Satoshi Nakamoto Is Probably This Unknown Australian Genius? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-this-unknown-australian-genius/ <comment><USER2> So far there have been multiple Satoshi Nakamoto reveals which, of course, never panned out. To their credit Wired is hedging their bets, saying Wright could be a determined hoaxer and even providing some countervailing evidence to their own theory. Good journalism, that.

Having said that, I looked over the article and this seems to be the most convincing Satoshi Nakamoto theory thus far. There's no need to jump to any firm conclusions yet though: I'm certain the Internet will conclusively prove or disprove this over the next few days.

<comment><USER3> I think a very small amount of stylometric analysis would cast a lot of doubt on this theory.

Satoshi's grammar is always perfect. His sentences are tight. He's clear and to the point. Wright rambles; his grammar is terrible; he seems to have no idea what a comma is for. Scanning his blog for a minute, he comes across as the kind of slightly dotty kook who would try to convince people he's Satoshi with this kind of "leak."

I'll stick with the current mainstream theory, thanks...

<comment><USER4> Not only grammar, but Wright's writings are full of typos and spelling errors, which occur at a remarkable rate, to the extent that he can't spell Silicon Valley! (he spelled it as "silicone valley"). I never once saw Satoshi make a spelling error.

That said, the rest of the evidence is pretty compelling, isn't it?

Satoshi did once say he wasn't all that good with words, despite evidence to the contrary. Perhaps this mysterious collaboration with his dead friend involved the other guy writing the messages.

<comment><USER5> I think that's plausible particularly because he emailed someone asking them to leak his message about not being Dorian, and that person heavily edited / redacted it; it's quite possible that is a recurring theme.

Also in the Gawker article we are told Wright emailed Kleiman asking for "help editing a paper", "I need your help and I need a version of me to make this work that is better than me."

<comment><USER6> Notice that most of Wright's retroactive editing to make himself look like Satoshi took place in 2013-2014, shortly after Kleiman died.

Perhaps Kleiman was the one who really wanted to keep Satoshi's identity a secret, but Wright had different ambitions and now he doesn't have his friend to rein him in anymore.

<comment><USER7> Or Kleiman & Wright formed the Satoshi identity as a collaboration, and after Kleiman died, Wright decided to edit the historical record to take more of the credit for himself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apparently Gizmodo has been investigating this for even longer (!) and has a lot of other evidence for Wright=Satoshi too: [http://gizmodo.com/this- australian-says-he-and-his-dead-frie...](http://gizmodo.com/this-australian- says-he-and-his-dead-friend-invented-bi-1746958692)

<comment><USER9> That's mostly evidence for my theory: he's an egomaniac trying to sell a story. Almost all of this goes back to him or the leaker as a matter of faith. It all appears way after Bitcoin appears. Everything about how he presents himself comes off as playing to a mystique to draw people in.

I'd buy the leaks if the hacker posted a message as Satoshi using stolen credential and linked to this article. Meanwhile, the "hacker" is probably Wright with nothing to do with Satoshi other than make money on his name.

<comment><USER10> > he's an egomaniac trying to sell a story

Awesome guerrilla marketing.

Journalists want the scoop of the century - outing the real Satoshi. By back filling history, they gave exactly what they wanted, and they took it hook, line and sinker.

<comment><USER11> Except is that really the scoop of the century? Do people really care that much? If the media would just leave the real guy alone we could have the added benefit of preventing false self-marketing too. How about we just ignore all these "the real satoshi!" articles?

<comment><USER9> It's already in Wired, has 212 points on Hacker News, and who knows what value to people assessing him in academia or business sectors. Altogether, enough people care for it to matter to a tech egomaniac. Not "scoop of the century" or anything, though.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, when I said journalists, I meant tech journalists.

<comment><USER9> All good. I agreed with rest of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aaaaand the Australian police just raided his house: [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin- fo...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin-founder- craig-wrights-home-raided-by-australian-police)

<comment><USER13> Raided his out just a little while after these were sharing a theory he was the bitcoin founder. And in the name of the Tax Office? I'm in shock at the speed they moved in to try and catch him for ... tax evasion?

<comment><USER14> As the articles say, he has been under investigation for a while for his bitcoin mining work (which as far as I can tell is not under dispute). The Australian government has decreed that all bitcoin "investments" should be taxed for capital gains [1] so he could be up for a huge tax bill on his paper "profits" even if he was just mining back in the early days.

[1] [https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Gen/Tax-treatment-of- crypto-c...](https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Gen/Tax-treatment-of-crypto- currencies-in-Australia---specifically-bitcoin/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also Gizmodo was separately leaked to, it seems, has a bunch of screenshots

[http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead- frie...](http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-friend- invented-bi-1746958692)

if it's a hoax, seems like an awfully long and meticulous one.

[edit - Dang this fell off front page fast! Thought this one was going to be almost Steve Jobs in terms of having a life of its own]

<comment><USER16> It's being flagged down by the 'oh no they're going to kill satoshi' crowd; based on pts and time it should be the #1 post atm.

<comment><USER15> really? as if not having it on the front page of HN will totally keep the lid on it. plus the guy either outed himself or is pulling a massive hoax. either way he had time to plan for it. meanwhile the death of the Williams-Sonoma founder on 12/5 is basking on front page with 1/10 number of points. karma conspiracy HN is the worst form of HN but how odd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Worth noting that the main source on this is Gwern ([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gwern](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gwern)). Gwern, care to comment?

<comment><USER18> Can you share where you see that Gwern is the source?

<comment><USER19> first line on the page: > ANDY GREENBERG AND GWERN BRANWEN

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _" The PGP key associated with Nakamoto's email address and references to an upcoming "cryptocurrency paper" and "triple entry accounting" were added sometime after 2013"_

Why is this not at the beginning of the article? That's pretty strong evidence that this is a hoax.

<comment><USER21> I went back and read it more carefully, and it's linked to an email address one character off from the known Satoshi one. firstname.lastname@example.com vs firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I don't know why they're taking that as proof either. What's more likely, Satoshi having two near-identical addresses on the same host, or someone registering a near identical address to impersonate him?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This looks more like a trail of deliberately planted evidence to make us think he's Satoshi.

