-to-edit and tracking all editors: it's trivial for a government to then use it do identify anyone they consider a dissident.
• epicgiga 7y ago
  Has anybody here ever actually met a human being who has used cryptocurrency in a way other than: (a) speculating (including trying to hype and pump "blockchain technology" on every discussion corner of the internet), or (b) buying drugs on the internet? I'd be genuinely fascinated to hear your story.
  • HideousKojima 7y ago
    Hey now, you can buy guns with them too
  • lalaland1125 7y ago
    Cryptocurrency has basically single-handedly created and enabled the ransomware industry which has touched the lives of millions of people. Almost every single week someone is using cryptocurrency to pay off a ransom and reclaim their data. This industry wouldn't be possible without cryptocurrency.
  • yardie 7y ago
    I used it once to buy a pizza. It felt like the future and this was the time when BTC was a little less than a dollar and hadn't moved much. And the ledger was 4-5GB. It was fascinating tech and there was some smoke there. What I didn't anticipate was the dark web stuff and speculators vastly exceeding the ledgers capabilities.
  • De009772D 7y ago
    Not met, am. Non-Chinese person living in China. I have helped three PRC citizens buy BTC to pay for VPN service. Arguably, this is the same category as (b) if you substitute "drugs" with the more generic "prohibited goods and/or services."
• JackFr 7y ago
  > the person pushing [Jimmy to use] crypto [for Wikipedia] does not seem to fully grasp the technology they are pitching. Evergreen observation
• bawolff 7y ago
  To me its weird that immutability is what is focused on. Yes immutability is not really great for Wikipedia; sometimes people accidentally post private info and its nice to be able to redact it. However it seems like the least of the problems of applying a bitcoin fork to hosting wikipedia. Like I can imagine immutable wikipedia being possible even if not desireable. I can't imagine using blockchain as backend database of wikipedia even remotely scaling to something like that. Heck, the entire pitch for bitcoin sv seems to be we will make bitcoin scale by removing all the limits that give normal bitcoin the slightest chance of scaling. It seems pretty rediculous even by bitcoin standards.