[HN Gopher] Class 1 / Class 2 Problems
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Class 1 / Class 2 Problems
Author : imartin2k
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-11-06 10:21 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (kk.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kk.org)
| pjdorrell wrote:
| Nuclear fusion.
|
| It's been such a struggle to get anywhere near to making it do
| something useful.
|
| But what if, one day, it actually works?
|
| What could happen if we all had access to enormous amounts of
| very cheap energy? Have we thought even a little bit about all
| the bad things that might happen as a result?
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Re: the facial recognition example: no shit
| edent wrote:
| I agree with the thesis, but not the specific conclusion.
|
| > Blockchain tech could unleash collaborations of several million
| members working on one project in real time, or orgs that are far
| more leaderless than today.
|
| How? Projects like the Linux Kernel already have thousands of
| contributors. It's not clear what putting their work in a
| distributed ledger would do to encourage more users.
|
| Twitter has millions of people generating content for it. Could a
| magic blockchain give people micro-cents every time their post
| was upvoted? Maybe. But that doesn't require a blockchain.
|
| Could a global art project distribute funds via a smart contract?
| I guess. But with millions of users, people will gravitate
| towards leaders. Even if it's just following the way an paid-for
| "influencer" votes.
|
| I too think that most of the tech problems inherent in DLT /
| smart contracts can be solved. But it isn't immediately clear
| what use they will be.
| qsort wrote:
| 99% of the stuff people want to use "a blockchain" for are
| solved more quickly, easily and reliably by a SQL database.
|
| It's not even funny anymore.
| sroussey wrote:
| I agree, but it does change in the limited domain of low
| trust and shared data, where data tampering is a real threat.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| Agreed. I think most people, even technologists, missed the
| problems that drove blockchain's design. Namely, the desire
| to decentralize administration of the ledger (socially as
| well as technically) and dealing with untrusted actors
| attempting to modify the blockchain.
|
| If you authenticate all users and retain central
| administration, then blockchain's constraints simply don't
| apply.
| huntertwo wrote:
| I think Blockchain removes the cost of user authentication
| (you are your address) which is non-negligible. Everybody
| has an identity that only they can use.
|
| On top of this, smart contracts take the code that would
| usually run these centrally administrated APIs and makes it
| public. I think this is the more powerful idea.
|
| It's not just a decentralized ledger anymore, but a
| decentralized and public execution environment. And it's
| not crazy to believe that we've barely scratched the
| surface of what this type of execution environment can
| enable in user/provider interactions and user/user
| interactions.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > I think Blockchain removes the cost of user
| authentication (you are your address) which is non-
| negligible. Everybody has an identity that only they can
| use.
|
| Like a login/password... With a specific difference, that
| if you lose your private key or if it's stolen, you're
| doomed and you cannot recover. The user authentication
| story is actually the weakest point of
| blockchains/cryptocurrencies, and that's exactly why 99%
| of their user actually uses a third-party wallet.
|
| Also, _smart contract_ sound like some magic sauce, but
| in fact aren 't anything magical, they are _short
| programs that can be executed on public data in the
| ledger_ , that's it. And the execution environment isn't
| distributed either (at least in the meaning of
| _distributed computing_ , every node have to process the
| entire contract).
| huntertwo wrote:
| > smart contract sound like some magic sauce, but in fact
| aren't anything magical, they are short programs that can
| be executed on public data in the ledger, that's it.
|
| The only ways they can modify this ledger is publically
| and immutably defined at the creation of the smart
| contract. Sure they're not magic, but at any given time,
| you can query events published by that contract and query
| that contract's state. That's at least different than the
| traditional internet.
|
| It may feel like I'm moving the goal posts but I'm just
| trying to highlight the differences between the stuff
| that happens on the traditional internet vs web3.
| edent wrote:
| How do you validate that an identity can be used by one -
| and only one - person?
|
| If my spouse borrows my authentication device (with or
| without my permission) - then that ID is being used by
| multiple people.
| huntertwo wrote:
| Maybe I misspoke, the identity is as secure as a password
| in a password keeper or authentication key.
|
| I think it's analogous to a decentralized SSO (e.g.
| Google login, Apple ID login, etc.) that can be used as a
| source of identity without the service provider/smart
| contract writer needing to implement it themselves.
|
| With Ethereum-style blockchains, this auth is built into
| the programming language itself. The msg.sender field is
| guaranteed to be consistent with the actual sender of a
| transaction. If it isn't, the computation that is ran
| will not be published to the blockchain.
