The state of prominent German hackers' understanding of bitcoin and #LightningNetwork: doing talks on the topic, while failing to look into and understand even the most basic things about the stuff they're lecturing others on:
I didn't even watch the talk, but I don't have to. A reader corrected fefe on a fundamental aspect of Lightning, and addressing this in an update yielded an even more fundamental misunderstanding of it. You literally have to ignore the entire word "Network" in #LightningNetwork, in order to tell people publicly that it's just payment channels between two people/nodes, and not an entire onion routing network for payments across the whole network.
Maybe he's an expert at producing misinformation? 😀
Criticism is good, and attacks against Bitcoin make it stronger (if it's anti-fragile, which I believe it is).
Eventually people one one side or the other will have to swallow their pride and admit they were wrong. Or maybe not, some people might be stubbornly wrong about something until they die.
But for people born later, they'll not even know about all the debates, the new system will be obvious and seem inevitable.
I'm old enough to remember all kinds of FUD and criticism of FOSS in the early 00s.
A lot of that has gone away over the years and FOSS has become completely mainstream with Microsoft embracing Linux etc.
Perhaps it didn't pan out the way FOSS idealists hoped, but FOSS is to a large extent mainstream now and there's much, MUCH, less FUD about it.
I expect the same for Bitcoin, it likely won't pan out the way the maxi idealists hope, that's just life, but it will become mainstream.
@icedquinn @jcbrand Not sure what "revised" means there. Or "off-chain marketplace" for that matter.
@icedquinn @jcbrand So? Payment channels existed long before anyway. But just out of interest, what was the first multi-hop network based on payment channels that you're thinking of?
@icedquinn @jcbrand Judging by their comments, and also what they wrote in the past, I'm fairly certain that they haven't read any papers at all in this whole area of computer science.
Either way, if they specifically talk about Lightning Network in their lecture, then I think they should've learned the very basics of it first. We're not talking about missing a detail or two, but about being completely clueless about the entire raison d'être and basic functionality of it.
@icedquinn @jcbrand ... but of course, it was only used to proactively address the inevitable comments about bitcoin not needing everyone to pay for things via on-chain transactions, by just handwaving second layers away.
@raucao So? I hope you are aware that Fefe himself doesnt claim to be "unfailable", but sees his "blog" as an experiment in alertness and rational thinking. A lot what he says and depict wrong might be corrected later, and in this regard he's behaving better than the rest, ie. he acknowledges his mistakes and tries to ammend them. And hey, he was (and probably still is) a big negative critic of the pirate party, and I've didnt fall from grace either (or at least not thanks to him) ;)
@ginsterbusch It's one thing to blog about something (in usually very abrasive, harsh, and absolute language by the way), and then add corrections later on. It's a whole other thing to publicly lecture people on a topic that you haven't even researched a little bit. I know his modus operandi (and frankly don't care much about what he thinks), and I just used this example as a general state of intellectual rigor among German hackers in regards to this specific topic. It is mostly non-existent.
@raucao I'm ok with his rather .. brash .. language. I tend to be similar when I forget to put on my human simulation. But on the "knowledge-able" level I agree - although its not just German "hackers". I may have destroyed my teeth in the past about this, but not anymore. Its similar to the "working remote in Germany / German-speaking countries" - there has to be a HUGE impact to make any of those ...hrm .. stoic minds mend at least a bit. *sighs*
@raucao Ie. just continue "rolling on your own" and inform people, maybe, at some point. Although .. Germany! *add frustrated, fatalist emoji here* You'd have more luck to emigrate elsewhere and becoming the president / main person of the country, than easily changing the mentality of Germans ..
What grinds my gears is that the same person also considers himself an expert on misinformation. Go figure.