The email/tweet/transcript quotes almost suggest sort of multiple personality disorder where he believes he's Satoshi.

<comment><USER16> A plausible explanation is that he was part of a 'Satoshi partnership' with Kleiman and, with Kleiman's passing, began trying to retroactively make himself look like a bigger part of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if Steven Wright has any open source code that we could review.

While it seems plausible that he would obfuscate his styleometry, it would be interesting to do a comparison with early Bitcoin.

The early Bitcoin code is super awkward.

<comment><USER24> > I wonder if Steven Wright has any open source code that we could review.

I've been looking, and so far the only thing I've found is this: [https://digital-forensics.sans.org/blog/2009/04/24/code- skil...](https://digital-forensics.sans.org/blog/2009/04/24/code-skills-make- better-forensic-analysts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If someone wants to prove they are Satoshi Nakamoto all they have to do is sign a message with the private keys from the genesis block. Until then it's a little pointless to guess.

<comment><USER26> That's assuming they still have it. Perhaps the reason none of the bitcoin created in the genesis block has ever moved is because Satoshi thought there would be some value in having it be static and never expected bitcoin to have actual value.

They may have deleted that key.

<comment><USER9> It's going to be really funny if we find out he, too, tossed a HD full of Bitcoins in the trash thinking it was nothing. ;)

<comment><USER27> Yeah, I did this... I mined 100BTC Solo on my CPU right around the time it first came out. Then it wasn't even worth $1. Multiple formats/rebuilds later it's worth over $1K/btc (yes that was an artificially inflated price, I know). _sigh_ I could be student-debt free but it wasn't worth it for me to hold on to at the time...

<comment><USER9> Man, that sucks. Sorry to hear it.

<comment><USER27> I always just tell myself I would have probably got excited and sold at $2/BTC or when it hovered around $8. Such is life, no use wondering what might have been.

<comment><USER9> I hear you and you might have so it's at least semi-true. My own loss was a triple HD failure that cost almost a TB of software, research papers, photos, everything. I have none of my prior work as an INFOSEC pro. Three in a month when I was too broke from recession to replace them. So I feel the pain. ;)

One time I told that story to a Marine who instantly went PTSD. First time I met someone with similarly messed up HD loss. He had his slim, external laying on a table in maybe Iraq. Another Marine, round in the chamber, casually dropped his M16 on the table as he came in. It fired a burst right into the HD, leaving it unrecoverable. I said, "Damn. I'm at a loss for words." So, you ain't the only one haha.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, at this point I keep massive replaceable data backed up locally and important "can't lose" in 1-2 clouds and locally

<comment><USER9> Good start. Remember to hash and check the files regularly for bit rot. My three HD method kept three copies of the stuff while scripting the checks on the files and replacing broken ones with 2 out of 3 voter logic. Obviously, three HD's didn't work out so my next scheme will be like yours plus my bit rot solution when I'm not broke. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> He seems obsessed with being Satoshi. And the article itself said he made edits to insert bitcoin related entries into past writings. I'm sure he's a very smart guy but he's also one of the last people I'd think was Satoshi.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel Why is it important to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is/was? It seems like all this desire to know the person defeats the point of the pseudo-anonymity here. I assume it's meant to keep people focused on the idea of the crypto-currency and less on any specific ideology SN may espouse. But that's just me.

<comment><USER29> Personally, I want to know who this guy is because he did something really rare: putting together some bits of common, _old_ math—just bits that nobody thought to put together before—into a system with entirely novel (some would say "emergent") high-level semantics. He's an "inventor" in the most crucial sense.

And really, he's created one of the few things in Computer Science that I wouldn't argue with being patented. A blockchain is a configuration of algorithms into a novel abstract "machine", with many possible implementations, which isn't domain-specific, and that nobody had thought of—or, really, was likely to ever think of—without him.

Really, I'm just hoping that he's still actively working on other ideas; I would love to follow his research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Motherboard seems to think this is a hoax[1].

In sum:

* Only one key, the Original Key, is actually known to be associated with Satoshi.

* The Wired and Gizmodo Keys that supposedly lead back to Satoshi weren't previously known to be linked to Satoshi, and their 2008 creation date could have been faked.

* Both keys use a longer and less-common key size than the Original Key.

* Both keys use a list of cipher-suites that don't match up to the Original Key, and weren't added to GPG until 2009.

* The Wired key was retroactively added to a 2008 blogpost sometime between 2012 and 2014, as noted in its story.

* A core Bitcoin developer who's been involved from nearly the beginning looked back at 2011 chatlogs referring to "fake" Satoshi keys on keyservers, and found no reference to either the Gizmodo or Wired keys. He thinks that those keys weren't yet uploaded to the keyserver in 2011.

[1] [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are- proba...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-probably- backdated-and-point-to-a-hoax)

</comment><comment><USER31> Watching the video:

"I've got a couple doctorates... I forget what I've actually got these days".

It's hard to take seriously someone who is trying this hard not to appear self-aware.

</comment><comment><USER32> I wish people would respect satoshi's wish of anonymity.

Having probably the only concentration of wealth over $100M not guarded by a full security detail, it could very well lead to not only his own harm, but perhaps his family members being kidnapped, etc.

That is not even to mention the bilderberg/rothschild/etc. type of people that probably aren't big fans.

<comment><USER33> There are something like 5,000 families in the US worth more than $100M, the majority don't have private security, don't worry about kidnappings, and don't take any real actions to protect themselves from the Bilderbergs (?)

<comment><USER34> Is there some leaked "source" that claims that Satoshi is American too ?

PS: Getting kidnapped for ransom is not so uncommon in third world countries.

<comment><USER33> The linked article combined with the Gizmodo one make a compelling case that the creators of Bitcoin are an American and an Australian.. Where kidnapping for ransom is extraordinarily uncommon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Does anybody have access to Craig Steven Wright's papers? Google Scholar only turns up a single patent application (apparently a patent on a registration server -- vaguely related to bitcoin but without the decentralized aspect-- and very ideologically misaligned...)