|
| This sort of auth infrastructure is not trivial to
| implement and you get it for free by deploying your
| service on blockchain. In addition, you get persistent
| storage for free. On top of that, smart contracts have
| common published interfaces. My IERC721 implementation
| will respond to the same calls as your IERC721
| implementation. Standardized APIs is not really a thing
| on the normal Internet, but it's commonplace in web3.
|
| EDIT: by "for free" I mean in terms of implementation and
| infrastructure work. The gas fees definitely are not
| free.
| trevyn wrote:
| It's a defense against authoritarianism, concentrations of
| power, and abuse of that power. Blockchains are early
| implementations of distributed authority.
| edent wrote:
| And yet nearly all of them gravitate to "big" exchanges. And
| most normal people want the security of knowing that a
| fraudulent transaction can be reversed.
| trevyn wrote:
| Any technology or way of thinking is part of a series of
| overlapping S-curves in time (https://pratt.duke.edu/sites/
| pratt.duke.edu/files/Layered%20...), during which the
| majority switch from one dominant regime to another; some
| technologies are on their ascent, some ways of thinking are
| near their peak and will soon decline.
|
| If you can see through the hype, blockchains distributed
| across jurisdictions and organizations really do solve real
| problems for real people. Denying that is only putting
| blinders on. Maybe you don't have those problems yet, maybe
| normal people don't have those problems yet. That's great,
| but it's a snapshot in time; it doesn't say anything about
| the dynamics of the systems involved, or what people will
| want in the future, or how and why that might change.
|
| This is especially important to keep in mind when reading
| the prognostications of a _futurist_ like Kevin Kelly.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| allow me to jump on the bandwagon and agree with you. what is
| the specific problem the blockchain solves better than other
| tech? (other than you used to be able to use it to get funds
| out of china and some people made a lot of USDs during various
| speculative bubbles, myself included)
|
| ethereum smart contracts are "neat" but szabo, miller, et al.
| have been working on them for decades and bjg business hasn't
| jumped on them yet.
|
| maybe we'll come up with a use... i've heard mumblings about
| agtech decentralized something or other.
|
| kk touched on the idea here of tech monoculture and it's risks.
| what happens if stuff we trust breaks and we don't have a
| backup plan. maybe people are waiting for someone else to
| assume the risk and verify smart contracts work?
| Jonovono wrote:
| So, this is my understanding.
|
| Yes, everything you said is possible. But it requires each
| company to build an open api and make things interoperable.
|
| Crypto pushes things to the protocol layer
| https://www.usv.com/writing/2016/08/fat-protocols/ which leads
| to things being interoperable. For example,
| https://www.blockchaingamer.biz/news/1869/the-dragon-
| fightin....
|
| Since the protocols are public info, you can build off of them.
| It's why there is so much progress in all this space because
| the contracts are open, you can clone them, build new ones that
| make use of them etc.
|
| Try doing that in a non crypto world. You are at the mercy of
| what Facebook, Instagram or whatever other company decides to
| open up to let you build off of.
|
| It's a push for a more open internet, imo. Where data can flow
| fluidly where the users want it. Contracts are build out in the
| open, with the incentives pushed away from the application
| layer (less FBs) to the protocol layer (more stripes?).
| Applications can build off of the protocols but they make use
| of open data and open protocols that other applications can
| easily make use of as well. Making it easier to come in and
| compete with the FBs of the world.
| edent wrote:
| But, and please forgive me if I am wrong, there are dozens of
| different protocols. So I either have to pick the "right" one
| - and hope it never becomes obsolete - or use several.
|
| Sure, Facebook might deprecate an API. But that doesn't stop
| me from being able to do generic HTTP requests for JSON
| documents.
|
| And, while I _love_ decentralisation, it appears that the
| majority of people gravitate to big providers. Because they
| provide better services or a bigger audience or demonstrate
| more trust.
|
| And I'm still not sure what I'd use a smart contract for.
| Programmers don't seem any more competent than lawyers when
| it comes to writing bug-free documents.
| trevyn wrote:
| You appear to be jumping to conclusions before
| understanding the technology and ecosystem. I understand
| that emotions get charged around money and power, but if
| you're honestly interested in the answers to your
| questions, it might help the learning process to take a
| step back and learn about the parts from a position of
| detached curiosity before passing judgement.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| Working link for title:
| https://kk.org/thetechnium/class-1-class-2-problems/
| dang wrote:
| Fixed now. Thanks!
