I love the open web and want solutions like this to win but 3D experiences built on the web seem to fall flat. Any AAA games on the web? How far is state of art native desktop 3D vs 3D through the web? Add on XR (IMU, camera, geo-tracking, AI processing) and it falls even further. It would be interesting to see some side-by-side comparisons.
Don’t have precise answers to your questions but let me reframe.
AAA games that pushes HW to the limit is a small fraction of all content. Among most popular content on Quest you have VR Chat, Gorilla Tag, Beat Saber, Job Simulator: Indie titles def not AAA that the browser would be more than capable to deliver today. https://moonrider.xyz/ for example has 60-100k VR MAUs (300k at peak on Holyday season 2021). Tech is no longer a blocker to build good WebXR content and grow an audience. Mozilla, Google and now the Meta Browser team have done excellent work to get us here
Very excited for more people working on identity and ownership. Everyone calls web3 a grift because the stack is too young to see the truly useful applications, so all we've seen are some scammy NFTs and coin drops. We're at web browser state of 1993 where the core pieces have just launched but nothing has been proven.
It's actually very hard to develop a real app in smart contracts. We're missing the ability to store private data. Tooling is highly lacking for anything beyond deploying a simple 100 line NFT contract. As soon as these problems are solved, we'll start to see some traditional applications rebuilt in a way that gives users ownership of their own data.
That's the goal of web3 to me, not specifically the exact implementation of whether we're on a blockchain or doing peer to peer file storage. Web3 means I have all the rights to my data, and ideally, applications can live on beyond their creators.
> If a single "it went badly enough to wind up in the NYT" case means Google is a no-go,
I think we are beyond 'one' case going wrong with Google services like YouTube, Drive, etc which the result of automated bans have made people realize that Google owns whatever you put on their services and can remove whatever they 'think' violates their ToS.
> I've got really bad news for you about blockchains.
Yet, I made no mention about or storing data on the 'blockchain', since IPFS is not a blockchain.
Then solve it off-cloud. These companies draw clear lines on acceptable use, and you agree to their TOS. You reserve no right to have service restored when you violate those terms, period.
> You reserve no right to have service restored when you violate those terms, period.
You're right. Don't complain if Google Drive, iCloud, etc bans you via an AI or bot automatically over an alleged ToS violation. Same with Twitter and the rest of them or even payment companies like PayPal. When your account is banned, that is that. Period.
As these services are free to do business with whoever they want, you are free to choose alternatives to these services, since at the end of the day, they will never change.
And I would like my cake to re-appear after eating it. But it doesn’t happen.
While I’m not anti-web3 I’m sceptical the promised results will appear not for technical reasons but due to misaligned incentives. At the end of the day someone has to pay for the storage or compute and we’re back to systems of exploitative extraction by proxy. Your personal data pays for service X via advertising and you pay directly for service Y by volunteering cryptocurrency based information exchange tokens so that blah blah blah it’s normally just tokens automatically created to track what you do which makes it just the same as advertised, arguably more creepy.
It’s a very lofty technical goal, I fear will fail for very normal human psychological reasons.
I think my main point is it doesn’t matter if other things do it alright already. There’s a lot of energy behind putting together the whole package in the crypto area.
I’m not saying it will end up working, but I am saying that any critique that tries to say it won’t work because disparate things X, Y and Z exist already is inherently unconvincing because it never comes down to whether some features exist in some form already. It’s always the final packaging, branding, and all sorts of vague appeals and ideals that give energy to something. And crypto, for all the leeches, certainly also has a lot of energy, funding, and smart people, and more than enough of appeals and ideals.
Web3 is a long way from either Dropbox or iPods. My point is that all of this stuff is done better and with much more polish in databases and existing tech. Perhaps one day web3 will come up with a killer app, but everything so far has been just enriching someone with a vested interest.
> Everyone calls web3 a grift because the stack is too young
I don't think that's true. I think people call it a grift because "identity" and "ownership" are not topics that require whatever "Web3" constitutes to be implemented, and the idea that we require web3 to allow a user to "have all the rights to [their] data" is equally facetious.
The components that get called Web3 may be younger than some other parts of the internet, but they have been available for nearly a decade now (depending on when you start counting), and in that time I haven’t seen any useful applications emerge. Well, maybe a few that are useful to criminal gangs.
Not too much longer. I think the big difference is now there are private chains coming out like Aleo, Aztec, and Espresso that use zero knowledge proofs. You can think of them as private Ethereum much like Monero is a private Bitcoin. They've only been possible to build in the last couple of years.
