User:Amraphenson/sandbox

Peer Review:

Hey it's Angela- Here are my thoughts for editing your articles. Overall, you're in great shape- nice work! Please just send me a paragraph via email - angela_miller@berkeley.edu by next Friday to get credit for "respond to peer review."

Overall, be sure to proofread and spell check. In your first underlined paragraph, you spell "searches" "searchs." Grammatically, periods go inside of quotation marks, so "and so on."[4] in the first sentence of that paragraph. You have 15 sources now, be sure that you have 30 for the final project. Other than that, it seems like you have some more writing to do to flesh out your ideas and connect them to the quotes you've selected. Be sure that you explain and analyze the quotes so that people without background knowledge in the subject can understand them.

Thanks!

-Angela

Thanks Angela for the feedback. I'm still working on the content, hopefully to be done soon. -Amra ~~~~

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Draft for editing Bitcoin Core page:

• Add information from the Bitcoin Core website: team size, information from the FAQ (ie work process and their contribution process), usage process (it's not clear that a program is opened to interact with Bitcoin Core)

Draft for editing Big Data:

• Edit the introduction, make it readable. edits below are highlighted
• Strikethrough portions are those that I believe should be removed. Underlined are additions to be made.

Big data is a term for data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate to deal with them. Challenges with big data include analysis, capture, data curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, querying, updating and information privacy. The term "big data" often refers simply to analytic methods used (predictive analytics, user behavior analytics, etc.) to extract value from data, and seldom to the actual size of a data set.^[2] "There is little doubt that the quantities of data now available are indeed large, but that’s not the most relevant characteristic of this new data ecosystem."^[3]

Analysis of data sets can find new correlations to "spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on".^[4] Scientists, business executives, practitioners of medicine, advertising and governments alike regularly meet difficulties with large data-sets in areas including Internet search, finance, urban informatics, and business informatics. Scientists encounter limitations in e-Science work, including meteorology, genomics,^[5] connectomics, complex physics simulations, biology and environmental research.^[6]

Analysis can find new correlations to business trends, diseases, crime, and so on.^[4] These data sets can include Internet searches, finance, urban informantics, and business informatics, while scientists see big data in meteorology, genomics, [5] connectomics, complex physics simulations, biology, and environmental research.[6]

Data sets grow rapidly - in part because they are increasingly gathered by cheap and numerous information-sensing mobile devices, aerial (remote sensing), software logs, cameras, microphones, radio-frequency identification (RFID) readers and wireless sensor networks.^[7][8] The world's technological per-capita capacity to store information has roughly doubled every 40 months since the 1980s;^[9] as of 2012, 2.5 exabytes (2.5×10¹⁸) of data is generated every day.^[10] One question for large enterprises is determining who should own big-data initiatives that affect the entire organization.^[11]

Relational database management systems and desktop statistics- and visualization-packages often have difficulty handling big data. The work may require "massively parallel software running on tens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers".^[12] What counts as "big data" varies depending on the capabilities of the users and their tools, and expanding capabilities make big data a moving target. "For some organizations, facing hundreds of gigabytes of data for the first time may trigger a need to reconsider data management options. For others, it may take tens or hundreds of terabytes before data size becomes a significant consideration."^[13]

The scale of big data makes conventional analytics like desktop statistics packages unsuitable. Big data work often requires "massively parallel software running on tens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers" [12] What counts as a "big data" varies depending on user capabilities and tools, thus big data is not a concrete parameter. A hundred gigabytes may give some organizations issue, while only data sets in the range of terabytes may give another organization pause. [13]

-Create article or edit Bitcoin article with subject matter: Mike Hearn and/or Bitcoin limitations/negatives. Personally found sources and citations begin below.

Prominent Bitcoin developer, commonly referenced by the Economist. Notably declared bitcoin "dead" and a "failure" Notes several limitations: can't move existing money; wildly fluctuating and unpredictable fees; payment takebacks; large backlogs, flaky payments; controlled by china; creators were and are in open civil war with the competition of Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin XT.