I've seen people want to mysteriously associate themselves with something large before. This could be an example of it.

</comment><comment><USER36> he is actively deleting himself from the internet; his several blogs (gse in particular as it was posted here a few weeks ago, but there are more), his youtube channel and any reference to him.

i doubt this is speculation as the actions definitely show he is trying to hide something (his original writing from analysis). this is also apparent in his replies to wired.

also, it sucks that this kind of content is being cleared. i found it interesting and hope it will make it back. please put it back craig.

edits:

the following quote is quite odd; anyone have any clarity?

"About 20 years ago, I was at the launch of Alta Vista. It was the first big commercial search engine. Back in the early '90s… everyone told me how much of a 'coo-coo' [crazy] I was for wasting all this money to be part of something that's a 'bloody piece of computer code'," said Wright. [1]

[1] [http://www.cio.com.au/article/549278/bitcoin_safe_/](http://www.cio.com.au/article/549278/bitcoin_safe_/)

</comment><comment><USER37> If Satoshi is Wright, and he really wanted to remain nameless, he almost certainly would not have shown up to the Bitcoin Investor's Conference. Poor op-sec.

That said, the issue with outing him is that he could hold more sway over the direction of BTC than if it were a truly decentralized currency. Not sure this if that's in the best interests of BTC.

<comment><USER38> Judging by the trainwreck that the debate over the change in block size ended up being, maybe Bitcoin could use a benevolent dictator.

<comment><USER39> It wasn't a trainwreck; it worked exactly as it should.

Bitcoin is not a system for those that favor changing the rules once the game is in play.

<comment><USER40> Bitcoin has gone through lots of changes. For example, the blocksize limit was added in July 2010, a year and a half after launch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I used to follow him Twitter, G+, Blogspot and LinkedIn. Within minutes of the article being published all his accounts have been out (disconnected?). Only LinkedIn is still up.

</comment><comment><USER42> I find it eerily odd that that pencil making article was posted on HN a couple of weeks ago.

<comment><USER43> The submitter's account has only submitted links from Craig Wright's blog and was created 36 days ago, but is an active participant in discussions about the recent revelations...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cba9](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cba9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I came here to say "oh god not again", but then I read it and found out gwern was involved in the investigation. Suddenly it's quite interesting. :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Gizmodo now chiming in and saying Satoshi was 2 people, but basically confirming the Wired article on Dr. Wright.

[http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead- frie...](http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-friend- invented-bi-1746958692)

<comment><USER31> Confirming it based on the same leaked information which can't entirely be corroborated.

<comment><USER44> The interesting thing about these claims is that they tie so many parties together, I think ongoing investigations will be able to figure out whether all of this is true.

While so much seems 'too good to be true' and potentially a plant, it is quite incredible that someone would put this all together after the fact to make a perfect fitting story. Either some ends won't meet, or we'll have the answer at long last.

<comment><USER45> I don't really understand. If he is claiming to Satoshi (as some people have mentioned, although all I've seen is stuff leaked about him) can't he just sign a message with Satoshi's widely known PGP key?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Most of the 'evidence' seems to have been added in 2013, a year when prices hit nearly $1,000 per coin. Maybe it's Mr. Wright, maybe not.

But, it's quite credulous to say "Oh, what an unusual and determined person it must to be to think of claiming to be Satoshi in 2013."

</comment><comment><USER47> Wouldn't it be fun if we could set up a prediction market so that we could all place bets on whether Mr. Wright is or is not an inventor of Bitcoin?

</comment><comment><USER48> Trying to identify one member in a population of 7 billion, you are likely to find many more than one very persuasive false positive.

</comment><comment><USER49> This feels like a really weird story, on one hand I've wanted to know the answer to this forever and on the other hand, this doesn't really seem to be a story at all:)

So what does this mean for bitcoin, anything?

<comment><USER2> If this turns out to be true, it could mean a lot or nothing, depending on what Wright decides to do. The big questions would be, a) does he have the private keys to Satoshi's 1.1MM BTC stash or has he lost them and b) will he decide to be actively involved in Bitcoin development/governance.

The Bitcoin market has mostly been assuming that Satoshi's bitcoins are lost forever, and the price reflects that. If it turns out Wright can still sell those Bitcoins it would have a dramatic- but probably not cataclysmic- effect on the price.

The other question would be if he wanted to involve himself in Bitcoin development. If he really is Satoshi, his voice would carry a lot of weight on big, divisive issues like block size. For better or worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm really wondering why the author of bitcoin would hide their identity? Don't want the attention? Plenty of innovative people are simply footnotes in history. Or is the true origin of this digital currency a dubious agency, who if revealed would stop people from wanting to use it? Is it a second try at Amero? [http://forextrading.about.com/od/forexhistory/a/amero_conspi...](http://forextrading.about.com/od/forexhistory/a/amero_conspiracy.htm)

<comment><USER51> I would have done the same thing. People are insane, can you imagine what they would do to the inventor of digital money? (I realize Satoshi is not that, but a lot of people will think he/she is.)

<comment><USER50> What do you think people would do to him? I'm not sure I understand the 'danger' you seem to perceive.

<comment><USER9> He's presumably a computer geek sitting on a fortune that can be stolen and transferred without FinCEN knowing or able to do crap. I think that's enough reason to keep his identity secret.

<comment><USER50> What's FinCEN? Is that the Australian equivalent of the USA IRS?

<comment><USER9> It's a U.S. organization that goes after financial crime world-wide. I just gave it as an example. Point being, many types of money moving require careful laundering to prevent traces for financial or other prosecution. It's why most crooks focus on trying to steal straight cash if they're here in U.S.. A guy with an easily-moved, unregulated, semi-anonymous stash of millions is a much easier target and the government might not be able to help him. So, more risk than usual and varies depending on his location.

<comment><USER52> Let's say someone stole Satoshi's stash. To convert it to non-Bitcoin value, they would have to spend it or transfer it. Wouldn't people notice that the famous Satoshi block is suddenly in play? And the point at which it is converted to real value is the point at which a criminal investigation would begin.

I don't understand why Satoshi's stash of bitcoins is any easier to spend untraceably than any other store of value.

