Hacker News

points by athrowaway3z 1 day ago | 0 comments

Who wants to design a basic cryptographic p2p lock between trains that limit their speed 30km/h if they're not able to get proof they're alone on a track; when the alternative is to debate endlessly about whom to blame, and which billion-dollar conglomerate has the technical prowess to sit on the committee to debate the specs for a much worse system.

[–] baobabKoodaa 1 day ago

Of course HN wants to fix train crashes with a "cryptographic p2p lock". On a blockchain, presumably.

[–] athrowaway3z 19 hours ago

I could have been more precise, but it's the same ideas underpinning HTTPS and git - long before blockchain became a hype.

Did you instead want to build some central hub that grounds all train traffic if unreachable, or create a bunch of semaphores that anything can overwrite by accident or on purpose?

I'm genuinely curious here.

I can understand being intimidated by concepts outside your wheelhouse, but if you have a simpler solution you'd feel safe with i'm all ears.

I'm not saying this is all there is too it, but I am saying all the other design choices like recovery modes, operator experience, etc - should build around cryptography between tracks and trains.

We can call them cryptographic semaphores if that makes your brain turn on again.

[–] baobabKoodaa 17 hours ago

I don't know anything about trains so I can't really propose a solution. I just thought your proposal was funny in that it was very "HN flavored" in a domain that is somewhat far from typical HN domains. Not saying if it's good or bad, just saying I thought it was funny.