The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS • Hacker News Board

Re: The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

#191

Post by SXX » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 1:46 AM UTC

humanistbot wrote: post #145

capableweb wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Each year's form is probably the most intentionally distributed PDF on the planet In the US*. The Bitcoin paper has surely been distributed far wider than any US-specific tax forms.

No. We're talking in the hundreds of millions of people who either make a 1040 PDF themselves or have one made for them, and every year. The number of people who have used a cryptocurrency is probably larger than but within one order of magnitude of the number of people who have filled out a US 1040. But the number of people who have intentionally downloaded the original Bitcoin whitepaper? That's a tiny, tiny fracti…

Outside of US most famous document produced by fed would be W-8BEN.

Basically anyone who ever opened investment account know about it.

Re: The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

#192

Post by tzs » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 1:49 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #92

crazygringo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I can't even think of any other "famous PDF". If you asked me for a famous modern formatted document generally, I might say the screenplay for The Godfather would be a good candidate. But there's no canonical PDF for that. :P Plus, copyright would prevent that.

What about the famous "Lorem Ipsum"?

"Lorem Ipsum" completely confused me the first time I ran into it.

I was trying to make a document for work, using Apple Pages for the first time. Pages had a template that seemed good for the kind of document I had to make so I used that.

The template included "Lorem Ipsum" text. But since I hadn't heard of it before I thought it was some sort of sample document showing how to use the template but in a language I didn't recognize.

I figured that I'd somehow gotten Pages configured to default to a foreign language and spent the next couple of hours trying to figure out how to set it to English. Eventually it occurred to me to search for some of the exact text from the template, hoping to find someone else had already dealt with this problem, and found the Wikipedia article that explained what "Lorem Ipsum" is.

Re: The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

#193

Post by silentsea90 » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 1:50 AM UTC

vonwoodson wrote: post #186

Look, I don’t want to give too much away: but if you’re using literally any of my software and can enter xyzzy… nothing happens

"xyzzyspoon!" does work wonders on one piece of software

Re: The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

#194

Post by pcthrowaway » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 1:50 AM UTC

alex_sf wrote: post #141

doodlesdev wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> blockchains existed for decades before bitcoin did That's absolutely not true. Bitcoin was the first blockchain like the ones we know today, the idea existed before but no one had implemented it in a decentralized way [0][1]. Bitcoin was also the first to solve the double spending problem. [2] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain [2]: https://en.wikipedia…

We had DHTs, we had blockchains, and double spending was solved at least 2 years before the bitcoin white paper. Satoshi combined them together in a novel form, for sure, but it’s still largely useless.

We had linked lists of hashes which themselves referenced hash-tables, and we had a solution to the Byzantine Generals problem, but the bitcoin whitepaper combined them, and the combination of those two properties (not even tied to the consensus mechanism) is the thing people are talking about when they use the word "blockchain" now

Re: The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

#195

Post by pcthrowaway » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

bdcravens wrote: post #133

How long before Craig Wright, an Australian "academic" who has very dubious claims of being Satoshi and who has attempted to bully via the legal system, claims Apple owes him billions?

This is great, because he has an obligation to sue them to defend his IP.

And Apple will bury him.

Re: The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

#196

Post by kinghajj » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

Cool, now I can add this to my `~/.bashrc` and easily view the whitepaper whenever.

    btc_wp() {
            open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf
    }

Re: The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

#197

Post by nirav72 » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 1:59 AM UTC

jboy55 wrote: post #159

danielodievich wrote: post #67

This reminds me of the (encrypted) copy of Microsoft Bob shipping with every Windows XP CD ever https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-...

The story mentioned how one of the reasons to put Bob on each CD was to make any download of the ISO longer, since the actual XP data didn't fill the CD's capacity. Someone this conjured a memory of downloading XP/2000 back in the day, when I first got DSL, and how it was almost an hour. I thought that was quick at the time. 1.5mb/s vs 56k and all. I recently upgraded to 1GB internet, a 600mb game update took under 1…

> I wonder what 20 years will bring?

Probably not much. At least advancements wont be like the difference between going from 1.5 mbps to 1 gbps. It's the same reason why 10gbe ethernet has not become a common thing for consumer level desktop hardware. While 1gbe ethernet has been the standard offering since the mid-2000s. Recently lot of manufacturers have started supporting 2.5gbe. But low cost switching/routing hardware that fully supports 2.5gbe isn't quite there yet.

Re: The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

#198

Post by s1gnp0st » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 2:04 AM UTC

EamonnMR wrote: post #179

alwillis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve seen many instances of documents that weren’t highly thought of at the time of their publication, with that changing radically later. Vannevar Bush‘s essay “As We May Think” in 1945 is a visionary document that describes technologies we take for granted today more than 70 years ago. It’s possible the Bitcoin white paper will be looked at in similar ways, especially if Bitcoin ends up being one mankind’s most im…

> if Bitcoin ends up being one mankind’s most important inventions That seems unlikely.

It's really disheartening how much unjustified disdain is heaped upon Bitcoin the technology by commenters here.

You're going to claim you're certain that a solution to the Byzantine generals problem will have no useful consequences?

Re: The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

#199

Post by s1gnp0st » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 2:07 AM UTC

alex_sf wrote: post #29

monero-xmr wrote: post #22

The Bitcoin white paper is probably one of the top 100 impactful non-literary documents of all time. Makes sense to be used

Really though? I’m confident there are 100 RFCs alone that were more impactful.

Silicon Valley tech-bros know that the money-printer drives the malinvestment bubbles that feed them. They're natural enemies of a decentralized, deflationary currency.

Re: The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

#200

Post by cozzyd » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 2:11 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #87

krsdcbl wrote: post #84

Honestly If i had to guess, I'd say the answer is as simple as: a freely distributable, easily verifiable document was needed for testing purposes, and some engineer thought it'd be a cheeky little easter egg to use that file as bitcoin was starting to gain back traction in 2019 after it's first big surge and fall the years prior.

Yup. I can't even think of any other "famous PDF". If you asked me for a famous modern formatted document generally, I might say the screenplay for The Godfather would be a good candidate. But there's no canonical PDF for that. :P Plus, copyright would prevent that.

https://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf