Costs of under-confidence - <AUTHOR> http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2015/12/costs-of-under-confidence.html <comment><USER3> I don't like the tone of the opening anecdote

> Had Linda been more confident, we'd have won.

It appears that Linda kept being right. Regardless, the captain kept not choosing her answers. Perhaps being a poor captain led to the team's defeat, not Linda failing to assert herself properly. Afterall, a good captain should have experience in the world of pub quizzes, and one would expect that he might have seen this sort of situation before. Failing that, based with the empirical evidence of Linda being right often, he probably should have picked her answers more frequently.

I think the larger lesson here is that confidence is a good thing, but relying on it solely can fail miserably as a substitute for having actual knowledge about something.

<comment><USER4> Couldn't agree more: if people think team outcomes would improve "if only the smart people spoke more confidently", it's a sign of incompetent leadership to me. This problem is as damaging as it is pervasive, and scales from pub trivia to national elections (where voters are the collective team captain).

However, the most fascinating example is found in large hierarchical organisations (i.e. large corporates and government agencies). Poor managers have no relevant domain knowledge. So the only basis they have for decision making is 'who sounds the most confident', because they lack the ability to judge who is actually correct. Worse still, the 'captains' (managers) decide who gets to be the 'sub-captains' (and therefore future captains).

I watched it happen in real-time once. I worked in a relatively young organisation that put 2-3 incompetent guys in upper management. They made bad hires and bad decisions, because they had zero domain expertise (IT). I was startled at how quickly incompetence spread throughout the organisation, like a metastasising cancer. Within 6 months they had virtually ruined the place, and the (few) competent hires they had made were rapidly jumping ship.

It was like they'd read the Netflix Culture slides ([http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664](http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664)) and decided to do the exact opposite...

<comment><USER5> That's the big problem with the modern workplace, right? It's impossible to be an expert in everything, and so you need to quickly judge _who_ the experts are and defer to them. And it's made doubly difficult because competence and confidence are often inversely proportional: once you've put in all the detailed study necessary to actually become an expert, you understand just how much you don't understand.

Anyway, I'm actually with the article on this one: it's on Linda to learn to speak up and become more confident. Why? Because of game theory. The situation where everyone projects a realistic assessment of their own confidence is not an evolutionarily-stable strategy. It is trivial to "defect" and project high confidence in an area of low competence, the cost (to the individual) of doing this is low, and the chance of detection is also low in most situations. That means that any large population will tend toward being filled with blowhards; statistically, somebody is gonna do it, and then once they do it everyone else has to become a blowhard to keep up. And so analyzing this rationally, your only choice is to become a blowhard yourself, ideally while also keeping factual discipline so your ideas are themselves usually right.

Interestingly, I've seen some very good managers make their careers off of "confidence arbitrage". Basically, they learn to recognize and surround themselves with people who have low confidence but high competence. They then take the opinions of these individual contributors (which are often right, but often stated equivocally) and then repeat them to upper management with zero doubt, basically providing a confidence boost to other peoples' opinions. This helps viewpoints that are _right_ but imperfectly stated get heard, and it makes the manager seem like a genius. Win-win for everyone.

<comment><USER4> As you point out, it's interesting how this problem is amplified by the dunning-kruger effect. I've also observed this issue to be worse in environments when success or failure is difficult to measure (or is only measurable far in to the future).

And I very much agree with your last paragraph: good managers and leaders are people who recognise competence and use it to further an organisation's goals. I don't mean that in the "take credit for your subordinate's idea" kind of way, as that's clearly an unsustainable strategy (the uncredited start withholding information and ideas, eventually).

On the game theory/evolutionarily stable strategy side of things though, I think it depends on context and perspective. If the context is one with a ubiquity of good managers, the pay-off for 'unjustified confidence' is probably pretty low or even negative. Also, as this is a multi-round game, the pay-off for 'unjustified confidence' gets lower and lower with each successive round (as good managers will factor past experience into their estimation of subordinate competence).

On the flip side, in a context with mostly incompetent managers, I'd agree the dominant strategy for individuals, competent and incompetent alike, is to 'act confident'. Although, as mentioned before, the competent are hobbled by the dunning-kruger effect here. Even if they weren't (i.e. competent and incompetent subordinates display equal levels of confidence), the outcome for the organisation would be indistinguishable from random decision making. In other words, you could replace managers with a coin (or a n-sided die, for problems with n possible solutions). And you don't have to pay coins or dice six figure salaries, making it the better option...

From the organisation's perspective, it seems crazy to rely on getting the competent people to 'be more confident'. In fact, it seems impossible. If your organisation needs to rely on 'confidence' to determine who is competent, then by definition it cannot directly discern which employees are competent. So how would it know which employees to encourage to be 'more confident'? This seems to reduce back to the '(at best) random decision making' outcome in the previous paragraph.

Funnily enough, if you factor in the dunning-kruger effect, in the 'bad managers' context the best way to make decisions (on average) would be to follow the advice of the 'least confident sounding' employees.

The only viable (albeit less hilarious) solution from the organisation's perspective (and therefore dominant strategy) is to try very hard to only hire competent leaders and managers.

<comment><USER6> > If your organisation needs to rely on 'confidence' to determine who is > competent, then by definition it cannot directly discern which employees are > competent.

That's correct specifically because in the absence of the ability to judge competence (the original research by Dunning and Kruger showed that those low in competence overestimated the competence of others as well as their own), confidence becomes the stand-in. So over time if you don't start with the most competent people in positions of leadership, and maybe even if you do, you end up with the most confident (and probably least competent) people in them over several refresh cycles.

Longer form piece on the subject: [https://hbr.org/2014/07/the-dangers-of- confidence/](https://hbr.org/2014/07/the-dangers-of-confidence/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the over-confident people are not necessarily more sure of their abilities, but rather, less afraid of being wrong or making a mistake. Mistakes are just shrugged off, whereas for the under-confident, mistakes can be crippling and cause further under-confidence.

Having a culture where it's ok to fail is very important for the under- confident to progress. Knowing that a wrong outcome is little more than an opportunity for learning can be incredibly empowering.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, the hiring process (in general, but particularly in the tech industry) is biased towards the overconfident and strongly against the under- confident. It then becomes hard to build that sort of culture because you are actively filtering out the people who fit it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an interesting article since he cites a pub quiz and sports - something I participate in.

I've been playing for about 4 years in a pub quiz. We've won once and are considered a strong team. However, the difference between the a strong team, and the better team in a night, is the fact that our team fosters a "no suggestion is a dumb suggestion" policy. No matter how stupid you think your answer is, you are encouraged to say it. In fact, if we see body language from a person hesitating we're quick to jump in and say "Spit it out! Just say it!"

We essentially create a safe zone for our team members to not worry about the consequences of a wrong answer. There were so many times where a completely wrong suggestion makes another teammate say, "Hey! Wait, I think I remember!"

We also have a policy of if a person has a different answer than the rest, then he/she has to "fight for it". That is, you have to convince the rest of the team. By having a "fight for it" rule, we put controlled confrontation on the centre of the table and let people hash it out. There is no regret, or fear, or worrying about feelings. It's just a normal part of our evening that is done with humour and friendliness. Firm, but friendly!

By doing the above, we instil confidence in every team member. Those that are more confident by their nature, can still be challenged by anyone and keeps them in check, and the weaker confident ones feel safer to step forward when they need to. It balances out and our team has absolutely great chemistry because of it.

I've also played team sports for most of my life and some of the best teams I've played for had former professional athletes. Since they were stronger than the rest and more confident, they always raised their hand and took the blame for any mistake! It was quite funny because we knew my screw up was not their fault, but they would make an excuse about how they should've done 'X' and I wouldn't have screwed up.

Needless to say, that allowed players like me that weren't former pros, to be at ease and to be more confident and give my best, knowing that the strongest player on the team wasn't going to look down on me for every mistake.

It was a very interesting dynamic where the more confident person ensured that the less confident person is playing their best and it raised their confidence. Again, it is a kind of delicate balance that can change on any given night.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is shocking how far being self-confident can carry you, despite having very little skill or being completely wrong. I've worked with several engineers who are extremely confident in themselves, talk with complete confidence and authority, and are generally wrong. One engineer I worked with recently almost took down our entire company with his terrible code. And yet, everyone keeps going to him for answers, etc.

I think it's just human nature. Underconfidence is the exact opposite. Conducting you with underconfidence will lead to no one taking you seriously. Unfortunately, moving up in your career requires for you to convince people to have confidence in you, so this is a skill everyone needs to learn.

<comment><USER11> A simple record of getting things done well and accurately will make people take you seriously in good organizations more than any amount of confidence.

<comment><USER12> Those of us with engineering or mathematical background wish that what you assert would be consistently true. My own experience in medium to large corporations indicates that this is only partially true and often requires substantial endurance and sub-par compensation before it begins to work out.

