#a coder or hacker or game dev or something

[big-tiddy-goth-ghoulfriend]

my geef is trans and a furry and even wears the striped thigh high socks but she can't hack her way out of a paper bag like she's computer literate enough to do a wfh job but that's the extent of it. Every time she feels like she's "bothering me" by asking for computer help I'm like "Hey don't feel bad you're just defying trans girl stereotypes".

[november-narwhal]

*gasp* a creative endeavor

A few weeks or so ago, a mutual (i genuinely don't remember who) reblogged a post about how no one posts OC playlists anymore. So this is for you, the "setlist", character list, and short blurb for my jukebox sci-fi stage musical, or *ahem* Muse-ical...

I also don't have a link of all of these in one place, sorry not sorry.

Binary Sky

Bell, Protagonist

Rykker, Revolutionary

Ava, Lover

The Preacher, Ally

The Architect, Tyrant

The Narrator, Arbiter

The Coder, Exile

The Prophet, ????

Chorus, debuggers, programmers, fighters, and all the others caught in the mix.

~~~~

Bell wakes up with no memory of who or where he is, but Rykker remembers and tells Bell that the two of them are burdened with great purpose: saving the world.

A virtual world that is.

One of the lead devs of ARC Gaming's insanely popular deep dive VR game has gone power mad and partitioned off the players' memories of the real world, trapping them in the game indefinitely. But Bell and Rykker are hackers intent on liberating the players of this game, having warped the game's code to create the "Glitchknife", an asset capable of disrupting and unloading the parts of the virtual world it slices. If they can avoid the Architect's debugging team and get to the center of the game, they can plunge their creation into the virtual manifestation of the game's code, unloading the game and freeing the players.

There are many blockades and pressures, both internal and external, for them to face, but if they can do that, Bell might just be able to save this world, and maybe even find love along the way.

Simple as that... or is it? After all, nothing is completely black and white.

~~~~

(they're all Muse songs so I'm not going to bother adding the artist, also there would be some slight lyrical changes if this were a real thing)

ACT I

Algorithm - The Narrator

Thought Contagion - Rykker and Chorus

Panic Station - The Prophet and his Band

Uprising - Rykker, The Preacher, and Chrous

Pressure - Bell

The Dark Side - Bell and Ava

Unnatural Selection - The Preacher, Bell, Ava, and Chorus, ft. The Architect

Break It to Me (Sam de Jong Remix) - The Architect, Bell, and Chorus

Soldier's Poem - The Prophet and his Band

Get Up and Fight - Rykker, Ava, Bell, and Chorus

- Intermission -

ACT II

Supremacy - The Architect and Rykker

Break It to Me - Rykker and Ava

Something Human - Bell and Chorus

Unintended - Ava ft. Rykker

Sunburn - Bell

Dig Down - Rykker, The Preacher, and Chorus

Blockades - Rykker and Bell

MK Ultra - The Prophet, ft. Rykker, and The Architect

Propaganda - Bell, The Architect and Chorus

The Dark Side (Alternate Reality Version) - Bell

Animals - The Prophet, ft. The Architect, The Narrator, and The Coder

The Handler - Bell

Blackout - The Prophet and his Band

The Void - Bell, ft. The Architect and The Narrator

Curtain Call

Algorithm (Alternate Reality Version) - The Coder, The Narrator, and The Architect ft. ????

[holytheoristtastemaker]

You might think a profession based on logic and learning would be immune to folklore, but the developer community remains rife with myth — myths so pervasive they begin to manifest into reality.

If all the programming myths were true, the programming world would look like a cohort of 20-something geeks (some 10x better than others) using their elevated math skills to code at all hours of the night. Well, as you probably know if you’re in the field, that’s simply not the case, nor are some of the things developers themselves believe about the industry. Let’s debug those myths:

Good Coders Work Around the Clock

Here’s where we insert a picture of Silicon Valley: a room of hoodie-clad guys hooked up to Red Bull IVs. There’s some truth to this, especially with startups. However, it doesn’t always have to be this way, and research would suggest that long hours and sleep deprivation don’t actually increase productivity. In reality, there’s a blurred line between effort and progress, and usually an outcome of unrealistic expectations. Plenty of developers have families and lives outside of programming, and would rather leave the office at a normal time. Instead of allowing that idea to persist, the programming community would benefit from looking at ways to improve workflow, and set realistic goals with agile methodology.

