I agree - however, that has mostly been a feeling for me for years. Things feel fast enough and fine.
This page is a nice reminder of the fact, with numbers. For a while, at least, I will Know, instead of just feel, like I can ignore the low level performance minutiae.
As the newcomer to the, very entrenched, block, I think the memristor has a lot of momentum to overcome. In a EE undergrad (2007, so it has been a bit) we spent plenty of time understanding resistors, capacitors, and inductors. We looked at example circuits and uses, we learned the math and theory... We developed intuition around them.
Memristors were the missing fourth, and "imagine what you could do with that!" My imagination did not extend very far. Everything was being built with those other three and the non-linear components.
It'll take a while to overcome that momentum.
I feel like IPv6 has a similar barrier. I'm mostly an infosec nerd and I've been through a lot of training and education. Never once seen IPv6 treated beyond, "it has more bytes, firewall it off".
Programming a computer is a way of thinking. It in some ways involves the same thinking as determining how to break down a mechanical manufacturing process, or parts of team management (sport or industry), or legal arguments, or considering how biology works.
Basic logic is part of this, as is process decomposition, as is just learning a new way of communicating and many other things.
Learning new ways of thinking makes us flexible individuals. It fosters creativity. These are skills we all need in society, but the modern economy especially.
This is actually, I think, a compelling argument (aimed at adults who are deciding what children will do, less so the children themselves) for almost any subject.
Unfortunately just like putting "democratic" in your country name - if you have to put "freedom" in your name it's a good sign you are going for anything but.
Ok - I like this for some use cases. To restate my understanding so you can tell me I'm wrong if I am:
I think that it's still the user's job to make sure that they are skeptical of the provenance of any photos that claim to be from, say, the NY Times, that are not viewed in the NYT's viewer (if they were using your system). And then, they should still trust the image only as far as they trust the NYT. But if they're viewing the image the "right" way they can generally believe it's what the NYT intended to put out.
And perhaps, over time, user behavior would adapt to fit that method of media usage, and it would be commonplace.
I am skeptical that that "over time" will come to pass. And I think that users will not be apply appropriate skepticism or verification to images that fit their presuppositions. And I think malicious players (like some mentioned in the article) will attempt to build and propagate user behavior that goes around this system (sharing media on platforms that don't use the client, for instance).
And I guess making that broad set of problems harder or impossible is really what I'd like to solve. I can see how your startup makes good behavior possible, and I guess that's a good first step and good business case.
I can see how then a journalist source could use this to help prove their integrity. And I like that as a solution for that...
But - I don't really see that as the issue today. Those outlets that are interested in lying don't have to participate in this Blockchain chain of proof system. The malicious entities like political groups cited in the article definitely don't have to participate. It's still really on the viewer/spreader of the fake images/misinformation to verify the images, and to only rely on verifiable images. But I think a system like that would leave out most of the population who simply don't care.
Perhaps my worry about leaving out that chunk of population means this problem is unsolvable - and therefore my point is unfair. But I do think we need some solutions that are practical for widespread acceptance and use. If I can't imagine my parents (who are tech literate) would participate, and can't imagine some of my non-nerd friends wanting to participate, I don't think it solves the problems I'd like systems like this to solve.
But this only works if all views of the images employ your client... If I download an image (screenshot if necessary), modify it, and host it myself, how does the system work then?
And, unless all users trust only things viewed securely, and distrust things viewed nonsecurely (out of your client), then misinformation and fake photos can still propagate, right? (Or, how does the system handle this?)
In this scenario, it would almost certainly have to be that manufacturers would have to build cameras that cryptographically sign the images and videos. The cameras would have to be able to have that ability, install of the manufacturers doing the signing.
And then what would the Blockchain provide in this case? A chain of cryptographically signed certificates back to a manufacturer is basically the same system we use on the web today TLS certs. No Blockchain required.
And a major problem with that system is making sure the camera only signs genuine images. A nation state actor, or even a large political operation, is going to have an incentive to bypass the protections on that camera - perhaps just driving what the CCD is telling the rest of the camera - so they can produce signed fakes.
That's if they can't just get the private key off the camera, perhaps through a side channel attack - which can be pretty tough to pull off but is very tough to really defend against. Get a private key, game is over for the fraudster.
"Once it works properly, you won't need to spend anything at all on marketing... people will flock to it in droves."
I agree.
However this really remains to be seen. If Waymo got everything working as right as they could it might still fail. This is a culture shift you're talking about, and even when past tech has required less to shift some has failed.
'All three statements using "because" are counterfactual.'
No - the definition the article refers to is this: adjective - relating to or expressing what has not happened or is not the case.
I used "because" to illustrate the "looking for root cause" use case, like what the article was referring to. Regardless, that doesn't make it counterfactual per the definition the author is using.
To me the part that makes the counterfactual less useful when determining root causes is the human element the author mentions - looking for root cause tends to stop once they're brought up (they're the end of the causal chain in discussion), and blame starts to get assigned. I've seen that happen, and it hasn't helped resolve the issue, so avoiding that seems useful. I don't see a problem with using a counterfactual statement if it really is the root cause and I'm blaming myself for something.
"I'm tired because - I stayed up all night playing games", or, "I'm tired - because my child screamed all night long," are more along the lines of what the post suggests are useful, and I can see how they're fundamentally more useful to getting at the root cause than the counterfactual, "I'm tired because I didn't sleep."
But this example is very simple and makes the argument less important I'd say.
All of the higher level systems map down to something very low level, like a syscall or writing to a specific memory address in a specific pattern. The layers of abstraction between the lowest levels and the highest levels can get pretty dizzying, but understanding even a piece of it reveals how fantastic the whole system is.
In a cop show, they'd bust everyone they could with the info they have. Then they'd say something publicly like, "the work is only starting", to make the folks they can't bust nervous enough to do something stupid.
The Galaxy brain move is maybe to realize that this news will cause the crims to move to a new network, and to have one waiting for them.
This page is a nice reminder of the fact, with numbers. For a while, at least, I will Know, instead of just feel, like I can ignore the low level performance minutiae.