sth's recent activity
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Comment on For those involved / interested in Web3, what do you make of the near and long term future for it? in ~tech
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Comment on For those involved / interested in Web3, what do you make of the near and long term future for it? in ~tech
sth Link ParentEven for trust, its more a theoretical improvement than a practical one. It only applies to transaction on the blockchain itself and as soon as you interface with anything else the guarantees are...Even for trust, its more a theoretical improvement than a practical one. It only applies to transaction on the blockchain itself and as soon as you interface with anything else the guarantees are gone.
If you pay for some goods with cypto, nothing on the blockchain ensures that you actually get those goods. If you want to sell your crypo for dollars, nothing on the blockchain ensures that money actually ends up in your bank account.
Even for transactions on the blockchain itself, users typically have to trust that no adversarial transactions are possible in every situation. This trust is often misplaced, as can be seen by the constant stream of hacks, bugs and fraud where millions are transferred against the users intentions.
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Comment on Hey, monthly mystery commenters, what's up with the hit-and-runs? in ~tildes
sth Link ParentI don't think the intend should be individual communication at all. To me, the whole point of having a discussion on a public site like this is that everybody can jump in and add their insight. If...I don't think the intend should be individual communication at all. To me, the whole point of having a discussion on a public site like this is that everybody can jump in and add their insight. If that's not the point, why have the discussion in a public place with open participation in the first place?
I agree that bumping to the front page is a feature. Why write something if not for other people to read it. And if I want to read others opinions about a topic, of course I want to see when somebody adds something new.
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Comment on Backdoor in upstream libxz targeting sshd in ~comp
sth Link ParentAnd a detailed an well explained analysis of the shell scripts/... injecting the malware into the build process from the same blog: https://research.swtch.com/xz-scriptAnd a detailed an well explained analysis of the shell scripts/... injecting the malware into the build process from the same blog: https://research.swtch.com/xz-script
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Comment on What is the horrible phrase my wife learned from her grandpa? in ~humanities.languages
sth LinkThere are just too many steps where inaccuracies to the original phrase/sound get introduced, from some original expression to how your wife's grandpa pronounced it to how your wife as a child...There are just too many steps where inaccuracies to the original phrase/sound get introduced, from some original expression to how your wife's grandpa pronounced it to how your wife as a child tried to say it, how she remembers it today, how you translated it to IPA and how a random reader imagines that IPA to be pronounced. Chances to get something recognizable get much higher by cutting out as many of those steps as possible, which in this case would mean to listen to your wife say it. That still might be very far from the original phrase, but it's the best we can hope for.
Additionally additional context would be useful. When did the grandpa say it? Did he for example use it to swear at people or when something went wrong? Or did he say it when he was excited about something? That might narrow it down a bit.
Since grandpa learned the phrase while in Germany, the most likely option is that it's German. The only reasonable German word I could hear is the part "krɛplj jɛɽɛ", which might be "krepiere!". That means "die miserably!" and could very well be part of a "horrible phrase". The preceding "ʃɛ" is also a common sound in German and might be part of another word.
The core idea of web3 is a mechanism to have a tamper-proof database.
The way to make the database temper proof is essentially to share it between a lot of people and make it in everyone's self interest to be part of the majority consensus of the current state of the database. The pioneer here is Bitcoin which stores the current owners of all the Bitcoins in its database. To incentivize people to participate in maintaining the database and keep every individual's self interest aligned with the majority, people get some Bitcoin for doing so.
That mechanism of creating a tamper-proof database is extended by web3 to add more information to the database. They all use basically the same "digital currency" mechanism as Bitcoin to create a tamper-proof database, but they store additional things in the database. Notably for example Etherium stores small programs in the database that can be used to manipulate the data (think "stored procedures" if you are familiar with databases).
Using some variation of such a database is the defining feature of web3.
Since the basic foundation of all of these databases is a "digital currency" mechanism derived from Bitcoin and that digital currency is used as an incentive to keep the database running and tamper-proof, monetization and speculation with the things using that database comes naturally. Often that promise of potential value is a main selling point to users and why those things are built in the first place.