Offshoring Leads to Cheaper, Faster Software

Offshoring usually does the opposite, companies are only attracted to the idea because it seems cheaper. However, hiring more programmers for less money definitely doesn’t mean faster. It involves more communication overhead, training, and effort in repartitioning. Offshore development teams are also prone to higher turnover rates, meaning that the long-run desired effect becomes void. In this case, the in-house team has to pick up the slack and savings diminish.

Offshoring Will Destroy Your Career

As mentioned above, offshoring doesn’t necessarily lead to cheaper software done faster. People will continue to try this model until it has proven worthless, but offshoring is not going to suck all the jobs from the U.S. The facts remain: language does matter. Attempting to communicate with offshore managers and teams is unreliable, and tumultuous. Clients normally run out of money or patience dealing with offshore teams and turn back to the dev shops in the country where contracts can be better enforced.

The More People Checking, The Fewer Bugs

Eric S. Raymond coined the term, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”. It is a commonly held belief that in open source software that bugs will be found, reviewed, and fixed because anyone can take action. Truly, more people are using open source software than contributing, and most are not capable of correcting mistakes in code. In other words, too many cooks spoil the broth. A better way to is to use a concentrated team equipped with great bug tracking software.

Math Skills Determine Coding Skills

Yes and no. Math skills don’t necessarily translate into being a good developer. If someone isn’t mathematically inclined, they may be better at certain aspects of programming that require one to be clever or practical. Outside of gaming, most developers are only using basic algebra and statistics to find out how efficient the code is, and even that is minimal.

Developers are Geniuses

You don’t need to be a genius to be a programmer, you just need the drive and ability to learn. Programmers are constantly faced with mistakes that can be frustrating, and the best developers are those that can fail repeatedly and learn from mistakes.

You Can Specialize in Just One Thing

Learning never stops because the world of programming moves at light speed. It’s smart to master a language, because you’ll have the ability to work well and understand the nuances. However, never get stuck only knowing how to do one thing, you’ll end up knowing about ‘legacy’ software no one uses.

Language X is Better

There is not one, magic language for all of coding. Rather, every language fills a special niche in the coding environment. That doesn’t mean some languages aren’t better at one thing over another — you might use Javascript for interactive software, but C++ if you want to do something fast. Developers, keep bickering amongst yourselves, there’s no one perfect language.

You Can Master a Language in a Few Weeks

You may be able to learn the basic tenets of a language in two or three weeks, but you surely cannot be a master. Mastering a language requires interest, patience, and most importantly — application. You wouldn’t want a doctor operating on you if they had only read all the medical textbooks and taken the tests, you want someone who has spent countless hours actually participating in surgeries. Well, think of yourself as a surgeon, because the same muscle memory is needed to be a good developer.

The Software Crisis

In 1968, Edgar Dijkstra talked about the ‘software crisis’, which referred to building software that was inefficient, over budget, low quality, and difficult to maintain. Today, the fact that ‘buggy’ software costs the U.S. billions of dollars purports the ‘crisis’ although there’s no real crisis to speak of. Software isn’t doing too bad, it’s always improving. It commands a large chunk of the economy while moving at lightning speed, and there will always be hiccups in efficiency as new software emerges. No need to panic, the crisis is a myth.

When You Ship Software, You’re Done

Software is rarely finished. Sure, management and developers would love to believe that large, multi-layered a software is in constant flux, the developers who made the software aren’t perfect, applications change, added features introduce new bugs. Management and teams need to consider support and maintenance costs, and account for continual innovation that a product must upkeep to stay competitive.

Coding is Simply the Act of Writing Code

Management often thinks that developers are just translating an ideation into code, without understanding the decisions that developers make along the way. It’s quite the misunderstanding, because developers are building and making decisions for the project every step of the way. There are plenty of non-functional requirements and design decisions that developers make every day, and good developers are ones that can track those, communicate important decisions with a team, and make executive decisions on minor details.

