'As AI Rises, is Web3 Dead in the Water?' - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

• ›

  I could not give the tiniest shit.

  • Re:

    AC's Rule of Headlines: No Shit

• by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07, 2024 @03:55AM (#64138074)

  Web3 was just a euphemism for kleptocurrencies and all that crap. Of course it's dead. A little trasnparency and sunight was enough for that. The problem is that it still needs to be staked through the heart, doused in holy water, burned, and its ashes sealed in a a lead lined container then sunk into the Mariana Trench.

  • Re:

    Anything using blockchain, so also non-scammy applications like medical records and distributed computation.

    But for some reason, no one wants really really badly for you to invest in those.

    • It's been over a decade now and _nobody_ was able to find any sensible use case for that technology that couldn't be done with much less effort without blockchains. Not even the original ideas behind cryptocurrencies have been reached. Cryptocurrencies are now more centralized than "normal" currencies, transaction fees are higher than anything banks would even dream of.

      Essentially all that's left is fraud.

      • Re:

        I believe Distributed Ledgers have valid use cases. One Web3 use case I'm involved with going live in 2024: web3-based auditable carbon markets.

        Right now the sustainability market contains plenty of fraud itself (difficulty in verifying accuracy of underlying data and metrics, lack of price transparency, some reporting being based on subjective estimates rather than real data, etc).

        The overall Web3 does contain plenty of fraud and ponzi schemes right now, and those of us who see value in Distributed Ledger

        • Re:

          And "carbon markets" aren't a ponzi scheme from the word go?

          • Re:

            And "carbon markets" aren't a ponzi scheme from the word go?

            No. Its the most effective measure we've come up with to date for reducing CO2 within a capitalist framework.

            "The revolution" either aint happening, or aint happening in time, so we come up with solutions, And this one has a proven track record.

            Yeah its got fraud and nonsense. But it can be fixed.

            (But I still dont think blockchain shit has *anything* to offer the problem. We still fail to learn that just cos you write fraud to the blockchain it doe

        • So please, tell us how a blockchain/smart contract based system could solve that problem?

          In the end any system will have to depend on people doing "honest" inputs into a system despite it being against their interests. No system can solve that. If you want transparency over data so you can simply do this by just publishing it. Sign it with GPG if you want to be able to proof it actually came from the entity you think it came from.

          • • Re: It's not like there have been any use-cases

              (apologies in advance for the excess brackets:))

              If you haven't said too much already, can you talk a bit on the "distributed ledger and digital assets" bit of your solution?

              I am genuinely curious. Outside Surety Inc digital notarization service (http://www.surety.com/about) and it's weekly hashes (*) published in the NY Times classifieds, I don't recall seeing genuinely useful blockchain applications. (BTW, is Surety's a centralised ledger? What drove your need for a distributed ledger?)

              ( *) Even though I

        • Re: It's not like there have been any use-cases

          Web3 and block chain is a solution looking for a problem. Why store medical records in a block chain when you could use a replicating fault tolerant database, or you could be clever and use a merkle tree or any other decentralization technology that is computationally easier than block chain. Need to authenticate those records? Sign them with an authority, sign them multiple times if you want. Each doctors office can sign them if that seems useful.

          • • Re:

              Sorry. it's in this thread but up about 3 parents. Slashdot's 90's aesthetic is really not phone friendly. Also I don't pay attention to what I'm doing most of the time.;-)

      • Re:

        I think there is one sensible use case (built largely by some of my colleagues at Google, actually): Certificate Transparency [transparency.dev]. CT has some very peculiar requirements which make a blockchain[*] is useful. CT aims to ensure that there is a global ledger of all legitimately-issued CA certificates which both browsers and web site owners can check, browsers to verify that a web site's certificate is legitimate, and web site owners to verify that the ledger doesn't contain any falsified certificates for their se

        • Re:

          Maybe a trivial effort on the part of the NSA would be noticed and removed. However, what about a non-trivial effort? From what I've read, the more shadowy arms of the NSA have done some rather extreme effort stuff.

