He doesn’t get it in the slightest:
Blockchain is a foundational digital technology that rivals the internet in its potential for transformation. To explain: essentially, “blocks” are segregated, vast bundles of data in permanent communication with each other so that each block knows what the content is in the rest of the chain. However, only the owner of a particular block has the digital key to access it.
So what? First, the blocks are created by “miners”, individual algorithm writers and companies throughout the world (with a dense concentration in China), who want to add a data block to the chain.
Sigh.
“Our health data can be given to the whole chain for it to assess, rather than an individual doctor, and the chain can then assess and price an insurable risk.”
FFS, the idiot’s confusing machine learning with block chains. What did we do wrong to get Murphy and Hutton in the same generation?
We did the Internet. In devious generations they would just be muttering, alone, in to a half of mild in a forgotten corner of the snug.
I’m just a dumb engineer, so while I get the idea behind blockchain stuff, I don’t really understand it. Maybe that helps me spot when someone else has no fucking clue? Because it’s obvious even to me that Hutton doesn’t.
Moving ever more economic activity into this universe, with its anonymised transactions and secret keys, may please the ultra libertarians – but there remains a public interest in ensuring accountability, justice and fairness.
Now that I get. The State must have a backdoor, you can’t have wealth squirreled away where we can’t get at it. For heaven’s sake, we’re just getting to the point where opinion is coming round to getting rid of cash!
Secret keys – am I allowed to keep my bank password secret or does that contravene fairness?
Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for providing a sanctuary of sanity Tim 🙂
Reminds me of Stephen Fry’s explanations of GPS and TCP/IP: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/18/stephen_frytard/
I only know a little about blockchain, but I know enough to know that it really, really isn’t anything at all like Willy thinks it is.
It’s like a man set out to explain what a horse is and described a geological rock formation.
Jesus what a moron. Given the endless resources online that describe blockchain accurately and simply, how do these idiots like Murphy and Hutton put this utter gibberish out there. And the Guardian proves once more, as if further proof was needed) that it publishes complete shite.
Tim’s more complete refutation on the Adam Smith Institute blog was masterful.
Apart from Hutton’s ignorance, a separate problem is his preconception that centralizing data (which he doesn’t realize is encrypted!) enables central detection and resolution of problems.
It is quite hard to find a set of declarative sentences written in grammatically correct English that less accurately describes a blockchain than that which the dunderheaded Hutton saw fit to share with the world there. It is wrong, minutely wrong, wrong in essentially every particular. What a fucking mong.
That’s maybe the most wrong thing that I’ve ever read on the internet.
Ever … on the internet!!!
Oh dear. That’s so wrong it could be a parody.
Senator Ted Stevens’ description of the Internet as a “series of tubes” looks pretty good in comparison.