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The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS

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

#361

Post by kobieyc »

paulmd wrote: post #235
bbertelsen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a PDF but there are images like this. "Lenna". There are also really famous datasets that are used for examples in similar ways (iris).

Lenna is copyright-encumbered (despite its widespread use, Apple is a commercial operator and can't do that sort of thing) and it's not very inclusive to use a playboy centerfold image (even cropped) and it's taking some heat on the sexism front these days.

Careful, there is someone whose name I shall not mention who is suing people claiming he is Satoshi and has copyright over the Whitepaper. He even got it banned from Bitcoin.org in the UK

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

#362

Post by hnbad »

Psychoshy_bc1q wrote: post #284
igsomething wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add countries with hyperinflation too such as Venezuela and Argentina. Every cryptocurrency-related post here in HN is flooded with extremely negative comments, even if the post itself does not promote cryptocurrencies. These people have seen countless examples of cryptocurrency scams, but they cannot understand what life under an economically oppressed or unstable country is because they never experienced it.

HN is flooded with overprivileged richkids with no connection to reality

I mean yeah but that describes a vast amount of cryptobros (or at least the more successful ones rather than the ones left holding the bag).

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

#363

Post by idkyall »

ralfd wrote: post #331
sinoue wrote: post #151

I still remember the Paula Abdul office background poster and the whole fiasco of BHA Carl Sagan code names. Easter eggs and codenames were supposed to be fun, not lawsuit material.

> I still remember the Paula Abdul office background poster I don't understand this reference and Google leaves me totally blank here. I could ask you to clarify, but there is the chance you don't see it or dont reply so … ChatGPT to the rescue? ----------- Prompt: What was the Paula Abdul office background poster controversy? ChatCPT: The Paula Abdul office background poster controversy refers to a incident that occ…

I wonder if American Idol or Paula Abdul has paid to reduce some of those results in relevance

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

#364

Post by Gordonjcp »

humanistbot wrote: post #140
yreg wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those are famous PDFs .

OK fine, except for IRS Tax Form 1040. Each year's form is probably the most intentionally distributed PDF on the planet (so excluding PDFs bundled with software like this story). I don't think there is a country larger than the US that requires its citizens (or their tax agents/software) to download a form and submit it each year.

So, something that a small minority of the planet's population would have even heard of?

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

#365

Post by gshubert17 »

Y-bar wrote: post #296
grimgrin wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of nothing more important and famous than chicken.pdf https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf

I bet that PDF compresses nicely.

I was surprised that the 52 KB PDF compressed to only 45 KB on my machine. There seems to be about 13 KB of text; perhaps the rest is the illustrations?

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

#366

Post by aldanor »

jxf wrote: post #308
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

Of all time? This almost certainly isn't true. Many treaties, laws, RFCs, and so on would be more impactful than Bitcoin. Do we really think the Bitcoin white paper is more impactful than, say, the Magna Carta or Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses? I think you might be inadvertently succumbing to recency bias.

(Not trying to defend the grandparent's comment, but) You might be also succumbing to the country bias – outside of UK/US, most people wouldn't have ever heard and wouldn't care about ML's 95 or Magna Carta, and it's not going to impact their present and future life in any way.

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

#367

Post by pyinstallwoes »

chucknthem wrote: post #253

Interesting to see this discovery today on Satoshi's birthday (April 5th, 1975). Also the 90th anniversary of Executive Order 6102.

6102 can be summed to 90

6+1+2=(9)0.

Oh how strange the machine elves churn.

April 5th is also 9. (Month 4 day 5) and guess what…

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

#368

Post by sicariusnoctis »

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.

Perhaps the ResNet paper, which has the most citations of all time.

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

#369

Post by hnbad »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #328
lottin wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. Cryptocurrencies are specifically designed to evade regulations. Everything else —efficiency, cost, convenience, usability— is sacrificed in order to achieve this goal.

Call me old school but I don’t understand the hype about regulations. The less power the government has, the better. They certainly don’t need to know my spending habits. And a stack of banknotes evade regulations pretty well anyway.

The function of the state is to enforce private property rights. Regulations exist to alleviate the consequences of private property rights by adding various forms of exceptions. Whether you think that's a good thing depends on whether your idea of utopia is a egalitarian commune or a neofeudal federation of corporate city states.

Note that I'm talking about private property not personal property. Variations of the latter exist and have existed in almost every society but the concept of the former has increasingly been maximized to the point that patches of land, ways to do things, ideas in your head and sincere promises are now things you can own and exchange and people refusing to suffer hunger or lack of shelter are seen as unreasonable if they want to use what isn't eaten or isn't lived in.

Abolishing the state as long as other organizations (or individuals) are allowed to hoard resources/wealth/power seems as catastrophic a suggestion as abolishing the police as long as other gangs exist. You're just substituting one evil for another without affecting any material change.

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

#370

Post by simondotau »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #337
paulmd wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenna is copyright-encumbered (despite its widespread use, Apple is a commercial operator and can't do that sort of thing) and it's not very inclusive to use a playboy centerfold image (even cropped) and it's taking some heat on the sexism front these days.

The "Lenna" is also low dynamic range, low resolution (512x512), low chromatic range, does not have a color profile, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna "In today’s age of high-resolution digital image technology, it seems difficult to argue that a 512 × 512 image produced with a 1970s-era analog scanner is the best we have to offer as an image quality test standard".[2]

I’d be willing to bet that there have been significantly more viewings of that image this century as a result of the documentary. What a ridiculous way to try to end cultural awareness of a meme.

And I’m sorry but I just can’t fathom the controversy. The cropped version is the only one I’ve ever seen used in the context of a sample image. It is utterly unremarkable unless you’re aware of the image’s provenance, (which I bet most people didn’t). Even the uncropped version, which I have only ever saw because of the controversy, isn’t any more racy than many historically important paintings hanging in art galleries.

I’m not saying this is an appropriate canonical test image. But I am saying that it’s disingenuous to single it out as a problem. There is so much of mainstream culture that is orders of magnitude more degrading of women than this image.

I am certainly not equating the two, but I do see parallels in the hysterics around “Lenna” and hysterics around David of Michelangelo’s little noodle.

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