          Also, wouldn't it be fairly trivial for them to bury the system in computing power if they tried?

          • Re:

            Like what? Go learn how it works, then see if you can come up with any attacks that would be successful.

            Computing power isn't even relevant. CT isn't a proof of work scheme.

        • • Re:

            True, but I think it's reasonable to take a broader view of what "blockchain" means when evaluating its potential utility. But even in that broader view, useful applications are scarce.

            • Re: It's not like there have been any use-cases

              If you try to widen the definition of "blickchain" by that much, then git also fits it.

      • Re:

        You aren't wrong. I've interviewed with a couple of web3 outfits, their business models left me incredulous.

      • • Ahh a "proof of work" scheme. Those always end up in the hands of very few people as the following happens:

          Computation power gains you money. With that money you can buy more computation power... to get more money...

    • Re:

      That is because doing things that really help society, people and attempts to keep things secure does not generate 1000% per day profit and high bonuses. More likely you may get 10% profit with those. Ponzi schemes always seem to win investment dollars these days.

  • Re: Of course

    Add to it privacy intrusion/profiling.

    Please go back to 1.0.

  • Go look at the price of Bitcoin. They're talking about and it's very possible that they're going to allow or called crypto efts or exchange traded funds. These are basically the exact same type of investment instrument that caused the 2008 market crash. And we're going to do it with pretend money on computers...

    • Re:

      Given that there was evidence the last two times bitcoin was on the rise there was strong evidence of wash trading I see no reason to think that wouldn't also be the case this time around too.

      Thats an enormous stretch to try to link BTC and the financial crisis simply because ETFs.

• Shouldn't we be up to Web5 , Web11, or Web121 by now?

• Dystopias usually don't disappear that quickly.

• Degenerative AI will propel Web3 where no man (woman or other gender) has gone before.

  • Re:

    How deep of a hole in the ground will that be?

    • Re:

      Remains to be seen, but perhaps this time there will be no bottom.

• I thought this was an interesting take on the current frenzy about AI:

  "AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are "value" (how much customers will pay for them) and "risk tolerance" (how perfect the product needs to be)."

  So investors may not see the enormous costs of running these AI systems (data centres, highly-skilled engineers, legions of content checkers etc.) as worth the return on low-profit stuff like image generation (which images in the US have also been ruled as not being copyrightable BTW). And the enormous costs of running high-profit but high-risk stuff like self-driving cars or radiology bots if those systems make mistakes in risk-intolerant domains. And we are still way away from any real efficacy in those applications so far. In fact it's debatable whether stuff like self-driving cars or diagnostic bots are even going to be feasible, for both technical and market economic reasons.

  https://pluralistic.net/2023/1... [pluralistic.net]

  • Re: What kind of bubble is AI?

    Why does every AI bubble article sound like it was written by someone butthurt about the fall of bitcoin?

    When the dot com bubble collapsed the internet didn't go away, internet storefronts didn't go away, direct internet sales, etc. Selling products online was definitely the future. We were left with everything in place to make it happen, and it just did in its own time because a pile of investor money couldn't make it happen faster. That bubble didn't fail because internet commerce was a dead end.

    That whol

    • Re:

      It's as useful today as it ever was.

      I think there's a difference in that blockchain technology isn't really going to evolve, whereas AI still has some ways to go, and as AI evolves more uses for it will come into focus. For better or worse, hype fueled capital has its limits promoting that evolution.

  • Re:

    AI doesn't just mean LLMs and image generators. Deep neural networks trained on large datasets are everywhere. When you do a Google search, it uses AI to decide which pages to show you. Hit the translate button in your browser and it uses AI to translate the page. Log in to Youtube and it uses AI to decide what videos to recommend to you. Post a photo on Facebook and it uses AI to identify the people in it.

    Deep learning is everywhere because it works so much better than the techniques that were used be

• "Always Has Been"

  *Insert spacesuit and handgun pic here*

• Even the semi-intelligent have come to realize crypto is a scam. If AI didn't exist, web3 would still be "dead in the water" at this point.

