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Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

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Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#141

Post by aazaa »

> I hesitate to speculate about Satoshi’s identity, given that the discourse has generally ranged from misguided to downright idiotic and unethical. But with Craig Wright fraudulently claiming credit and invoking a copyright claim to take down the Bitcoin whitepaper, it’s important we revisit the topic and recenter the discussion around the Cypherpunks who actually built Bitcoin.

If the author cared about the shenanigans of fraud Craig Wright, a better approach would be to deal with them directly. The only thing that's hard about that is that the false claims are so numerous.

Wright has conjured a tornado of bullshit. In the process, he has built a loyal following. This is the real story, because the Craig Wrights of the world are wising up to the power of the Internet. They're multiplying, spilling out of the woodwork, and overrunning the pantry. People have an insatiable hunger to be lied to with gusto, and the Internet gives them everything they need to satisfy that hunger. All it takes is an unethical person who understands this point and has no qualms about exploiting it. Past a point, the fact checkers just give up.

We've seen several examples now of this phenomenon. But the Internet-savvy Big Liar is on an exponential growth curve.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#142

Post by acjohnson55 »

atatatat wrote: post #131
acjohnson55 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good data point. Although many people program for both OSs, it at least raises the question of why make a Windows app, if it's not your preferred platform?

Why did the person who published a whitepaper they hoped would change the world write an adjacent app for the most used consumer OS in the world?

Let's say it was Sassaman and that it's true that he was primarily a Unix programmer. If he didn't have any pretenses that it would become an immediate hit, he might have focused on coding in his comfort zone. Presumably the people he interacted with who were most interested were probably also Unix users.

On the other hand, he was Bram Cohen's roommate, and he saw BitTorrent take off as a mainstream product. So it's quite possible he was sensitive to the idea that a Windows program would have more viral ability to pick up users.

In any case, he probably would have assumed that if the system gained even a minimal level of adoption, it would quickly be ported to all platforms.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#143

Post by acjohnson55 »

mijoharas wrote: post #41
acjohnson55 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a particular link? Because simply googling the term, I find a few things that don't even mention Sassaman. But it also seems like they may be preselecting the candidates and applying the analysis to only their works. For whatever reason, Sassaman hasn't been spoken of much as a candidate, and is unclear whether his writings (of which there are many) would have been included.

I believe the parent comment is referring to Hal Finney. Similar points are made in this other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28815538

Yeah, but some of the stylometric analyses point to the other leading candidates. It doesn't seem like there is a stylometric consensus.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#144

Post by lostmsu »

simonh wrote: post #111
lostmsu wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is 50/50 for me between Carmack and Torvalds. 2/1 if you add Satoshi.

Neither of them have demonstrated any significant knowledge of the extremely sophisticated, cutting edge crypto and anonymisation tech involved.

The conversation was about hackers (presumably great) in general.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#145

Post by dcow »

starfallg wrote: post #105
temp8964 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author of the article already assumes Satoshi is a single person. The name is simply a Japanese male name. So it is obviously wrong to call him "they". This kind of stupidity only works in Woke English. Translate it to most other languages will make the readers deeply confused: what's wrong with the writer? What's going on in his mind?

Can you take this culture war garbage back to Gab or whatever? We don't need more pointless division (and this goes for both sides).

There is a correct way to do this in the english language. There is no culture war here.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#146

Post by dcow »

vecplane wrote: post #107
temp8964 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author of the article already assumes Satoshi is a single person. The name is simply a Japanese male name. So it is obviously wrong to call him "they". This kind of stupidity only works in Woke English. Translate it to most other languages will make the readers deeply confused: what's wrong with the writer? What's going on in his mind?

Thank you for understanding what I'm trying to get at. It's unfortunate that so many other people here fail to grasp the harm that this is doing to written and spoken English.

The only harm happening here is people like you overstepping bounds and ultimately trashing actually correct usage of the language because you are operating under some pretext that there's a woke conspiracy to remove all gendered pronouns from colloquial usage. This conspiracy may well exist, but it simply does not apply to this situation. As multiple people have explained and linked, the singular "they" is used to refer to an antecedent of unknown or unspecified gender or when gender is simply irrelevant. "They" is not being used because "satoshi could be trans let's not hurt zer feelings". It's because we literally don't know. You're barking up the wrong tree here. I care because I cringe every time someone says "We were just at Mary and I's house baking cookies." which is so obviously incorrect it drives me up a wall. I guess that makes me a grammar nazi.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#147

Post by SiliconVallet »

derangedHorse wrote: post #123
wp381640 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still think it was Hal Finney Finney didn't mix British and American English the way Satoshi did in his writing. Finney was also an experienced and much better developer[0] than Satoshi[1] [0] https://github.com/halfinney/bitcoin/commit/dc411b51e0a3cffc... [1] https://github.com/Maguines/Bitcoin-v0.1/blob/master/bitcoin...

Nothing in that PR showed he was a much better developer, he just implemented an optimization he found in a book. Contrary to the medium post, Satoshi's code was fairly clean for a first release. The omission of unit tests just shows the uncertainty Satoshi had about the project (why make tests for something that hasn't found adoption?).

Because TDD is dumb and actual hacking and development doesn't revolve around unit testing?

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#148

Post by julienchastang »

Reading this article, I am struck by how BitCoin and crypto currencies had idealistic origins. Contrast that with practical realities of crypto today which seems to be fueling mostly speculation and illegality. It is also an environmental and climate disaster.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#149

Post by sigg3 »

trixie_ wrote: post #109
ari__ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most hackers I know write software for pretty much any other OS because of how much easier it is than writing software for Windows, not because they're uppity. Some may be ideological purists, sure, but I think you'd be very hard pressed to find a hacker that says the developer experience on Windows is easier/nicer/better than the developer experience on Linux or MacOS.

People who write open source windows software are looked down upon. Your typical hacker especially in the 90s/00s - Microsoft was the evil empire.

What do you mean _was_?

If Microsoft was a person it would be a psychopath: befriend you for economic benefits and crush you when that is the more convenient option.

It's a private company who has actively pursued monopoly by buying its way into the educational system and strongarming any competition in the OEM off the shelf OS market, literally making it damn near impossible to avoid it.

It's goddamn scary how the public sector seems to believe Windows, Word or Excel are the only professional alternatives and are necessary for society to function. Why aren't we writing in LaTeX or R on Linux? Because a very powerful market force has bought the truth and will embrace or extinguish any sane opposition.

Fuck Microsoft and fuck Bill Gates. They are evil.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#150

Post by vecplane »

dcow wrote: post #146
vecplane wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for understanding what I'm trying to get at. It's unfortunate that so many other people here fail to grasp the harm that this is doing to written and spoken English.

The only harm happening here is people like you overstepping bounds and ultimately trashing actually correct usage of the language because you are operating under some pretext that there's a woke conspiracy to remove all gendered pronouns from colloquial usage. This conspiracy may well exist, but it simply does not apply to this situation. As multiple people have explained and linked, the singular "they" is used to r…

I'm not being an anti-trans culture warrior with this argument. My point is that this post is made less clear and harder to read by referring to Satoshi as 'they' whenever possible. I am being anti-political-correctness because it's ruining written and spoken English.

Satoshi is a masculine name, so it's reasonable to expect the author to use masculine singular pronouns. Even if Satoshi is a woman or a group of people, we can still refer to the pseudonym construct as 'he' because the construct is masculine.

It's needlessly confusing to use the singular 'they' in reference to a specific individual with a gendered name, especially when the whole point of the article is that Satoshi is this one man. And most other writing I find on Satoshi refers to him as a 'he' without a problem.

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