HN user
I've always wondered what happens at the deeper levels of a DB beyond just SQL-literacy. The memory-management tricks (pages, overflows, pointers and remains techniques etc.) is always a great reminder of low-level abstractions I am blessed to not worry about. True programming seems to lie in the OS...
Not OP, but: Moving back to Austin, the overwhelming number of cumulus clouds in the sky reminded him how much he enjoyed their marshmallowy appearance. They don't exist in the Bay, hence his first sentence being true.
Presumably he spent his youth in the Midwest. Austin is a pretty transient city so OP likely moved there.
Funny enough I have felt similar to OP about Texas skies compared to the East Coast. The plains landscape and the heat (common to the Midwest) seems to create a cloud overlay so very different from what you find on the coasts. Me, I'll keep my stratocumulus and cirrocumulus beautiful sunsets of the South Eastern United States anyday!
two parties have to be able to agree on which key grace@key is bound to without consulting anyone in particular. They need a shared, append-only record of which names exist and which keys they belong to. And that record can’t have a signing key to steal, an operator to coerce, or a committee to lobby
Having studied this problem space for some time, this is also my read of what the ultimate solution requires. That said, as the author also mentions, the biggest challenges in this paradigm are social, not necessarily technical. Therefore, I think the new solution requires a protocol approach rather than just a technical standard or implementation.
The KERI protocol (https://keri.one/) has been the best attempt I've seen at this. They focus on a similar concept, persistent long lasting identifiers built on top of cryptographic primitives, but they do so with a microledger approach than a monolithic blockchain as the root. The core primitive is what is known as a Key Event Log which tracks verified attestations of key transactions such as issuance, revocation, delegation, rotation, interaction, and so on. It is a very powerful concept that then facilitates stronger trust assumptions via end-to-end verification. And maybe most importantly, enables some very clean key management procedures that then can anchor the protocol behavior needed to optimize for those social challenges discussed earlier.
Regardless, adoption of KERI and other solutions like Spaces has not been very productive. I fear we've reached a tipping point where the external threats are too large now and top-down authoritarian-like solutions that address these issues head on will be the winners, leaving out dociety with very poor tradeoffs in such a critical area.
I'm not so sure thats correct. The Labs seem to offer the best overall products in addition to the best models. And requirements for models are only going to get more complex and stringent going forward. So yes, open source will be able to keep up from a pure performance standpoint, but you can imagine a future state where only licensed models are able to be used in commercial settings and licensing will require compliance against limiting subversive use or similar (e.g. sexualization of minors, doesn't let you make a bomb etc.).
When the market shifts to a more compliance-relevant world, I think the Labs will have a monopoly on all of the research, ops, and production know-how required to deliver. That's not even considering if Agents truly take off (which will then place a premium on the servicing of those agents and agent environments rather than just the deployment).
There's a lot of assumptions in the above, and the timelines certainly vary, so its far from a sure thing - but the upside definitely seems there to me.
This is a technical forum, isn't pretentious name dropping kind of what we do?
Seriously though, I appreciated it because my curiosity got the better of me and I went down a quick rabbit hole in Sugiyama, comparative graph algorithms, and learning about the node positioning as a particular dimension of graph theory. Sure nothing ground breaking, but it added a shallow amount to my broad knowledge base of theory that continues to prove useful in our business (often knowing what you don't know is the best initiative for learning). So yeah man, lets keep name dropping pretentious technical details because thats half the reason I surf this site.
And yes, I did use ChatGPT to familiarize myself with these concepts briefly.
Although this is clearly the equivalent of Cloudflare propaganda, they are trying to address the issue of connecting a user and an agent in a way that respects the users privacy.
They effectively use credentials and cryptography to link the two together in a zero-knowledge type of way. Real issue, although no one is clearly dying for this yet.
Real solution too, but blind credentials and Chaumian signing is equally naive to think it addresses the root issue. Something like Apple will step in to cast a liability shield over all parties and just continue to trap users into the Apple data ecosystem.
The right way to do this is to give the user sovereignty over their identity and usage such that platforms cater to users rather than the middle-men in-between. Harder than what Cloudflare probably wants to truly solve for.