  • AI is going to hurt crypto

    Because there's still a lot of too bad for proof of work nonsense which requires enormous computing resources that are going to be more and more devoted to AI because it's roughly the same competing resources.
    
    Also crypto is far from dead. Bitcoin is pushing over $40,000 on news that the SEC is going to approve crypto-backed exchange traded funds. I'm not saying I approve of that the exact opposite actually it's utterly terrifying to think that Wall Street is going to start doing large-scale transactions

  • • Re:

      Wel, I'll take a currency that slowly looses value over 90 years over hyper volatile ctyptos any day, and here is why: I din't wand my curency to have the potential to lose 20%+ over nite because some twat says something on a talkshow or on social media. Yes I knowit recovered an you made a lot of money ( non crypto fiat) if you bought on thr dio. But I don't want to have to time the market when I go to get food. All that said my only problem with cropto correncies is the name, IMHO they ( well at lest BTC)

      • Re:

        "It's a currency" is just an excuse: the transaction rate is so slow that it can't ever become a currency. What the cryptobros *really* want is a speculative asset.

        • Re: It's got nothing to do with AI

          Which is why they are desperately in Internet threads declaring that cryptocurrency is a guaranteed increase in value, that traditional currency is inflationary and "cryptocurrency" is always deflationary, despite over the last three years experiencing 42 percent inflation on top of anything the USD has experienced.

          As a pyramid style scheme, they desperately need suckers to believe it to pass their crypto on to someone else and hope they aren't the end of the pyramid.

    • Re:

      Yes, it is. Crypto is backed by nothing. The US dollar is backed by American hegemony. Even if it is in its death throes it can be expected to remain powerful for some time.

      That's not a guarantee of anything. If bitcoin actually became a threat to the established order, its users would be targeted for tax code violations in a hot second... or at least by the time tax season rolled around again, if they weren't already a quarterly filer. Or whatever they have in your country of choice, but AFAIK nobody does

      • • Re:

          Modern banking is backed by massive computing power that's distributed across the globe. With a public accounting unlike what the corrupt crypto miners and exchanges and their shady practices

        • Re:

          Crypto uses massive computing power, but is not 'backed' by it. That computing power is not doing anything useful and can not be used for anything other than crypto. Outside cypto and scrap metal, it is valueless.

        • Re:

          That computing power isn't 'backing'; it's a transaction cost. It may have taken a zillion hashing operations to bring a 'coin' to its current state; but it's not like you can convert it back into that amount of compute power for your use(even if it's one of the flavors that does something relatively general purpose; rather than one highly specific flavor of makework that has no other uses); it's all just expended.
          
          It's like saying that a paper currency is 'backed by printing presses'. Do you need to do s

    • Re:

      Once again, bad news for anyone who had a lot of cash in 1930 and then earned zero labor or capital income since then

      • Re:

        Yes, so BTC is more like gold. If you bought $20 of gold in the 1930s its worth $2k now unlike the fiat dollar printing press currency

        • Re:

          Yes it is more like gold in that it is a speculative asset whose value is based more on it's fluctuations of demand more than it's grounded, utility value.

          Or, and get this, you simply invested your capital into something as simple as a DJ100 or SP500 you would outperform gold. $100 in the market in 1930 would net you $625K today.

          That's why the "dollar lost value" is a silly point, it only applies to the person who had cash money then and did absolutely nothing with it.

          https://www.officialdata.org/u... [officialdata.org].

          • Re:

            Indeed. It's an eternal problem that people think that rich people essentially have Scrooge McDuck money bins.

            No, rich people generally keep as little "money", cash or otherwise, as they practically can. Why? Because inflation eats at the value, when they can invest it and make money with it instead. Hell, if they can borrow money at a low enough interest, they do so and invest that as well. Or borrow money against assets in order to avoid paying capital gains taxes on it.

            The ads trying to get you to i

        • Re: It's got nothing to do with AI

          If you bought $20 worth of BTC in 2021, you'd now have $14 dollars worth of BTC.

          This is on top of the fact that the $14 USD is not as valuable as it was in 2021.