<comment><USER9> Not easier to spend than stock, bonds, derivatives, and so on that most wealth is stored in? Last I heard, there was more liquidity and less auditing for Bitcoin spending in general. An expert on Bitcoin might know that particular block moving would be a high risk operation. Thugs reading about his identity, worth, and use of Bitcoin in criminal dealings might think differently. They might decide to go get his money.

That's the risk. Not sure of its likelihood in terms of a percentage or even verbal description. It's near zero while he's anonymous, though.

<comment><USER52> There is more auditing for bitcoin than almost any other store of value, because every transaction is broadcast to the entire network. Crowd-sourced auditing is essentially all bitcoin _is._

Like bitcoin itself, the anonymity of bitcoin is also a chain. Bitcoins can be mined anonymously, and therefore transacted anonymously. But any point where they are converted to other stores of value will create connections to real- world identity. For example, cash has to be picked up in a physical place, or it has to be transfered into a bank account, which creates an auditable transaction record. Purchased objects have to be delivered somewhere. Purchased services are interacted with in some way. Etc.

<comment><USER9> I thought crooks successfully transact services with Bitcoin like they do cash, western union, and traded CC's. Must not be as hard to obfuscate as you make it seem regardless of the ledger. Someone else mentioned mix networks to hide whose doing what as well but I'm not up-to-date on them.

Overall point of the discussion is that people finding out he has a physical/digital object worth millions might try to rob him. Some of them also use Bitcoin as payment for crime. So, anonymity seems like a good choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Perhaps it's just me, but I find the - repeated - attempted unmasking of a cypherpunk nym adopted with good cause and reason for the creation of a very disruptive technology terribly disrespectful, although perhaps inevitable.

"Who is but the form following the function of what, and _what_ I am is a man in a mask." (Well I can see that.) "Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man _who_ he is." [-V, 2005]

</comment><comment><USER54> gwern, should we really be doing this? Why not leave the guy alone? Obviously he does not want to be found out... let him have his peace!

<comment><USER55> I'm really not too sure why you're being downvoted. I think there are a number of people who agree that outing him isn't necessary or valuable. A man trying not to be in the public eye deserves as much.

<comment><USER56> Not just that - outing satoshi could cause him and any close family significant danger, given that there is a strong chance he is in possession of the secret keys of addresses containing 1M bitcoins. [https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well- deserved-f...](https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved- fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/)

<comment><USER57> What makes him different from say, Bill Gate?

<comment><USER58> Bill Gates doesn't have billions in cash sequestered under the digital equivalent of his mattress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Newsweek one made more sense than this one. Especially him saying he wasn't involved in it any more. Imperfect English wouldn't make me think I worked on a project called Bitcoin, which also doesn't even sound like most tech. He certainly issued a rebuttal but would if it was true or false. Same for the email saying he's not Dorian. Meaningless.

So, she might be wrong or right. Who knows. That story wasn't convincing mainly due to how it was presented. I think this guy is onto something about that:

[http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/03/10/satoshi- why...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/03/10/satoshi-why-newsweek- isnt-convincing/)

So, now we have a new one with leaked emails and blog posts. The writer is wise enough, as Analemma noted, to mention it could be a hoax with some indications of that. It's actually the first thing I think given the two source are both huge red flags, one already has editing, and they center on a sort of egomaniac. An egomaniac who also has financial conflicts of interest and major investments in Bitcoin that might benefit from a false reveal. I'm not buying it until we have good external or first-hand data tying him to Bitcoin like prior work attempted.

The trust chain and leveraging Satoshi's stash without directly moving it is good thinking, though. I predicted that in private conversations as a significant possibility. Learned the trick from Wall St where they have all kinds of ways to make money on less money or static assets. Hell, they even make money on non-existent assets lol. A person sitting on a Bitcoin fortune able to prove it without it being published could do a lot of the same stuff.

</comment><comment><USER59> "comparisons of different archived versions of the three smoking gun posts from Wright's blog show that he did edit all three—to insert evidence of his bitcoin history. The PGP key associated with Nakamoto's email address and references to an upcoming "cryptocurrency paper" and "triple entry accounting" were added sometime after 2013."

</comment><comment><USER60> Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police[0].

[0] [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin- fo...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin-founder- craig-wrights-home-raided-by-australian-police)

<comment><USER61> Anyone know why the presumed inventor would have existing tax problems, given the ample amount of valuable bitcoin that could be used to pay bills?

Edit: Gizmodo mentions a bunch of tax issues [http://gizmodo.com/this- australian-says-he-and-his-dead-frie...](http://gizmodo.com/this-australian- says-he-and-his-dead-friend-invented-bi-1746958692)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Well, this is compelling stuff. Certainly moreso than the easily-dismissed Newsweek story.

</comment><comment><USER63> _" As Wright told the Bitcoin Investor's conference, he's applying that second machine towards the mysterious task of 'modeling Bitcoin's scalability'[.]"_

If he is Nakamoto, I wonder if he's using this computing power to test strategies for divesting of the "nine-figure fortune" of coins which is assumed to be controlled by Nakamoto.

<comment><USER64> Can you explain your theory better? The coin's Satoshi owns haven't moved since they were mined long ago.

<comment><USER63> Basically, it's supply and demand.

Satoshi has a large position relative to the whole market. If he every wanted to convert those coins to US dollars or some other currency, I'm guessing the supply it would introduce would cause the conversion rate to crash unless done in a sophisticated way.

<comment><USER32> Satoshi's fortune (1.5Mbtc) is almost as large as the daily volume (1.9Mbtc) of the entire market... its sudden change from dormant and, for all purposes inert, to "potentially market-destroying" would be way too spooky.

Even a single satoshi leaving one of his known wallets could spook enough people to cause a crash. I can't speak for other investors, but even though I have been long in bitcoin for years, I would be out in a heartbeat, for at least a month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Why do we care? How does knowing the identity of Satoshi advance Bitcoin in any way? If someone wants to stay anonymous...

</comment><comment><USER66> I'll believe it when I see something here: [https://blockchain.info/fr/address/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SL...](https://blockchain.info/fr/address/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa?filter=1)

</comment><comment><USER67> They don't seem to have spotted that the second "perplexing" email is a word- for-word quote from Neuromancer. Which is particularly funny given that they managed to figure out the William Gibson reference.

I had to explain to my wife why I was laughing so hard.

<comment><USER68> Which email are you referring to? None of the phrases in the second email (starting with "The nature of this moniker") appear in any of Gibson's Sprawl trilogy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> this twitter account just got deleted [https://twitter.com/dr_craig_wright](https://twitter.com/dr_craig_wright)

<comment><USER41> I followed him for his work on Cloudcroft, until an hour ago both of his blogs and Google+ account were active. Completely out now :( [http://gse- compliance.blogspot.com/](http://gse-compliance.blogspot.com/) [http://security-doctor.blogspot.com/](http://security-doctor.blogspot.com/) [https://plus.google.com/117910648569393591305/posts](https://plus.google.com/117910648569393591305/posts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Is this the same Dave Kleiman who is the Microsoft MVP?

</comment><comment><USER71> The NSA has nothing on these wannabe journalists. Good grief, why can't someone's identity remain private even when they make something popular?

</comment><comment><USER72> Satoshi is very probably Nick Szabo...

<comment><USER9> Does anyone have source code of Nick's from around the time period of what Satoshi submitted? Satoshi's style is so weird that Nick's should be the same unless the style was itself an obfuscation.

<comment><USER73> Got any examples of the weirdness in the original code?

<comment><USER9> I didn't read it. People that fo writeups on Satoshi and people who read the code always mention it's weird style. Irritates them, even.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> It almost feels like this is a double bluff designed to confuse and discredit pursuers.

</comment><comment><USER75> Lets be clear: This is not an article you should write, or should have been written.

</comment><comment><USER76> I would submit that posting this drivel on HK is unnecessary.

I'm all for real Bitcoin news, even about whats-his-face in Japan or interviews with old cypherpunks. Or new forks or new coins or ponzi schemes or silly lost hard drives even.

But this article is unfounded clickbait nonsense. Whomever the real SN is has done good security work on their identity and won't be found unless they want to.

<comment><USER77> I would agree with you, except that it's based on work by Gwern, who is not a guy to sell wolf tickets.</comment></comment>


programmming rant - <AUTHOR> http://ytcracker.tumblr.com/post/138998909050/programming-rant <comment><USER2> I think that this Rant has more to do with NoSQL tech not being a drop in replacement from one another. And not unified with some translation layer.

Traditional SQL servers have the advantage to implement some common subset of SQL, ORM usually interface very well with the most popular ones.</comment>


Ask HN:  How to decide between ovh/hetzner and AWS? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently using AWS for my dev/QA but I hope to go live very soon. AWS makes everything almost effortless but I am not afraid of diving in when needed. I am wrestling with the idea of going with ovh as I get more bang for the buck.  I have a monthly budget of approximately US$500 per month. What factors besides throughput of bare metal and low prices should I consider ? <comment><USER2> I use a combination of Hetzner and AWS.

AWS - RDS, EMR and S3 Hetzner - Crawling and CPU intensive computing

In the early days AWS allowed us to spin a crazy amount of machines up with basically no capital outlay.

Depending on your status... AWS, Rackspace and Softlayer would more than likely throw some $$ your way to play with. That could set you on your way for a couple of months.

<comment><AUTHOR> when you set up hetzner + aws combination, won't lag time cause failures when communicating between AWS RDS and Hetzner server ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For a business critical web service I would look at a decent dedicated server provider, unless you really need the API and scalability features of AWS.

OVH are great, I use them my self, however they are cheap and that's for a reason, the hardware isn't server grade and the support is almost Nill.

<comment><AUTHOR> @iSloth , can you please elaborate on issues you have faced ? and how you countered them . Thanks !

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I do not have an experience in maintainIng and keepiNG services up 24x7. I want to know what I should expect to go wrong ? If I rent servers with h/w raid, is disk failure still an issue ?</comment>


Theo de Raadt summarizes the OpenBSD IPSec "backdoor" situation - <AUTHOR> http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=129296046123471&w=2 <comment><USER2> The meat of it:

      (g) I believe that NETSEC was probably contracted to write backdoors as alleged.

      (h) If those were written, I don't believe they made it into our tree.

As an OpenBSD user, the big benefit of all of this is that the code in question got a lot of audit attention.

And that the next version of OpenBSD will probably have a funny song about this on the end of CD #2

<comment><USER3> We might also get some commentary with this next release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> People often complain about his erratic and uncontrollable behaviour, but I find Theo de Raadt comes across entirely reasonable in this message.

What's the history there?

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I think that it's reasonable for Theo to suggest that one of his key contributing developers was "not fully transparent" about whether he wrote backdoors in the OpenBSD IPSEC code. Theo has no evidence to implicate Jason. Jason served the OpenBSD project with distinction. The matter at hand relates to Jason's personal honor. The instigator of the controversy is a known high- drama person.

I might have hoped to see him stick by his guy.

But then, that's Theo. You take the good with the not-so-good.

<comment><USER6> But, I thought you weren't supposed to take people's "high-drama" into account when evaluating statements and arguments, and judge them entirely on the facts. Isn't that ad hominem as you love to point out?

<comment><USER5> Personally, Zed, I don't give a shit about "ad hominem"; my "hominem" has been the "ad" of many an "arguendo", just like you, and (unlike you, I know) my take is pretty much "that's life in the big city". So, I don't hold myself to this standard of not considering the source in arguments and controversies, even though I recognize the virtue of doing so. I'm a manifestly imperfect person.

But I'm not talking about rhetorical purity here. I'm talking about a comment that implies Theo gave a reasonable (maybe even classy) response to the situation. Put yourself back in the position of being a lead dev at Bear. Imagine someone accused one of your better developers of, say, fraud. What's the standard you set for yourself for sticking by your people? From your demeanor, my guess is your standard for loyalty to your own people is even higher than mine.

And that's my point here. How well is Theo acquitting himself here? He's not doing terribly. He's not necessarily doing great.

But hey, either way, I'm out here with my name signed to my posts. If it turns out Theo was justified in questioning how Jason handled this, everyone can look this post up and hoist me with it down the road. I would concede up front that this is kind of not a whole lot my business; I have a minor, historical, emotional attachment to it and nothing more.

You brought it up, I responded. There you go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You may find yourself wondering, "what is this CBC oracle bug Theo keeps talking about?". Especially if you've paid attention to security news this year, where "CBC padding oracle attacks" demolished Java Server Faces and ASP.NET security. I am here to help!

First, the tl;dr: this flaw is _not_ as bad as a CBC padding oracle. It allows an attacker with continuous on-line access to a vulnerable target to conduct a slow, online dictionary attack against all previous ciphertext blocks. Given, say, a dictionary of passwords, and incurring packet I/O for each guess, you could discover whether a given ciphertext block encrypts any entry in the dictionary.

CBC is a way ("the" way, really) to take something like AES that works in 128-bit blocks and apply it across an arbitrarily long stream of data.

The naive way to do this (called "ECB") is simply to apply AES over and over in 16 byte increments. This sucks for two reasons: first, blocks can be shuffled around or replayed, because each is encrypted in isolation, and second because the same plaintext always encrypts to the same ciphertext --- so if you know the plaintext for a specific block, you can see if that block has ever occurred anywhere else.

CBC fixes that problem by XORing each plaintext with the previous ciphertext block; it "chains" all the blocks together. This neatly addresses both those problems; you can't simply look for repeating patterns because the same block encrypts to infinitely many different ciphertext blocks. Go CBC!

The one tricky thing about CBC is what you do with the first plaintext block. There's no previous ciphertext block to XOR it with. The answer is what's called an "initialization vector" (IV), which is one of the worst names in crypto. All the IV is is a fictitious zeroth ciphertext block. It's a parameter to the CBC construction; when you use a library, it'll ask for the cipher ("AES"), the key size (128 bits), the mode ("CBC"), and the IV.

Here's the thing about the IV: it's conceptually ciphertext. It's a public value. Anybody can see it. The only thing it's not supposed to be is predictable or repeatable.

The way you're supposed to do the IV is very simple: you generate 16 random bytes from your CSPRNG, use them as the IV, and then tack those 16 random bytes to the front of your message so that the recipient can strip them off and use them as the IV.

Here's what OpenBSD (and SSH2, back before 2004) did instead: each time it encrypted a message, it used the last ciphertext block as the IV for the next message.

This makes perfect conceptual sense! Think about it: what they are basically do is encrypting in one long, unending CBC stream. It's hard to see how that could even be a flaw, because a _real_ ciphertext block seems stronger than an artificial one.

Turns out, no. Here's where that goes wrong: attacker sees a message go across the wire. Attacker has the last ciphertext block from that message. Attacker now knows the IV for the next message _before the message is encrypted_. Here's what can happen: if attacker can get the target to encrypt something for it†, the attacker can use for that block _known-iv_ XOR _cipherblock- prior-to-any-target-block_ XOR _guessed-plaintext-of-target-block_. The target is going to XOR the known-iv into that block (it's the IV, after all), so they cancel each other out. The block prior to the target block is going to cancel out the CBC XOR for the target block. So, what you're left with is the ECB- style encryption of the target block; if you feed _iv_ XOR _previous- cipherblock_ XOR "YELLOW SUBMARINE" to the target, you can tell if the target block was "YELLOW SUBMARINE", because they'll match.

The "oracle" here is the condition that the server will encypt a block of plaintext for the attacker, thus revealing the associated ciphertext. The "vulnerability" is that by pre-disclosing the IV before using it, that oracle can be used to attack any previous cipherblock.

This is a neat attack, but also a total pain in the ass to use, and certainly not an FBI backdoor in OpenBSD IPSEC.

A nit about Theo's message:

This is not a complete summary of what's been discovered about OpenBSD's IPSEC stack. Marsh Ray also discovered that sometime back in 2003, OpenBSD discovered a _serious_ vulnerability in its IPSEC stack: they weren't verifying ESP authenticators! This was due to a straightforward bug in Angelos' original code to handle crypto accelerator hardware, and it was fixed in 2003, and that's presumably why Theo didn't mention it.

But Theo is missing the point. We're not simply interested in whether OpenBSD is vulnerable _today_. We want to know if there's any evidence that the IPSEC stack was _ever_ tampered with, and particularly around the time frame that Greg Perry suggested that it was. Worse still, OpenBSD had what appeared to be†† a very serious security flaw, and they fixed it without telling users. OpenBSD users do have a right to ask the question, "hey, what gives?".

† _It turns out that this is very often easy to do! For instance, the attacker might be able to invoke a web app on the target and get it to send a database query across an IPSEC link; by playing with the lengths of the input, the attacker can coerce the target into sticking a specific piece of attacker- controlled data at the beginning of an IPSEC packet. Just one example._

†† _We don't know if any particular configuration of OpenBSD with or without hardware accelerators in any particular release of OpenBSD had this problem exploitably, although it sure looks like they did._

<comment><USER7> > Here's the thing about the IV: it's conceptually

> ciphertext. It's a public value. Anybody can see it.

> The only thing it's not supposed to be is predictable

> or repeatable.

You don't need the IV to be non predictable, as long as it is a different string every time it's all ok. The outcome of the encryption is also related to the first block of real plaintext, so your IV can just be a few random bytes with a decent distribution: no need for a cryptographically secure random number generator.

<comment><USER8> I'm confused, didn't the parent comment just explain why it MUST be unpredictable? Doesn't the attack tptacek describes use the fact that the IV is predictable?</comment></comment></comment>


Synthetic Sensors: Towards General-Purpose Sensing - <AUTHOR> http://www.gierad.com/projects/supersensor/ <comment><USER2> Measuring activity / usage is one thing but as they get more advanced it would be exciting to explore detecting machine part failures as well.

As a child my father would relate how his father's time as a mechanic in WWI left him with the skill to listen to a passing car and say what was wrong or wearing out with particular parts of the engine.

Using ML to crack that and we'll have the good part of HAL from 2001 (although in the film the item turned out not to be faulty if I recall correctly!)