It’s not a creative field

Yes it’s technical & logical, but it’s also an art form. Many non-programmers overlook the beauty in construction of code, and some developers may even believe this too. Many programmers would say it’s like poetry. It’s absolutely a creative effort. Paul Graham outlines the artistry of coding in his essay Hackers and Painters.

Developers Have Poor Social Skills:

A lot of people have the idea that programmers are loners who like to sit alone with their computers and code all the time, and when faced with social situations aren’t savvy contributors to an organization. Frequently, this leads managers to interact with developers in a way that underestimates the contribution of a development team. When managers do this, they are putting themselves at risk for a resentful team. Developers make decisions constantly in their code, and come in all shapes and sizes, just because you enjoy coding doesn’t mean you prefer solitude.

Developers Think Managers have Nothing to Contribute

Developers often operate under the belief that managers have no skills and are useless in guiding the development team. This isn’t true, most managers really know what their doing, and exist to shield their team from distraction, provide them with the best tools, and manage deadlines, budgets, and bring in extra resources when needed. People tend to focus on the negatives, so managers get blamed when things get frustrating, but their purpose is to make things run more smoothly for their team.

Young Developers Think They’re Hotshots

Maybe it’s just a symptom of age, but developers early in their career tend to think they are better than experienced developers. They learned a new technology they believe to be more productive, and are in turn more valuable than someone using old platforms. Many developers continue to learn new technology as they get older, as they should. The fresh out of college developers are overlooking an important factor: the depth and breadth of experience that only comes with time.

Programming is Boring

Everyone is bored with something, but you don’t dedicate your life to something that bores you. Coding can be fascinating, it’s a mix of architecture, math, and language. People who think coding is boring don’t understand the intricacies, but developers know that coding is all about coming up with solutions and learning — how could that be boring?

A Developer’s Career is Over at 35

Ageism in the programming world is real, but age is not what ends a career. Individuals who get stuck in one language, or fail to learn new platforms and technologies contribute to their own waning relevance. This is not to say that developers leave programming entirely, many move into management positions or start their own companies. Others continue learning and loving developing for their entire career, it’s just a matter of staying up-to-date.

Developers are a Commodity

Often people think a person who writes more lines of codes is more productive, but developing isn’t bricklaying. Hiring cheaper programmers and expecting the job done exactly the same is irrational. Developers are people! They have specific skills, personalities, and knowledge. As a language, some programmers will be better at one project than another, and that’s what will influence efficiency.

[jasonfry]

Notes: Rebel in the Ranks, Pt. 2

WARNING: These notes will completely spoil Servants of the Empire: Rebel in the Ranks. If you haven’t read it, stop and go here.

(Here’s the first part of the notes.)

Part 2: Impersonation

There’s a good reason the second part of Rebel in the Ranks is called Impersonation: Zare has become a cadet under false pretenses, while Merei infiltrates the Transportation Ministry claiming to be Kinera Tiree, the daughter of Lothal’s education minister. But aliases and mistaken identities are woven throughout the book. Dev Morgan, of course, is really Ezra Bridger. When Merei meets Zeb and Sabine, they use their Spectre code names, with Merei wryly adopting the nom de guerre Merei-1. Characters repeatedly call others by the wrong name – Currahee refers to Pandak Symes as “Sykes,” while Jix Hekyl scrambles Merei’s last name into “Spamjack.”

This is really Merei’s section. Zare’s story is in something of a holding pattern during Part 2 – it’s the arrival of Dev Morgan in Part 3 that forces a reckoning. I hadn’t anticipated that as a storytelling danger, and was lucky that I’d done enough with Merei’s character to be able to turn the focus to her.

Still, that put a lot of weight on her piece of the narrative – the story couldn’t sag while we waited around for the events of “Breaking Ranks.” So I got to work, researching how Merei could break into the Transportation Ministry. Professional pride came into play: I roll my eyes when movie hackers squint, type a little and HEY PRESTO they’re into the computer system, and I was determined to do better. I wanted a break-in that was not just exciting but also plausible.