          On gold, is been flat relative to USD over the last 3 years, so it hasn't fared better than dollars in a mattress. Between 2012 and 2016 gold experienced what would have been equivalent to a 54% inflation over whatever the USD did.

          Turns out that you can't rely on crypto or gold as a stable store of "value". There's really no such thing as object

          • Re:

            Exactly. There is no such thing as a stable store of value other than assets that have real-world uses... and even those assets may gain or lose value as society and circumstances change. The closest thing there is to a stable store of value is land, and even that isn't guaranteed. I'm sure residential land in Detroit seemed like a great investment 50 years ago.

            Nope, the only way to store value is to keep it working, by investing in a diverse portfolio of productive enterprises and assets, and regularly r

    • Re:

      It's true that both crypto and the dollar are "imaginary" concepts not backed by any physical thing. But that doesn't make the dollar a scam.

      Crypto is essentially a giant Ponzi scheme. The only actual value of crypto comes from people paying dollars (or other real currency) for it. To get any value out of it, people have to sell their crypto...for dollars. As soon as people are no longer willing to buy in to crypto, it will collapse, just like every other Ponzi scheme. Numerous cryptocurrencies have already

      • Re:

        Dollars are backed by contract law. Whether that's a "real thing" is debatable I suppose, but as a practical matter it's pretty damned real.

        Specifically, each dollar created (there are some exceptions around the edges, but what I'm saying here is true for nearly all dollars) is balanced at the time of creation by the simultaneous creation of a debt obligation. A dollar comes into existence in order to be lent to someone, and that someone signs a legally-enforceable contract committing to pay that dollar b

        • Re:

          My wording was very specific. I said that dollars are not backed by a *physical* thing. Your analysis is essentially correct, and doesn't contradict my statement in any way.

          Dollars *used to be* backed by physical gold, but that hasn't been true for a long time.

          • Re:

            Yeah, I wasn't disagreeing with you, just adding color. I think a lot of people don't understand how fiat money works, what a fundamentally great idea it is and why metallic standards were never actually important (and were arguably a bad idea), so when I have time I often post explanations to try to spread the knowledge.

            • Re:

              More to the point "fiat" money isn't actuall fiat. That is just what cryptobros call it because they don't understand it. It is money backed by a national treasury, using a combination of backing from raw materials, to debt, to law and contracts.

              • Re:

                Fiat money was called fiat money long before anyone thought of cryptocurrencies. The oldest use of the phrase Google Books has indexed is from 1804 (from a pamphlet [google.com] that advocated[*] abandoning metallic standards, among other things), though I'm sure there are older examples since fiat money has been used in practice since the 12th century (in China), or even longer if you include government issues of partial-fiat money, i.e. "debased" coinage not redeemable for pure gold or silver. The phrase was created t

                • Re:

                  Correction: That allegedly 1804 text is from 1894. Looks like there was an OCR error on the publication date. The actual oldest-indexed (by Google) usage of "fiat money" is from an 1815 Princeton syllabus for a course on European history. This doesn't affect my point, but I like accuracy.

                  FWIW, I noticed because I got interested in the text and read the opening paragraphs, which mentioned that it was more than 100 years since "These are the times that try men's souls", which is obviously a reference to Th

      • • Re:

          If what you say is true, how can it be that there are more than 1,700 "dead" coins? https://99bitcoins.com/deadcoi... [99bitcoins.com] If they are indeed backed by a physical thing, couldn't they just be resurrected by collecting those physical things?

          When you used crypto to buy that used furniture, what do you thing the seller did with it? Yeah, they exchanged it for dollars, which is what they wanted in the first place.

          • Re:

            No that person can save the crypto and buy physical or digital items as well. Who says anyone has to convert to dollars??

            The dead coins are like startups. Think of burger joints or coffee shops that failed while McDonalds and Starbucks thrive.

            • Re:

              Anyone who wants to sell me a physical item that was produced or purchased originally in dollars. Or if they want to pay their taxes...

