7 ms·

After the 100th clone of the million dollar home page, I would have dismissed the web, if there hadn't been also been hundreds of good/useful/entertaining websi

After the 100th clone of the million dollar home page, I would have dismissed the web, if there hadn't been also been hundreds of good/useful/entertaining websites around at that point.

rglullis 5y ago
Just like that for some of us working with web3, the amount of useful applications that come up more than make up for all the stupidity going on with the "NFT art" space.
- falcolas 5y ago
  FWIW, I haven’t seen one “Web3” application. All I ever see is folks singing its potential from the rafters. Loudly. Perhaps the “web 3” evangelists can switch to show more of these apps, and the real world value they provide.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    - fuzzer37 5y ago
      Neither of those solve any real problems. This is literally the classic crypto "Solution looking for a problem"
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > you haven't seen it, you were not interested in looking and I doubt that any "evangelist" is going to change your mind This is disingenuous. (Also, ENS appears to be functionally similar to App.net [1]. I'm open to being challenged on this.) One thing pervasively lacking from Web3 is compelling fiction. Not "this and that trustlessly," but a functional narrative of someone doing something useful or compelling they presently can't. VR has that. Crypto, not so much. Instead we have pitches of doing the same things one can currently do, but decentralised. (Again, see App.net.) That will be appealing for a certain political niche. But Truth Social for libertarians, while definitely worth something, isn't the narrative web3 wants. [1] http://daltoncaldwell.com/we-did-it http://daltoncaldwell.com/we-did-it
      - rglullis 5y ago
        [flagged]
        falcolas 5y ago
        Respectfully, pointing at the Unlock protocol and justifying it with "poor people dealing with hyperinflation" is a bit disingenuous. The unlock protocol (and, to a lesser degree, ENS) is not about or for poor people. It's for socialites in first world countries with money to burn.
        rglullis 5y ago
        Or for people who ate shut out from PayPal/Stripe and any possibility of doing business online. You talk about socialites, but your kind of comment is the most "let them have cake" type of mentality.
        theamk 5y ago
        Do you know of any websites which are run by people who are shut out from PayPal/Stripe, and which use cryptocurrencies? So far most crypto-related websites seem to be run by people from rich countries with full access to banking system.
        rglullis 5y ago
        Yes. To this day if you work with marijuana dispensary you will be denied of any payment processor. Sex workers are denied credit card applications, even where prostitution is legal. There is also "not exactly blocked but so many hoops to jump that is practically as it doesn't exist" markets: try being a consultant working from South America without getting ripped off in transfer/exchange fees and ask them how many would wish that their customers paid them in crypto instead.
        theamk 5y ago
    - theamk 5y ago
      This is a prime example of what others were saying! We asked for an example of "good/useful/entertaining websites", and you are giving us technology demos, something that is only interesting to Web3 people. How about some real-life useful stuff? Don't give me youtube, show me Kurzgesagt channel. Don't talk about Javascript, DOM and browser optimization, show me Google Maps. Right now, all the stuff Web3 people produce is only interesting if you are into Web3 as well.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        You are basically saying "these GNU people only produce things that are interesting for people into software stuff. Don't give me a C compiler, give me Visicalc." It's not because this is not "real-life" enough for you that it means that it is not worthy of being done.
        dmitriid 5y ago
        > You are basically saying "these GNU people only produce things that are interesting for people into software stuff. Don't give me a C compiler, give me Visicalc." Yes we are. Yes, we re saying that. Because Unix was announced outside Bell Labs in 1973, and VisiCalc's first release was in 1979. It wasn't released on Unix, but that's really beside the point. Two years later it was available for basically any consumer system in existence. And on top of that there was a wealth of other software available on those systems. For example, vi and emacs are both from 1976. What you are saying is that "well, bitcoin paper is from 2008 (14 years ago), smart contracts are from 2014 (7 years ago), and we still have nothing even resembling VisiCalc, scratch that, we don't even have an equivalent of emacs or vi, `it's still early boohoo`"
        rglullis 5y ago
        Visicalc was not free software. Unix is from the 70's, but Linux 1.0 is from 1994. The point is not just in having an application, the point is in having an application created under the new paradigm.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      ENS: > ENS’s job is to map human-readable names like ‘alice.eth’ to machine-readable identifiers such as Ethereum addresses, other cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and metadata. So, for $5 (as of right now) a year, I can create a DNS-ish entry that points at a static piece of data (though not an IP?)? There are plenty of companies who sell DNS addresses (which can do the same things, plus IP), and while they do report to a single authority, that's to keep them in line, not to keep me in line. Unlock Protocol: > Create memberships and sell access NFTs in minutes How is this not possible without a "central authority"? Exclusive community membership and cryptographically signed tokens have been around longer than you or I, likely even on the internet. Being honest, neither of these are compelling technologies. At best, they're re-implementations of existing distributed technologies, just with a new backend. This isn't a bad thing, but neither is it very exciting.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        > (though not an IP?) You can point to anything. > How is this not possible without a "central authority"? Ask that to the people that got shut out of Patreon, OnlyFans, business in Russia that have nothing to do with the war and yet got blocked from transacting with the rest of the world, a freelancer in Venezuela who does not want to have their funds confiscated by Maduro's thugs... > At best, they're re-implementations of existing distributed technologies, just with a new backend. The big thing that you are missing out is that this backend is permissionless and that it can not be captured by any single entity. It's not so much about what it can do, but what it prevents from being done. Basically, web3 can be the place where we can build the next search engine that is as revolutionary as early-day Google, without worrying that it will become a Goliath that controls every aspect of our lives. And that to me is very exciting.

