Bitcoin did two things to this paper, first it demonstrates that Byzantine fault tolerance has practical applications, and second it demonstrates that anytime you have to deal with Byzantine fault tolerance the question is not "How do I verify this message?" but "Why am I trying to deal with those assholes?"
Bitcoin manages to consume more power than all the AI systems were wringing our hands over: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
And provides approximately none of the scant benefits of asking Claude to fix my spelling.
*we’re
Sorry, had to do it for the irony
Still better than bitcoin.
"Listen, regardless of which Byzantine fault tolerance protocol you pick, Twitter will still have fewer than two nines of availability. As it turns out, Ted the Poorly Paid Datacenter Operator will not send 15 cryptographically signed messages before he accidentally spills coffee on the air conditioning unit."
This is one of my favorite quotes from technical comedic writing
> “How can you make a reliable computer service?” the presenter will ask in an innocent voice before continuing, “It may be difficult if you can’t trust anything and the entire concept of happiness is a lie designed by unseen overlords of endless deceptive power.”
If you didn't know Mickens[0] and you enjoyed this piece, you may want to peruse more of the same[1]. They're not all this good, but they are good.
[0] which I discovered through HN years ago, thanks folks [1] https://danielcompton.net/james-mickens-collection
Also just found this thanks to another user.
Hey man, leave Keanu out of this
I don't actually care about byzantine fault tolerance. But, James Mickens wrote it? I'm reading.
The Night Watch... https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf is one of my all time favorite pieces of internet writing
Can you believe there are people out there who haven't read this yet? I can, because one of them was me. This was incredible.
> A systems programmer will know what to do when society breaks down, because the systems programmer already lives in a world without law.
Me also, I found Mickens through his Harvard Tenure post, but somehow just found Night's Watch today.
"I have no tools because I've destroyed my tools with my tools" is a phrase I think to myself at least weekly.
Your theories on Muppet physiology are childish and naïve, and I viciously refute them in my upcoming article “Parasitic Infections of Muppet Gastrointestinal Hand Holes.”
[0] https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/tenure-announcement-april-2...
Oh thank you very much for that link! I have now bookmarked https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom/ to binge read.
Mickens is a rare combination of bright, engaging, and absolutely hysterical.
I hope I get to meet him someday.
Same. No idea how that could ever happen but it would make my year. Mickens is a treasure.
Mickens is the best!
This is why I no longer work on trustless systems.
In actually useful business problems, there is trust to be "exploited" to make the system simpler than Byzantine algorithms can manage. And what if the trust is exploited for theft? Then the parties take a loss, learn who can't be trusted, and get on with business.
Humans trust. Their systems should too.
> Humans trust. Their systems should too.
And indeed as Thompson showed, you've got to trust at some point...
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/2223/R209/Reflections-Trus...
Things would be profoundly simpler if Judge Dredd would take care of computer crackers.