              So not currency but speculative assets, got it, thank you. Things with 66% failure rate is what we desire out of a medium of exchange.

            • Re:

              OK, so I challenge you, try living for one month spending nothing but crypto. If you can do that, then I believe you don't "have to convert to dollars."

              You did not answer the point about dead coins. If crypto is really backed by something physical, then it should be possible to find those physical things and sell them. This is true of actual coins, for example. If somehow the dollar collapsed entirely and was worthless, but you had some silver or gold coins, they would still have value. Even pennies, nickel

        • Re:

          I don't think you have the slightest understanding of what the word "backed" means in this context.

          • • Re:

              "cannot be stolen" - so why do we regularly see articles about millions of dollars worth of crypto being stolen by hackers?

              It might not be copyable, but it can certainly be stolen.

              You might be able to copy USD, but the work to do it competently enough to pass inspection will often cost more than the face value of it. Unless you're a foreign power or such, in which case there may be other consequences for trying.

              And no, you don't understand what "backed" means in this context. We're not talking about the c

              • • Re:

                  I have read about a number of crypto wallets being cracked though. Hell, there's a regular parade of stories of it happening here. Including cracking supposedly secure hardware devices, people having their crypto stolen by a compromised USB sex toy, etc...

                  Exchanges can be hacked, but I'd argue not like my bank account. If my bank account gets hacked, then the bank replaces the money. Exchanges can't do that. Also, exchanges have a couple noted problems that banks do not:
                  1. Losing the password for thei

        • Re:

          You are spouting more lies about cryptocurrency. In this case you are equivocating: using the word "backed" in an unusual way.

          When people talk about a currency being backed, they are talking about the old days when a paper dollar was a document that represented an amount of gold (or whatever commodity was backing it). There was a real substance that had value of its own for its own reasons and the dollar was equivalent to a tradeable receipt of purchase.

          What you are saying about all the computing power is

          • • Re:

              More lies from you! Here are the facts: most people who bought crypto have lost money [barrons.com].

              Though your analogy about Casinos is apt. The casinos make loads of money, their customers (which they will never run out of) do not.

        • Re:

          No, that's not what people mean when they say 'backed up by'.
          What this phrase means is that there is something tangible present to balance the value of the coin.
          Miners don't do that for bitcoin. In fact, they consume value, namely the power needed for the calculations.
          But what this service doesn't do is balance the value of the coin with some tangible economic activity. Or at least, real world economic value seldomly modulates the value of crypto.

          In case of your furniture, sure, that links the value of the

      • • Re:

          The design of Bitcoin (& probably other coins) limiting the number of coins ensures that price will increase all the time. This also means that it is the very opposite of a currency. Why would anyone trade using bitcoin when they can hold onto it and let its value rise? The only reason it is rising fast is because of selling the idea of fast profits to the non-crypto population in the world). So it definitely is not a currency, rather an asset whose value increases over time. Now whether that asset has

    • Re:

      That's a lie because there is no limit to the number of new cryptocurrencies that a person can spin up. Any given cryptocurrency might have that limitation due to the math behind it, but since absolutely nothing stops new and differently-named coins from entering the market, and nothing stops people from adopting them, that limit is infinite.

      Furthermore, limited money was in use prior to fiat money, and the limitedness of the money did not prevent economy-destroying financial disasters from occurring. The

      • Re:

        Spot on, it's easy enough to look up recessions during the gold standard era where they were more destructive and lasted longer. Bank runs were more common than you think.

        Finally, consider a crude measure of financial stability: the frequency of banking crises. From 1880 to 1933, there were at least 5 full-fledged banking panics: 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, and 1933. Including the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, in the past half century, there have been two.

        So, on every score, the gold standard period wa

      • Re:

        Every wall street trader and business person I know is buying crypto. It's just not going anywhere since there are so many excess dollars being printed. Sure anyone can make a crypto currency just like anyone can make a coffee or burger, but most will flock to Starbucks and McDonalds due to familiarity and availability and trust

        • Re:

          Are they selling their traditional investments to buy crypto? Unless the answer is yes then that means nothing except they are doing some diversification, same as any other high risk asset.