Honestly, I think 98% of Web3 is garbage. It's a worse system than our current financial system. I founded a web3 company in early 2022 based on a new way to put data onchain in a permissionless & trustless way to make smart contracts more useful. People don't actually care about decentralization so we pivoted a couple months after our raise.
Our team explored the space in depth by speaking with established founders and execs of many protocols and companies in the space. It's almost all driven by speculation for imaginary use cases. We went back to basics and asked, "Really, what is the point of this tech existing?" IMHO, the only reason for this tech to exist is privacy.
Right now, there's no private digital cash. I believe the ability to purchase things anonymously is a fundamental right. To me it's the same as private communication. Right now there's no private way to digitally send money. BTC & ETH seek to make this worse by making every transaction public instead of concealed by a trusted third party. I personally believe it's socially important that we figure out stable private digital cash.
Monero/Zcash don't solve the problem because they fluctuate wildly and are largely driven by speculation. Our long term goal is to create a private p2p venmo using a stablecoin. There are definitely up and downsides of privacy as there are with any freedom. Scientology wouldn't exist without freedom of religion, neo-nazi marches wouldn't exist without freedom of speech. All of the illegal activity on the internet wouldn't exist without encrypted communication. Nonetheless, I think the social benefits of empowering individuals outweigh the costs and I don't see any other technology capable of delivering private digital payments.
The blockchain was completely novel when it emerged in 2009. It needs an entirely new toolset, and major upgrades, to become widely useful, just as the early internet did when it emerged in the 1970s.
> Web3 means I have all the rights to my data, and ideally, applications can live on beyond their creators.
Thanks for this, I agree. For those of us working on the application stack, web3 is about human rights, and building global scale utilities that are run by networks not companies.
After having spent a few years working on a chatbot, the allure is this: talking to a real human is better than filling out a form. If we can build a Q&A system as good as talking to a human, people would also prefer it to filling out forms. So that's the pursuit.
I understand the hate, because we haven't landed very close that goal yet, and the intermediate product is much worse than a form. But I am surprised that a technical community is not more supportive of the ambition.
It's so much easier to fill out a form than it is to talk to a human. I read faster than most people speak, and I can scan and review much faster via sight rather than voice. Talking to someone is valuable if I have questions or there is some uncertainty. Assuming that I know what I want and have no questions, it's much easier for me to order food online than to call a restaurant.
Chat bots can only really search a database of documentation and frequently asked questions. Making one that has the benefits of talking to a human might be tantamount to AGI
> it's much easier for me to order food online than to call a restaurant.
I feel like this is where bots would do well - you can say "order me a burger with extra mayo and fries for pickup at 5pm" and it should negotiate all the minutiae for you. Doing this all manually requires a bunch of menu navigation. Maybe a phone bot is still a bad fit but doing something like this using your on-phone voice assistant or typing it into a text window feels reasonable.
You can go to fast food places and see there are people who will use the touch screens even when there is no line, and similar for self checkout at grocery stores. There is an assumption people enjoy chatting to a friendly customer service person, but that's at least not universally true.
Is talking to a human better than filling out a form? I can usually fill out 90-100% of a form with just my browser’s autocomplete feature. There’s also MUCH less chance for errors if I fill things in myself.
Consider diving into tulip land (without any major investments of course). Mint an NFT, write a coin contract, it's actually a very fun and easy way to learn the basics of web3.
What a weirdly aggressive and unnecessary comment. Web3 has some pretty cool parts and there's definitely a new programming paradigm at work. Even out of curiosity, you should give it a try. Distributed computing is pretty interesting, and even more-so when there's a code complexity resource you need to optimize for (gas).
> Distributed computing is an entire field of study unrelated to blockchains.
I'm not sure if you're just being purposefully obtuse, but this is most definitely not true[1]. Consensus protocols (which are very salient in blockchains) have been studied in distributed computing since like the 70s; the EVM is basically a distributed Turing machine; etc.
What? Your comments support my point, they don't refute it. Blockchains are a (naive) application of distributed computing principles, not the foundation of them...
Don't think it's fair to call them a naive application of distributed computing principles if you look at the current research output in the area. Subset yes, but let's not underplay the genuine output on distributed and decentralized consensus and governance that's coming out of the area.
I'm deeply connected to the space. Blockchain folks have made some progress in the area of BFT specifically, but beyond that, no, it's mostly been naïve re-hashes of work already done in the 80s and 90s. This isn't necessarily bad, but it's absolutely not novel.
