Newsweek's Statement on the Bitcoin Story | Hacker News Reader

Newsweek's Statement on the Bitcoin Story

newsweek.com

29 pointsuptown24 comments

So Newsweek "encourages all to be respectful of the privacy and rights of the individuals involved." It might have been nice to consider that before publishing a legible photo of Nakamoto's license plate.

It just occurred to me how ridiculous this whole article is...they cite his supposed $400 million Bitcoin stash and then post a photo of his home and license plate. I just pray nobody goes snooping around looking for his (potentially nonexistent) BTC wallet.

>We recognized a public interest in establishing some core facts about Bitcoin and better informing those who might invest money in it.

Bullshit. Revealing who Satoshi is doesn't give you one shred of information to help you decide whether or not to invest in Bitcion.

There are some values of Satoshi that would make some people change their minds: if it were an NSA operation, or a neo-Nazi group, or Scientologists, or Intellectual Ventures.

Personally, I try pretty hard to not use things created by assholes, even if the things themselves are good. (You can't avoid things made by people with abrasive personalities, but I don't think I regularly use anything made by a genuine asshole.)

Linus Torvalds is generally accepted to be pretty abrasive, at least, do you use anything created by him?

I try not to learn anything about any creator whose work I admire, they will unfortunately generally disappoint.

abrasive != asshole

The rough tone on lkml (supposedly) reflects the gap between people who want to make something that's nontrivial and used by many people and the smaller number of people who are actually able to do so. Setting yourself up as this kind of gatekeeper means you have to be non-likable towards a lot of people even if you're a perfectly nice person.

Conversely, someone can be an asshole while showing spotless behaviour to the people they meet.

I was just struck by the improbability of using "nothing made by an asshole."

Drive a Volkswagen? Or a Daimler, Chrysler, BMW, or Mercedes Benz?

But that's the entire point of bitcoin. It's decentralized. It doesn't matter who had the idea, they don't have any more control over it than anyone else.

Given the amount of bitcoins Satoshi allegedly owns, he would be able to exert more influence on the bitcoin market than anyone else.

But the article didn't talk about his values (because he wouldn't talk about them).

It was just a tabloid exposé of a private individual.

Well, not really.

Whoever Satoshi is does control an amount of BTC that could significantly shift the market if they suddenly did something with it...

An analogy to clarify my point: this would be like having to learn about Steve Jobs to decide whether or not to invest in Apple in 2015.

I guess it could be helpful knowing if it's a good-hearted civilian versus a tech savy mafioso.

Other than the fact that the guy owns perhaps $1 billion (surprise: he's not the only one), how is this illuminating?

It's been open source for 5 years and, by design, Nakamoto has no control over it.

That's a good question. I'm on the fence. If you look at the design of an artifact and try to tease out clues to the intentions of the designer, that's very interesting to me.

Recently there was an essay by Charlie Stross buzzing around, fueled by a particularly contentious passage that suggested that BitCoin looked as if it were designed as a weapon against central banking and tax collection. A good chunk of the techno-nerd community denied it with the standard observation that it's just a descentralized protocol, etc.

So that conversation was very much like "This knife was designed to make fillet cuts". Response: "No, it's just a long sharp blade with an attached handle".

And I came away from that thinking "really, doesn't the design of this artifact suggest a little more about its intended purpose?"

And then this article comes out and suggests that the anthropological instincts of Charlie Stross vis-a-vis the design intent behind BitCoin may not have been so off the wall after all. And so that superficially feels somewhat illuminating to me, as someone who would not feel entirely comfortable throwing my weight behind something like that - despite how brilliant and cool BitCoin is on a purely technical level.

I also wonder - if we entertain for a moment the hypothesis that Charlie Stross is on to something - does the fact that Nakamoto no longer has any control over it imply that it would no longer behave as designed?

"Ms. Goodman’s research was conducted under the same high editorial and ethical standards that have guided Newsweek for more than 80 years."

Can anyone comment on their editorial and ethical standards? How high are they to begin with?

Since being sold to the Daily Beast and then the IB Times, not very high. There are a lot of factual errors in their "Fall of France" article and even when pointed out Newsweek refuses to acknowledge any of them.

Google Newsweek and "Hitler diaries." Google Newsweek and Quran and retraction.

They're one of the most inconsistent publications I've ever seen. Lots of great work that stands the test of time. Also some past accuracy problems that were big enough to make headlines.

> Moreover, [Newsweek] encourages all to be respectful of the privacy and rights of the individuals involved.

It takes ignorance, stupidity or both to not realize that this "encouragement" is nothing compared to the several $100M that the Satoshi Nakamoto owns incentivizing many people to trample his privacy and rights.

Why would him having a bunch of (potential) money cause a lot of people to try to bother him? Steve Jobs, for example, had a lot of (actual) money, and managed to get by OK in his Palo Alto home, whose address was very well known, and was on a public street that was easy to get to, and maintain his privacy. The same goes for most people with large amounts of money.

Is there some reason that Bitcoin millionaires are more likely to be harassed than normal millionaires?

Yes: they are not spending large amounts of money on their personal security (yet).

Anyone got a no paywall link?

https://archive.is/Q1hi7

Are they just trolling the public in this article or adding insult to the injury?

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