Man Denies He's Bitcoin Founder • Hacker News Board

Re: Man Denies He's Bitcoin Founder

#121

Post by Crito » Fri, Mar 07, 2014, 8:20 PM UTC

nhaehnle wrote: post #91

saraid216 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still claim that Satoshi Nakamoto is the NSA. Clearly this was one of their fall guys. Terrible people, the NSA, setting up innocent bystanders as scapegoats.

What is your story for the thought processes/internal processes at NSA that would have led to the creation of Bitcoin by them? I'm genuinely curious because it seems pretty out of character for an organization whose task is to protect the established elite to go out of their way to create something extremely creative that could endanger the established elite.

Perhaps *"TLAs got tired of smuggling cocaine for beer money, and wanted something a bit less hazardous/risky."

Re: Man Denies He's Bitcoin Founder

#122

Post by latj » Fri, Mar 07, 2014, 8:22 PM UTC

declan wrote: post #58

latj wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two stories arent mutually exclusive. According to Newsweek the man acknowledged that he had worked on bitcoin: "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it" AP says the main is denying he ever worked on bitcoin. He very well could have said both of those things.

Imagine this: Dorian Nakamoto was a former DoD contractor working on classified project and was not Mr. Bitcoin. A woman started (from his perspective) stalking him, emailing him under false pretenses, phoning him, calling his son, and then showing up at his house in person. He called the cops to keep this stalker (again, from his perspective) away from his house. She yelled some questions at him from a distance and…

I knew I should be weary of the writer after this:

"Satoshi Nakamoto's 2008 online proposal also hints at his age, with the odd reference to "disk space" - something that hasn't been an issue since the last millennium"

1. Showing great concern for the small details, side cases, resource conservation is a timeless and ageless sign of a good programmer.

2. Disk space is most certainly still an issue.

Re: Man Denies He's Bitcoin Founder

#123

Post by drjesusphd » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 3:55 AM UTC

bennyg wrote: post #79

declan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could well be the case. I've seen it happen before including in newsrooms I've worked in: A reporter feels too confident in her story and starts to ignore contrary evidence. Her editors don't perform sufficient independent verification. Everyone is caught up in having an exclusive. In this case it coincides with the magazine's relaunch, ratcheting up the pressure still more. Also you might have a bunch of Englis…

Cryptography is learnable by anybody. Maybe not practiced up to state-of-the-art standards by just anybody, but to say that's unreachable is bad form. I'm an art major turned software developer who has been reading about cryptography and paying astute attention to cryptography articles here (as well as trying to objectively gauge the comments), for the better part of the last half-year. I'm not saying I'm good at it,…

> but to say that's unreachable is bad form.

Hear here! I think there's something profound here. Not to put words in your mouth in what follows, of course.

As a physicist, I'm really tired of the attitude that some things are just too complicated for the "common man" to understand, and I can easily see how crypography is similar with respect to public perception. This idea that "not everyone can understand" is propaganda put forward by the most intellectually insecure among us, and it does us damage in the long run.

Inevitably, someone comes by that sells the public a load of snake oil under the cover of being "too complicated". When they're eventually proven wrong, public trust erodes. Eventually, the very idea that expertise exists is in jeopardy.

Thank you for calling out the bullshit, even though you might not have meant it as such. These "technical" topics are open and understandable by everyone that cares, and I'm convinced that anyone who suggests otherwise is not worth their salt.

(edit: No offense intended whatsoever to declan. This is just something I've been meaning to get off my chest for a while and bennyg just reminded me of it.)