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> could be implemented as a distributed-consensus database. Yes it can. That is not the question. The question is why do you think a bog standard, but correctl

> could be implemented as a distributed-consensus database. Yes it can. That is not the question. The question is why do you think a bog standard, but correctly implemented and administered database could not handle the same? Imagine the following: the task is to move two wheels of cheese 5 km from A to B. Your proposal is akin to someone comming and suggesting that a suborbital rocket can do the job. And you are right. It can. But so can a Toyota Corolla without breaking a sweat. So tell me, why should we use a “hypothetical modern crypto-consensus solution” here, with all its complexity, instead of a well understood and bog standard and well implemented database?

gojomo 4y ago
Any bog-standard database might work. But if so, curious the FAA hasn't just done that: say, SQLite replicated across many places. But the centralized team running it could still "fat-finger" it. Any "master DB" system has problems that blockchain-like approaches have definitively solved, allowing progress on valid messages when large portions of the usual maintenance systems have gone down or been compromised.
- tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
  What do you mean might? Is there a major RDBMS out there that struggles with 150MB of data?
  - gojomo 4y ago
    Of course any major RDBMS would have no problem with the data. If the reports here are accurate, you could fit the last 5-20 years of all NOTAM messages into the RAM of a Raspberry Pi running SQLite. But if that's enough, why hasn't the FAA solved the problem already? And even a "major RDBMS" is vulnerable to stodgy management leaving design in a state where it's vulnerable to a single central point of failure, where "2 contractors who introduced data errors" (!) can bring it down. Modern highly-distributed consensus systems are not vulnerable to that. Neither accident nor malice from 2 government contractors could prevent all authorized updates worldwide in a distributed consensus system like Ethereum. DC & northern Virginia (or wherever the FAA's systems hosted) could even spontaneously disappear into a lava pit and the official consensus set of NOTAMs would continue to update.
    - tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
      Because this was all standardized back when interoperability meant standard fixed-length data formats that everyone had to understand rather than versioned API's and the inertia of the established file formats is too great. Hell, if you _really_ wanted to insist on an exchange data format, XML would work just fine.

gojomo 4y ago

Any bog-standard database might work. But if so, curious the FAA hasn't just done that: say, SQLite replicated across many places. But the centralized team running it could still "fat-finger" it. Any "master DB" system has problems that blockchain-like approaches have definitively solved, allowing progress on valid messages when large portions of the usual maintenance systems have gone down or been compromised.

tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
What do you mean might? Is there a major RDBMS out there that struggles with 150MB of data?
- gojomo 4y ago
  Of course any major RDBMS would have no problem with the data. If the reports here are accurate, you could fit the last 5-20 years of all NOTAM messages into the RAM of a Raspberry Pi running SQLite. But if that's enough, why hasn't the FAA solved the problem already? And even a "major RDBMS" is vulnerable to stodgy management leaving design in a state where it's vulnerable to a single central point of failure, where "2 contractors who introduced data errors" (!) can bring it down. Modern highly-distributed consensus systems are not vulnerable to that. Neither accident nor malice from 2 government contractors could prevent all authorized updates worldwide in a distributed consensus system like Ethereum. DC & northern Virginia (or wherever the FAA's systems hosted) could even spontaneously disappear into a lava pit and the official consensus set of NOTAMs would continue to update.
  - tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
    Because this was all standardized back when interoperability meant standard fixed-length data formats that everyone had to understand rather than versioned API's and the inertia of the established file formats is too great. Hell, if you _really_ wanted to insist on an exchange data format, XML would work just fine.