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Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

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Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#151

Post by trixie_ »

sigg3 wrote: post #149
trixie_ wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Yes, thank you. Case in point, this is how you are looked upon by the community as a developer of open source windows software.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#152

Post by reducesuffering »

Graffur wrote: post #119
reducesuffering wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hal Finney theory is too convoluted what with him talking to himself, a stark contrast in programming styles between Hal's organized manner and Satoshi's haphazard hacking, and no connection to the genesis block being a headline from UK/Europe and British lingo. A Nakamoto in town is just a common coincidence, there are 2,800 of them in the US.

Out of curiosity is there anything I can view to compare the two styles?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28816037 as a starting point to poke around the difference in their commits

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#153

Post by starfallg »

dcow wrote: post #145
starfallg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plausible deniability indeed.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#154

Post by dcow »

vecplane wrote: post #150
dcow wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peopl…

> I am being anti-political-correctness because it's ruining written and spoken English.

You incessantly continue to miss the point. People have explained multiple times that this isn't about political correctness. You are seriously missing the point.

It doesn't matter what you think about whether it's politically correct or not to assume Satoshi's gender. And it doesn't matter what I think either. And it doesn't matter whether either of us even give a shit.

What matters is that it is objectively correct, colloquial, and precise to wield the singular `they` when discussing an unknown person. It doesn't matter whether they've picked Mary or Satoshi as their pseudonymous handle.

> we can still refer to the pseudonym construct as 'he' because the construct is masculine.

I'd love to be introduced to a group or style guide that has adopted this style. I have never encountered it. The closest I've encountered is just a default "use he/him because most people just assume male without really thinking about it when online". I would never, as a pedant, use a masculine pronoun to describe e.g. a forum user of unknown meatspace characteristics irrespective of the gender of their handle unless there was a pretext of role playing. If I'm Jisoo on waffles.fm I don't expect to be referred to as "she".

Even if you're correct (and I think you are) that it can be considered correct to use a gendered pronoun when a pseudonym is clearly masculine or feminine and you're strictly referring to the pseudonym, the author of the essay is simply making a style choice and I'm perplexed how you consider his correct usage of the english language (as it's been used since the 14th century) to be ruining the english language. EDIT: also I actually think the author is not referring to the "pseudonym construct" in the essay, I think the author is deliberately referring to the unknown entity that goes by satoshi rather than satoshi full stop (but I may be wrong).

Now if the author said something along the lines of "Satoshi and I's shared understanding of the cypherpunk ... ... " I'd pull out the pitchfork immediately.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#155

Post by dcow »

starfallg wrote: post #153
dcow wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Plausible deniability indeed.

I think that would be a more appropriate theory if we were talking about all the silly pronoun fields every site feels the need to add so that everyone and their mother can virtue signal to infinity and beyond as if they were a good/correct UX or as if they enriched the content of the site or something unfounded. But we're talking about something that predates any sort of culture war of the last 20 years (which I do not deny exists, I just don't see it being waged here).

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#156

Post by mdoms »

russianbandit wrote: post #90
mdoms wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’d have to assume that PLR was posting from 4-9ish in the Philippines. Ok? Why is that a dagger in the heart? My most active posting times are 4-9 and I don't even know if you're talking AM or PM because both work for me.

You mostly sleep between 9pm and 4am?

Yes. Pretty normal sleeping hours.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#157

Post by starfallg »

dcow wrote: post #155
starfallg wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plausible deniability indeed.

I think that would be a more appropriate theory if we were talking about all the silly pronoun fields every site feels the need to add so that everyone and their mother can virtue signal to infinity and beyond as if they were a good/correct UX or as if they enriched the content of the site or something unfounded. But we're talking about something that predates any sort of culture war of the last 20 years (which I do…

You responded to another user here as such -

>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.

So it seems like you agree with me. The sensitivity and derision of the (more or less) correct usage of a pronoun indicates culture war malarky here.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#158

Post by vecplane »

dcow wrote: post #154
vecplane wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peopl…

> I am being anti-political-correctness because it's ruining written and spoken English. You incessantly continue to miss the point. People have explained multiple times that this isn't about political correctness. You are seriously missing the point. It doesn't matter what you think about whether it's politically correct or not to assume Satoshi's gender. And it doesn't matter what I think either. And it doesn't mat…

I'm not missing your point. I'm arguing that your point is wrong.

Satoshi is a he, and should be referred to as a he, not a they.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#159

Post by vecplane »

ethbr0 wrote: post #25
vecplane wrote: post #18

Nitpicking but it's annoying - Why does this post insist on using the singular 'they/their' (in reference to Satoshi) when the normal 'he/his' would suffice and read much more clearly?

Because Satoshi might have been female?

There is no evidence to suggest that Satoshi is a woman. Other writings refer to Satoshi as a 'he' without issue.

Re: Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

#160

Post by masa331 »

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.

Is it that extremely sophisticated tho? I think both of them could crack that very easily if they wanted to
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