I like Jason Roberts article on Luck Surface Area [http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck- surf...](http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area)

This rings much closer to the truth in my experience. The best results are some combination of what you suggest plus the confidence and ability to communicate about the good work that you have done.

<comment><USER11> True - having absolutely no communication is a good way to get put into the back room and fired in a round of budget cuts because nobody knows what you do, but I consider that to be relatively uncommon rather than the rule. A minimum amount of soft skills are required for almost any job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > There are two elements to this. One is knowing what you don't know - <USER2> > being overconfident. The other is knowing what you do know

This reminds me of my musician days, when we sometimes talked about the four stages of progression from beginner to pro.

1\. You know you don't know (beginner) 2\. You don't know you don't know (cocky amateur - over confident) 3\. You don't know you know (talented amateur - under confident) 4\. You know you know (seasoned pro)

<comment><USER14> 5\. You know you don't know, and nobody else does either (fully realized)

<comment><USER15> "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."

\- Socrates

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Over confidence is related to self deception. In fact research shows that over-confidence is the biological norm. It is normal for people to lie to themselves. In fact the strange thing is, people who are under-confident tend to be diagnosed as clinically depressed.

source: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100008723963904433437045775489...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443343704577548973568243982)

<comment><USER4> The phenomenon you're talking about is known as 'depressive realism' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism)). The evidence is fairly inconclusive, but it's an interesting (and IMHO, plausible) hypothesis on depression. The prevailing theory is that depressed people have a more accurate perception of reality (as opposed to the non- depressed, who have a positively biased perception).

There's some (disputed) evidence that Winston Churchill suffered from depression. Perhaps this is why he was such an effective war-time prime minister: in a time of war, if your perception of reality is inaccurate, you're less likely to survive.

It's interesting to contrast the speeches of Chamberlain and Churchill with this in mind. On the one hand you have Chamberlain's "Peace for our time" speech after concluding the Munich Agreement:

"My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."

And on the other you have Churchill's first speech to the House of Commons after becoming Prime Minister:

"I would say to the House as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs—Victory in spite of all terror—Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A side effect of the narcissistic disturbance which you see a lot today is an unstable self image. One minute you think you can do anything, then you have some slight reversal and you think you are useless.</comment>


Solar PV rapidly becoming the cheapest option to generate electricity - <AUTHOR> http://www.grist.org/solar-power/2011-10-11-solar-pv-rapidly-becoming-cheapest-option-generate-electricity <comment><USER2> It is surprising how little attention has been created by this huge PV panel price decrease, from $4.00 a watt to $1.25 in three years.

Solyndra is an early casualty, since their business model depended on PV panel prices to fall much more slowly.

The economics of home based solar electricity depends on three numbers, the panel price, the local retail electric rate, and the interest rate of the loan for the system. Right now, in much of the US, you can see that a PV system makes sense for new construction. A simple example:

      $12500 : 4500 W PV system w/no storage (grid backed up)

      4% interest rate, payment of $60/month

      $0.11 per kwh avoided cost, the system generates about $70 of electricity/month

In a nutshell, this is grid parity, right now in 2011. And the owner of such a system does not need to worry about utilities increasing their rates over the years.

<comment><USER3> Does your example include a FIT (feed in tariff) provided by government at a much higher rate than grid power, or are you doing a calculations at grid power? A lot of places have a high FIT value currently, but this is subject to political whims and any incoming government might find it easy to gain votes by trimming the FIT, as has already happened in many places around the world.

Another huge problem with these calculations is the very small fraction of people who stay in one house for more than 10 years. Essentially you have to stay in the house for the entire payback period or you've lost out.

Personally I think the solar price will have to drop to the point where it is much lower than grid (with no subsidies), rather than just about equal. At that point, takeup will be much higher.

<comment><USER4> Why would you have lost out? Couldn't you sell the house for more than you could have if you hadn't had solar panels installed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He's making way too many assumptions. In 1894 a writer said that at then current rates of population expansion in fifty years the streets of London would be buried in horse manure.

[http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past- th...](http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past-the-great- horse-manure-crisis-of-1894/)

Course he didn't foresee the advent of the automobile. Breakthoughs like the horseless carriage come out of nowhere. Something like Thorium could end up generating ultra cheap electricity and in fifty years solar might end up being thought of as a quaint technology like buggy whips.

Our goal for the US should be energy independence, not a slavic devotion to a specific technology.

<comment><USER2> Since solar is less than 1% of US electricity generation, it is unclear why you interpret this to be "a slavic devotion to a specific technology".

Solar is the ultimate option of energy independence, since as the OP discusses, 30 lbs of sand turned into solar cells will power a house for three decades or more.

<comment><USER6> But it's hard to store energy and to transmit it across long distances. This is the fundamental problem with solar and wind. You can put one of China's new thorium [1] or pebble bed [2] reactors anywhere on the face of the earth, and the wattage per surface area ratio relative to solar will be a great deal less.

Solar will likely be some part of the answer but it's always going to be niche relative to oil, coal, nuclear, and (where the region allows it) geothermal/hydroelectric.

The question that only experts in the space could answer is whether the $1.25 price per Watt is due to a real decrease in the price of fundamental components/manufacturing processes or whether it is due to subsidies of some kind.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_prit...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe- nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/global/25chinasid...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/global/25chinaside.html)

<comment><USER2> Not hard to transmit solar electric fifty feet, from the rooftop to the iPad charger, pretty much a solved problem.

The OP graph showed solar prices falling faster than linear on a _log_ scale. Meanwhile, nuclear and coal plant construction costs are now two to three times what they were a few years ago.

Not sure where your confidence solar will be a niche player comes from when the pricing trends favor solar so dramatically.

<comment><USER3> Solar will always remain niche because it can't do baseload power. Sure, there's been some success with solar thermal providing power for 24 hours, but during bad weather there's no chance it's going to do that for a week at a time. Anything that can't do baseload power has to have baseload power backup, which is a large cost of duplicating power. Which is why very few people will every totally rely on solar power if they can get a grid connection.

There is no way around the fact that the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day, and residential power usage peaks after dark.

In short, other types of large-scale generation will always outdo solar because it just cannot reliably provide power around the clock.

A bicycle is cheaper than a car by an order of magnitude, but can't carry passengers or luggage, can't go long distance, and isn't weatherproof. That's why nearly everyone with a bike also has a car, even despite the massive cost advantages to cycling.

<comment><USER2> So the question is, is it possible to imagine a system that uses a majority solar? And does it appear to have the potential to be economically competitive?

First, however, residential usage does not peak after dark. Peaks occur on sunny hot days when A/C usage is maximum. And since in the US the electric grid already exists and no one is proposing dismantling it, that simplifies the problem.

Ten years in the future, iPad-level power consumption will rule for computing machinery at home (iPad == 2.5 watts). LED lights will be common. Solar panels will be the cheapest form of electricity, if current trends hold. Even on a cloudy day, solar PV generates significant power, so about the night?

Batteries, either connecting a city's worth of hybrid cars, dedicated battery packs, pumped water storage, compressed air storage, are all options. Others are to run natural gas generators at night, or wind or hydro or geothermal, all grid connected. None of these are particularly difficult to imagine, and combined with efficient lighting and other expected improvements in efficiency could easily be expected to cover residential night time load.

<comment><USER3> The majority of power usage in homes is heating, cooling, cooking, refrigeration and appliances. Lighting is already falling down the list of energy usage because of more efficient lighting solutions that are already widespread. It is a total red herring to discuss the power usage of computing devices, because they already constitute a tiny minority of power consumption.

Adding battery packs significantly increase the cost of a system by an order of magnitude. These are all true but they do not factor cost into the equation. With any of these additions, solar will still be far more expensive than baseload grid power, and for most will still not negate the need for a grid connection.

All these technologies will be fantastic for remote areas to obtain a higher standard of living, but essentially have zero chance of displacing baseload grid power as the majority of power usage in urban areas.

The only way they will win out in the long run is with punitive taxation of large-scale power generation, which is essentially a political dead end for all those who try it.

It's great to be enthusiastic about solar power, I personally like solar technology and will buy when it makes sense to do so on it's own merit. But there are limitations that are very difficult to overcome.

<comment><USER7> > Adding battery packs significantly increase the cost of a system by an order > of magnitude.

At current prices. Grid-scale batteries are expensive now because each is a unique specialty product. If we built sodium-sulfur batteries in the same volume as we build gasoline storage tanks, the price would decrease dramatically.

Efficiency gains also matter, because net system efficiency is a geometric process. Consider a 20% efficient solar cell and a 20% efficient battery: the system efficiency is a ghastly 4%. And that's not counting power conversion and transmission.

If the solar cell and battery were boosted to 40% efficiencies (physically possible), then the system efficiency would rise to 16%, a factor of 4 increase. That's halfway through the order of magnitude price problem you give.