<comment><USER3> I don't have specific examples but I have read of standard manufacturer tools to do audio analysis of diesel engines to diagnose which part(s) are failing. AFAIK this has been a standard type of diagnostic for decades, although perhaps not as widespread or cheap to do as it is presently.

<comment><USER4> Similarly, with some practice, identifying engine types by ear (and possibly models) isn't out of the question. Airplanes, too, not just cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This technology is key to how we will detect fake or doctored videos. Publishers will no longer be able to produce simple live video stream, they will need to publish general purpose sensors to create an audit trail for validating the contents. If you want to fake a video, you will need to forge all of these other signals in a consistent way too.

<comment><USER6> You just need to timeshift them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool! I especially liked the approach to measure water or to count paper towels left.

It reminds me of this paper [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/192069](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/192069) where they detect events such as an oven being turned on, by monitoring the household power usage.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is cool! Building a context from many data points is impressive.

I could see this being built into phones for sure. If the phone can detect the context with a small amount of battery it opens the phone to a whole lot of applications.

</comment><comment><USER9> Absolutely amazing work! If it can be made reliable enough, this may be just a key stepping stone towards actually useful IoT.

That said, I can't wait for a open source/open hardware on-premises alternative - because there's no way in hell I'm running something like this through vendor's cloud. They deserve credit for not sending raw sensor data to the cloud, but vendor lock-in is still vendor lock-in. N-th-order sensors should be products, not services.

</comment><comment><USER10> Really cool, don't get me wrong. But imo, the biggest achievement here is explaining in non-technical terms how real world inputs can be mapped to features in ML, and how the resulting classifications can be fed into state machines. Obviously, none of this is groundbreaking, but it's explained so clearly that the non-technical person can see the potential in the technology.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is amazing - and from 2017 no less. I haven't had time to read the paper but my only question would be how it handles the distinction of multiple sounds in a room triggering multiple event states. For example, if I run the shower and leave the faucet on, then turn off the shower, how does the ML algorithm handle that, etc.

Very neat!

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems like a simple/interesting way for residential/commercial monitoring of utility and appliance usage.

Maybe we could teach it how to listen for leaks, too. I'd probably pay for a device that could sense anomalies like fire/flood/etc.

Especially useful to augment the senses for visual/hearing impaired folks.

</comment><comment><USER13> Off topic, but... why do the titles so many papers start with "towards"?

<comment><USER14> It indicates that you think the work is a meaningful contribution towards (but not a full solution for) the problem named by the paper title. I'm not sure if there's a distinct origin (see [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/188988/what- is-t...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/188988/what-is-the- origin-of-the-towards-a-new-used-in-the-titles-of-some-research-ar)), but it's fairly conventional these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is from 2017.</comment>


Ask HN: Link to recent HN submission about an AI fiction story? - <AUTHOR>

There was a recent submission on HN (within a few weeks), which was an fictional AI story in which the protagonist is invited by his AI-programmer friend to participate in a turing test experiment, and eventually ends up discovering that he himself (the protagonist) is a computer with a planted historical memory, and hence as a result, is self-conscious.
Can someone please share the link to the story?
I tried looking through the older HN submissions, and dug up my browser history, and tried googling, but to no avail. It was a pretty impressive story, and i want to share with a friend. Thanks. <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3628887>

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly what i was looking for. Thanks!</comment></comment>


A jQuery plugin to embed a HN thread in a webpage (uses api.ihackernews.com) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sharkbrainguy/HN-Comments

<comment><USER2> The Rise of the Hacker News Eco System!

</comment><comment><USER3> Live demo URL?

<comment><AUTHOR> sure <http://gerardpaapu.com/hncomments/>

<comment><USER4> Why do reply links go through the unofficial 'hackerne.ws' domain? Because that domain is not owned by YC, whenever I wind up there, my phishing alarms go off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I was just using that because that's the domain, I normally use. I've just pushed an update to fix that.

(also I updated the demo)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Parker Solar Probe data consistent with 20-year-old theory - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-04-switchbacks-spikes-parker-solar-probe.html <comment><AUTHOR> > "What this gives us is insight into how the sun produces slow and fast solar > winds. ... Defining that mechanism is key to predicting when a transition > from slow to fast solar wind is going to strike Earth and create a > geomagnetic storm."</comment>


Show HN: Mys – an attempt to create a statically typed Python-like language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eerimoq/mys <comment><USER2> I was once toying with the idea to create a statically-typed Python-like language, and I had the perfect name for it: Typhoon... ;)

<comment><USER3> Alternate idea: a language called Typon in which the compiler paves over typos of keywords and symbol names.

<comment><USER4> Like a whole language built on the fuckit principle.

<comment><USER2> I thought that was Perl... ;P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given that the OP is the github project owner, are you aware of [https://chocopy.org/](https://chocopy.org/) ?

You might want to also look at Shedskin, [https://github.com/shedskin/shedskin](https://github.com/shedskin/shedskin) which converts implicitly typed Python programs to C++

<comment><USER6> And at mypyc [https://github.com/python/mypy/tree/master/mypyc](https://github.com/python/mypy/tree/master/mypyc)

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks promising indeed. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Question for the OP seeing as this is a Show HN: how does this compare to Nim ([https://nim-lang.org/](https://nim-lang.org/))?

<comment><USER8> Not OP, but a big Nim fan. I think Nim has made a mistake by marketing itself as Python inspired. I know why it does so; Python is a very successful language and as a niche language, Nim wants to associate itself with an established one. But in my experience, Nim has a very small overlap with Python. It is whitespace significant, prefers short words to symbols for operators, and has a robust stdlib. But if you look at the actual language semantics, or even the keywords, Nim is not really related to Python. I'd go as far as saying Nim is more similar to a Lisp than it is Pythonic (which works fine for me, as I prefer Lisp to Python).

All of this to say, the OPs language seems much more Pythonic. The key words, the built in functions, the class system, all seems designed to match Python as closely as possible.