Still, cool article even if a bit lengthy.
As a Fireman/EMT of 7 years whos been in high-tech for almost 10 - I feel sorry for this guy.
Sure, some parts of work will definitely get better and feel different. But a lot will get worse.
Say goodbye to good working conditions and simple problems. Work life balance is meaningless when your work has a habit of sticking around everytime you close your eyes. And the hero culture of EMS wears off quick when you realize 90% of the time you're societies janitor. That 10% you make a difference is amazing, but for the most part it's medics who are really making an impact and that world is almost as political and overmanaged as technology is.
The real problem is trying to make your career your life source rather than just an income stream. Tech utopia is no different than emergency-medicine utopia - its all fantasies that have no bearing to real life.
I wish the author the best of luck, and the issues they bring up are oh so real, but the source of the problem lies elsewhere in my humble opinion.
As a southerner who has also pondered this, I think it's simply the basic nature of the menu and local nature of the employees.
Food is basically just pre-made batter, eggs, potatoes, and processed meat; all of which holds well and only requires limited refrigeration. Staff is pretty basic crew: Cooks and customers can order directly at the register if waiter isn't available.
Add to that a culture of staying open at all costs and there you go.
It's never the encrypted database that gets hit, it's always the other database that was made because our first database was encrypted....
I don't think this is relevant. Even on-prem "air gapped" networks get breached. I would say it happens on as frequent a basis as any other network tbh. Microsoft hacks get headlines because Microsoft is a public company; there are lots of undisclosed breaches happening out there.
Security vulnerabilities come from the same place they always have. Where IO happens, where transactions happen, and where an operating system does a lot of work. How attackers get to these points, what happens when they do, and then how the system reacts when a malicious event occurs are the factors that matter.
In today's world of complex technologies, I have yet to meet a single organization that is invulnerable to these threats. I've seen a lot of organizations limit damage, patch vulnerabilities, and generally manage their risk profile effectively - but losses are a part of the business.
IMO, the only thing that will really make a difference is when we have technologies that are sufficient enough to male the user more resilient. Only then can we have a truly safer web.
How is YJS different from introducing CRDT? Doesn't it basically just do that for you anyways?
If CRDT is complications and difficult to manage, either YJS resolves that completely, or more likely that complexity will leak out of the abstraction layer no matter what.
To me it seems more like that OP should compare and contrast concurrency solutions, one of which is CDRT via YJS or another could be something like concurrency based on Go routines.
Edit: Should obviously mention Loro, the literal thread we're in now lol
Because at this point it's a well known API. I bet people want to recreate AWS without the Amazon part, and so this is for them.
Which, to your point, makes no sense because as you rightly point out, people use S3 because of the Amazon services and ecosystem it is integrated with - not at all because it is "good tech"
The preceding lines in this surah explicitly mention this is addressed to wives of the Prophet who are unlike other women. The answer in your link even explicitly mentions this is their interpretation outside of what is explicitly written.
Islam is no different from the other Abrahamic religions. It is the culture of organized Islam that is uniquely violent, conservative, and extreme in its views today.
But please, DYOR.
Does this give credence to cryptoeconomics?
It's mostly neglect on behalf of the teams. In this case, the code was never audited and was created by a rather immature team that was rushing for production. So recupe for disaster.
In truth you can write code that is upgradable or ammendable, but always within limits of Ethereum transactions being immutable. However, when a project wants to emphasize that immutability, because that's perceived as the need by the users and the devs, then you end up in this situation.
So, as usual, the problem is solvable with a little diligence. The challenge is for crypto culture to get over itself and mature and actually perform that diligence.
I will say that there are very mature, very well developed projects that you don't hear about getting hacked, because they take advantage of the wealth of experience that's been built on this subject.
The intersection of organizations who can run a bank but don't already have entrenched software to do so, and want to build all the other software themselves seems vanishingly small.
Most FinTech is like this though. User Facing front end custom services built on top of bank infra. The bank infra is typically a bank partner and rarely is something like Stripe depending on the exact use case. This basically provides an intermediate alternative between Stripe and bespoke banking relationship.
