The Latest Course Catalog Trend? Blockchain 101 (wired.com) 91
An anonymous reader shares a report: On a clear, warm night earlier this year, several dozen University of California, Berkeley students folded themselves into gray chairs for a three-hour class on how to think like blockchain entrepreneurs. The evening's challenge, presented by Berkeley City Councilmember Ben Bartlett, was to brainstorm how blockchain technology might be used to alleviate the city's growing homeless problem.
"We have at least 1,400 homeless people in our city, and that includes many right here at UC Berkeley," Bartlett told the class. "So how can we use blockchain to fund a new prosperity? That's a challenge I'd like you to take on." The course, taught by visiting professor and former venture capitalist Po Chi Wu, is among a growing number of classes and research initiatives on blockchain technology emerging at universities. Blockchain -- a method for creating and maintaining a global ledger of transactions that doesn't require a third-party middleman such as a bank, government or corporation -- is best known for its role in powering the virtual currency bitcoin. Applications for the technology are springing up in sectors including retail, humanitarian aid, real estate and finance. Although some analysts believe blockchain won't gain widespread adoption for another five or 10 years, companies like IBM, Facebook and Google are investing heavily in the technology -- and universities are taking note.
New York University, Georgetown and Stanford are among the institutions that offer blockchain technology courses to get students thinking about its potential uses and to better prepare them for the workforce. Job postings requiring blockchain skills ballooned by 200 percent in the first five months of this year, compared with the same period a year earlier, though they remain less than 1 percent of software development jobs, according to the research firm Burning Glass Technologies. Universities including MIT, Cornell, and Columbia are launching labs and research centers to explore the technology and its policy implications and seed the development of rigorous curricula on the topic.
"We have at least 1,400 homeless people in our city, and that includes many right here at UC Berkeley," Bartlett told the class. "So how can we use blockchain to fund a new prosperity? That's a challenge I'd like you to take on." The course, taught by visiting professor and former venture capitalist Po Chi Wu, is among a growing number of classes and research initiatives on blockchain technology emerging at universities. Blockchain -- a method for creating and maintaining a global ledger of transactions that doesn't require a third-party middleman such as a bank, government or corporation -- is best known for its role in powering the virtual currency bitcoin. Applications for the technology are springing up in sectors including retail, humanitarian aid, real estate and finance. Although some analysts believe blockchain won't gain widespread adoption for another five or 10 years, companies like IBM, Facebook and Google are investing heavily in the technology -- and universities are taking note.
New York University, Georgetown and Stanford are among the institutions that offer blockchain technology courses to get students thinking about its potential uses and to better prepare them for the workforce. Job postings requiring blockchain skills ballooned by 200 percent in the first five months of this year, compared with the same period a year earlier, though they remain less than 1 percent of software development jobs, according to the research firm Burning Glass Technologies. Universities including MIT, Cornell, and Columbia are launching labs and research centers to explore the technology and its policy implications and seed the development of rigorous curricula on the topic.
Re: This is a complete farce. (Score:1)
The latest course trend, learning to maximize the sound and smell of your own farts
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Show us on this doll where Russion collusion touched you.
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Some people are going to make a lot of money from this B.S.: that's the driving force behind the blockchain movement. Any benefits to society are incidental.
If the starting premise is to help alleviate homelessness then the only people making money off it will be the ones who sell whatever they've come up with to the local government.
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"It's astonishing."
Not at all.
Instead of putting a name on a piece of paper and signing it, you need a computer an a ton of calculations and I guess the homeless need a computer or a thumb drive instead of a paper card.
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Smart? This is a drop dead easy assignment. A localized expiriing blockchain currency, use the homeless to clean up the streets, pay them in the local currency, and get the local chamber of commerce to fund it all because the increased business from the newfound customers will start an upward economic spiral in the area. Soon the homeless will have regular jobs and be able to afford rent.
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"How to write the next app that will make you an overnight billionaire" is a 2xx course. This one is a prerequisite.
Why blockchain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it more important to do something to help the homeless, or to develop a viable use case for blockchain?
If helping the homeless is more important, then why limit the potential solutions to ones involving blockchain?
If developing a viable use case for blockchain is more important, then why limit the problem to the homeless?
It's bullshit like this that just turns people off and reduces credibility. If you want to solve a problem, then SOLVE THE PROBLEM! If you just want to highlight some technology, then at least be honest about it.
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Is it more important to do something to help the homeless, or to develop a viable use case for blockchain?
Solving the problem of homelessness is very hard... (well, very hard to find a solution that would be acceptable to the government and most tax payers at least).
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Is it more important to do something to help the homeless, or to develop a viable use case for blockchain?
Solving the problem of homelessness is very hard... (well, very hard to find a solution that would be acceptable to the government and most tax payers at least).
And it's even harder to find a solution acceptable to the homeless!
That said, a blockchain is a type of data store. Any solution can incorporate that, it doesn't have to be a necessary part of the effort. I doubt you would have an attempt at affecting the problem without generating data.
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That said, a blockchain is a type of data store.
And an expensive-to-maintain type of data store at that.
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That said, a blockchain is a type of data store.
And an expensive-to-maintain type of data store at that.
Yeah, I'm mostly a blockchain programmer now, and every time I hear somebody call it a database I cringe and think, "Keep this person away from my database!" LOL
But that said, you only need to have overhead from the blockchain at the network nodes; the real work, and the real databases with mirrors of the blockchain data, usually run on application nodes that are using traditional technologies and access the blockchain through the API services on the network node.
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Only a fraction of them would benefit from being put in to asylum. Most would benefit simply from medical treatment that has been denied from them. Even more would benefit from combining medical treatment with psychiatric treatment.
It would help many (not everyone) to get their life together, get a place to stay in and maybe even a job.