Investigating the trademarks of successful hacks, I found that most depend more on social engineering and human laziness than ingenious programming, and rely on physical presence instead of remote entry. Which was honestly better for my story: there’s something not just lazy but also bloodless about a lone hacker typing. To achieve her goals, Merei would have to put herself in danger of direct discovery. If things went wrong, the indicator wouldn’t be a flashing icon on a screen but a drawn blaster.

A funny thing: I did some of the research into Merei’s hack in the San Diego airport after 2014’s Comic-Con. (While Googling, I heard a strangely familiar voice berating someone over a cellphone, looked up and realized it was a rather grumpy Adam West.) It crossed my mind that maybe I shouldn’t use the Delta Sky Club’s Wi-Fi to research network intrusions. What if NSA agents appeared to drag me away, Dhara Leonis-style? Would they really believe all that research was to craft a Star Wars story about a teenaged slicer? Fortunately, neither Batman nor the government decided to cart me off.

Anyway, Merei uses a “snooper” program, essentially a keylogger with a built-in timer. But she really depends on everyday human failings to get in and out of the Transportation Ministry: she exploits its employees’ laziness, fear of getting in trouble, love of gossip and aversion to conflict. Which are the weaknesses most real-world hackers and phishers exploit. I was pleased when one reviewer called Rebel one of the few young-adult books she’d read that actually portrayed a realistic hack based on social engineering.

Another reader reaction to Merei’s story in Rebel has stuck with me – not long after the book came out, someone tweeted at me that she’d grown up wanting to be a coder only to be told that girls couldn’t code. Thank you for this, she said, more than you know. I hadn’t really thought much about representation in Star Wars or my own fiction before then – Merei was simply a character I liked who played a role in the story and whose importance grew in response to that story’s needs. But I thought about it a lot more after that.

I grew up in the 1970s reading about and watching heroes who looked like me – people who looked like me were and still predominantly are fiction’s default protagonists. It never occurred to me that other kids didn’t have that experience, or to think about what it must be like to have people who looked like me relegated to being sidekicks, bit players or comic relief. Interactions like that tweet convinced me this stuff mattered, not just according to some abstract metric of fairness but to real readers – ones who’d tweet but also ones who’d simply curl up with a book. After that, I was determined to help raise a bigger fictional tent that invited more people in – and I was convinced that bigger tent would yield better stories and, yes, a better world.

OK, off my soapbox. One more thing before the notes: I struggled with how Zare and Merei could talk with each other and how much they could say. My original idea was that the Empire didn’t monitor cadets’ communications after orientation, which I explained as a relic of the honor code of the Republic still alive in the Imperial military. As hand-waves go, I’ll give it a C+. Story Group shot that down by noting that a) it didn’t fit with what we’d see in John Jackson Miller’s A New Dawn and b) if that were the case, then why did Ezra send Chopper out with a holographic message?

Happily, Story Group had a better idea, suggesting that Zare be able to talk from Maketh Tua’s office. That solved not one but two problems: Tua’s office could also be the location where Ezra climbs into the ductwork.

Notes on Part 2:

The treatment had more about stormtrooper training vs. officer training, with the idea that everyone went through basic training and officer training kicked off in the spring. But I dropped it because it sapped the story of its urgency. Yes, Zare was stuck – but he’d also been stuck in Edge of the Galaxy, and I knew he’d really be stuck in Imperial Justice. The reader wanted to see Zare trying to get unstuck, and any intimation that the best course of action was for him to wait flattened out the storytelling.

Merei’s parents, Jessa and Gandr, were mentioned but not named in Edge of the Galaxy. Jessa is the name of a character in Han Solo at Stars’ End, my favorite Star Wars novel, so I reused it here. Gandr’s origin, on the other hand, is a little embarrassing. While plotting out Rebel I used “Goose” and “Gander” as placeholders for Merei’s parents. “Goose” had to go, but I got kind of attached to “Gander,” and thought it fit Merei’s distracted, slightly goofy father. So I dropped a letter and kept it. The same thing happened in Jupiter Pirates – the Securitat agent DeWise bears a placeholder name that I struggled to improve on and finally kept.