        • Re:

          Wait, you honestly believe that the reason crypto isn't going anywhere is because "so many excess dollars are being printed?"

          Really???

          I am unsure if you are just another grifter trying to motivate people to buy your silly coin, or if you seriously are this naive.

          Money is important. Very important. And there is a lot you need to know in order to manage it and invest it wisely. You clearly have not learned even the basics. You are just jumping to conclusions based on what seems like common sense to you, b

    • Re: It's got nothing to do with AI

      Over the last three years, BTC has experienced 42% inflation above and beyond any USD inflation.

      No, there's no guarantee of flat or deflationary behavior over time.

    • Re:

      "Crypto is no more of a scam than the US Dollar..."

      I hope you make a full recovery from your brain injury.

    • Re:

      Let's see, the 30s was the Great Depression, one of the lowest points in US economic history. After 90 years of inflation, seems like 98% "loss" of buying power is about right.

      In other words, you're full of shit, cherry picking data points to lie about. Which will surprise no one, given that you want people to believe that crypto ever had any potential to be anything other than a scam.

      I'm guessing you invested your piggy bank in Bitcoin at some point, and lost your ass.

      • • Re:

          On the internet, everybody is a 16 year old girl looking for an older man to take care of her. Or, to be more blunt, you're a liar as well as a fool. And we know what happens to fools and their money.

          • • Re:

              Why do you?

• • Re:

    Yeah, but Web 3.5 really kills battery life on older devices.

• Replacing already optimal network applications with a blockchain infrastructure that:

  * After over a decade still has no use case outside of speculating on its own value
  * Is completely unscalable
  * Is hugely fragmented
  * Is ridiculously insecure
  * Is full of the worst type of shills and outright criminals
  * Is absolutely NOT decentralized, about the only claim it ever made which had some merit
  * Is doomed to failure even if the above were not true - governments the world over are NEVER going to accept a lawless decentralised financial system

  The sooner any hype around this pile of steaming garbage ends, the better.

  I'd respect slashdot a great deal more if it stopped posting topics about the subject, its a joke.

  • Re:

    Yep, pretty much. With any single one on your list already making the thing completely unworkable. And probably a few more reasons you did not list.

    • Indeed!
      One I forgot to mention, possibly one of the most important:

      Wild price fluctuation.

      How on earth can you offer a reliable service, based on blockchain transactions, when the price of any given "asset" is subject to "value"
        fluctuations as high as 40% in a matter of days?
      That's even before we get to the issue of scalability.
      The idea is that investors provide the blockchain compute power in exchange for "assets" per transaction - what could possibly go wrong?
      The biggest irony being that some of these "investors" are providing compute power on the back of the cloud - AWS/Google/Microsoft. You couldn't make it up.

      • Re:

        Very much so. Relatively stable and more so predictable currency values and exchange rates are a primary requirement for any real-world use and trade. There is a reason so many countries with an unstable currency have to use USD or EUR for everything international and sometimes even for many domestic things.

        Something based on the Greater Fool Theory and money laundering as its primary "uses" cannot be stable enough to be a valid "currency" option outside of these uses. Oh, an look, it is not.

  • Re:

    Slashdot's current owner is a company with its own cryptocurrency.

    What becomes of Slashdot if the world admits cryptocurrency is and always was a big fraud, and/or dumb idea? It was first sold on to a company whose business model was attaching advertisements to open source downloads, then to these guys, what's next? Who else can be convinced that a discussion site with mostly lurkers and where a huge percentage of the active user base is only present to troll is worth owning?

    • Re:

      We start a crowdfund to purchase it, owned by the users. We going full socialist co-op on this place.

      "It's one website Michael, how much could it cost? Ten dollars?"

• AI is supposed to be central to Web 3.0, as is crypto. Seems like a "great" idea, but the implementation is non-existent. I would like a more privacy-oriented web that uses AI to answer questions (as google gets worse and worse). That has yet to happen.

  The simple fact is that money begets money. Open source and privacy is great, but if there is no money in it, it won't happen. In today's capitalist society anyway.

