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The Face Behind Bitcoin?

mag.newsweek.com

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Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#371

Post by pkfrank »

Crito wrote: post #351
gnaritas wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much anyone who learned how to write in the age of typewriters double spaces after a period, this is not a unique trait for anyone in their mid 30's or up. Hell I still do it, it's deeply ingrained.

As far as I know, many public school typing classes still teach double-spaces. It isn't until you get to things like classes in journalism tracks at universities that the concept is dispensed with.

This bit of the article also confused me. Who doesn't double-space after periods? I recognize the historical origin (typewriters), but I was taught this way and I'm "only" 24.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#372

Post by ap22213 »

arrrg wrote: post #146
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your point about paranoia: Here's an example of people in Ecuador executing a father and son for a mere $20,000: http://www.reddit.com/r/MorbidReality/comments/1zktth/quito_... This is what the Nakamoto family now has to worry about. It wasn't a random killing. There were at least 6 people arrested in connection with the murders. Apparently the robbers had people inside the bank who they were paying to aler…

Yeah, and people get robbed and killed for a few hundred dollar all the time. So what? That’s just a reality. I don’t really see the connection.

Seriously. Isn't this the reason why we pay many billions of dollars each year for the rule of law? If you're an exceptional case that needs extra security, get extra security.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#373

Post by 72deluxe »

The article appears to have many "from then on he stopped responding to emails" and "he then dropped off the map" phrases in it. He might not be replying to emails?

The article is cleverly written to make these perfectly ordinary (in)actions sound suspicious. People could write the same about me if I didn't reply to emails or phone calls for a while.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#374

Post by bane »

lmg643 wrote: post #336
bane wrote: post #101

Topic other than discussing the irresponsibility of "outing" a guy using the clever tricks of using his name and public records look ups. > A libertarian, Nakamoto encouraged his daughter to be independent, start her own business and "not be under the government's thumb," she says. "He was very wary of the government, taxes and people in charge." > What you don't know about him is that he's worked on classified stuff…

Why disregard the topic of the way Newsweek handled this? Here's a private citizen. He has $400mm in an anonymous currency. Here's the city he lives in. Here's what his house looks like. I recognize they are just trying to prove that he isn't living some ostentatious lifestyle but for someone who appears to have no personal security, they could just say "he lives in a modest home" and that is really enough. Focusing…

> Why disregard the topic of the way Newsweek handled this?

Not disregarding it. I just think the topic is already beaten to death elsewhere in this discussion. I wanted to talk about something else.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#375

Post by Torgo »

winstonsmith wrote: post #258
bane wrote: post #101

Topic other than discussing the irresponsibility of "outing" a guy using the clever tricks of using his name and public records look ups. > A libertarian, Nakamoto encouraged his daughter to be independent, start her own business and "not be under the government's thumb," she says. "He was very wary of the government, taxes and people in charge." > What you don't know about him is that he's worked on classified stuff…

These quotes are not just Orwellian, but straight out of Animal Farm : >He doesn't like the system we have today and wanted a different one that would be more equal. He did not like the notion of banks and bankers getting wealthy just because they hold the keys," says Andresen. "Four legs good, two legs bad." >Holding the keys has also made early comers to Bitcoin wealthy beyond measure. "I made a small investment in…

The analogy to holding bankers' keys in bitcoin is holding 51% of mining power, and not a percentage less. Just having a lot of bitcoin gives you the ability to affect the price of the currency, but again this is directly proportional to how much you hold, not because of an artificial power like legal authority to take advantage of fractional reserve, or being a member of the Fed.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#376

Post by dlsx »

The article is distasteful and does not respect the privacy of Mr. Nakamoto the real or his pseudonym. I hope the author gets punched in her stupid dumb cunt for writing this shit.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#377

Post by dragonwriter »

pkfrank wrote: post #371
Crito wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, many public school typing classes still teach double-spaces. It isn't until you get to things like classes in journalism tracks at universities that the concept is dispensed with.

This bit of the article also confused me. Who doesn't double-space after periods? I recognize the historical origin (typewriters), but I was taught this way and I'm "only" 24.

> This bit of the article also confused me. Who doesn't double-space after periods?

I don't. Every style guide I've seen has recommended against it in any medium that is going to be presented in non-fixed-width type, and IME its a lot less distracting to have single-space-after-sentence-ending-punctuation in a fixed-width font than double-space-after in a proportional font, so I've pretty much abandoned the practice entirely except in very narrow circumstances (e.g., I'll usually still do it in source code comments.)

I think I first started adopting this practice around 1990 (about the same time I was finishing high school.)

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#378

Post by Torgo »

jeremyt wrote: post #290
bane wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've learned over the years is that there are a tremendous number of highly different personal philosophies that call themselves "conservative" or "libertarian" that share only the loosest similarities, but the people who self-identify these ways also seem to comfortably self-group and display similar behavior and thought patterns. This is regardless of the textbook definitions of what these philosophies sh…

I'm going to take you at your word that you're actually curious. I think you're seeing hypocrisy here when there is really a lot less in reality. People who are in favor of a certain outcome have no obligation to act as if that outcome has already come to pass. This is why I don't give liberals a hard time because they are in favor of higher taxes but don't voluntarily pay higher taxes themselves. First of all, most…

I worked in the defense industry for a while, and the number of small government conservatives I worked with who were essentially living off the largesse of the bloated defense industry...was really really big.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#379

Post by ceejayoz »

scott_s wrote: post #246
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Nakamoto the only person who lives in LA who also controls >10% of a currency?

Yes, but he's not the only person in LA with a net worth that large. And people who hold a large amount of stock in a company are in a similar situation.

> And people who hold a large amount of stock in a company are in a similar situation.

Initiate a Bitcoin transfer at the same time as a stock sale followed up by a bank transfer from your brokerage and let us know which one finishes faster.

Plus, the brokerage and the bank can choose to hold and/or reverse your transactions, for reasons like "hmm, we should probably see if Bill Gates really meant to sell all his Microsoft shares..."

There are not many people sitting on tens/hundreds of millions of dollars in a format that you can store in your house and send irretrievably to a guy in Eastern Europe in an instant.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#380

Post by crucialfelix »

gexla wrote: post #167
bane wrote: post #101

Topic other than discussing the irresponsibility of "outing" a guy using the clever tricks of using his name and public records look ups. > A libertarian, Nakamoto encouraged his daughter to be independent, start her own business and "not be under the government's thumb," she says. "He was very wary of the government, taxes and people in charge." > What you don't know about him is that he's worked on classified stuff…

Maybe he developed those views after working for the government. Maybe he saw something while working for the government (that we don't see) which helped shape those views. Maybe for him, given the chance to do things he found to be interesting and challenging was greater than his views of the government. This story obviously leaves a lot out from a guy who has had a long secretive life. Also, he isn't on a soapbox.…

We should also consider that its improbable if not impossible that he has not since been visited by contacts from the Government. They knew exactly where he was. So any change of mind he has had since the explosion of Bitcoin should take that into account.
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