Then there's heating and cooling efficiency. American buildings and refrigerators tend to have horrible insulation. In many localities, merely using proper insulation closes the rest of the price gap.

<comment><USER8> Lead acid batteries are 85% to 95% efficient. A good AGM is 98% efficient.

As a data point, I sized the batteries at my cabin to provide two days of power under total cloud (more than enough for getting to 24 hour solar power) and the batteries cost about half what the panels did.

(That discharges the batteries to 60% capacity. You also need to consider that the batteries will last about 6 years then get recycled. I mentioned AGM because they can charge much faster. If you are only interested in 24 power shifting, it might be cheaper since you'd need to buy more capacity in lead acid batteries to tolerate the charge rate. )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is really interesting because very recently, a bunch of American solar companies joined together to sue Chinese solar companies for selling panels "below cost" (i.e. "dumping") [1].

I don't understand how that works. What is the cost they use? For industries with steep learning curves, the right strategy would be to use expected future cost as the basis for business decisions, rather than the trailing average (realized) cost, in order to build the market and more quickly progress on the learning curve.

If that's illegal (it's often used in instances I mentioned above), then I feel like progress in industries with steep learning curves will be slower, because companies will be more timid, causing the market to grow less quickly.

What is everyone's opinions here?

[1] [http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/234291/20111019/solarworld-s...](http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/234291/20111019/solarworld- solar-panels-cells-china-antidumping-subsidies-lawsuit-complaint.htm)

<comment><USER10> We should thank the Chinese for giving us free solar panels which will eventually help disentangle us from the geopolitical mess in which our fossil fuel dependency involves us. We will be able to devote the intellectual and financial resources formerly devoted to those pursuits to more beneficial endeavors.

<comment><USER11> I'm more inclined to view it cynically, China have already said they want to be the world leader in alternative power sources, a move like this could be seen to deliberately destroying foreign competition, stopping any incentive for non-Chinese companies to invest in R&D leading to a Chinese monopoly on the technology.

At best China will collapse a-la Russia under its own evil government, at worst this will help prop them up for many years to come.

Scary thought.

I'm not thanking any nation involved in such wholescale thought control. Let's not forget it's an evil nation, they're liberty and freedom hating bastards. This seems to be a lost thought recently in the capitalist land rush that's been going on the last decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've found Travis Bradford's book Solar Revolution to give a good overview of the solar industry, with the same numerate feel as this article: <http://www.prometheus.org/research/solarrev>

The best rebuttal I've heard (to renewables generally, not PV specifically) is the second to last chapter of Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist: [http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/rational-optimist- how-...](http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/rational-optimist-how- prosperity-evolves)

(Sorry I can't link directly to the content, but so far as I know, it's not available online in either case.)

<comment><USER13> As far as Matt Ridley's writing, can you speak to whether these are the same arguments: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870342120457632...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703421204576327410322365714.html) ?

Summarized, Ridley argues here that the "renewable/non-renewable" distinction is quantitative (not qualitative), and that renewable energy harvesting devices are built from non-renewable materials.

<comment><USER12> Some of the arguments in that article are repeated in the book, but it's not the main thrust of the chapter I was referring to. I'm afraid I gave the book to my brother after I read it, so I can't give you an authoritative summary of the arguments in the book. As best as I can recall, the argument was renewables generally have such low power density (W/m^2) and high energy cost ($/J) that they are unlikely to be an effective solution to climate change, should climate change be as severe as we fear it might be. (Ridley is not a climate change denier, but he does think scientists' worst fears are exaggerated.

Here's an audio interview with Ridley that might cover some of the same stuff in the book: [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/10/ridley_on_trade.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/10/ridley_on_trade.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If solar really does drop in price significantly and has a big impact, wouldn't that lessen demand for coal/natgas/etc? A drop in demand will lead to a drop in the price of those fuels everything else held equal.

Of course, maybe the declining supplies of fossil fuels will cause fossil fuel prices to rise. But what about advances that make the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels more efficient?

I'm just throwing these things out there because there's a lot of economic dynamics that could move targets like "grid parity" significantly.

</comment><comment><USER15> Too many assumptions. The biggest of course is that that "22%" number will continue despite the fact that "the learning rate has been exceptionally high".

Another assumption is that natural gas prices will stay the same, when actually they are going down right now.

Not an assumption but rather an omission: He uses a 25 year payback period for solar, but does not include opportunity cost of that money (i.e. how much that money would have brought in interest) over 25 years. Once you include that (and you should) it doesn't look as good. And in any case 25 years is far too long. 10 years is the standard for evaluating payback periods.

6% over 25 years is 4.5 time the base value. So the solar power actually costs 4.5 times as much as he assumes. Even assuming just 3% would give you 2.1 times your cost.

Edit: These calculations are a bit off since they assume paying for the standard power all at once at the end, but actually you make payments throughout.

<comment><USER16> He says that $700 worth of solar cells would produce 4000kWh of electricity per year which is what the average family consumes. Over the course of 25 years ("a lifetime of household electricity") had you purchased that from the grid, it would have cost $25,000. Ignoring maintenance, you get $25,000 worth of electricity for an initial one-time investment of $700. Though that's production cost, and excludes installation, maintenance, etc. so likely multiples of that at retail.

I think you misread the 25 years as being a payback period.

<comment><USER17> > Ignoring maintenance, you get $25,000 worth of electricity for an initial > one-time investment of $700. Though that's production cost, and excludes > installation, maintenance, etc. so likely multiples of that at retail.

Something is wrong here. Installation is maybe $3k. The typical retail markup is 2x. So, let's call it $5k.

25 years of 4,000kWH is 100,000kWH. $25K means $0.25/kWH, which seems high.

<comment><USER18> in south san jose, we pay an average of $.42/kWH in the summer. and it only goes down to about $.31 in the winter.

<comment><USER17> Huh?

I'm in San Jose and my last electric bill was $107 (including taxes) for 587kWH. That's just over $0.18kWH.

I'm not on a life-line or time of use schedule. (That's a two family house.)

<comment><USER18> well there you go. I'm on a time of use, stepped schedule.

<comment><USER17> > I'm on a time of use, stepped schedule.

Why? My average is considerably less than yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> sunelec.com, PV Panels $1.28 Peak watt, Inverter $0.5 watt, Rails and Cables $0.27 watt.

In my area I expect to save .18 cents per year per peak watt.

Prices have been falling at 1-2 cents a week since june.

<http://pvinsights.com/>

</comment><comment><USER20> _But the fact that 30 pounds of silicon, an amount that costs $700 to produce, is enough to generate a lifetime of household electricity baffled me._

Except per panel is at least $300 and you need a bunch of them.

I guess the idea is also to avoid battery storage and just feed the grid.

Price comparison for grid-tie [http://www.sunelec.com/comparisons_of_grid_tie_systems_price...](http://www.sunelec.com/comparisons_of_grid_tie_systems_prices.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is true for deep space satellites and locations where running a power line is cost prohibitive, such as weather monitoring stations in Antarctica.

<comment><USER22> It's also true in parts of Florida. In rural areas, PV can be cheaper than paying the power company to run out their lines. I expect, in five years, it'll be worth my while to put them on my house, in the middle of the city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Beyond the power price issues there is some value in being able to partially power your residence when the grid is down. Many of the nicer homes in Florida now have fossil-fuel generators since everyone has seen how a hurricane can knock out power for weeks. And grid reliability is likely to decrease due to lack of infrastructure investment.

</comment><comment><USER24> Anecdote != data, subsidies are bad, etc etc - but my parents' PV installation is paying off at an 11% ROI right now (Belgium, heavily subsidized), up from an estimated 8% at the time of installation (3 or so years ago) because of the high amounts of sunshine there have been there. Bring on the global warming. There are many people getting filthy rich on these installations (for example those who have large industrial buildings with roof space they don't use - they are getting 4-8% NET YIELD on as much money as they could borrow back in 2006-2007, which back then of course was easy as pie).

</comment><comment><USER25> A fascinating idea is to use solar and wind power to power factories or mining/production sites that are in remote locations - often, that's one of the main limiting factors.

The main disadvantage of solar power is that it can't be used 24 hours a day, however besides the expensive batteries, solar power can be stored in other ways - for example, you can use every minute of idle time or free capacity to power compressors that pump air inside a few large tanks, and use that compressed air at night to power the generators.

</comment><comment><USER26> In the article the author claims the price reductions came from technology improvements. But some say they are caused by the entry of the Chinese on the market with heavy subsidies and dumping practices ([http://www.grist.org/solar-power/2011-10-19-are-we-in-a- sola...](http://www.grist.org/solar-power/2011-10-19-are-we-in-a-solar-trade- war-with-china)).