-Blockchain article: Introduce risks and problems that have arrived with Blockchain technology in the modern day. Use the below quotes to create a section in the Blockchain article that properly introduces the risks Blockchain based transactions and operations face.

• "Our objective is to understand the current research topics, challenges and future directions regarding Blockchain technology from the technical perspective. We have extracted 41 primary papers from scientific databases. The results show that focus in over 80% of the papers is on Bitcoin system and less than 20% deals with other Blockchain applications including e.g. smart contracts and licensing. The majority of research is focusing on revealing and improving limitations of Blockchain from privacy and security perspectives, but many of the proposed solutions lack concrete evaluation on their effectiveness."
• "Blockchain can reduce many costs for banks, providing a boost to productivity and making it easier to offer products and services to a global clientele. They can also reduce risk in the industry, particularly in wholesale finance. Settlement times for many financial instruments take days, sometimes weeks, tying up capital and exposing industry participants to huge counterparty risks. Blockchain promises to radically simplify many business processes, reducing risk and boosting transparency. This explains why more than 45 leading banks, including Credit Suisse, RBC and UBS, have joined the R3CEV Consortium to develop Blockchain infrastructure for banking and why IBM launched the Hyperledger project, counting Deutsche Bank, DTCC, the London Stock Exchange Group, Wells Fargo and State Street as members. But this is not all upside for banks, of course. Blockchain also radically lowers barriers for new entrants to create alternatives to the conventional banking industry, challenging incumbents in virtually every market where they operate, and so it’s as much a threat as an opportunity."
• "Regardless of one’s opinion on the merits of virtual currencies, financial regulators must develop a better understanding of Blockchain technology’s impact potential as they continue to engage in its pragmatic regulation."
• "Can Blockchain really change companies as we know them? There are plenty of technical issues, such as how to reduce the system's consumption of electricity. The biggest challenge, though, is likely the human element. People aren't eusocial creatures like ants or termites. They like their freedom. The Blockchain community needs to find a way to liberate people from corporate hierarchies without subjecting them to a new master, the Blockchain itself."
• "The biggest problems, though, have to do with governance. Any controversy that you read about today is going to revolve around these governance issues. This new community is in its infancy. Unlike the Internet, which has a sophisticated governance ecosystem, the whole world of Blockchain and digital currencies is the Wild West. It's a place of recklessness and chaos and calamity. This could kill it if we don't find the leadership to come together and to create the equivalent organizations that we have for governance of the Internet. We have the Internet Engineering Task Force, which creates standards for the Net. We have the Internet Governance Forum, which creates policies for governments. We have the W3C Consortium, which creates standards for the web. There's the Internet Society; that's an advocacy group. There's the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an operational network that delivers the domain names. There's a structure and a process to figure out things."
• "Another issue, Johnson said, is that most people use bitcoins at exchanges and trust the exchange will look after them. "You're putting a lot of trust in these exchanges having the right security protocols," he said. Many exchanges are not fully regulated entities. They cannot offer federal deposit insurance on digital currencies. Some have not protected users' interests well at all."
• "Moving forward Blockchain technology currently has no formal roadmap to ensure, for instance, that even at their current level, all global financial transactions could be transferred to Blockchain."

Final Edits to Big Data, Bitcoin, and Blockchain

Big Data Changes

Big data is a term for data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate to deal with them. Challenges with big data include analysis, capture, data curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, querying, updating and information privacy. The term "big data" often refers simply to analytic methods used (predictive analytics, user behavior analytics, etc.) to extract value from data, and seldom to the actual size of a data set.^[2] "There is little doubt that the quantities of data now available are indeed large, but that’s not the most relevant characteristic of this new data ecosystem."^[3]

Analysis can find new correlations to business trends, diseases, crime, and so on.^[4] These data sets can include Internet searches, finance, urban informantics, and business informatics, while scientists see big data in meteorology, genomics, [5] connectomics, complex physics simulations, biology, and environmental research.[6]

