m3ta

I don't understand the assertion made regarding blockchains/digital signatures supposedly increasing accuracy or trust in IoT sensor-reading reliability.

Also, how do you respond to the inevitable criticism that advertising your solution as a "shared global registry" invokes the "How Standards Proliferate" XKCD[1]?

Finally, I like the idea of creating a marketplace or exchange for AI training information, but it's strictly not necessary to use a blockchain for this purpose unless a very large portion of your users are hyper-concerned about their anonymity. It's also misleading to try to build a marketplace of signed IoT data, with the assumption that it is more trustworthy than unsigned IoT data, when that is simply false.

[1]: https://xkcd.com/927/

I use flux maxed out all day with orange-tinted glasses.

This may be one of the biggest reasons Instagram was purchased by Facebook. It's a hedge against Facebook's potential to go the way of AOL and MySpace.

Your friend's site and this article suffer the same basic problem: blockchain technology is really only effective at solving these problems:

1. Timestamp validity is of utmost importance (proof-of-existence). 2. Transactions are being heavily censored and there is a need for truly peer-to-peer value transfer.

This article has a terrible introduction that explains blockchain as enabling an upside-down communication method allowing users to aggregate their requests among many apps. This isn't something that a blockchain is needed for. In fact, I'm finding it hard to see how a blockchain improves upon traditional solutions already implemented.

Also, as you said Afton, traditional contracts work just fine and are preferable to blockchain contracts in almost every real-world scenario.

In the case of agriledger specifically, I am wondering why ECDSA concepts aren't enough to solve the problem of authenticity of records.

Blockchain apps can really redefine many concepts and processes, just like Bitcoin's blockchain is redefining money right now. However, I'm hesitant to over-prescribe blockchain as a solution to all that ails the tech world.

I don't understand how HN so easily handwaves away these enormous problems with "basic income". What do you do when the currency becomes completely worthless?

They claim to have secure end-to-end encryption. In fact, I would say using wire.com is better than Signal because Signal does not make any guarantee of anonymity.

With the wire desktop app you can take steps to anonymize your connection to their server, although on a mobile device it's probably roughly equivalent to Signal.

Also, here is a handy chart that compares the differences between these two services (and other similar competitors). https://wire.com/privacy/

I must have missed that.

I don't understand what the point of your blog post is, in this case. You understand why PGP is needed and how it's important, how to use it correctly, etc, yet you "give up" on it because no one you know uses it correctly.

Is that it?

By the way, how are you going to send someone a 5GB file securely using Signal?

You're right, long-term identity keys are bad. Long-term identity keys are not a concept mandated by PGP, they are a result of how people use PGP or how PGP is implemented in a third party app.

No part of PGP requires you to use a key more than once. This phenomenon is a result of a consensus of people deciding on a terrible operations strategy over a long period of time.

Edit: this comes to mind https://gist.github.com/grugq/03167bed45e774551155

It seems the author is using the phrase "do not fluctuate" to explain wind supply prices in the same way most people think, or assume, the value of the dollar does not fluctuate.

Everything fluctuates, but some things are less prone to wild fluctuation, by quite a large margin.

There isn't a lot to unpack in this article. Most is set-up; explaining how connected he is to a community that is enthusiastic about PGP yet doesn't apply secure operations in practice.

Then there is the main complaint:

> I haven't done a formal study, but I'm almost positive that everyone that used PGP to contact me has or would have done (if asked) one of the following:

> - pulled the best-looking key from a keyserver, most likely not even over TLS

> - used a different key if replied with "this is my new key"

> - resent the email unencrypted if provided an excuse like "I'm traveling"

I haven't done a formal study either, but no one I know that uses PGP would do any of these things under any circumstances. PGP works fine for myself and the group of people I know that use it, because we adhere to security protocols that are just as important -- if not more -- than using PGP itself.

That is a similar but separate problem. It is admittedly a larger problem in particular for bitcoin and other currency systems with fixed supply.

The block reward is 12.5 BTC now, it is not 25 BTC any more. Also Cryptsy ended up failing and is no longer functional. This article is outdated.

Bitcoins can be split and divided up to 8 decimal points. You can own 0.00000001 BTC.

Additionally, the software could be forked to allow division of BTC to a more granular amount than 0.00000001, meaning if all but 1 BTC were lost the entire world could still transact with that last singular BTC by dividing it up into smaller units.

This is correct. I should have been more clear in my original comment. That is my mistake.

Perhaps. Dying very easily is sometimes a good thing for a species from an evolutionary standpoint.

That is not "all the DRM they need". Files split up into "randomly named 100mb chunks" does not make them safe from would-be pirates with a penchant for reverse engineering.

> - Signed Transactions (TLS based authentication trades security & audibility for speed)

I think you meant "auditability".

How are "Signed Transactions" an upgrade from TLS 1.2? How is TLS trading security for speed?

Blockchain decentralization doesn't imply a market-based solution. Bitcoin's market value perpetuates its ledger but that market isn't necessarily involved in every blockchain app.

Furthermore, to achieve true "1 person = 1 vote" decentralization you would need to solve the sybil attack problem which is an issue that greatly effects but is separate from blockchain and voting.

These two concepts are often conflated.

"Failure is not an option" is not even in the same reality as "sitting on our ass". It is exactly the opposite.

That is the million BTC question. Bitcoin, on its own, could "change the world". Other blockchain apps could be influential even if the network/reach of Bitcoin stays at its current level. It's unclear which implementation (if any) will be the winner in the long run.

You can say "I understand biology" without saying "I understand the biology of humans". You can say "I understand blockchain" without saying "I understand the bitcoin blockchain".

The innovation behind a blockchain-based system isn't the ledger or the distributed nature of the thing. It's the incentive structure behind proof-of-work that gives Bitcoins their value.

The non-zero value of the bitcoin network is the reason the blockchain exists, and it's the reason it can be used as a decentralized neutral third party for building apps. The blockchain "killer app" is money (Bitcoin).

Neither the title of this thread nor the article linked touch on this subject.

The reality is also that the quality of users' search results is directly correlated to the skill of the searcher and consequently the quality of their searching process.

Our two statements are not mutually exclusive.

I've developed on a MacBook Pro for the last 5 years in vim and I have never touched the escape key or any of the F keys, ever.

If you're using vim and reaching for the escape key you are doing it wrong imho. Rebind esc to something else (like capslock) or learn another pattern that has more ergonomic value.

I think Google's personalization of search is good for filtering out noise in most day-to-day searching.

If an individual finds personalization of search to be a barrier to finding diversified news, they could always use incognito and search among many different search engines for the most diversified results.

Merkel's solution to the problem is to add another roadbump via government intervention. The real solution is already in the users' hands.

Merkel seems to be conflating the issue of search engine algorithms with social network algorithms. Search engine algorithms do their best to find what you are probably looking for -- it is a self-selecting filter bubble and they are working as intended.

Additionally, there are numerous search engines, unlike Facebook and Twitter which have effective monopolies over social media news sites.

In the case of social networks, Zuckerberg is 100% on the money on this one. Anecdotally, I've noticed my Twitter and Facebook feeds are extremely diverse in opinion and philosophy. The articles linked to and discussions had on each of my home pages are wildly different than what I would find if I were only searching through the news sites I habitually visit.

I think OP used "they're" instead of "their". Read the sentence again with that in mind and it makes sense.