Yahenna Laxo, the chatty/scary boss of the Gray Syndicate, really comes into his own in Imperial Justice, but was one of my favorite characters from the beginning. Originally I imagined him as a Shell Hutt, but that made the Gray Syndicate feel like a bigger player in the Lothal underworld than it should be. So Laxo became a doughy crime boss with an impressive pompadour and bedroom slippers. And that turned out to be more fun.

By the way, the Gray Syndicate’s headquarters used to be Ake’s Tavern from Ezra’s Gamble, a Rebels tie-in book written by my good friend Ryder Windham. Even the gouge on the floor is still there.

Baseball fans will recognize that cadets de Grom and Wheeler share last names with a pair of talented Mets pitchers. What can I say? Beyond being a Mets fan, I was running low on evocative names.

The Pillar in the assessment hall is just the Well from “Breaking Ranks” turned inside out. I knew I’d have multiple scenes in the Well in Part 3 of the book, so I looked for a way to shake things up a bit before then.  

One difference from writing Legends stories is that new canon has downplayed or discarded some “spacey” terms – for instance, characters get to use bathrooms instead of refreshers. That was still new to me and I needed some nudging from Story Group – for example, I described the Transportation Ministry as “duracrete and clari-crystalline.” That got revised to “stone and glass,” which is far better. It gives you a picture without running the risk of tripping up the reader.

I got stuck in another lingo-related box canyon later in the book when Jessa’s describing the odds of picking out a transmission from Merei’s snooper program. I spent an absurd amount of time looking for an equivalent to “needle in a haystack,” finally proposing “needle in a grain barge.” I didn’t really like that, but I’d given up in despair. Enter editor extraordinaire Jen Heddle, who rather sensibly pointed out that as a farm world, Lothal undoubtedly had … haystacks. And so we wound up back at the beginning, and the simple answer I should have gone with in the first place.

Next up: The adaptation game, Zare vs. the Inquisitor, and a big cliffhanger.

[goodcore101]

The 10 Different Types of Software Development

Software development is an incredibly in-demand and rewarding field to be a part of in today’s competitive job market. In fact, it was recently declared the #1 best job in the US, according to job demand, salary expectations and career reviews. The Bureau of Labor Statistics even projected a 30% employment growth in the software development field by 2026. While the demand for software developers is high, the diversity in the type of work software developers do is just as widespread. Furthermore, the more advanced your skill set is, the more opportunities you have to work in various types of software development fields/areas. Here are the 10 types of software development:

1. Web Development

The golden child of the current and future generations of coders, developing for the web means coding those many web-pages you browse through over your morning coffee. It’s diverse and ranges in complexity, from a <h1> “Hello World” </h1> to many dozens of interconnected files only the original developer knows how to organize.Web development today is exploding thanks to the emergence of new web technologies and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which let websites “plug in” to other useful features. The Web today can deliver ‘apps’ that feel native, because browsers now are so much more than a URL bar and an Ad-blocker these days. What you need to know: HTML, Javascript, Django, C/C++, ASP.NET, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rails etc.

2. Mobile Development

This one probably was unheard of 9 years ago, but today it’s all the rage. Mobile Development could better be described as “App Development” and involves creating applications that run on mobile devices, such as iPhones, Android devices, and recently, the Windows 10 platform. Most popular OS’s are built with their own programming languages but some traditional languages are being used as well.The versatility of mobile development allows anything from Candy Crush games, to console-like quality games in the palm of your hand. Games aren’t the only thing to focus on either; there are all sorts of apps for pretty much anything, from the ordinary, like finding a restaurant for lunch or catching up with news, to the random, such as reminding you to drink water throughout the day, or morphing your photographed face into a zombie.What you need to know: Android, Swift (for iOS), Objective C, HTML5, Java, C#

3. Data Science

Data is the new gold! Large data sets provide no value to anyone unless you know what to do with them. That’s where data scientists come in – they are able to find value in data just as much as the everyday person finds value in gold. In order to pull out valuable actionable insights, data scientists need to mine through and manipulate loads of data using analytical approaches. Think crunching large data sets, potentially using some cluster-computing approach, and developing a scientific application based on the findings of your data.The applications of this are cooler than you think: it’s actually what and how machines think. Machines need large amounts of data to “learn” from, in order to ‘make their own decisions’ on given situations, and data science ensures this data is presented in the correct form to be used in AI applications. What you need to know: C/C++, MATLAB, Python