You claimed distributed computing was unrelated to blockchain. Now you're saying the relationship is one thing and not another, but you're admitting a relationship all the same.
idk it's not untrue. So far my time investment in distributed ledgers hasn't done a damn thing for anybody, but it has been fun (in a 'playing with your food' way, as someone said downthread). I suspect many here have had a similar experience.
Didn't think I would see a comment like this on Hacker News. Learning and experimenting is fun! When you are learning and having fun, there is no such thing as "wasting time".
Some would consider learning a old, outdated programming language a waste of time, but sometimes learning something new just to learn something new is just... Fun!
Allen | San Francisco, CA | Remote | Contract or Full-time | https://allen.bot
Allen is building on the blockchain in the real estate space. We are creating a system using smart contracts to track relationships between tenants, property owners, and service providers.
Building in Python, Django, JavaScript, React Native, and running on AWS.
Looking for self defined roles - from co-founder level to contributing engineers to business positions - anyone excited about the problem space and tech stack, interested in getting in at the very beginning and defining a new paradigm.
Write to me at hello@allen.bot if you’re interested!
Allen is building a chatbot for the real estate space. We are creating a system using machine learning to do preventative maintenance, service routing, price comparison, and investment analysis.
Building in Python, Django, JavaScript, React Native, and running on AWS.
Looking for engineers excited about the problem space and tech stack, interested in getting in at the very beginning and defining a new paradigm.
Write to me at hello@allen.bot if you’re interested!
This makes me think of some of the battles that play out in Daemon and Freedom [1]. They're able to visualize all other parties in the area mapped by drones in real-time. They fight with massive AI swarms and are able to control the AI bots with hand gestures as they see them on the field, all while cruising around on modified motorcycles. We're in for a wild future.
More fairly popular pop culture that this might mirror is the Black Mirror episode Men Against Fire where the AR implants are being used to trick their soldiers into thinking regular humans are some mutant creature to make it easier to pull the trigger and kill them.
The Allen Bot | San Francisco, CA | Remote | Contract | https://allen.bot
The Allen Bot is using AI to redefine the real estate property management space. We use machine learning to predict service issues, route problems, and interface with users through natural language processing in a custom chat based interface.
Building in Python, Django, JavaScript, React Native, and running on AWS.
Looking for engineers excited about the problem space and tech stack, interested in getting in at the very beginning and defining a new paradigm.
Write to me at brent@allen.bot if you’re interested!
Why do you feel React Native is a dead end? I've built apps of all sizes with it and had a good amount of success. I love Swift as a language, but building the same app across platforms (Android/iOS) always feels so wasteful.
Background: I worked on the NFL mobile app and then worked on a search engine app both of which were in React Native. Specifically I worked on the team that did the developer tooling side for other teams. I made it so experienced JavaScript developers who had no experience with native mobile could create features more easily. Both get millions of downloads.
React Native is a pain to work with when the scope of your app becomes any larger than an agency level project (e.g. an app for an event that's only going to be used one weekend).
Once you start getting into requirements for a prime time production app (setting up APM tool, setting up tracking, setting up Google Analytics, native specific features that don't have a React Native hook yet) React Native is an extra layer of abstraction that slows you down. The experienced native developers hate working with it because they'd rather just use the related native platform themselves, but at the same time for any slightly complicated app you still need their expertise. Also, out of the box animations in React Native is difficult to work with, especially with less experienced developers, so you end up having to do a variety of work arounds to get animations between screens to look nice which you'd get out of the box just using Kotlin/Swift.
In 2020 if I needed to make an app quickly, cheaply, that worked on both platforms, I'd make a great mobile website and wrap it in a native shell. Any screen that needed a little bit extra "magic" I would do 100% native code for both platforms. This also allows you to ship updates to screens as you go without a complicated "codepush" JavaScript setup, as it's just a webview on the other end.
I'm still maintaining the React Native search app now, it works fine, but if we need to create an iOS version of it I'd definitely pitch doing it in native code.
I’ve just been building an app using react native (for web). We built the web app first and had it responsive and designed to match mobile interactions from the start (a stack view that keeps state) and it’s been quite nice. The other day went to get it running on native and was pleasantly surprised - was able to get all the main screens working smoothly and well in a matter of days.
Compared to SwiftUI it was far easier and even faster. Granted, I’ve worked with React a lot. But it’s really quite nice, I’m impressed with the whole ecosystem and how it’s grown.
It is not going to be as good out of the box as a native iOS app, but it is is workable with a little bit of effort. Unlike Flutter, react native does not have a fundamental architecture that makes accessibility tricky.