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With all these supposed big corporate interests in blockchain, I'd like it if someone gave a brief primer on what types of problems actually benefit from a decentralized ledger. Digital cash i
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Yeah, I'd love to see that list. Because I can't think of anything.
A signed hash tree that's shared publicly or at least by all involved (a la git), sure, that's got lots of uses, but it's not exactly new or startling. An actual bitcoin-style blockchain with proof-of-something, etc? Outside of transactions you want to be resistant to government interference, is there anything that's not better solved without blockchain?
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Outside of transactions you want to be resistant to government interference, is there anything that's not better solved without blockchain?
Kind of. More broadly, the point of blockchain is to establish mutual trust in a scenario where it's otherwise hard to achieve that. If you have a lot to lose should trust be broken, you put in CPU resources.
There is certainly a trust issue in homelessness, but even assuming that this is the kind of trust issue that blockchain could help address (which it isn't), I'm lost on where homeless people are going to get their CPU resources from.
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I don't think it's quite that simple. There are lots of ways of dealing with trust issues, without using blockchain. For example, land records are something that gets brought up a lot. But if you want to guarantee there's no (retroactive) hanky panky with records, you just sign them and publish them. No blockchain required. If you try and change something, anybody who downloaded that published record has evidence that you did it.
Blockchain is specifically useful for when you *can't* have a central auth
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For example, land records are something that gets brought up a lot. But if you want to guarantee there's no (retroactive) hanky panky with records, you just sign them and publish them.
Yeah, that's a "trusted third party" model. We've been doing that for millennia; having the seal of Croesus on your coin makes it definitely worth something.
That's a really specific scenario, and aside from currency, where it seems to work quite poorly, I haven't heard even a single realistic example.
Cryptocurrency gives people an economic incentive (i.e. money) to donate CPU, and that's probably the only public blockchain that might work (for some vague definition of "work"). Every other proposal that needs a public blockchain that I've seen piggybacks on top of a cryptocurrency blockchain.
Private blockchains are a bit different. One example that c
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Addiction, not addition. If they have issues with addiction, addition'ing their drug problem won't help with the homelessness.
Solution in search of a problem...? (Score:2)
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Because they've built a reputation as a "blockchain entrepreneur".
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I will not utter it here.
Standup Philosopher? (Score:2)
Oh a Bull Sh*tter!
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The CliffsNotes... (Score:5, Insightful)
how to think like blockchain entrepreneurs
1) Say "blockchain" a lot.
2) Come up with some bogus online service that people will pay for by crypto coin. Storage, social media something something, distributed music bla bla, fan reward collectible dingus, etc.
3) Set up your coin. Pre-mine or pre-assign plenty of coins to the company "for future allocations"
4) Flog your shitty service online. A paralax scrolling website is essential, as are thin fonts. Do not present any meaningful information! (Not that you had any)
5) Once your coin hits a decent price on the exchanges, sell your stash and announce that your coins were "stolen by a hacker"
6) Fold. And profit.
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Shows how much you know. You forgot to pump. Pump baby! You have to get people fired up in it! This is crap coin! Everyone craps, everyone needs this coin! Just think, soon you won't be able to crap without any of this coin, you don't want that do you? Think of all the people in San Fransciso that have to crap on the sidewalk because they have no crap coin!
Get fake endorsements. Throw in Obama or someone too stupid enough to know what's going on.
Then step 5, then 6.
Forgot step 7 - where you get to have sex
um, what? (Score:2)
Seriously, WTH? Blockchain?
We're going to maintain a chain of the transactions that they ... er... don't make ... related to housing? What?
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Seriously, WTH? Blockchain?
We're going to maintain a chain of the transactions that they ... er... don't make ... related to housing? What?
Related to helping venture capitalists make more money.
The course, taught by visiting professor and former venture capitalist Po Chi Wu, ...
Darn, I've got that 80s song in my head (Score:2)
Is the box in question a large cardboard one?
New signage needed (Score:3, Funny)
Will Proof of Work for Food
beginning of the end for blockchain hype (Score:5, Insightful)
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...they will realize how small a niche it really fills.
Blockchain has exactly one niche: hide identity from prying eyes (which is relatively easy to overcome for someone with sufficient motivation). In ALL other cases, traditional databases are a far better fit.
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no, blockchain itself has nothing to do with whether or not identity is exposed. You can hide identity of updaters with *any* database solution by additional tech and software.
instead it's a poor distributed database solution where each part of the database has a checking mechanism so it can't be altered.
the problem is, in most business use cases the database MUST be altered for legal reasons. Right to be forgotten, improper information put in fields, illegal information put in fields (such as credit car
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Who do I need to trustlessly transact with?
Are you suggesting it's cheaper than merchant fees/paying for trust?
Yeah, no.
Blockchain: The solution looking for a problem (Score:1)
I can't believe people actually wasted three hours of their life on this.
Here's how you alleviate the homeless problem:
Step 1: You, the reader, the ugly bag of mostly water sitting in front of this computer screen, take some personal responsibility for your part in being a SOLUTION to the problem
Step 2: You, yourself, go engage with homeless relief missions located in your municipality or wherever you may roam.
Step 3: You, meatbag #1, get out of your chair and go actually TALK to homeless people, giving the
It's an example of a disgusting trend (Score:4, Interesting)
Using a tool incorrectly (Score:1)
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There are real-world problems in supply chain and logistics that blockchain might be a good tool.
Can you point me to any good references or resources about using blockchain in supply chain? I try searching, but a majority of the results are either articles with a lot of hype or companies trying to sell their blockchain solution as the "solution to all your problems" without any particular details.
Improvement over the usual buzz? (Score:2)
Though it sounds like buzzword bingo it also sounds like they're at least trying to fogo for uses of the tech besides shady financial activity