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submitted by walterbell nearly all criticisms responded to by a (the?) toomim brother, (who styles himself an independent psychology researcher, interesting)

submitted by walterbell nearly all criticisms responded to by a (the?) toomim brother, (who styles himself an independent psychology researcher, interesting) plus an appearance by mike_hearn. Why is this proposal to significantly extend the scope and basic functionality of http so popular with bitcoin promoters?

walterbell 2y ago
> submitted by walterbell ... bitcoin promoters Thanks to your left field comment, I've learned from Algolia that my HN submissions and comments include the terms "bitcoin" ~0.3% and "cash" ~1.3%. > nearly all criticisms responded to by a (the?) toomim brother Co-author of the technical proposal? It's usually good to see the author of a technical article providing substantive responses to HN comments. It's also good to have more feedback on the substance of the article. Any comments on the technical proposal? > Why is this proposal to significantly extend the scope and basic functionality of http so popular with bitcoin promoters? This draft proposal could benefit from contribtors from more than one organization (Invisble College), but at least there appear to be multple implementations of the proposed protocol, as is typical of IETF drafts.
- ChainOfFools 2y ago
  not a front-end developer, so this is not something I'd be directly interacting with although it sounds interesting. But I was struck by the preponderance of questions from other HNers in this comment section, all of which seem to be categorized it under the rubric, "what's the point of this?" It was only then that I noticed the connection between the few people making most of the answers to those questions, as well as the submitter. So I ask again, why are Bitcoiners so clustered around this project?
  - walterbell 2y ago
    > noticed the connection between the few people making most of the answers to those questions, as well as the submitter. As the submitter, what connection are you referencing? Your comment thread is the first I've answered on this article. mike_hearn has one (1) answer. That leaves responses from the author of the article, i.e. one person. Where are the "few people" to whom you are alluding? > questions .. seem to be categorized it under the rubric, "what's the point of this?" Given the effort involved in any IETF draft proposal with at least two competing implementations of the protocol, this is a good question. Since learning about this project 10 hours ago, when the story was submitted, I'm still trying to understand use cases beyond "less complex" than alternatives. Based on the HN responses, it's not a well known project, so it would benefit from wider evaluation and feedback. Work on substantive protocols for P2P decentralized publishing is always welcome, especially in 2024 when LLMs and "AI" are consuming available oxygen. If there is some (unstated?) connection between the proposed protocol and digital payments/assets, then protocol security and access control deserve close attention.
    - ChainOfFools 2y ago
      The few people are the same as listed in my original reply. There may be others, but these are names I recognize as proponents to varying degrees. Yes of the three you are comparatively a very minor influence, just as they are likely even less relevant to the promotion of D. If you just learned of this project 10 hours ago, found it compelling enough to merit a submission, and are also pro-bitcoin, then this suggests there is an answer to "what's the point" in the set of motivations that attract the sort of people who think crypto-currency is a worthwhile endeavor. So a first order impression is that braid would help foster decentralization, or at least counter latent centralizing tendency(ies) baked into http in its current form.
      - walterbell 2y ago
        > and are also pro-bitcoin For the third time, what's the basis of the claim that walterbell/submitter is pro-bitcoin? You're making a claim about a "group of three" where there's no data to include walterbell in the group, so that leaves an alleged "group" of two, i.e. a pair. Of the alleged pair, one person has posted once in this thread, the other posted ~20X. So you're referencing one (1) person, author of the article, whose affiliation is stated at the top of the IETF draft, no questioning needed. To salvage some value from this sub-thread, I found a crypto reference in this 2019 Braid post by toomim, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21642051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21642051 > if you want to build a peer-to-peer network, then you will replace the server with a validation function running on each peer, and authentication with a crypto scheme. But we aren't at the point of trying to standardize that stuff yet. And a follow-up question by sagichmal: How do you break a GET request of some state blob into "granular patches" if the state is encrypted? Question on encrypted state and possible "crypto schemes" for authentication in P2P networks built on Braid-HTTP, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40484475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40484475
jazzyjackson 2y ago
both bitcoin and braid are popular with some distributed systems nerds, not sure why the overlap strikes you as nefarious

