asdf forums

STORY TIME: So I'm currently enrolled in some college classes despite the fact I graduated more than two decades ago because learning is a lifelong pursuit and you whipper-snappers should know and embrace that.

Anyway, in class tonight we had a guest presenter come in--guy who is older than me, if you can believe it--and do a presentation on blockchain technology. Now, I don't consider myself an expert on blockchain by any means, but I am pretty plugged in to FinTech as it's part of my job, so know enough about blockchain to be dangerous. This guy presenting knew next to nothing about it. He spent the entire hour-long presentation talking about how revolutionary and amazing blockchain was by regurgitating soundbites he pulled from industry publications, asking a bunch of dumb, hypothetical questions, and then challenged the class to give several 3-5 minute presentations on ideas for practical applications for blockchain technology in our next class meeting.

After the class I went up to him to ask if he was aware of any successful practical applications for blockchain technology right now besides cryptocurrency (and not to go on a complete rant about that but most people involved with cryptocurrency do so in a way that defeats the entire purpose of blockchain's distributive ledger--I'm looking at you, Coinbase users--but I'll leave that one alone for now) and supply chain management (I read an article about how Walmart used blockchain technology to quickly track down some disease-ridden romaine lettuce in its vast network of suppliers and stores). Old guy responds by saying that blockchain technology has only been around for a few years since Bitcoin was introduced in 2008. Um, no old man, you are incorrect--a paper on blockchain was first published in the early 80s so it has been around for 40 years, and the only two practical use cases that anyone has ever implemented are fake virtual money and identifying bad lettuce. If it's such a revolutionary and transformative technology, where's the revolution? Where's the transformation? I explain this to him, and he basically shrugged his shoulders as he had no idea.

I walk away from the conversation and then suddenly realize that he's having the class present ideas of blockchain use cases in our next class because he has no idea what a good use case might be and is likely stealing our ideas to turn around and use them in his work. Isn't that just like stupid old people to use young people for their ideas and insight and profit off of them? It was at that moment I realized he had out-olded me, and I felt like an absolute amateur old person.

Stupid older old person. I hope he has painful hemorrhoids the rest of his life. Which will probably be for like 15 minutes, he's so old. Maybe he'll die of hemorrhoids. Yeah, that's it. I hope he dies of painful hemorrhoids.

TL;DR: I am a blockchain skeptic. People older than me suck.

Haha, wow.
Old 2: Electric Boogaloo
"how do you do, fellow kids, ever heard of blockchain? 'cause I haven't, care to explain how I can make money off of it?"

I've seen my share of absolutely terrible lecturers who had no business teaching anybody anything, but none of them tried to advertise crap they don't know about. This looks like a new low.

Please tell us more stories in the future, oh great wise (and very very decrepit) Assdef of the Lake!

assdef wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 5:47 am

(and not to go on a complete rant about that but most people involved with cryptocurrency do so in a way that defeats the entire purpose of blockchain's distributive ledger--I'm looking at you, Coinbase users--but I'll leave that one alone for now)

Going to leave this here because I also have a lot of thoughts and not nearly the energy to write out a whole rant about the many asinine ways people completely misuse a distributed ledger for and I like to listen to that guy embody my rage

assdef wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 5:47 am

(I read an article about how Walmart used blockchain technology to quickly track down some disease-ridden romaine lettuce in its vast network of suppliers and stores).

The thing about that is, for the most part, suppliers already keep track of what shipments were sourced from where. They sometimes call it different names like "lot number" but most suppliers already kept track of that stuff. They could have very easily gotten the major suppliers together, come up with an API that everyone agreed on, and had everyone start using that. Maybe throw some money at a development team to come up with a barcode app to interface with the whole thing (which is another thing that already exists). To me, the entire thing smells like another one of their "look how high-tech we are" PR stunts for investors, like the robot floor sweepers that they rolled out for like a year and then immediately shelved.

atomtengeralattjaro wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 9:43 am

I've seen my share of absolutely terrible lecturers who had no business teaching anybody anything, but none of them tried to advertise crap they don't know about. This looks like a new low.

I had a "AI and Society" course my senior year of undergrad where the instructor from the compsci department bailed last minute and was replaced by a lecturer from the Humanities department. He changed the entire course curriculum (after some of us had already bought the books) in a way that we never talked about AI and instead read musings from newspaper columnists and very dated books (mostly from the 70's and 80's) about how computers would bring about the end of culture. It was uncomfortably similar to the way a lot of white nationalists complain about "the end of western civilization." There a section in one book from the early 90's about how technology was "the new AIDs" and I stopped going to class after that.

Ml08180 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 6:30 pm

Going to leave this here

I like the foldable guy but this feature film is Very Long ™

Ml08180 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 6:30 pm

assdef wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 5:47 am

(I read an article about how Walmart used blockchain technology to quickly track down some disease-ridden romaine lettuce in its vast network of suppliers and stores).

The thing about that is, for the most part, suppliers already keep track of what shipments were sourced from where. They sometimes call it different names like "lot number" but most suppliers already kept track of that stuff. They could have very easily gotten the major suppliers together, come up with an API that everyone agreed on, and had everyone start using that. Maybe throw some money at a development team to come up with a barcode app to interface with the whole thing (which is another thing that already exists).