The scale of big data makes conventional analytics like desktop statistics packages unsuitable. Big data work often requires "massively parallel software running on tens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers" [12] What counts as a "big data" varies depending on user capabilities and tools, thus big data is not a concrete parameter. A hundred gigabytes may give some organizations issue, while only data sets in the range of terabytes may give another organization pause. [13]

Bitcoin Additions

Mike Hearn, prominent Bitcoin developer and common referral for the Economist, has on multiple occasions declared Bitcoin "dead" and a "failure". He notes several weaknesses as problematic obstacles: inability to move existing money, fluctuating and unpredictable fees, payment takebacks, backlogs, and historical problems. As a result of personal differences, the original team behind Bitcoin splintered into the Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin XT team. The two organizations differ in philosophy and coding approaches, which has created two very different Bitcoin organizations and wallets, with little to no shared information between them.

Bitcoin also suffers from arbitrary data limits and extreme vulnerability to DDoS attacks because of its nature as an internet based system. Blockchain transactions also take exponentially longer as capacity fills: up to twenty minutes at 80% capacity and 6 hours at 100% capacity. Due to this, some companies have discontinued Bitcoin support, citing that it is "officially impossible to depend upon the bitcoin network anymore to know when or if your payment will be transacted because the congestion is so bad that even minor spikes in volume create dramatic changes in network conditions." Growth is also difficult because 90% of hashing power is owned by a half dozen people. Hearn says, "Blockchain is controlled by Chinese miners, just two of whom control more than 50% of the hash power. At a recent conference over 95% of hashing power was controlled by a handful of guys sitting on a single stage." This forces Bitcoin to deal with the Chinese firewall, which fragments data and causes major packet loss that slows down transactions even further. Hearn also believes that these miners have a personal stake in preventing other miners from entering the network; he says, "if the Bitcoin network got more popular, they fear taking part would get too difficult and they’d lose their income stream. This gives them a perverse financial incentive to actually try and stop Bitcoin becoming popular." Bankruptcy relief, eligibility, and regulation are also major issues; none of these can be enforced easily with the distributed nature of the Blockchain technology Bitcoin uses.

Blockchain Additions

"Blockchain can reduce many costs for banks, providing a boost to productivity and making it easier to offer products and services to a global clientele. They can also reduce risk in the industry, particularly in wholesale finance. Settlement times for many financial instruments take days, sometimes weeks, tying up capital and exposing industry participants to huge counterparty risks. Blockchain promises to radically simplify many business processes, reducing risk and boosting transparency. This explains why more than 45 leading banks, including Credit Suisse, RBC and UBS, have joined the R3CEV Consortium to develop blockchain infrastructure for banking and why IBM launched the Hyperledger project, counting Deutsche Bank, DTCC, the London Stock Exchange Group, Wells Fargo and State Street as members. But this is not all upside for banks, of course. Blockchain also radically lowers barriers for new entrants to create alternatives to the conventional banking industry, challenging incumbents in virtually every market where they operate, and so it’s as much a threat as an opportunity.

Where Is Current Research on Blockchain Technology?—A Systematic Review. PLoS ONE. 10/3/2016, Issue 10, p1-27. 27p Vol. 11

Blockchain @ Banking

Benefits for Blockchain are notable enough that many banks have begun development of their own APIs. However, the limitations of Blockchain technology is supported by numerous sources, each pointing out common factors: immense cost of replacing pre-existing architecture, power consumption and processing power, bias towards wealthy miners, delays in transactions, security and information leakage, governance, and its uncertain future as a new technology. On the other hand, the Blockchain system allows for significant increases in other aspects. It is considered incorruptible [1] due to data within the system being subject to mass replication.[7] A lack of central, 'master' copy reduces the data's vulnerability and inherently removes the need for access control.^[21] Any system that requires peer-to-peer collaboration benefits from Blockchain technology because of its inherent nature.