| dsr_ wrote:
| The two hardest problems are naming, cache invalidation, and off-
| by-one errors.
|
| In this case, there's a naming problem. "Class 1" and "Class 2"
| don't give any semantic content. Is there a "Class 3" coming
| along?
|
| Let me suggest "Inadequacy Problems" and "Ubiquity Problems" as
| alternatives.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > The two hardest problems are naming, cache invalidation, and
| off-by-one errors.
|
| Aside: the joke I've heard was always naming, resource
| management, and off-by-one errors.
|
| Resource management would include cache invalidation,
| malloc/free, open()/close(), accept()/close(), dup()/close(),
| garbage collection, etc. etc.
| olau wrote:
| If we're going to generalize this old saying, let me point
| out that naming is just a specific instance of resource
| management, name space management.
|
| So I guess from this perspective, there's really only one
| hard problem in computer science: resource management and
| off-by-one errors.
| qsort wrote:
| I'm familiar with your parent's variant ("cache
| invalidation") as well.
|
| https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/19836/has-
| phil-...
| sudhirj wrote:
| > Is there a "Class 3" coming along? Quite possibly. There is a
| class of problems to deal with when technology has outlived its
| usefulness and must be gotten rid of. Coal power arguably has
| Class 3 problems now.
|
| There are also Class 0 problems, like fusion, where just
| getting things off the ground is difficult.
| dsr_ wrote:
| "[Dis-]Graceful termination" and "Theory-to-practice" are
| good names for those problems.
|
| They supply useful context and are not ambiguous.
|
| Class 1: medical devices, explosives, renewable energy
| credits, depreciable property, lasers, streetcars, UK
| national insurance, railroads, electronics, felonies...
|
| If you're going to coin a term, make it a good one.
| ssss11 wrote:
| Title doesn't match the article
| slingnow wrote:
| Which begs the question: if the link isn't even to the original
| article, why is this being upvoted to the front page?
| imartin2k wrote:
| True, thanks. Will repost with the correct URL
| imartin2k wrote:
| Strange. HN seems to automatically change the URL when I post
| it.
|
| This is the correct one
| https://kk.org/thetechnium/class-1-class-2-problems/
|
| But every time I try to post it, it changes automatically to
| kk.org once posted.
| peey wrote:
| looks like a class 1 problem
| imartin2k wrote:
| I emailed the HN team and asked if they can fix it
| manually, since this submission now unexpectedly ended up
| on the frontpage.
| dang wrote:
| Fixed now. Sorry. Thanks all!
| peey wrote:
| You're right! Even I tried to post it. This is what I
| observed:
|
| 1. After posting, I'm redirect to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newest where the link works 2.
| I click to open the discussion, now on this page link no
| longer works 3. Going back to /newest, the link no longer
| works!
| [deleted]
| ssss11 wrote:
| Wow that seems odd!
| Jtsummers wrote:
| HN tries to use canonical addresses. In the page source two
| canonical addresses are provided, the first is:
| <link itemprop="url" rel="canonical" href="http://kk.org">
|
| And the second is the correct one: <link
| rel='canonical'
| href='https://kk.org/thetechnium/class-1-class-2-problems/'
| />
|
| I'm imagining HN takes the first, always, and doesn't use
| any extra logic to try and discern (when there are
| multiple) _which_ should be used.
| dang wrote:
| Hmm that's a new one. Anyone know how to figure out which
| canonical URL should be used?
| pvg wrote:
| there's some useful stuff that pops up if you google
| 'itemprop' and 'canonical' but the rel-and-itemprop-at-
| once thing seems to be out of spec
|
| https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#the
| -li...
|
| Doesn't really help too much with which one is the url to
| use but the link rel one is more righteous.
| golemotron wrote:
| The salient point is that technological innovation drives
| culture. Without the precautionary principle (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle ), norms
| and law continually play "catch up."
|
| The trick for technologists is to make their technology
| ubiquitous before anyone sees the consequences. It's done over
| and over again and it is hard to see a way out that does not
| stifle innovation.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Is there a real world class 2 problem as the author defined? I
| couldn't image one in the history.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| weirdly, when i click on the link at the top of this page, i am
| taken to kk's bio page.
|
| it's easy to find this content with a few exploratory clicks, but
| seems weird it would do that since other commenters obviously saw
| the content.
|
| anyway, if you have a problem finding the link, i typed this in
| and got there directly.
|
| https://kk.org/thetechnium/class-1-class-2-problems/
|
| ymmv
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(page generated 2021-11-08 23:01 UTC)