</comment><comment><USER27> How can landlords make this an investment that pay off? [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=solar+panels...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=solar+panels&srchType=A) hardly finds any hits, so I take it "you'll have lower electric bills in this apartment" has not been found an effective way to attract renters.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is fantastic. Haven't looked at the solar pv for couple years. Didn't realize they have dropped so much in price.

Does anyone know the current approximate total cost (labor + material) in Northern CA? It was like $8-$10/W last I looked couple years ago. Also how easy is a DIY approach in installation?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just got quoted $5.10/W in NC, can't imagine the CA costs are too different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> >As scale goes up, per-unit costs come down. This is known as a "learning curve"

Weird. Where I come from that is called economies of scale & learning curves are applicable only to the labour component.

</comment><comment><USER30> "European solar radiation"? How much is that exactly? I'm pretty sure the radiation levels where I live (Portugal) are _much_ higher than in Scandinavia.</comment>


Stop Wasting Time on Voicemail  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/trapani/2009/11/stop-wasting-time-on-voicemail.html <comment><USER2> Voicemail transcription is one of the things I'm looking forward to in Exchange 2010.

Then I can dump emailing from a smartphone and send voice recordings instead - without the listener having to listen to my voice recording. Best of both worlds.

Also - there's a link to "robotic voicemail woman wastes our time" which is an article with a clickable audio link in it. But it's not an embedded player, it's a popup window which loads another page which has an embedded player which starts by playing an advert for ... the site it's on!

Followed by a rant about how it's unneccesary for a voicemail system to tell us it's a voicemail system. Well maybe it's no easier for people to change their company voicemail system than it is for you to change your podcast introduction to remove the redundant message that we're listening to your podcast system!</comment>


Show HN: Discover Awesome New Repositories on Github - <AUTHOR> http://insightdatascience.com/blog/inspector_git_discover_awesome_new_repositories_on_github.html

<comment><USER2> This is particularly great for recommending new software for rich ecosystems like Hadoop. This highlighted the usual suspects: Hive, Pig, & Cassandra, but it also found a few Apache Incubation projects automagically:

[http://inspectorgit.com/apache+hadoop- common](http://inspectorgit.com/apache+hadoop-common)

Found: Oozie, a 'worfklow' engine for Hadoop ([https://github.com/yahoo/oozie](https://github.com/yahoo/oozie)) Netty, high-performance networking on top of Hadoop ([https://github.com/netty/netty](https://github.com/netty/netty))

<comment><USER3> Check out my Ansible Playbook that installs a Hadoop cluster (running on Java 7), with Ganglia, Fluentd, ElasticSearch and Kibana 3 for monitoring and centralized log indexing. [https://github.com/analytically/hadoop- ansible](https://github.com/analytically/hadoop-ansible)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> For what is similar to the linux kernel: [http://inspectorgit.com/torvalds+linux](http://inspectorgit.com/torvalds+linux)

Gets Git itself as well memcached!

</comment><comment><USER4> Such an awesome idea. If you're getting into a new project this will be very handy.</comment>


Hacker News meeting at SF Wednesday April 16th - <AUTHOR>

I just wanted to remind everyone that we are meeting on the Delacy Street Restaurant (600 Embarcadero St.) in San Francisco. Everyone is welcome to come and bring friends with them!
The event starts at 6pm and will run until 11pm. We will probably have diner there also or we can have diner elsewhere depending on how many people attend.
I just created the event in the upcoming site: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/473235/?ps=5
Extra info here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144632
Don't hesitate on contacting me if you need something at: abarrera AT inkzee DOT com
See you guys there! <comment><USER2> Hmm, this conflicts with the Javascript meetup: <http://javascript.meetup.com/4/>

I think you mean the Delancey Street Restaurant (not Delacy) <http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/enterrestaurant.php>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's it Delancey Street Restaurant. Thanks for the correction :)

About the js meetup, we can't get everything hehe too many things to do at the same time. But I understand if some people can't come to the meetup.

Fred are you still up for the meetup the 19th? I wished I could stay until then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this fell through... bummer

</comment><comment><USER3> Will be there rain or shine.

<comment><USER4> Shine. It will be a nice day in SF @ 65F during the day [http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en- us&...](http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en- us&q=sf+weather&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> im there for sure :-D</comment>


Microsoft Surrenders to the Cloud. - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=476

<comment><USER2> sooner the better else elephant is going to fall - and when elephant falls it takes forever to get-up !!!</comment>


Facebook Relationship Status News Feed - <AUTHOR> http://www.fringelessweb.com/preview/rsnf/

<comment><USER2> the home page when im not logged in needs some designing.....</comment>


Mentorship Service To Connect Startup Founders With Good Advice - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/03/clarity-mobile-mentorship-app/ <comment><USER2> One of those tools where it works well for its intended purpose, but also has additional unintended utility. =)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like you've used it & would recommend it?

It definitely seems interesting and possibly valuable, but I'd be a bit apprehensive about it. IE. I feel like its much better to get introduced organically to and advisor than pay for it. When it's pay per minute it seems like they're incentivized to take on anyone whether they can provide solid advice or not. Also feel like there would be a stigma like "here's this guy who can't get an advisor so he has to pay for it".

Edit: I should probably just try it, potential value > potential awkwardness :)

<comment><USER2> I understand the concern, but I don't think the intention of the site is to connect you with "your advisor" but rather provide manageable access to advice, from willing participants.

I have used it, on _both_ ends of the service.</comment></comment></comment>


Solomon W Golomb has left us - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_W._Golomb <comment><AUTHOR> On the one occasion I met Sol he was friendly and helpful. A quiet genius. I was I had had the chance to know him better.</comment>


New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage - <AUTHOR> https://federalnewsnetwork.com/dod-personnel-notebook/2019/04/new-study-shows-grim-outlook-for-future-of-air-force-pilot-shortage/ <comment><USER2> Aren't many of them going to be made redundant by robots anyway?</comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth purchasing TailwindUI? - <AUTHOR> At the pricy tag of 250$ is it worth buying TailwindUI? Anyone who has already bought it. Could they share some feedback? <comment><USER2> Personally, I love Tailwind. If I were building more MVPs these days, I would absolutely buy it, because the up-front cost would pay for itself in billable labor by the end of the first day.

Back when I had a small design studio, I employed two contractors to help with book covers and typesetting. We were dispersed across the U.S., and would use the brand-new Wunderlist (remember that??) to coordinate who was working on what title. Wunderlist was free but limited in its features, but after a few months they unveiled a premium plan that was something like $5-10/month. Lots of people were upset, but I gladly forked over the money. Overnight, I cut my time spent on administrative tasks by ~90%, freeing me up to do whatever else that needed to be done. I believe I calculated out the "savings" the premium Wunderlist membership made me every month, and it was in the thousands of dollars. Ten bucks a month was a steal.

If you're relying on something as heavily as Wunderlist—or in your case, Tailwind—buy it and don't look back.

</comment><comment><USER3> My totally unsubstantiated view as someone who hates "utility-css":

If you already use tailwind, like it and don't want to heavily customize your UI components: Yes. The cost is definitely lower than getting a dev/designer to make equivalent stuff if you want to arrive at the same end result.

Otherwise: No.

<comment><USER4> Why do you hate utility-css?

<comment><USER3> It goes against what css and html is supposed to be, it works against the cascade built into the language and it's clearly just a inline css replacement with a new coat of paint (and I don't even like the paint).

I could probably go on, but I think that is enough. There were a lot of discussions about this in the thread about tailwindUI here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22422873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22422873)

<comment><USER5> > _works against the cascade built into the language and it 's clearly just a > inline css replacement with a new coat of paint (and I don't even like the > paint)._

If that's the only reason, then you should seriously re-evaluate it. [1] You can combine the utilty classes into your own component classes anyway e.g: '.my-button'.

The main thing that _" utility css"_ offers is composition over inheritance. You're basically composing small styles to create component styles. You're not overriding the css framework, you're composing your own framework.

But it's not for everyone and that's cool too

[1] [https://tailwindcss.com/docs/extracting- components/#extracti...](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/extracting- components/#extracting-css-components-with-apply)

<comment><USER3> > You can combine the utilty classes into your own component classes anyway > e.g: '.my-button'.

Yeah, I heard that argument but in that case I really don't see why I would use it over some well-defined css variables in normal css like this:

        .btn-blue {
            background: var(--color-blue);
            color: var(--color-white);
            font-weight: bold;
            padding: 0.5rem 1rem;
            border-radius: .25rem;
        }

instead of:

        .btn-blue {
            @apply bg-blue-500 text-white font-bold py-2 px-4 rounded;
        }

<comment><USER5> Well, it's probably faster to write (depending on how good your code completion is).

