@robby I should've mentioned Algorand but wasn't sure if much happened in terms of implementation since 2017 Financial Cryptography conference on Malta, where I had an honour to listen to Prof. Micali talk about Algorand and his research during a dinner organised by Charles. Thanks for update.

Re: posts, I don't treat myself too seriously and readily amend my writing if I wrote something silly. :)

Re: paper, I was trying to find something short by Sapolsky, but referred to this one→

@robby when I'm in front of the computer, I'd like to make a digest of it and some of Sapolsky's research, because this is something "decentralise everything" crowd should learn about the world. I mean, they have their leaders and centers too…

Re: police — it won't work, undelivered meal is not within their scope. You should look at identity systems and reputation systems, but it also doesn't address individual cases of misservice proactively.

@jonn

Re: police — it won’t work, undelivered meal is not within their scope. You should look at identity systems and reputation systems, but it also doesn’t address individual cases of misservice proactively.

Maybe not police, but whatever government agency deals with consumer protection laws. That’s more what I was getting at. Maybe people could try to circumvent bad ratings on a blockchain by creating a new identity, but someone with 1 5 star rating doesn’t look as good as someone with 100 ratings at 4 stars, so I think it could still work. There could also be a “rating decay” to avoid things like selling highly rated accounts.

@robby

re: is [humans converging] that a good thing?

I tell myself that I prefer something else, but I still live in a city. Don't you? Maybe it's not capitalism that is to blame for centralisation, it's just how it is? Maybe we should accept it and attack exploitation with what actually matters to the exploited people?

That's why I strongly dislike the OG quote. Encode Uber as a dapp is not something anyone asked for.

@jonn

> I tell myself that I prefer something else, but I still live in a city. Don't you? Maybe it's not capitalism that is to blame for centralisation, it's just how it is? Maybe we should accept it and attack exploitation with what actually matters to the exploited people?

I don't live in a city. I grew up in a very rural area, but I'm in a small village right now (<2k people)

> That's why I strongly dislike the OG quote. Encode Uber as a dapp is not something anyone asked for.

I think a lot of people who drive for Uber really dislike the service, and only use it because that's where customers are right now. Accounting for the cut that Uber takes, the cost of gas, and the maintenence required from the extra wear on the vehicle, Uber drivers often not only don't make minimum wage, but actually lose money (I saw something on this a probably a year or two ago, so perhaps this info is outdated). Cutting out the middleman would probably be very beneficial to those people.

@robby well, yes, but you don't cut the middleman by moving Uber on blockchain (which is impossible), you do it by making a FOSS Uber and driving social change.

@jonn I’m pretty sure I have mapped out how basic functionality would work to create an “Uber-like” (I’ve never actually used Uber myself, so I don’t know exactly how it works) application, connecting riders and drivers. What about the idea seems impossible?

@robby to see where you need to pick up a person based on a smart contract. :D

@jonn here is how I imagined it: the rider would upload their desired ride as something like a 5 mile radius which includes their location, and a 5 mile radius which includes their destination (to avoid writing their exact location to the blockchain). Drivers post their prices for the ride, and then the rider picks one (might not be the lowest due to ratings, type of vehicle, etc). After the rider picks one, the rider and driver exchange chat info (like jami public keys) and then coordinate exact locations through the chat.