4. Application Development

This is the “original” type of programming. These are ‘standard’ applications that perform their duties on traditional desktop operating systems, such as Windows, Mac, or Linux. It’s often considered a programme, executed on demand by the user, that opens its interface in the confines of the OS that it’s running in. Application development is basically the process of creating a computer program or set of programs that can assist the daily functionalities of the user or business.What you need to know: Java, VB.NET, C/C++,C#, Python.

5. Back-end Development

Back-end development is the work that goes on behind the scenes to make sure the front-end program churning away does so without bringing half your computer to a standstill.The back-end, or “server side”, of a website is where the data is stored and it usually consists of three parts: a server, an application, and a database. Back-end developers need to understand databases, as well as server programming languages and architecture. If an application keeps crashing or is mind-numbingly slow or keeps throwing errors at you, it’s likely to be a back-end issue.Finally, database management is a prime aspect of back-end development. Database management is the backbone of any system that holds large amounts of data. Think companies’ client database, such as Facebook��s; one billion users’ details have to be organized somehow, and back-end developers make this their job.What you need to know: Python, Java, C and C++, (my)SQL, dBase and Oracle for databases

6. Software Tools Development

Not used by most consumers, but critical in the software development industry, this type of development builds tools for other software developers to test their code with. Beyond simply testing, developing this software will ensure other developers’ code conforms to industry standards and remains maintainable. Developing programs to (amongst other things) test other programs is no easy task, but tech giants like Microsoft and Google employ software devs by the bucketload to design applications for testing other projects on-the-go.What you need to know: Java, Python, C++

7. API Development

API Development, or the development of Application Programming Interfaces, is the art of building something extensible. Developers build programs that act as puzzle pieces, across different operating systems, on desktop, mobile and the web. They allow 3rd-party developers to interact with the tools or functions the API relates to. API development is the laying of a foundation of standard procedures, types, tools, GUI interaction methods, and database access rules that programmers building other applications can use for that particular API.What you need to know: APIs are written for specific platforms or functions, and each API will have the programming language of the platform/device/site/service it’s designed for

8. Embedded Systems Development

With the rise of the “Internet of Things” and just about everything but the kitchen sink being connected to the internet these days, embedded systems development has boomed. This type of software development deals with the coding skills needed for embedded systems like Raspberry Pi’s, Arduinos, Beaglebones, etc. The embedded software is specialized for the particular software that your machine or device runs on.What you need to know: Embedded C, Assembler, Python, Arduino (an embedded C derivative), Java

From left, the Arduino Uno, Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black, all use embedded development languages. (mcmelectronics.com)

9. Security Software Development

Otherwise known as hacking. You may be asking yourself,  “Is that really a type of software development?” Certainly, and it’s a critical field to be working on these days. Penetration testers (“white-hat” ethical hackers) and cyber-security experts work together for the good of companies and their systems and data. The cyber-security team develops software to keep important company assets safe from theft, viruses and other malicious attacks.The pentester, or penetration tester, then tries to ‘hack’ into the system to find where the vulnerabilities, or weak spots, are. This way, there’s less chance of your “black-hat” actual malicious hacker getting into your important data.What you need to know: the programming language relevant to the system that needs to be tested

10. Cloud Computing

Whilst the traditional idea of local storage for files has stuck around in some parts of the world, the notion is slowly changing, and cloud computing services are becoming more prevalent. Cloud computing services use networks of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store and manage data rather than using a personal computer or local server. Developers involved in cloud computing software development develop the software that powers cloud storage applications, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), OneDrive storage and GitHub.What you need to know: Java, XML, R, Erlang, Google’s Go!, Clojure and others

We’ve discussed 10 different types of software development in this piece, as well as what you need to know to be successful in each field. Software development is an increasingly lucrative and in-demand field, and getting your hands dirty in any of the above types of software development will offer promising career prospects in any good software development company UK or around the world. Interested in learning more about software development and whether it’s the career for you?