• Not tricky at all. It's exactly like Web 2.0: it's a buzzword now, and it will be a pile of shit when it's finally rolled out.

  And that predates AI.

• Web3 failed not because of AI, it failed because it sucks. Web3 is a solution looking for a problem and after years of searching there is 0 viable products that are possible and exist because of it.

  AI on the other hand "exists" for little over than a year and already has multiple viable products, enhancements to existing products and looks like it will deliver a LOT more in the coming years once the tech matures and gets even more sophisticated.

• Remember web 2.0? Essentially, it referred to interactive, dynamic web sites, as opposed to static "brochure" type sites. Basically everything today is Web 2.0: shopping sites, maps, search engines, Wikipedia, everything that has dynamic content. Slashdot itself is a Web 2.0 site.

  So where are these Web3 sites, based on blockchain? Yes, some existed. But I'll bet 99% of people never used one. That's because Web3 never solved any real problems. There was nothing to draw anyone to a Web3 site, other than to be able to say you did it. Web3 was never more than a crypto marketing ploy.

• Web3 needs to check the history of the Franklin Mint, turns out that certificate of authenticity does not mean a lot. Web3's death has nothing to do with AI and more to do with crypto scams. Plus If I buy a painting from an artist, I don't have to pay that artist a second time when I sell it - Web3 attempts to distort the ownership of art.

• You must have the new sauce in your business plan. Doesn't matter if its a political movement, griftcoin, or Eliza 6.0. Otherwise, the low-effort, low-skill financial advisors won't have any way to know you're in the cool kids club and recommend your stock io the Iowa School Janitors Pension Fund.

  What will the Next Big Thing be? My guess is Vietnam, make thing there, sell things there. No, I have nothing to do with the country. It will just become cool to do, because there's an actual business case that can

  • Re:

    I think they call that "ChatPeePee" now (or something... mumble mumble mumble)

• by Kisai ( 213879 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @10:06AM (#64138420)

  Web3, cryptoshit basically tried to make it self seem like the next version of web 2.0 (which is running javascript using DOM manipulation instead of endless piles of document write/innerhtml, responsive hhtml) I don't know how any of this crap was ever supposed to be "web" anything when none of it ran in the browser.

  Snake oil, rug pulls and ponzi scams, that's all it amounted to.

  Crypto currency is garbage, nobody needs it, it costs too much "fiat" money to actually use, and thus it's relegated to being used by idiots with no sense of reality.
  NFT's, interesting idea behind it, but ultimately it was a reciept or signpost to an actual asset, still stored on the regular web. Anyone who wanted "your" asset could just go get it. Not to mention you could just launder anyone elses assets. It's only use was to try and find a "use" for smart contracts on Ethereum.

  Only people who were either too stupid to understand what they were getting into, or were already in in too deep and needed to get out of the ponzi scheme before it collapses, pushed for any of this shit.

• In surprised VC still pump 7B$ in crypto. Anyone in the VC industry cares to give inner circle reasoning? No/. opinion

• ... "web 3"? I've been a professional software dev for 25+ years, and I've never fucking heard of "Web3"?!?...

• I frankly don't care who hits the concrete first, as long as both jump.

  The sooner worthless buzzwords that get thrown ridiculous amounts of money at die, the better.

• This article is based on a false premise. Regardless od how much money stupid people pumped into "web3" there never was a killer app type product (or site) released to the world. Nobody with the most rudimentary logical faculties present gives a fuck about NFTs, the blockchain is a giant yawn, and everything else was endless bullshit hype with no substance or sticking power in the end...

  AI is largely going to be the same. It's too damn expensive for Microsoft or Google to turn it into a product for the masses, and it's fucking HARD to use it well even for very tightly constrained and well define applications. As a very smart colleague of mine says "ML can interpolate, it cannot extrapolate" and the cost of collecting that data and training good models is simply too damn expensive to be sustainable at any scale like people are hypothesizing about.

• >there's the question of how to regulate crypto — a marquee aspect of the Web3