Primarily, Blockchain sees issues in its speed. Because every transaction may use up a extremely variable amount of blocks, this can create massive, unpredictable delays in the system. The unpredictability is the least desirable feature in a banking system, made worse by the unpredictable delays. If users do not know how many blocks will be requisitioned to complete a transaction when they ask for a certain amount, delays of easily an hour can occur as a result of the system struggling to find enough blocks to complete the transaction.

This is financial software. One would expect that when a confirmation time of 6 blocks is requested, the software would be reliable enough to be able to return a fee value that might need 5 blocks, or 9 blocks, or even 15 blocks. But this financial network is in such a crisis now that requesting 6 blocks actually means that 80 blocks could be required to service the transaction.This isn't Hearn's fault for writing a bad program or the Core developers' fault for creating a bad fee estimation algorithm. It wouldn't even be that bad if we knew definitively that it would take 80 blocks. The issue is that it's now officially impossible to depend upon the bitcoin network anymore to know when or if your payment will be transacted because the congestion is so bad that even minor spikes in volume create dramatic changes in network conditions. To whom is it acceptable that one could wait either 60 minutes or 14 hours, chosen at random?

Steve Sokolosky, Prohashing.com

Replacing existing architectures in banking or voting would require a massive bureaucratic undertaking at all stages. Every level of every organization would have to approve before replacement could even begin, which would then create a massive cost as entire legacy systems are cycled out for newer, extremely expensive server technology. These organizations would then have to deal with creating unique security protocols that are not widely understood, long delays in transactions, and a lack of projected future for the technology; there is no promise that Blockchain will be successful or remain so. Disrupting these organizations and their daily processes for even a second could have drastic consequences on worldwide commerce, jobs, and trading, but could also create massive improvements in the same sectors. Many banks would rather remain with their old systems than risk a system crash, but at the same time many banks are exploring Blockchain technology for use in their back office systems.

Blockchain @ Society

Blockchain also lacks any sort of governing body as result of its nature; while the Internet on a whole has entities like the Internet Engineering Task Force, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Internet Governance Forum, and others, Blockchain lacks such things and has no standards, laws, or bureaucracy it must bear witness to. This lack of governing body puts immense trust on the system. Any system errors may take an extremely long time to discover, which is further problematic because of the delays in Blockchain transactions. However, lack of governing bodies also allows for a democratic system based directly on the votes of users, which can allow for rapid change as situations demand, limited only by how quickly it takes users to create and implement appropriate code.

In addition, there is an explicit cost-to-power relationship due to the processing power required to run a Blockchain network, making it prohibitively expensive to convert to. This thus creates an inherent bias in the system because wealthier and better equipped users have control over more of the network, and thus a greater capability to possibly exploit the system. In addition, advances in technology would do nothing to alleviate the disparity between wealthy or non-wealthy Blockchain users: miners of a lower socio-economic bracket must remain with old technology, while wealthier miners can continue to upgrade and improve their systems to further the gap between them. On the other hand, the Blockchain entry threshold is very low; any system capable of coding can theoretically influence and add to the system regardless of its specifications. This theoretically allows for any user to create alternatives to existing systems, in the same way Bitcoin and crytocurrencies have for standard currencies.

Blockchain @ Research

Research efforts into Blockchain are also mostly unorganized. A majority of research papers looked at by PLoS ONE shows that only 20% of Blockchain based research is on Blockchain itself; the other 80% is specifically on Bitcoin. Their proposed solutions to security and privacy issues also lack evidence supporting effectiveness due to lack of data. Blockchain is simply too new in its current iteration to know what is effective and what is not. Current Blockchain research is focused on cryptocurrencies over any other subject. Current non-cryptocurrency uses of Blockchain include Tezos (voting) and Gem OS (messaging).

Blockchain was designed specifically for one main goal: preventing the “double spend” of electronic coins, without a central authority. Yet few of the mooted use cases are vulnerable to double spend or anything analogous. At the same time, many important security objectives are not provided by blockchain at all. Thus, blockchain is neither necessary nor sufficient for many of its suggested applications; in practice it’s massively over-engineered, or incomplete, or both.

Blockchain: Understanding the Weak Links, Steve Wilson, 2016