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He Always Had a Dark Side

mastermind.atavist.com

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Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#271

Post by valisystem »

myrbergs_army wrote: post #59

Original author of the story here... Just to add that 1. yes, the reporting on Le Roux's childhood is more tentative based on a family source (well backed up by docs and images sent to me). But the fact that the same Le Roux created E4M which formed the basis of TrueCrypt is something I think I've established definitively, company and site registration trails show it very firmly (and PLR himself admits it in court, b…

I don't read long content on lcd screens, I really wish for a (paid and proper) ebook release. Is it possible? How could I be notified?

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#272

Post by zorpner »

dang wrote: post #246

The submitted title was "Truecrypt was written by a international arms dealer named Paul LeRoux". That broke the HN guidelines by cherry-picking a single detail from the article, and it's also misleading enough that we're getting emails complaining about it. Rather than litigate what the article does or doesn't show, we've simply reverted the title. It seems particularly bad to make the title say something that the a…

It's a real shame that a bunch of people were tricked into reading an excellent piece of long-form journalism because someone singled out why it might interest them.

The HN front page has a context, and the new title is completely incoherent there. Do better.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#274

Post by startling »

dang wrote: post #246

The submitted title was "Truecrypt was written by a international arms dealer named Paul LeRoux". That broke the HN guidelines by cherry-picking a single detail from the article, and it's also misleading enough that we're getting emails complaining about it. Rather than litigate what the article does or doesn't show, we've simply reverted the title. It seems particularly bad to make the title say something that the a…

This title is much worse. There's no clue what it's even about.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#276

Post by Karunamon »

dang wrote: post #246

The submitted title was "Truecrypt was written by a international arms dealer named Paul LeRoux". That broke the HN guidelines by cherry-picking a single detail from the article, and it's also misleading enough that we're getting emails complaining about it. Rather than litigate what the article does or doesn't show, we've simply reverted the title. It seems particularly bad to make the title say something that the a…

Echoing the other sentiments here - the connection to Truecrypt is what made this story interesting. As rewritten, the title is basically meaningless.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#277

Post by murjinsee »

nxzero wrote: post #270
spacehome wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quoted you talking about the U.S.!

Then, I don't understand what you're comment means. Happy to respond again if you'd clarify want you intended.

'Arms dealer': one who sells arms. The point he is making is that, regardless of what is considered legitimate, both this individual and the U.S. government are, by definition, arms dealers.

Or at least that the U.S. is an arms dealer.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#278

Post by Natanael_L »

jron wrote: post #182
svenfaw wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who first read it as "Satoshi"?

There are some interesting circumstantial connections to Satoshi: Considered to be a "brilliant" programmer with a strong C++ background - Most people would call you crazy if you attempted to put a 6 billion dollar prize behind an internet facing application without memory safety Author of crypto/privacy software - E4M and possibly TrueCrypt written in C++ Experience hiding identity both online and off Millionaire -…

Satoshis original code wasn't considered brilliant, though. Not crap, but more in the style of an academic that understood programming than that of an experienced programmer.

The code was written as a basic proof of concept, not with long term maintainability in mind, and the code for the wallet client was not well separated from the code for parsing the blockchain, or from the networking code or from the mining code, etc...

No brilliant programmer would have been willing to publish such a rudimentary proof of concept when interoperability and network effects are such important parts of its main idea.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#279

Post by atmosx »

mirimir wrote: post #267
toyg wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, please. Laws are abstractions and relative and whatnot, but Really Bad People do exist and the public has a right to know. Otherwise, why have journalists or even laws at all?

Honestly, I don't have a clue. Who gets to decide? Some murderers are presidents, and others are on trial. There's really no point in arguing about it.

Start here: https://www.congress.gov/constitution-annotated/
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