Most people on HN here don't have a clue of what they are talking about, whether it is financial market regulation or cryptocurrency or blockchain technology.
What makes this topic difficult to approach is the degree of complex issues which surrounds it. We are looking at the intersection of technology innovation, the long-standing failure of institutional and market mechanisms, and combined with a bleak macroeconomic context.
Most people here should take a good reminder that they actually aren't experts in everything.
What are you talking about? Read some history prior to the 4 years of the SEC.
Look at the suggested reforms the SEC was supposed to undertake AS IDENTIFIED BY CONGRESS. Then look at what actual reforms where implemented.
I'll help you out - almost none. The SEC has had a monopoly on financial market regulation since the 1930s and is just now becoming a victim to the cultural side affects of this monopoly. Shit, I actually think the SEC has done a phenomenal job regarding this and all other aspects of their job.
I appreciate your sentiment, but I want to point out that your belief that "Traditional brokerage houses have regulations forcing them to play fair" and believing that there are adequate "reporting structures to enforce it" is a great example of the moral hazard that exists in the market today.
I agree that law and regulation plays an important role in the market, but as the market has advanced and become increasingly more complex than previous models, I do not believe Law and regulation has kept up.
The GME fiasco and the resulting litigation is a good example of these problems. And before anyone says this is proof the rules in place work - I'd like to point out that our online brokerage infrastructure and market structure has been around since the early 2000's. It's quite difficult to say what has not been surfaced and recognized. And no, despite the nature of the trade itself, no one should discredit the lawsuit as illegitimate. https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/01/29/gamestop-lawsuits-hi...
The absurdity and extreme nature of the GME case shows tells me that there are outstanding issues throughout this value chain. And the belief that our system of rules adequately handles this just because the rules exist is a strong indicator of the moral hazard that prevades our market culture.
Public companies swindle quite often, and usually with more catastrophic results.
When are we going to admit that the current rules are no longer working?
Equating public financial statements with "transparency" is a fallacy. It creates moral hazard and over-emphasizes private audit facilities.
Is it objectively better than non-public financial statements? Maybe. Is it worth saying this alone should draw the line on what is considered a "safe" investment? No.
Again, the OP is asking about access, not what you believe about "transparent investments"
Are you saying the fork was a bad thing? Or are you critiquing crypto people for not living up to their values?
For both points, I'd like to mention that there is no universal value set or profile.
A lot of the database solutions don't seem to account for full security or full verification of the transaction context. You can certainly create an audit trail for all database activity, but auditing other aspects of the product requires some additional work.
The App Trail comment provides a good example of the necessary user context you may want. Additionally, you may also need to require verification that activity was logged, for example for a transaction to complete you want redundancies to ensure the logging occurred correctly.
Essentially it boils down to recreating user authentication and authorisation type functionality, but for all of your middleware pieces and components. You can capture the logs into a single database, do some hashing, and maybe include signatures from devices and users and you should have pretty coverage.
Cryptocurrency as a means of payment is used in Africa. And the usage of Bitcoin as an inflation hedge has certainly been proven by the fact that Bitcoin returned superior returns over the inflation rise recently than any other asset an average African could have held.
Maybe we shouldn't ignore that mobile banking in Africa still doesn't allow easy access to US dollars? Maybe we shouldn't ignore that a transfer from the currency in Ethipoia to the currency in Nigeria requires routing through the European banking system?
Don't act as if the traditional financial system has greatly supported the emerging market world. Let's not lie to ourselves.
What actual digital currency markets have existed in Argentina or any other weak state prior to Bitcoin?
All of these dark markets where cash only markets before, precisely because prior to Bitcoin you always needed a reliable state sponsored intermediary for online transactions.
This is not a tick.
Currencies ARE assets. Even fiat currency requires it be viewed as an asset by society to then lend its usage as a currency.
There are some fundamental misconceptions still, but it's a great post.
First, crypto currencies networks are not attempting to rely on no intermediaries, but rather removing the need for trusted intermediaries. Yes there are challenges and constraints to this, but the successful operation of the Bitcoin network without a single trusted intermediary (and surviving several large physical shifts and attacks from the mining community) is a testament to its success. Prior to Bitcoin, there wasn't a single non-bank digital currency system that succeeded precisely because of the trust issues. Bitcoins success in that regard is not mentioned once.