<comment><USER9> It took me a couple of weeks to realize Nim's semantics are really different. Despite that Nim feels like an alternate reality of Python 2 -> 3 that went more lispy and a bit Pascal-ish. It gives me the old Python 2.7 vibe. Though I'd still prefer 'def' to 'proc' but that's pretty minor to me.

It's interesting to see how well the typed Python syntax maps to a static implementation of Python. The speed should probably be a lot faster than CPythin too for many cases.

<comment><USER10> The really nice thing about proc is that emphasizes that they are in fact procedures, rather than mathematical functions - a distinction that becomes more relevant as FP gains mindshare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > We don't need a GC because RC

        L = []
        L.append(L)

</comment><comment><USER12> I am working on something similar, although with a different focus (mobile coding): [https://github.com/stefanhaustein/tantilla](https://github.com/stefanhaustein/tantilla)

P.S.: Might make sense to try to get to a common type-safe language spec?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice job.

I don't understand the question. Can you rephrase it? =)

<comment><USER12> It might make sense to try to support the same subset of Python in both projects. On the other hand, this might make experimentation harder... And there seem to be many differences, for instance I am trying to move towards async/await... But there might also be areas that could be easy to get consistent, e.g. how local variables are declared...

p.s. And I wasn't aware of Cocopy either. Having a list of similarities and differences of all three might be useful...

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea. If our languages are similar it could even make sense to stop developing one of them and focus on the other, but that's probably far fetched. I'll have a look at yours to get a better understanding of what it looks like and where it shines. Maybe we meet again =)

<comment><USER12> Do you have any objections against using google drive for an initial list of similarities / differences? I think the comment function could be useful....

<comment><AUTHOR> Please do, but I won't promise I will contribute a lot, so don't be disappointed. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cython is a great tool for this. It's a superset of Python with full static compilation support for native CPython or for pure C or C++ extension modules.

[https://cython.org/](https://cython.org/)

</comment><comment><USER14> There is also [http://strlen.com/lobster/](http://strlen.com/lobster/)

Rust-like borrow checking with a Python-ish syntax, compiles to C++ or Wasm

</comment><comment><USER15> Similar and relevant:

Crystal: [https://crystal-lang.org/](https://crystal-lang.org/)

Sorbet: [https://sorbet.org/](https://sorbet.org/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I love this.

I have nothing else to say except that I want this to happen. Python is an amazing language which is missing two things - static types and speed. I starred your repo and am looking forward to seeing it progress.

</comment><comment><USER17> This looks cool. Is there anything specific you're trying to do with Mys that another language didn't do? Nim comes to mind as being in a similar space.

Small nitpick about the title: Python _is_ strongly typed.

<comment><USER18> I would call Python untyped

<comment><USER19> You would be wrong. Try adding a string and number together. That's a type error. Unlike in JS or C, where a lot of these conversions are implicit and only warn if anything.

Python determines the types at runtime, but it is very clear about what few operations you're allowed to do on any given set of types.

<comment><USER18> I can import this with no errors, so Python is untyped:

        def foo():
          return 1 + "2"

Another example showing Python is untyped:

        x = 1
        x = "2"

x clearly has no type. No variables in python have types.

<comment><USER19>
      >>> 1 + "2"
      Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
      TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'str'

[https://dev.to/jiangh/type-systems-dynamic-versus-static- str...](https://dev.to/jiangh/type-systems-dynamic-versus-static-strong- versus-weak-b6c)

<comment><USER18> What that article calls "dynamically typed" is commonly referred to as "untyped" in PL research.

The program '1 + "2"' is a perfectly valid python program with well defined behavior (it signals a TypeError). This demonstrates that you can in fact add integers to strings in python. Of course whether or not you can add integers to strings is completely orthogonal to whether or not a language is typed. Both typed and untyped languages may overload the addition operator.

<comment><USER20> For those downvoting aidenn0's comments, I was surprised to find that "untyped" is indeed a common term that includes what many people (myself included) call dynamically typed. See the three top-voted answers to this Stack Overflow question, one of which includes a citation from TaPL, a standard text (emphasis added):

"A type system is a tractable _syntactic_ method ... Terms like 'dynamically typed' are arguably misnomers."

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9154388/does-untyped- als...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9154388/does-untyped-also-mean- dynamically-typed-in-the-academic-cs-world)

I still prefer the term dynamically typed, because there are useful distinctions about value types to be made among such languages, such as those described in striking's link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Data races will occur when multiple threads uses a variable at the same > time, which will likely make the program crash.

... or let the attacker execute arbitrary code.

</comment><comment><USER22> Isn't Dotty basically statically typed Python? They added whitespace syntax recently and thanks to Scala native it should be possible to have a LLVM backend somewhere down the line.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why not to just use Cython?

</comment><comment><USER24> Strongly typed? You mean statically typed?

See _" What to know before debating type systems"_:

[http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2010/08/what-to-know- before...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2010/08/what-to-know-before- debating-type-systems.html)

<comment><USER25> > _Type inference is generally a big win._

I see this claimed a lot, but haven't seen any evidence.

<comment><USER26> Might depend on what "win" is supposed to mean in this context. If it's intended to mean "languages with type inference are more productive", then sure, evidence would be nice. If it's intended to mean "type inference helps cut down on the need for explicit type annotations", I don't think evidence is really necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Before making Yet Another Language, I'd like to see a good analysis of the options and trade-offs they offer: what does each design choice make easier and harder. There is probably no free lunch, but maybe we can find a better lunch by balancing things carefully.

<comment><AUTHOR> For me it's pretty simple. I love Python. I like speed. I like embedded. This is an attempt to take advantage of Python's type hints to create fast and hopefully small binaries that can be executed on embedded devices limited amount of resources (both CPU and RAM).

There are probably other languages that would serve the same purpose, but oh well, I can't resist creating another. =)

<comment><USER28> Have you look at mypyc?

[https://github.com/python/mypy](https://github.com/python/mypy)

Its a compiler that support subset of python and mypy's team including Guido work on it. It would be great if this kind of efforts have been done on more realistic project.

<comment><AUTHOR> It compiles statically typed Python modules to CPython C extension modules. I do not know the details, but it sounds like that's a major difference to Mys.</comment></comment></comment></comment>