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Imagine if in 1975, the editor of your local news paper said that solar cells are the worlds least efficient energy source ever invented and they were the techn

Imagine if in 1975, the editor of your local news paper said that solar cells are the worlds least efficient energy source ever invented and they were the technology industry's greatest failure. Or in 1995 you read the same article about websites... now remove all journalistic integrity and quality from those misinformed articles and you have what this post is about. This is an editorial fluff piece with a very poor core argument. I'm very surprised has risen this high on HN, usually the opinion pieces here have far better formulated arguments. e.g. "Ok, so what do we even mean when we say “blockchain”.The answer is really that nobody knows, it’s not a term that has any precise definition and it really depends on who you talk to and the context. (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1363418896301228033 https://threader.app/thread/1363418896301228033)" The irony being... the author also never bothers to spell out /which/ blockchain he is ranting against. Again, he get's sidetracked on his own strawman argument of what a blockchain is... "Now some introductions will tell you a blockchain is a data structure from computer science which consists of a linked list of blocks which are iteratively hashed so that subsequent blocks depend on the hashes of previous blocks. (7/)However the utility of a term of art for any piece of software that includes two of the most common concepts in computer science (hashing, linked data structures) is just bad classification. (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1363418896301228033 https://threader.app/thread/1363418896301228033)" He entirely misses the point that the novelty of what a blockchain is, isn't a fancy linked list, it's a mechanism for distributed consensus. Where by distributed computing algorithms from Paxos -> RAFT and private implementations of distributed databases like BigTable, Dynamo, Cassandra, and now next generation iterations like Hazelcast, Redis Grid, Spanner, etc... have enabled the greatest leaps in computing scalability of the past 10 years. However these are all privately maintained databases. The "blockchain"... whichever implementation to which you refer, must be defined in its usability as a trusted distributed database. The mechanism of the datastructure to represent it is the least interesting or novel part of the technology. The rest of the author's "points" regarding utility and energy consumption are equally misinformed and poorly formulated. All in all the author just doesn't seem very informed of what blockchain is beyond the sorts of talking head gossip you'd seen on CNBC. His own limited imagination into the possible uses are akin to people from 1995 who couldn't imagine why websites would be so big or that solar panels would ever be efficient enough to generate energy.

vnxli 6y ago
Why is HN so anti crypto? Blockchain/distributed databases seem like really cool tech with some valuable real world applications outside of just coins and stonks but I feel like we never get into that here. Or is this just a vocal minority thing?
- vcavallo 6y ago
  crypto is all wrapped up with other things that the powerful, vocal, hateful slice of the internet like to trash in public (while blindly supporting one another on anything that feels connected).
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Still waiting to see any of these "valuable real world applications". I've seen some proposed vapourware nonsense about voting-on-blockchain or identity-cards-for-refugees-on-blockchain but they didn't make any sense as far as I could tell.
  - tomw1808 6y ago
    Most of these projects are crap, but there are some very legitimate use cases when it comes to binding businesses together. Blockchain solutions make it possible to transact easier than before. One particular use-case that stayed with me for a long time is what DeBeers is doing with the diamond tracing. For long time diamond certificates were faked between Afrika and Antwerp, especially on border checkpoints. This is where blood diamonds were introduced into the supply chain. Participants cannot be trusted and a common ledger (a.k.a Blockchain or DLT) is a solution. With a traditional database you'd have again a "super administrator", which is exactly what you want to avoid. This has, obviously, nothing in common with a public network like Ethereum, but it's still "Blockchain" and I believe it's still a very valuable real-world use-case. https://www.tracr.com/ https://www.tracr.com/ Paul Brody does also a lot of real-world projects with EY.
    - rcxdude 6y ago
      The question with this kind of application is usually "does this actually need a cryptocurrency framework? (or even benefit from it)". For example, with these diamonds: it's not like you need a distributed consensus system to create a cryptographic certificate of origin for diamonds (or any other good). Usually the challenge is in being able to connect the certificate with a specific item (which cryptocurrency tech does not help you with). Unfortunately, like with many other websites of projects in the crypto space, their website does nothing to explain how they are actually solving the problem, and just throws out buzzwords.

vnxli 6y ago

Why is HN so anti crypto? Blockchain/distributed databases seem like really cool tech with some valuable real world applications outside of just coins and stonks but I feel like we never get into that here. Or is this just a vocal minority thing?

vcavallo 6y ago
crypto is all wrapped up with other things that the powerful, vocal, hateful slice of the internet like to trash in public (while blindly supporting one another on anything that feels connected).
ForHackernews 6y ago
Still waiting to see any of these "valuable real world applications". I've seen some proposed vapourware nonsense about voting-on-blockchain or identity-cards-for-refugees-on-blockchain but they didn't make any sense as far as I could tell.
- tomw1808 6y ago
  Most of these projects are crap, but there are some very legitimate use cases when it comes to binding businesses together. Blockchain solutions make it possible to transact easier than before. One particular use-case that stayed with me for a long time is what DeBeers is doing with the diamond tracing. For long time diamond certificates were faked between Afrika and Antwerp, especially on border checkpoints. This is where blood diamonds were introduced into the supply chain. Participants cannot be trusted and a common ledger (a.k.a Blockchain or DLT) is a solution. With a traditional database you'd have again a "super administrator", which is exactly what you want to avoid. This has, obviously, nothing in common with a public network like Ethereum, but it's still "Blockchain" and I believe it's still a very valuable real-world use-case. https://www.tracr.com/ https://www.tracr.com/ Paul Brody does also a lot of real-world projects with EY.
  - rcxdude 6y ago
    The question with this kind of application is usually "does this actually need a cryptocurrency framework? (or even benefit from it)". For example, with these diamonds: it's not like you need a distributed consensus system to create a cryptographic certificate of origin for diamonds (or any other good). Usually the challenge is in being able to connect the certificate with a specific item (which cryptocurrency tech does not help you with). Unfortunately, like with many other websites of projects in the crypto space, their website does nothing to explain how they are actually solving the problem, and just throws out buzzwords.