Another benefit is that "bg-blue-500" is globally configurable with [1] themes or configuration files. This means you're not hard-coding colors or sizes (although, yes that's possible with plain old CSS too)

But what's even faster is simply using the utility classes in your components (it looks messy at first) but its extremely fast to write once you know the syntax of the classes e.g. ".p-xx = padding: xxem". Then all your components encapsulate that messiness and it's easy to change.

For example in vuejs, I might make a "btn" component file and style it using Tailwind classes, then the component encapsulates all it's _styles_ but can still be globally configured using tailwind themes.

[1] [https://tailwindcss.com/docs/theme](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/theme)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I bought it and I am happy with my decision. You need to understand, however, that there is still a bit of labour involved in extracting reusable components.

For example, you will want to make things like the buttons easily reusable instead of repeating the same CSS utility classes everywhere, so you may want to spend time creating reusable components for the common UI elements in your front-end framework.

Another frustrating thing is figuring out which are the "active" and "inactive" classes on some components, as described in this tweet: [https://twitter.com/cgenco/status/1256948882065494017](https://twitter.com/cgenco/status/1256948882065494017)

Overall, I'd say if speed of development is a priority, then it may be easier going for a ready-made bootstrap template or UI component library. If flexibility and customization is a priority, then go for TailwindUI.

</comment><comment><USER7> I bought TailwindUI, at first it was just crazy to spend 250$ for a CSS utility.

I regularly build MVPs or administration dashboards and TailwindUI saved me several hours of work.

With perspective, it's one of the best investments I've made. Moreover the Tailwind team regularly adds new templates.

</comment><comment><USER5> An alternative is [https://tailwind.build/](https://tailwind.build/) which is a similar concept and way cheaper

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you will check it out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Personally I didn't buy it but it's a great investment if you work on a lot of projects without a strict design constraint. Many UI features you may end up creating manually are already there, and it looks refreshing when you compare it to the more traditional or older frameworks like Bootstrap.

I'd recommend to first try using Tailwind without buying the UI option, it's free and open source.</comment>


Ask HN: Any open-source or non-profit software, which needs free UX help? - <AUTHOR> Is anyone here maintaining freeware or open-source software, which does its job but lacks a bit behind in terms of usability and looks?
I would be glad to change that. I'm transitioning to freelancing right now and would like to help projects like these for free to extend my portfolio. I could help you with user research, user experience design and user interface design. The implementation of the final design would be up to you but I would support you with a pain-free designer to developer handoff.
A few requirements from my side for working together:
- The software is already live and has a proven track record of being used. - The software has a positive and useful purpose. - If you are satisfied with the new design, you will actually find the time to implement it. (if the front-end is based on web technology, I could help you with that)
Bonus points for bizarre or strange software, which is facing an interesting usability problem at the moment.
My email is in my profile, my website as well. You can find more information about my way of working there. Looking forward to hear from anyone who needs help! <comment><USER2> Hi There!

I'm part of an open source based startup and we'd love to get some help with our web design.

We sell physical FIDO2/U2F security keys, for strong authentication on the web. Soon to replace passwords! All firmware and hardware is open source.

[https://shop.solokeys.com/](https://shop.solokeys.com/)

Would you be interested in helping out?</comment>


Ask HN: What Software Engineering domains require the least continuous learning? - <AUTHOR> In most domains where software engineering is involved, one has to continously learn, unlearn, relearn new languages/frameworks/technologies or what have you.
What domains require the least continuous learning?
If I had to answer my own question, I'd probably bet on safety critical software, but I'd like to hear what the community has to say :) <comment><USER2> Hardware changes the slowest so advances that affect how chips, processors and boards tend to be more predictable and long-winded. However, the application of these changes to different domains (e.g. IoT) changes rapidly so the underlying hardware platform may be "stable" but new requirements that need to be programmed (e.g. power efficiency, security, etc) will continue to evolve -- therefore requiring continuous learning.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could try lower level, like anything with microprocessors, industrial robots, data communications, or healthcare. The kind of things that use C or Assembly. These will still be in high demand and highly paid as IOT/Industry 4.0 tries to catch on.

<comment><USER4> How true will this be when we can eventually run Javascript on chips cheaply enough?

<comment><USER5> How soon is that in your opinion/information?

Is it 1 year away or 10 years away?

<comment><USER4> With projects like johnny-five [0] I think we're pretty close to that reality.

[0] [http://johnny-five.io/](http://johnny-five.io/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You could always dive into something ancient like COBOL that is objectively never going to change, but people will always need. Same goes for similar languages of that era (FORTRAN, etc.)

<comment><USER7> I agree.

I just want to point out that COBOL developers do need to learn new stuff. There are new tools, mainframe emulators, different structures at different companies, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> More learning is necessary in areas which are more prone to changes.

Hardware architecture and hardware itself are the least changing parts related to software engineering. And as the result OS kernel level development and system programming don't require to relearn that often.

</comment><comment><USER9> Companies started in the last 10-15 years that started and ended on a mostly Java-based stack.

The business should also be super stable, slow growth, but high revenue/margins. That's probably the most important thing you should look for.

</comment><comment><USER10> Big tech companies, cable companies, banks, FAANG, utilities, etc.

Just stay away from agencies and startups.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure about FAANG, but big companies are pretty stable, especially banks and government. Even they're evolving, though.

<comment><USER7> Big companies are hit or miss. I work for a large financial company and they are constantly switching stacks and chasing the latest industry tech. They love to compare themselves to silicon valley. It's exhausting.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, one telco I interviewed with talked about how they could play on the same grounds as Google. They have the market cap and manpower, but not really the same vision and engineering culture. So a lot of what they do is chase the latest buzzwords.

<comment><USER7> Oh yeah, don't even get me started on the buzzwords. I think I need to move into management so I can just be a 'yes' man and blow smoke mixed with buzzwords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Enterprise .Net shops. 90% of their work is CRUD, but you aren't stuck as unemployable. Low innovation, 8x5, pay can be very good.

</comment><comment><USER12> Any legacy system - but your skillset then becomes tied to domain knowledge. This can be both good and bad - the good is your valued as long as the system exists, the bad is once the system is replaced you can be on a rocky path

</comment><comment><USER13> I would challenge the idea that you must continuously learn. It's entirely possible to have become a Java/Spring specialist and continue to remain employed into 2020 and likely well beyond.

The churn you're alluding to happens mostly at the very thin frontier of innovation and applies largely to engineers who want to retain high compensation.

<comment><USER14> I'm looking at jobs in my area at the moment and being up to date doesn't really help in many ways. If I search for Rust or Elixir there are no jobs. If I search for gatsby or next there's no results (there are plenty for React though).

There are plenty of Java jobs though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Continuous learning is a fundamental part of the job. Some of the answers here focus on stable tech stacks but in reality even if you spend your entire career using the same tools, you still need to be continuously learning new things within that stack just to keep up.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point, but I believe there is a subtle difference between different kinds of continuous learning. On the one hand, you have the goal of mastering a stable tech stack throughout your career. On the other hand, there are those jobs where you have to continuously keep up with changes in the field that could require skills in a completely new stack.

In the first kind of continuous learning you get more value out of your experience. In the second kind, I wouldn't say none at all, but certainly less than the first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cobol should probably be up there on your list.

</comment><comment><USER17> Banks tend to be pretty risk averse and will maintain working code for as long as they can before adopting new technology.

</comment><comment><USER18> Try something like C where changes come very rarely. Avoid going to Flutter or Dart!

</comment><comment><USER19> front-end web development

</comment><comment><USER20> Management

<comment><USER21> If you don't care about being a crap manager, maybe.</comment></comment>


The cognitive ecology of the Internet (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://philpapers.org/archive/SMATCE-2.pdf <comment><USER2> The paper is Chapter 13 of the following book:

Cognition Beyond the Brain: Computation, Interactivity and Human Artifice

Stephen Cowley & Frederic Vallée-Tourangeau (eds.)</comment>


Satoshi Nakamoto is probably Nick Szabo? - <AUTHOR> https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-nick-szabo/ <comment><USER2> You can't exactly use "digital signatures" and "cryptographic proof" as distinguishing characteristics among crypto researchers. Many of the phrases noted are similar overly verbose academic writing. "It should be noted" at 5% and "can be characterized" at 1% do not add up to a 0.05% chance of non-Nick Szabo writing the paper.

Even if we agreed with the statistics, the "one in a thousand" would be relevant if we had some other reason to suspect Szabo. He could simply be that one in a thousand who matches.

The article is somewhat persuasive, but more certain than the evidence presented seems to justify.

<comment><USER3> I agree there the two phrases are not independent, but the joint probability of both events is mathematically guaranteed to be lower than the probability either event alone. As we add more phrases (events) to this distribution, it becomes exponentially less likely to be someone else.

<comment><USER4> The problem is also a sample bias I think. He clearly hand picked low probability words as evidence.

In other words, the probability that there exists a subset of words in a pair of papers that are "globally rare" among cryptography papers is likely high.

So to answer P(Nick|Evidence) we can't use ~P(selected subset|crypto), we better use ~P(all words|crypto) and _compare_ that to all other plausible sources.

As a clarifying anecdote, remember low probability events happen all the time if the sample space is simply large. Throw a dice ~8 times in a row an the probability of that event is lower than winning the lottery or getting hit by lightning, yet it happens every time. If you pick every word from the source paper and multiply their relative frequencies out, you will get a number _astronomically low_ , and that happens for any paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a couple more stylistic quirks that jump out on a very cursory glance at Nakamoto's public postings. (Disclaimer: I know nothing about Bitcoin but am a pretty experienced copy-editor. None of these are remotely conclusive, just more incremental evidence.)

Satoshi Nakamoto uses double spaces after sentence-final; so does Nick Szabo.

"Interestingly" is a distinctive word, especially at sentence-initial. Both Nakamoto and Szabo use this.

Hyphenated "e-mail" has been on the way out for a few years; I still use it but I've been in a minority for a long time. Again, both Nakamoto and Szabo use this.

(I'd be interested to see if anyone can find Szabo starting paragraphs with "Right, ...": that's a definite tic in Nakamoto's postings.)

<comment><USER6> > Satoshi Nakamoto uses double spaces after sentence-final; so does Nick > Szabo.

So does every single person of my generation who went through the Canadian school system (and no doubt others world-wide). Double spaces after sentences is 100% standard here. In fact, it was only recently I found out some people use a single space...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> He analyzed only the white paper. There is some more text written by Satoshi in the emails [0] provided by Dustin Trammell.

[0] - [http://www.dustintrammell.com/files/Satoshi_Nakamoto.zip](http://www.dustintrammell.com/files/Satoshi_Nakamoto.zip)

<comment><USER8> The style of writing is different in technical papers. You would need to compare it to the purported authors informal cryptocurrency writings which may not exist.

<comment><USER9> Like Nick's blog?

<comment><USER8> Probably not similar enough in style to e-mail messages but maybe. You would also need control sets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was recently (Thanksgiving) discussing this with the owner of a small tech company. Our consensus was that if Satoshi was not Szabo, Satoshi at least read Szabo's works. The article doesn't spend as much time on the similarity of Szabo's ideas to those of the Bitcoin whitepaper, but I encourage anyone who is interested in this topic to read some of Szabo's stuff.

His website, [http://szabo.best.vwh.net/](http://szabo.best.vwh.net/) is currently experiencing capacity issues, so here's a cache link:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://szabo.best.vwh.net/)

Additionally, his blogspot: [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER11> From a limited experience with either of their writings, I don't think it's Szabo. I've read a lot of Satoshi's emails and Satoshi's writing style seems at the same time less academically formal but also more technical. Nick Szabo's writing, at least on his blog, seems less technical but more academically formal. Nick Szabo also seems to heavily discuss history and historical concepts. I do not see a lot of technical content on his blog. Satoshi seems to have a greater command of - and focus on - computers. This doesn't rule out the possibility the Szabo is some kind of Newton-like polymath who has command of a vast quantity of knowledge, but it seems more likely that Satoshi is more technical-minded than broad-based in his knowledge, despite being very smart. They might use a lot of the same phrases and idioms but this could just be a function of the fact that Satoshi was heavily influenced by Szabo. Regardless if they are writing about the same topic they are likely to use a LOT of the same words and phrases, and it might be more useful to filter out any words or phrases that are specific to the topic at hand.

<comment><USER12> If your aim is not to be identified, I can understand keeping your mouth shut about matters of opinion, especially if you hold distinctive opinions you have given out in public before. One of Ulbricht's reported failings [1] was talking about Mises and the Austrian School as both Ulbricht and DPR.

Keeping your anonymous persona's mouth shut about history, politics, economics, sociology, art theory and human nature is good 'opsec'.

[1] [http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/10/09/it-was- dpr/](http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/10/09/it-was-dpr/)

<comment><USER13> Except that Nick Szabo's main interest in bit gold was to stop inflation. He says flat out that "the most pernicious of which has probably been inflation" when discussing problems with money. That seems to also be a main motivation behind bitcoin was well(at least from the early proponents who seemed to be more philosophically motivated than they were by practical considerations)

<comment><USER12> For sure you'd expect the creators of cryptocurrencies to have certain opinions in common, such as disliking the flaws of fiat currencies.

I'm thinking more in terms of expressing multiple opinions that come together to give a fingerprint.

To use a computer analogy, if I told you I run Firefox I haven't told you much, but if (in a single post or across many) I tell people I run Firefox, OS X 10.7, flashblock, and I refuse to run the Java plugin? Taken together that's a fingerprint that could really narrow down a list of suspects (even if it didn't uniquely identify a single individual).

A set of political opinions could serve the same purpose, if they're distinctive enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds pretty legit.

But I'm wondering, where does the NSA paper "How to Make a Mint" fit into this story?

[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm)

Could contributor Tatsuaki Okamoto be Nick's partner? Satoshi Nakamoto kinda sounds like a combination of their names.

Maybe Nick was the ideator/philosopher/writer, and Tatsuaki was the programmer/crypto nerd?

<comment><USER15> +Satoshi Obana

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Do we really need to dox this guy?

<comment><USER17> Yeah. I mean, I'm quite interested from a personal curiosity point of view, but considering that they're probably currently living a reasonably ordinary life, to out them as a target for kidnapping in order to acquire the vast stash of bitcoins, just seems like a really mean thing to do.

<comment><USER18> There are somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 centa-millionaires in North America. If Nick is Satoshi Nakamoto, he may need to take basic precautions, but otherwise is likely to be fine.

<comment><USER17> Those 'basic precautions' will not be cheap and would probably require the liquidation of some of their bitcoins since they probably aren't anything like as wealthy in non-bitcoin terms. Liquidating their bitcoins would damage their psuedonymity, which is something that they are clearly not keen to do.

The other thing is that most of those centa-millionaires are not keeping their holdings entirely in cash that can be moved quickly in large quantities psuedonymously requiring only a small piece of information likely to be held by Satoshi.

Certainly, securing multi-millionaires is not an insoluable problem (although it fails sometimes), but I think that Satoshi is likely to be in a situation that make the consequences of being unmasked particularly dangerous and the difficulty of measures to keep safe particularly onerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The attempts to pin Satoshi on to one person strikes me as odd. In other threads on HN, everyone agrees the work was well done, like a peer-reviewed academic paper of sorts, but then nobody seems to entertain the idea that it might be, say, 2-3 people with Nick or someone else just being one of the team.

Are there solid reasons for discounting a team of researchers, post-docs, or something similar?

<comment><USER20> "Are there solid reasons for discounting a team of researchers, post-docs, or something similar?"

Yes, if you read the Bitcoin whitepaper that Satoshi originally sent out, and then compare it to the work done by teams of researchers and postdocs. Here are some things to think about:

1\. Bitcoin can be attacked in polynomial time. This is a sharp and very extreme break from the typical expectations we have about cryptosystems, yet Satoshi did not devote any time to this in the Bitcoin paper.

2\. The security analysis presented in the Bitcoin paper assumes a specific attack strategy, without ruling out others or even mentioning the possibility that another attack strategy could exist.

3\. The security goal of Bitcoin was never clearly stated in the Bitcoin paper, and there is no clear threat model.

4\. Almost none of the related work was mentioned, not even to distinguish Bitcoin from that work. Digital cash has been extensively studied by cryptographers, but that mountain of work was not mentioned at all. Bitcoin is a multiparty computation system meant to operate on a massive scale, yet at no point did Satoshi mention the even larger body of work that has been published on secure multiparty computation. Satoshi did not even mention the various ways that distributed systems can be attacked, which are presented in the unmentioned related work.

These are not signs that experienced researchers are behind Bitcoin. From where I sit, these all point to Bitcoin having been the work of a cryptography enthusiast, probably a high school or college student with some extra time on his hands.

<comment><USER21> > these all point to Bitcoin having been the work of a cryptography > enthusiast, probably a high school or college student with some extra time > on his hands.

If true, that's just embarrassing for the cryptography community. Having worked on the problem for years and then be shown up by an amateur who creates a system that hasn't been cracked despite a $multi-billion incentive to do so.

<comment><USER20> You make it sound like cryptographers were stumped by the problem of digital cash. In fact, the cryptography research community had basically solved that problem; the only difference between Bitcoin and the academic constructions is that Bitcoin does not have any central bank. There were almost no cryptographers trying to find a way to remove the central bank from digital cash systems when Satoshi came along. Nobody should be surprised by that, as there is still no rigorous definition of digital cash that does not invoke a central bank or authority of some kind. Had Satoshi presented such a definition, he would have unquestionably "shown up" cryptography researchers.

