
Honeywell Brings Blockchain to Used Aircraft Parts Market - prostoalex
https://www.wsj.com/articles/honeywell-brings-blockchain-to-used-aircraft-parts-market-11559072819
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ropman76
While this a great service for the aircraft parts industry, I am not seeing
why this couldn’t be done with a database and a properly secured REST API.

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Reelin
> The encrypted digital trail cuts the need for paperwork and makes it quick
> and easy to check the certification and origin of a part ...

> Many websites list used aircraft parts but omit details like final prices or
> provenance documents.

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notahacker
Bearing in mind these documents all start off as paper, I'm not sure that
really answers the question of what blockchain adds in the way of evidence of
provenance over a scanner and upload facility...

Aircraft part sales aren't trustless, and for a good reason.

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dev_dull
Likewise which one do you think they’ll trust if the blockchain disagrees with
the paper trail? The paper trail of course, which makes putting this on
blockchain worthless.

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rectang
Naive question, since I'm not familiar with the aircraft parts marketplace:
Can the elements of the paper trail be hashed and published publicly, and can
then those hashes be factored into the blockchain?

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root_axis
Material objects cannot be hashed. It is physically impossible.

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rectang
Yes, of course. But what makes the logical content of the documents/elements
in the "paper trail" something that cannot be represented as text files or
perhaps photographs?

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toast0
In a word, trust. You can represent the information digitally, including via
scanning, but you cannot digitally guarantee that the representation matches
the paper copy; and the paper copy will likely hold in any disputes absent
evidence of manipulation of the paper copy.

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fenwick67
So sick of these companies using blockchain hype to sell what is really just a
centralized database.

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eli
This is going to sound like trolling but I don’t think there ARE any
blockchain companies who wouldn’t be better off with a centralized database.

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tuesdayrain
Companies that focus on online gambling, for example, would not be better off
with a centralized database. To my knowledge, there used to be no way for
someone engaging in online gambling to verify that the game is using honest
odds. With Ethereum smart contracts, they can see exactly what code is being
executes.

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AlexMuir
Here’s the ‘groundbreaking blockchain marketplace’. Looks like a shitty ad-
filled Bootstrap template to me. Blockchain is vaguely mentioned halfway down
the “about” page.

[https://www.godirecttrade.com/about-us](https://www.godirecttrade.com/about-
us)

~~~
woah
I’m not seeing any of the great visual design that blockchain is supposed to
bring into the equation for enterprises.

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TheMagicHorsey
"Honeywell Aerospace first deployed the system based on open-source blockchain
technology called Hyperledger and tested it on Microsoft Corp.’s Azure cloud.
The company moved the blockchain to an internal cloud to be able to control
security and data privacy, Mr. Muthukrishnan said."

So in other words, they might as well have built a normal application on a
reliable database like MySQL.

I expected more from WSJ, but apparently their journalists are morons and
don't exercise even iota of skepticism in the face of blockchain hype.

Blockchain offers real benefits ... but this application is not one of them.

WSJ: HIRE PEOPLE THAT DO THEIR JOBS PROPERLY.

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chaz6
I do not see how this would prevent an imitation part being substituted for a
real part somewhere along the line.

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joezydeco
So is there a market potential here? A way to hash a physical object?

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dane-pgp
Depending on how broadly you want to define "hash a physical object", there is
a trick that was described by this memorable HN comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138699)

~~~
joezydeco
Yeah, it seems like an arms race you can't win.

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momentmaker
EY had just released Nightfall:

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/say-hello-nightfall-paul-
brod...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/say-hello-nightfall-paul-brody-1f/)

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brighton36
Linked lists are the future of aircraft parts!