Yeah, exactly.
Blockchain bros are always trying to find use cases though, perhaps more and more desperately.
(Actual decentralized money you could transact immediately without a carbon footprint could be a neat thing, maybe one day... not nearly as fantastic or important as they make it sound though)

Ml08180 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 6:30 pm

atomtengeralattjaro wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 9:43 am

I've seen my share of absolutely terrible lecturers who had no business teaching anybody anything, but none of them tried to advertise crap they don't know about. This looks like a new low.

I had a "AI and Society" course my senior year of undergrad where the instructor from the compsci department bailed last minute and was replaced by a lecturer from the Humanities department. He changed the entire course curriculum (after some of us had already bought the books) in a way that we never talked about AI and instead read musings from newspaper columnists and very dated books (mostly from the 70's and 80's) about how computers would bring about the end of culture. It was uncomfortably similar to the way a lot of white nationalists complain about "the end of western civilization." There a section in one book from the early 90's about how technology was "the new AIDs" and I stopped going to class after that.

oof.

Shut up bro you're not even human if you don't own at least three NFTs

obvious /s is obvious

That's terrible, how will you ever live down being out-olded?

atomtengeralattjaro wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 7:07 pm

Ml08180 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 6:30 pm

Going to leave this here

I like the foldable guy but this feature film is Very Long ™

Very, Very Long ™

I'll try to watch it some day, but I'm already aware of how NFTs are dumb.

atomtegneralattjaro wrote:

Ml08180 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 6:30 pm

atomtengeralattjaro wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 9:43 am

I've seen my share of absolutely terrible lecturers who had no business teaching anybody anything, but none of them tried to advertise crap they don't know about. This looks like a new low.

I had a "AI and Society" course my senior year of undergrad where the instructor from the compsci department bailed last minute and was replaced by a lecturer from the Humanities department. He changed the entire course curriculum (after some of us had already bought the books) in a way that we never talked about AI and instead read musings from newspaper columnists and very dated books (mostly from the 70's and 80's) about how computers would bring about the end of culture. It was uncomfortably similar to the way a lot of white nationalists complain about "the end of western civilization." There a section in one book from the early 90's about how technology was "the new AIDs" and I stopped going to class after that.

oof.

My sentiment exactly.

Shai'tan wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 18, 2022 5:49 am

atomtengeralattjaro wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 7:07 pm

Ml08180 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 6:30 pm

Going to leave this here

I like the foldable guy but this feature film is Very Long ™

Very, Very Long ™

I'll try to watch it some day, but I'm already aware of how NFTs are dumb.

it's absolutely worth the runtime. I like how it goes into the whole situation with more of a social/financial angle about how/why people fall into it and not just about why the "tech" doesn't actually do anything.

Watch it at double speed if you have to but highly recommended from me either way

atomtengeralattjaro wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 9:43 am

"how do you do, fellow kids, ever heard of blockchain? 'cause I haven't, care to explain how I can make money off of it?"

This. It was 100% this. Not overtly, but he was transparent enough. At least to me. I’m easily the oldest person in this class by 10-15 years and I suspect the ‘kids’ are falling right into his trap.

Froggychum wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 2:46 pm

Please tell us more stories in the future, oh great wise (and very very decrepit) Assdef of the Lake!

For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.

Ml08180 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 6:30 pm

The thing about that is, for the most part, suppliers already keep track of what shipments were sourced from where. They sometimes call it different names like "lot number" but most suppliers already kept track of that stuff. They could have very easily gotten the major suppliers together, come up with an API that everyone agreed on, and had everyone start using that. Maybe throw some money at a development team to come up with a barcode app to interface with the whole thing (which is another thing that already exists). To me, the entire thing smells like another one of their "look how high-tech we are" PR stunts for investors, like the robot floor sweepers that they rolled out for like a year and then immediately shelved.

Blockchain in supply management is essentially just a version of an API but instead of barcodes you use hashes. There is a bit more security with blockchain, too, that makes it harder to manipulate/makes the system more immutable. But I tend to agree it feels a bit ‘overkill’ to use it so you can quickly find diseased produce.

Ml08180 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 6:30 pm

I had a "AI and Society" course my senior year of undergrad where the instructor from the compsci department bailed last minute and was replaced by a lecturer from the Humanities department. He changed the entire course curriculum (after some of us had already bought the books) in a way that we never talked about AI and instead read musings from newspaper columnists and very dated books (mostly from the 70's and 80's) about how computers would bring about the end of culture. It was uncomfortably similar to the way a lot of white nationalists complain about "the end of western civilization." There a section in one book from the early 90's about how technology was "the new AIDs" and I stopped going to class after that.

Yeah, don’t have the humanities department teach anything but humanities. Having them teach CompSci is the equivalent of asking a high school phys. ed. teacher teach calculus. The fact that he ended up being a neo-nazi is even more unfortunate though.

Shai'tan wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 18, 2022 5:49 am

That's terrible, how will you ever live down being out-olded?

I have not slept in days.

ThingerDudes wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 18, 2022 7:09 am

it's absolutely worth the runtime. I like how it goes into the whole situation with more of a social/financial angle about how/why people fall into it and not just about why the "tech" doesn't actually do anything.

Watch it at double speed if you have to but highly recommended from me either way

Let us never forget that Americans popularized the “pet rock” in the 70s. NFTs are just this generation’s pet rock.

Okay, I've watched it. It was really, really good.

I'm going to watch it later, now.

YouTube has been recommending it to me also, so I recognized the name when I unblued the link