At best, all you can say is that Satoshi demonstrated that cryptographers were solving the wrong problem with digital cash. That, however, was not news in 2008. Cryptographers had thought that credit card payments were too insecure to make sense on the Internet; the failure of DigiCash and related efforts in the 90s proved otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think eventually we will find out who he/she is. Satoshi's wallet is holding 1M BTC right now, so close to a BILLION US $ worth of value. Would be interesting to see if it keeps rising, and goes up 30-40x from now over time if satoshi could end up being the wealthiest individual in the world.

<comment><USER23> Not gonna happen, the depth isn't there.

Even today's $1k BTC is speculation at the edge of the market, 1million BTC as a batch only fetch about $50m worth of interested buyers.

Here is one ting I don't understand, though: suppose I am a billionaire black hat VC, and I wanted to steal Satoshi's coins. Could I invest a half billion dollars and brute force a majority-coup attack on the blockchain? Of not now what about when those $ figures are 10x? Even if bitcoin gets 100x more popular, it won't be 100x more network miners, it will be people buying BTC and trusting the block chain published by coinbase and whoever.

<comment><USER24> The computational power to attack the network grows significantly faster than the price of Bitcoin (and this is pretty much guaranteed to continue, by design). Attacking Satoshi's coins would be among the hardest, because you would have to attack the very earliest parts of the Blockchain which have tens of thousands of blocks protecting them. Half a billion dollars wouldn't come close at the current difficulty level.

Further, performing this attack would invalidate all Bitcoins created after that point (which is the vast majority of them), so the Bitcoins you stole would be worthless.

<comment><USER25> To add to this: The "official blockchain" is the one with the most computational work expended to create it.

A 50+% attack operates by rewriting history back to a certain depth in the blockchain by providing a new chain of blocks with more computational work, back to a certain point.

I think the bitcoin devs also put in certain "checkpoints" just to be even more certain... i.e. blocks that are "officially permanent" (which also makes all prior blocks in that chain "offiically permanent").

Maybe someone could tell us about that.

<comment><USER24> Ah yes, I forgot about checkpointing. The reference client has certain blocks hardcoded in it to signal the official chain. Only transactions in blocks made after the latest checkpoint can be overridden in a way that the reference client would accept. So to steal Satoshi's coins, you would also have to get people to switch to your own client with different checkpoints. At this point, it really wouldn't even be Bitcoin anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is, he (or she or they) must have been at least aware of Nick Szabo. I wonder if there's any coincidence to the initials: SN and NS? Of course, even if SN != NS it could be a tip of the hat or an intentional red herring.

<comment><USER27> I do constantly worry how easy it would be to become deliberately but wrongly incriminated by a malicious person(s) leaving an ordit trail to look like it was you. I'm certain the next person to run a Silk Road equivalent will already have a suitable patsy lined up to take the fall...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A lot of this seems plausible. The one part that is really weak, though still interesting, is the way the textual analysis was done. Robust stylometric analysis uses the frequency of use of the most frequent words (think stop words, like it, of, an, the, or, on, etc.), not the topic-bearing words.

</comment><comment><USER29> Am I the only one who thinks it kinda uncouth to try to unmark this guy? He wants to be anonymous, this seems pretty stalker-y to me.

EDIT: not to mention potentially damaging peoples reputations by incorrectly accusing them.

<comment><USER29> Unmask _

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> And we complain about the right to privacy on HN with all the post about the NSA, Facebook, Google and so on. Whoever he is, it is non of our business. leave the man alone already.

<comment><USER31> My thoughts exactly. I got a followup question, who is the blog posts author? Posting such statements anonymously is just low.

<comment><USER32> Especially since, thus far anyway, they have not responded to any of the criticism or even approved any of the comments submitted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Oh please, just leave man alone. If he/she wanted publicity, he would come out himself, or herself.

</comment><comment><USER3> His analysis is fairly compelling. I imagine if a few others were also able to confirm this with their own independent textual analysis, it is extremely likely this is Satoshi Nakamoto.

The author needs to give more details of how he performed this: "an open, unbiased search of texts similar in writing to the Bitcoin whitepaper over the entire Internet, identifies Nick's bit gold articles as the best candidates". If true, this is the most convincing argument I have seen thus far.

<comment><USER8> His analysis is pretty terrible. He seems to have made up the method on his own without consulting established authorship attribution scholarship.

<comment><USER3> I agree that his methods are not rigorous enough to complete the argument, but it is going in the right direction. This is why it would be great to have confirmation from a few more textual analysis methods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Are there "text mixing" services you can use to anonymize your writing? Seems like analysis like this could prove to be dangerous for free speech in the future. Perhaps just round-trip babble fishing a few times.

<comment><USER32> Machine translation doesn't work: [http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~sa499/papers/adversarial_stylometr...](http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~sa499/papers/adversarial_stylometry.pdf) "Adversarial Stylometry: Circumventing Authorship Recognition to Preserve Privacy and Anonymity" Brennan et al 2013

Fortunately, simply trying to write like someone else does.

<comment><USER35> Perhaps Satoshi Nakamoto should have written in faux-Engrish in order to really confuse people.

I can see choosing an affected writing style becoming an integral part of creating an anonymous persona.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What is the purpose of identifying who Satoshi is at this point?

<comment><USER37> What is the purpose of 'Satoshi' remaining anonymous/psuedonymous at this point?

<comment><USER38> I prefer Satoshi being an anonymous techie than a fallible human. Imagine Bitcoin grows 10-100x over the next few years. I don't want Satoshi's divorce to threaten the entire ecosystem.

<comment><USER37> we've all got our preferences I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Please read carefully what Nick was interested in: [http://szabo.best.vwh.net](http://szabo.best.vwh.net)

Theory of property, origins of money, methods of protecting rights, origins of joint-stock companies. Almost every article is a motivation for building Bitcoin. And Nick is not just some economist, he is a capable programmer with knowledge in cryptography too. Do you know anyone else who could understand all these long-term aspects of Bitcoin and could carefully build a practical system over two years which most of the economists and most of the engineers would immediately dismiss for tons of "shortcomings"?

If it's not Szabo, it's someone who is very much like him.

</comment><comment><USER40> Give this man his privacy.

</comment><comment><USER41> Another theory equally consistent with this analysis: Satoshi (or the 'Satoshi' team) contacted Szabo for help writing the paper.

Thus it incorporated some of Szabo's preferred language choices, but Szabo is still "not Satoshi" and has his own deep and distinct criticisms/appreciations of the Satoshi work.

</comment><comment><USER32> See also the reddit discussion [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ruluz/satoshi_naka...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ruluz/satoshi_nakamoto_is_probably_nick_szabo/) and in particular, my criticisms: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ruluz/satoshi_naka...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ruluz/satoshi_nakamoto_is_probably_nick_szabo/cdr2vgu)

</comment><comment><USER11> Finney had the technical chops, Dai had b-money, and Szabo had the economic knowledge.

They've each done a lot of misdirection to the other two in order to draw attention away from them.

This lets them each say "I am not Satoshi Nakamoto" and not be lying.

<comment><USER39> Bitcoin 0.1 probably did not require cooperation to work out well. Just one dedicated person could do it and have help of early participants to solve silly problems (e.g. famous OP_RETURN bug and integer overflow). Nick was pretty good in economics to not ask suggestions on core parameters from anyone else. And both Dai and Finney already had their input in their public writings, so no necessity to ask them for more.

<comment><USER11> One person could do it - but along with coming up with the exact solution to the global view problem, did they?

Moreover is Szabo such a good programmer that Dan Kaminskey's auditing of the code for security holes would have caused him to say that he's never seen a programmer so good? That every likely bug was already found and plugged fairly early on?

Whoever programmed BitCoin didn't write the prettiest code in the world, but it was very good, and certainly good enough code to be written by someone who spends a ton of time programming. Nick Szabo seems to spend a lot of his time on other things not related to programming.

What makes me think it wasn't Finney was that Finney was one of the two first people to respond to Satoshi when the paper was dropped on the cryptography mailing list. There is extensive back and forth between Donald, Finney and Satoshi, mostly Finney and Donald critiquing the whitepaper and Satoshi defending it.

Of course that would be the perfect thing to do if you were trying to draw attention away from yourself.

<comment><USER39> Btw, Hal Finney was diagnosed around 2009 with ALS (in his words, in reality it could have been earlier) which is a plausible reason for rushing source code out with unfinished market implementation and some silly bugs. Also, Hal's ALS progressed in 2011 and he retired: another reason for Satoshi to abandon the project as he (if he's Hal) could no longer support it secretly on his own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't support all the effort people put into identifying this person. They clearly want to remain anonymous and being publicly known could possibly be bad for them. And knowing who it was makes no difference.

