kreynen

actual, verifiable digital ownership… using a distributed database technology that is designed to require a massive amount of computing resources to update.

I think where some of us who work in spaces using databases to verify something in critical business processes get stuck in accepting that blockchain has value is that our jobs have always been to verify “ownership” as quickly and efficiently as possible. We typically do this by defining a canonical source of truth and our success is judged on how many milliseconds transactions take and the datacener or cloud costs.

Saying that everything about blockchain is “dumb” isn’t a very nuanced analysis… but it’s a understandable reaction to hearing the hype that blockchain is going to change everything for years.

I’ve never seen anyone argue that the massively distributed nature or the public read access of blockchain technologies aren’t interesting. It’s the tradeoff that has to be made in speed and costs that make it hard for many of us to see any value in the approach for most applications.

They prefer a more polished UI? I know there are several mobile apps that improve on the default browser experience of visiting https://lemmy.world/, but you have to admit that the initial UX of Lemmy leaves room for improvement. This is the same reason many open-source projects gave up on IRC. The die-hard FOSS advocates raised the “but Slack isn’t an open standard” argument only to be shouted down by a larger part of the community with “IRC’s UX sucks and is a barrier to new contributors”.

https://kbin.social/ has a lot of issues (like calling communities magazines and general performance/stability), but the UI/UX is so much better than Lemmy.

I used eBay for years buying everything from computers to expensive bikes. I even helped a friend who bought a car from eBay.

Now? Full of knock offs and scams. My last transactions were garbage designed to last long enough for a product photo shoot. Using any of these products for their intended purpose is a real safety risk and returns require a back and forth with automated systems designed to try to make you give up before you get any $$ back.

I haven’t used eBay in ~8 and likely never will again. The thing about critical mass and network effect is it has as much (if not more) of an impact during a service’s decline.

we don’t have the kind of political system YET…

Roughly 50 American voting jurisdictions — from small cities to states — have now moved to a ranked choice voting system, according to tracking by the advocacy group FairVote, and it’s shaping up to be one of the political subplots of 2024.

Advocates say ranked choice voting could help take some of the toxicity out of American politics while giving voters access to a broader swath of ideas.

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1214199019/ranked-choice-voting-explainer

Adam Frisch came within 600 votes of defeating Boebert without this much money to spend. The money is likely given freely now by people who hate Boebert more than they like Frisch. They never want to hear about this trashier version of Sarah Palin again and donate make sure he wins, but if the donations are primarily coming from outside his conservative district, this election could still be decided by Trump’s ability to motivate people who would still enthusiasticly vote Boebert to show up at the polls. If that happens and true conservatives just sit this one out rather than voting for “the other side”, CO may end up sending this train wreck back to DC.

The legal representation of the voting machine companies are a box of pupies compared to the big pharma lawyers. IANAL, but this sounds like textbook defamation.