walterbell 2y ago

> submitted by walterbell ... bitcoin promoters Thanks to your left field comment, I've learned from Algolia that my HN submissions and comments include the terms "bitcoin" ~0.3% and "cash" ~1.3%. > nearly all criticisms responded to by a (the?) toomim brother Co-author of the technical proposal? It's usually good to see the author of a technical article providing substantive responses to HN comments. It's also good to have more feedback on the substance of the article. Any comments on the technical proposal? > Why is this proposal to significantly extend the scope and basic functionality of http so popular with bitcoin promoters? This draft proposal could benefit from contribtors from more than one organization (Invisble College), but at least there appear to be multple implementations of the proposed protocol, as is typical of IETF drafts.

ChainOfFools 2y ago
not a front-end developer, so this is not something I'd be directly interacting with although it sounds interesting. But I was struck by the preponderance of questions from other HNers in this comment section, all of which seem to be categorized it under the rubric, "what's the point of this?" It was only then that I noticed the connection between the few people making most of the answers to those questions, as well as the submitter. So I ask again, why are Bitcoiners so clustered around this project?
- walterbell 2y ago
  > noticed the connection between the few people making most of the answers to those questions, as well as the submitter. As the submitter, what connection are you referencing? Your comment thread is the first I've answered on this article. mike_hearn has one (1) answer. That leaves responses from the author of the article, i.e. one person. Where are the "few people" to whom you are alluding? > questions .. seem to be categorized it under the rubric, "what's the point of this?" Given the effort involved in any IETF draft proposal with at least two competing implementations of the protocol, this is a good question. Since learning about this project 10 hours ago, when the story was submitted, I'm still trying to understand use cases beyond "less complex" than alternatives. Based on the HN responses, it's not a well known project, so it would benefit from wider evaluation and feedback. Work on substantive protocols for P2P decentralized publishing is always welcome, especially in 2024 when LLMs and "AI" are consuming available oxygen. If there is some (unstated?) connection between the proposed protocol and digital payments/assets, then protocol security and access control deserve close attention.
  - ChainOfFools 2y ago
    The few people are the same as listed in my original reply. There may be others, but these are names I recognize as proponents to varying degrees. Yes of the three you are comparatively a very minor influence, just as they are likely even less relevant to the promotion of D. If you just learned of this project 10 hours ago, found it compelling enough to merit a submission, and are also pro-bitcoin, then this suggests there is an answer to "what's the point" in the set of motivations that attract the sort of people who think crypto-currency is a worthwhile endeavor. So a first order impression is that braid would help foster decentralization, or at least counter latent centralizing tendency(ies) baked into http in its current form.
    - walterbell 2y ago
      > and are also pro-bitcoin For the third time, what's the basis of the claim that walterbell/submitter is pro-bitcoin? You're making a claim about a "group of three" where there's no data to include walterbell in the group, so that leaves an alleged "group" of two, i.e. a pair. Of the alleged pair, one person has posted once in this thread, the other posted ~20X. So you're referencing one (1) person, author of the article, whose affiliation is stated at the top of the IETF draft, no questioning needed. To salvage some value from this sub-thread, I found a crypto reference in this 2019 Braid post by toomim, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21642051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21642051 > if you want to build a peer-to-peer network, then you will replace the server with a validation function running on each peer, and authentication with a crypto scheme. But we aren't at the point of trying to standardize that stuff yet. And a follow-up question by sagichmal: How do you break a GET request of some state blob into "granular patches" if the state is encrypted? Question on encrypted state and possible "crypto schemes" for authentication in P2P networks built on Braid-HTTP, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40484475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40484475

jazzyjackson 2y ago

both bitcoin and braid are popular with some distributed systems nerds, not sure why the overlap strikes you as nefarious