Second, the current cost of token ownership is not always the representative cost of entry for users. Where the network requires high fees, this may be true, but there are low fee networks with varying degrees of decentralization (Stellar, Hadera, Avalanche, Solana to name a few) that get no mention here. And no, because they are less decentralized that doesn't make the point moot. It's a spectrum, and ultimately many infrastructure services do try to achieve some form of decentralization in even more traditional contexts, so to throw out the low cost fee networks makes no sense. For things like Ethereum and Bitcoin, the fees are akin for users having access or using underlying settlement and base infrastructure systems (like mainline Telcom cables, the water main, or the high value payment system of a country). These systems are all expensive. The fact that they are expensive is indicative of demand at best and a limitation of performance given security constraints at worst.
Third, the alleged illicit use of cryptocurrencies continues to be incorrect. The early years of the ransomware wave didn't even take place on Bitcoin although they both existed simultaneously, to prove that ransomware did grow on its own accord just fine. And today the vast majority of criminal activity occurs through traditional payment rails. Many studies have shown Bitcoin network criminal activity to be incredibly small (in the range of one percent). Bitcoin cannot simultaneously be an incredibly useless, overly expensive, non-currency like system but also be purposely built for criminal payments when those criminals have the exact same requirements with traditional payment systems. Of the 4B hack made almost 6 years ago, not even a billion dollars was successfully laundered. That's appalling by criminal standards in which multi trillions of dollars are laundered every year.
Fourth, feeding off my last point, KYC/AML should never be the shining bastion of success to stand behind. Simply look at the reported success numbers, read the 2011 UN report, or listen to the markets estimated billions in wasted cost. It's empirically a failure of the modern financial system more than a success.
Finally, the presence of tokens in a network more than anything represents the monetization of that networks underlying value. How this is not applauded and encouraged blows my mind in the current age we live in. Digital networks in their modern form have been the source of incredible monopolies, abuse, and systemically destabilizing elements within society for two decades now. That we should not wish to see their fundamental arrangements challenged baffles me. The usage of a token to facilitate network activity, direct user ownership, and provide a scarcity element in an otherwise infinitely reproducible domain is necessary work. I would support this innovation to be done within the confines of our traditional financial system had the current banking system not proven itself to be ossified and unusably gridlocked in innovation. Just look at the rise of fintech, the growth of nonbank finance, and the continued failure of developing market funding (not just developing economies, but the actual lower end segments of our individual markets characterized by small businesses) as proof.
And I agree with parts of his presentation. Cryptocurrencies are currently incredibly divisive, unreliable, risky, and a few have incredibly poor environmental outcomes. But there is incredibly necessary innovation that is occurring at the core of the market. The existing high wealth inequality, cyber risks, overconcentration, and stagnation of our broader more traditional markets is proof that there are raw opportunities that need to be solved.
In the end, I am saddened to see the state of our world. I see the initiation of this work from a small group of anarchists and libertarians as both a failure of our system and as the only probably place it could have come from.
The existing system has failed, I am shocked at anyone who can refute that claim after the insane levels of market corruption and speculation that characterized the 90s, the financial crisis of 2008, and the absolute global stagnation of production following that has then led to the progressively high levels of public and private indebtedness since. To act as if Bitcoin, once characterized as the "evil spawn of the crisis", wasn't exactly what our society deserved is IGNORANT and ARROGANT.
I think he's upset that more people don't like Haskell.
Agreed that the procedural complication is not resolved. Soltuons that do make this problem go away is the next frontier in this conversation.
I believe the path to those soltuons does lie on the road of ubiquitous and dynamic technical interoperabity for web applications.
It's not an entirely technical hurdle, but eventually you run into repeated issues when trying to recreate application context across different applications. That means to do so at scale can be solved by a technology solution.
To me the issues that require addressing are things like standardization, general uniqueness proofs, Cross-app total order broadcast, identity and service discovery, to just name a few.
My feeling is that the internet does not solve these problems, especially at the application layer, and therefore interoperability is a technical solution that is required for a metaverse like vision.