After the 100th clone of the million dollar home page, I would have dismissed the web, if there hadn't been also been hundreds of good/useful/entertaining websites around at that point.

rglullis 5y ago

Just like that for some of us working with web3, the amount of useful applications that come up more than make up for all the stupidity going on with the "NFT art" space.

falcolas 5y ago
FWIW, I haven’t seen one “Web3” application. All I ever see is folks singing its potential from the rafters. Loudly. Perhaps the “web 3” evangelists can switch to show more of these apps, and the real world value they provide.
- rglullis 5y ago
  - fuzzer37 5y ago
    Neither of those solve any real problems. This is literally the classic crypto "Solution looking for a problem"
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > you haven't seen it, you were not interested in looking and I doubt that any "evangelist" is going to change your mind This is disingenuous. (Also, ENS appears to be functionally similar to App.net [1]. I'm open to being challenged on this.) One thing pervasively lacking from Web3 is compelling fiction. Not "this and that trustlessly," but a functional narrative of someone doing something useful or compelling they presently can't. VR has that. Crypto, not so much. Instead we have pitches of doing the same things one can currently do, but decentralised. (Again, see App.net.) That will be appealing for a certain political niche. But Truth Social for libertarians, while definitely worth something, isn't the narrative web3 wants. [1] http://daltoncaldwell.com/we-did-it http://daltoncaldwell.com/we-did-it
    - rglullis 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - falcolas 5y ago
        Respectfully, pointing at the Unlock protocol and justifying it with "poor people dealing with hyperinflation" is a bit disingenuous. The unlock protocol (and, to a lesser degree, ENS) is not about or for poor people. It's for socialites in first world countries with money to burn.
        rglullis 5y ago
        Or for people who ate shut out from PayPal/Stripe and any possibility of doing business online. You talk about socialites, but your kind of comment is the most "let them have cake" type of mentality.
        theamk 5y ago
        Do you know of any websites which are run by people who are shut out from PayPal/Stripe, and which use cryptocurrencies? So far most crypto-related websites seem to be run by people from rich countries with full access to banking system.
        rglullis 5y ago
        Yes. To this day if you work with marijuana dispensary you will be denied of any payment processor. Sex workers are denied credit card applications, even where prostitution is legal. There is also "not exactly blocked but so many hoops to jump that is practically as it doesn't exist" markets: try being a consultant working from South America without getting ripped off in transfer/exchange fees and ask them how many would wish that their customers paid them in crypto instead.
        theamk 5y ago
  - theamk 5y ago
    This is a prime example of what others were saying! We asked for an example of "good/useful/entertaining websites", and you are giving us technology demos, something that is only interesting to Web3 people. How about some real-life useful stuff? Don't give me youtube, show me Kurzgesagt channel. Don't talk about Javascript, DOM and browser optimization, show me Google Maps. Right now, all the stuff Web3 people produce is only interesting if you are into Web3 as well.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      You are basically saying "these GNU people only produce things that are interesting for people into software stuff. Don't give me a C compiler, give me Visicalc." It's not because this is not "real-life" enough for you that it means that it is not worthy of being done.
      - dmitriid 5y ago
        > You are basically saying "these GNU people only produce things that are interesting for people into software stuff. Don't give me a C compiler, give me Visicalc." Yes we are. Yes, we re saying that. Because Unix was announced outside Bell Labs in 1973, and VisiCalc's first release was in 1979. It wasn't released on Unix, but that's really beside the point. Two years later it was available for basically any consumer system in existence. And on top of that there was a wealth of other software available on those systems. For example, vi and emacs are both from 1976. What you are saying is that "well, bitcoin paper is from 2008 (14 years ago), smart contracts are from 2014 (7 years ago), and we still have nothing even resembling VisiCalc, scratch that, we don't even have an equivalent of emacs or vi, `it's still early boohoo`"
        rglullis 5y ago
        Visicalc was not free software. Unix is from the 70's, but Linux 1.0 is from 1994. The point is not just in having an application, the point is in having an application created under the new paradigm.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    ENS: > ENS’s job is to map human-readable names like ‘alice.eth’ to machine-readable identifiers such as Ethereum addresses, other cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and metadata. So, for $5 (as of right now) a year, I can create a DNS-ish entry that points at a static piece of data (though not an IP?)? There are plenty of companies who sell DNS addresses (which can do the same things, plus IP), and while they do report to a single authority, that's to keep them in line, not to keep me in line. Unlock Protocol: > Create memberships and sell access NFTs in minutes How is this not possible without a "central authority"? Exclusive community membership and cryptographically signed tokens have been around longer than you or I, likely even on the internet. Being honest, neither of these are compelling technologies. At best, they're re-implementations of existing distributed technologies, just with a new backend. This isn't a bad thing, but neither is it very exciting.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      > (though not an IP?) You can point to anything. > How is this not possible without a "central authority"? Ask that to the people that got shut out of Patreon, OnlyFans, business in Russia that have nothing to do with the war and yet got blocked from transacting with the rest of the world, a freelancer in Venezuela who does not want to have their funds confiscated by Maduro's thugs... > At best, they're re-implementations of existing distributed technologies, just with a new backend. The big thing that you are missing out is that this backend is permissionless and that it can not be captured by any single entity. It's not so much about what it can do, but what it prevents from being done. Basically, web3 can be the place where we can build the next search engine that is as revolutionary as early-day Google, without worrying that it will become a Goliath that controls every aspect of our lives. And that to me is very exciting.