</comment><comment><USER43> To up the conspiracy theories a bit, do you think it's at all possible that someone skilled in programming and cryptography, well-versed in English and with a priority for keeping his identity secret, just might attempt to obfuscate his language by altering his writing style? If you don't think that's entirely unlikely then you'd better adjust your p-value.

</comment><comment><USER44> Why is it important who Satoshi is?

<comment><USER45> It's important because whoever Satoshi is controls a significant number of bitcoins [1]. This gives them a large ability to affect the market for bitcoins and is a potential risk if they ever choose to do so. I'm sure for many people, they'd like to protect their investments into bitcoin, so knowing the identity of Satoshi is important to them.

[1] [http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/bitcoin-mints-its-first- bil...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/bitcoin-mints-its-first-billionaire- satoshi-nakamoto)

<comment><USER46> How does this relate to knowing who Satoshi is? Are you implying that Bitcoin investors should pressurise or threaten Satoshi in some way? That is disturbing...

<comment><USER45> Whoa, talking about going overboard. I'm implying no such thing.

What I am saying is that if you're investing into bitcoin it's intelligent to know what you're getting into. Satoshi currently controls around 12% of all bitcoins. And even with the maximum number Satoshi will control 7% of all bitcoins.

This is huge potential to disrupt the market and knowing what the person or people who are Satoshi might do has a potentially huge investment impact. Hence the reason that people have the desire to know who Satoshi is.

<comment><USER46> And you think that if you know the true name of Satoshi, you will have a chance of knowing what they might do? How exactly does that work? Will they suddenly put up their hand and say "Yup, it's me. From now on, I'm going to give advance notice of everything I will do that is bitcoin related" ? That makes no sense.

So, there's a wallet with a large number of bitcoins in it. Does it matter who owns it? Is it likely that the owner (named or otherwise unknown) is going to give you a heads-up before they sell any?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Do Japanese use anglicized "colour" & "favour" etc?

If so, I would only expect an inconsistent application of this spelling if he were impersonating a Japanese person writing in English (though the same could be assumed if there were multiple writers).

<comment><USER48> "Colour" and "favour" are predominate in every English-speaking country except the U.S. (eg: Canada prefers "colour.")

<comment><USER49> Yeah, but what are people who learn English taught?

For example, the books in my Bavarian school seemed to slightly prefer the British English spelling (but the vocabulary always also included the American English spelling and later on we were reading lots of American and British text intermixed) and for tests the teacher always told us that she didn't care which spelling we picked, all that mattered to her was that we were consistent (i.e. use either only British English or only American English).

I always picked American English but the preference of the books of British English screwed me up somewhat, so I will sometimes mistakenly use both variants in one text. For me it would consequently not seem obvious that someone using both variants is a native speaker who tries to fake another spelling variant.

<comment><USER48> It's my experience that Europeans are taught British English in schools (due to the easy availability of teachers from the U.K.)

Japan, Korea and China very likely are mixed between British English teachers (from India and Australia) and American English teachers (from the U.S.) In Japan in the late 80s-early 90s, there was a definite preference for American English teachers.

<comment><USER49> Are English teachers in many European countries native speakers?

I have only very limited experience, but from my experience in Bavaria (education is a state responsibility in Germany, that's why I'm constantly only talking about Bavaria) I can say that none of the foreign-language teachers I'm aware of (of any available foreign language, English, French, Spanish, Czech) were native speakers. They were all Germans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I wonder what randomwalker, who has done serious research on textual deanonymization, thinks about this.

<comment><USER32> I've suggested it to him in the past. He apparently is not interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I find this pretty convincing. First JK Rowling is foxed by textual analysis, and now this.

I do think it was a group, and Nick was part of it. So his denials are technically accurate.

Of course, we can go further than just the paper. Why not check out Satoshi's posts and compare them with Nick's blogging style?

<comment><USER52> _JK Rowling is foxed by textual analysis_

Was she? The way I recall was that she was first outed on twitter and only then did the textual analysis people come out and claim that they could prove the book was written by Rowling. I'm not aware of any textual analysis that pointed the finger at Rowling prior to the twitter reveal.

Tuning an algorithm to give you the right answer when you already know the answer isn't that impressive

<comment><USER51> So in this case, can we go further and analyze Satoshi's posts and emails?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can we find code written by Szabo and see find if the style or certain idioms are close to Bitcoin 0.1?

</comment><comment><USER53> Clearly Satoshi Nakamoto is the guy who did the Max Headroom pirate broadcast.

</comment><comment><USER54> The "Bit gold" post's date, and only the date, had changed in the Oct 17, 2009 wayback machine crawl, though I couldn't tell you whether that means anything or not.

</comment><comment><USER55> >Repeated use of expression "trusted third party"

That is like saying you uniquely identified someone based on repeated use of the expression "Q.E.D" in a mathematics paper.

</comment><comment><USER56> Satoshi Nakamoto: single-handedly turning HN into a tabloid magazine for the cryptographic paparazzi. Except that no one gets paid, so that makes it okay, right?

</comment><comment><USER57> Satoshi Nakamoto = SN. Nick Szabo = NS. SN & NS.

</comment><comment><USER58> [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25854.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25854.0)

</comment><comment><USER59> Is there also a chance that whoever Satoshi is asked Nick to write a paper, since he would understand the content and technology?

</comment><comment><USER60> This is how a witch hunt begins - if he wanted everyone to know his name, he wouldn't be using a pseudonym.

</comment><comment><USER61> Okay, all this witch hunt is becoming crazy. I'll come clean: I am Satoshi.

And Spartacus. And possibly Batman. Any questions?

(Related: [http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20090330/](http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20090330/))

</comment><comment><USER62> Are we even sure it is one person? I've heard the algorithms and techniques used make it probable that more than one person was behind this. I would have no idea where to begin searching so anyone's guess is a good as mine.

</comment><comment><USER63> It would be a great boon to BitCoin to know the identity of the creators.

Particularly if the unmasked progenitor(s) proved that they had actually destroyed the early Coins, that would help stabilize and legitimize the currency.

<comment><USER64> Could you expand upon the feasibility and the benefits of proving you had destroyed earlier coins?

I'm not calling into question what you say, just curious as to what you mean.

<comment><USER65> If Satoshi holds ~1M BTC it means he can crash the market at any time. In some people's minds that risk reduces the value of Bitcoin. But if he could prove that he doesn't, that risk goes away. Also, if Satoshi could prove he's not rich then people will stop trying to kidnap him.

<comment><USER64> Thanks to you and gambiting for providing what I guessed may be the benefits, I'm still confused about the feasibility. Can you prove something doesn't exist?

<comment><USER65> That is a problem. AFAIK it is possible to generate unspendable Bitcoin addresses without any private key in a way that could be revealed later (e.g. with a PRNG or deterministic wallet), but it's also possible that Satoshi generated normal key pairs and deleted them which would leave him with no way to prove that they were deleted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Even if it is him, leave him be. I don't want the feds on his ass! :p

</comment><comment><USER67> The Feds created Bitcoin and used it as a honeypot. The whole currency will dissolve due to its links to the criminal underground. That's my guess...

</comment><comment><USER68> Very unlikely. Much more likely explanation is that Satoshi was influenced by him and uses similar terms. AFAIK Szabo is a lawyer / historian.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Satoshi Nakamoto was a highly skilled computer scientist"

Nonsense. If you actually look at Satoshi's work, he was almost certainly an amateur and a cryptography enthusiast. That some software is popular is not an indication that it is the work of a highly skilled computer scientist; here is a simple and obvious counterexample:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Kernel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Kernel)

<comment><USER69> Did you even read the article? That statement is prefaced by "According to what seems to be a widely accepted origin story of Bitcoin, ...", meaning that's what many people assume.

Then right after, his thesis is to contrast that: "I would argue that Satoshi is actually Nick Szabo himself, probably together with one or more technical collaborators"

<comment><USER20> Did you read the article? He is saying that Satoshi was someone with experience as a researcher, someone who had authored many articles in the past. The Bitcoin whitepaper and Bitcoin itself suggest nothing of the sort; they suggest that Bitcoin was the work of someone with limited research experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> If Nick is Satoshi then its brilliant idea. Because it removes any heat from him while having shit load of BitCoins ^_^

</comment><comment><USER71> I am only certain of one thing when it comes to bitcoin, the creator(s) are not Japanese.

</comment><comment><USER72> This is unfortunate that the described method tends to prove nothing.

</comment><comment><USER73> This whole thing reads like "Bible Code" logic.

      I went looking for an obscure pattern and found an inconclusive curiosity, therefore, apocalypse!

</comment><comment><USER74> People still chasing this guy? Bitcoin has much bigger problems than the identity of its inventor(s).

</comment><comment><USER75> oh oh.. this again.

</comment><comment><USER76> Repeat after me: correlation does not imply causation.

<comment><USER77> Nobody is trying to discover any causation here.</comment></comment>