[askmike]

> A billboard is something that tons of people can't help but notice.

That's an interesting definition of a billboard. So if there is a billboard next to a road, and the road goes under construction for weeks/months it ceases to be a billboard for that time? Or if most people leave a village and it empties out.

> This requires installing a bunch of software, identifying peers on the Ethererum mainnet, asking them for their idea of the latest block, determining the most-worked-branch, validating its entire history, looking up a particular contract, determining its state at that block, extracting some text from it, and then somehow displaying it, for one person to see. At least that would be the somewhat trustless and decentralized way to do it.

Trustless and decentralized are not the same thing. I agree that would be "somewhat" trustless (Do you trust your OS? Do you trust your compile toolchain? How deep does trustless need to go?)

Instead, this is a webapp with a link to a blockchain explorer. It's trivial to check another blockchain explorer or your own node if you want.

[Gys]

> So if there is a billboard next to a road, and the road goes under construction for weeks/months it ceases to be a billboard for that time?

You could still call it a billboard but I am pretty sure the company paying for the ad on it will pause their payments. Maybe even sue if they were not given any notice in advance.

[shlant]

> So if there is a billboard next to a road, and the road goes under construction for weeks/months it ceases to be a billboard for that time? Or if most people leave a village and it empties out.

If a tree falls in a forest... :D

[mypastself]

Since it no longer serves to advertise to the public, its utility as a billboard ceases. So yes, it stops being a billboard.