News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploi... by tylersmith on Monday June 28, 2021 @02:09PM (#27665389)
Human beings write software that flies people around the world and shuttles people between the Earth and space. Managing money is not more important than many things we use software for.
Re:SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploi... by MattGaiser on Monday June 28, 2021 @02:12PM (#27665433)
1. Not always correctly, as seen with the 737 MAX.

2. We have a general AI exception handler called a pilot.

3. Many of those systems have hardware redundancies, so even if there is a bug, hardware can stop it. A fuse might blow instead.

Re:SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploi... by rspeele on Monday June 28, 2021 @02:17PM (#27665490)
Putting your money in one of these smart contracts is like getting on a fully autonomous plane, with no pilot.

And you get a refund for your plane ticket if you reach your destination, but if you don't, whoever figured out the trick to crash the internet-connected plane gets to keep all the ticket money. And that could be the same person who wrote the plane's software.

Re:SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploi... by admax88q on Monday June 28, 2021 @03:23PM (#27666537)
Surely you see the difference between managing money on the open internet and closed systems such as planes and spaceshipts.

The incentives to break those other pieces of software are different.

Very few people are incentivized to hack planes to crash and kill people. Even fewer are incentivized to hack the space shuttle. Not to mention those pieces are rarely exposed on the public internet, or have connectivity at all.

But massive amounts of nigh-untraceable free money? Ton's of people are incentivized to go for that.

Re:SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploi... by ethanbond on Monday June 28, 2021 @02:11PM (#27665414)
Software that you can't update is borderline not-software.

It's hardware with no joysticks for humans to adjust. It just happens to be hardware that's implemented in code.

Re:SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploi... by trophycase on Monday June 28, 2021 @02:21PM (#27665565)
You can upgrade many smart contracts with proper practice.
Re:SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploi... by mustafa_pasi on Monday June 28, 2021 @02:12PM (#27665429)
Those systems have built in redundancies. They don't assume trustless 100% bug-free code.
Re:SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploi... by pfisch on Monday June 28, 2021 @02:12PM (#27665430)
I'm not saying you're wrong, but that software in most cases isn't constantly under attack from another team of engineers trying to blow up all the planes.