Source: https://blog.hyperiondev.com/index.php/2017/09/26/types-of-software-development/

[coin-news-blog]

The Many Facts Pointing to Hal Being Satoshi

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/the-many-facts-pointing-to-hal-being-satoshi

The Many Facts Pointing to Hal Being Satoshi

The Many Facts Pointing to Hal Being Satoshi

The identity of Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder is the subject of endless and dedicated speculation among the hardcore crypto crowd, and for good reason: the mystery truly is enticing. While the oft-cited candidates are many, there’s something special about avid runner, cypherpunk and early Bitcoin contributor Harold Thomas Finney II, better known simply as Hal, that makes people want to believe he’s the one. All wishful thinking aside, though, an examination of the facts is illuminating.

Caltech and Crypto Beginnings

Finney graduated from world-renowned Caltech with an engineering degree in 1979. After working in computer game development for some years he then went on join the PGP Corporation, creating some of the first “pretty good privacy” the world had seen. Finney was an OG cypherpunk, a member of the early 90s mailing list and avid developer and philosopher when it came to crypto solutions for preserving privacy, anonymity and financial autonomy.

Among his pre-Bitcoin accomplishments are the creation of the first known anonymous remailer and a 2004 reusable proofs of work (RPOW) digital cash system. He also famously received the first ever bitcoin transaction directly from Satoshi. These basic facts are impressive enough, but it stands to take a more detailed look at some coincidences and other nuggets that could shed light on whether there’s truly a case to be made for Hal as Nakamoto. First though, a quote from Finney via a 1992 cypherpunks email:

Here we are faced with the problems of loss of privacy, creeping computerization, massive databases, more centralization – and Chaum offers a completely different direction to go in, one which puts power into the hands of individuals rather than governments and corporations. The computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them.

Other Intriguing Finney Facts

Libertarian Leanings

As a cypherpunk, Finney expressed many libertarian and anarchic views regarding individual freedom. Analysis of Satoshi Nakamoto’s correspondence, the Bitcoin whitepaper, and the famously hashed genesis block message may hint at Satoshi possessing similar convictions. In one 2010 email to Laszlo Hanecz, of 10,000-bitcoin pizza fame, Nakamoto expresses hesitancy about GPU mining outcompeting CPU users, saying:

GPUs would prematurely limit the incentive to only those with high end GPU hardware … I don’t mean to sound like a socialist, I don’t care if wealth is concentrated, but for now, we get more growth by giving that money to 100% of the people than giving it to 20%.

As libertarian anarchists are typically individualist and opposed to socialism, this is a noteworthy statement from Satoshi.

Down the Street From Dorian

Finney was famously discovered to have lived just blocks away from a real life Satoshi Nakamoto in small town Temple City, CA; a Japanese-American man named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. Though Newsweek quoted Dorian as saying “I am no longer involved in that [Bitcoin] and I cannot discuss it,” and “It’s been turned over to other people,” Nakamoto has since issued a statement emphasizing his denial of the explosive Newsweek hound piece, noting: “I did not create, invent or otherwise work on Bitcoin. I unconditionally deny the Newsweek report.” He also explained that due to previous work contract stipulations, he was not at liberty to speak about any past projects, and thus the misunderstanding in Newsweek’s assumption he meant Bitcoin.

Some zealous Satoshi hunters theorize Finney may have used Dorian as an inspirational pseudonym of sorts, to honor the humble and financially embattled California coder who noted in his official statement: “I have not been able to find steady work as an engineer or programmer for ten years. I have worked as a laborer, polltaker, and substitute teacher. I discontinued my internet service in 2013 due to severe financial distress.”

Running Bitcoin

Hal Finney was one of the first ever people to show genuine interest in Satoshi Nakamoto’s peer-to-peer cash proposal, noting that “When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, he got a skeptical reception at best. Cryptographers have seen too many grand schemes by clueless noobs. I was more positive.” He was also probably the first person other than Satoshi to run bitcoin. Real-life distance runner Hal tweeted famously all the way back in January 2009: “Running bitcoin.”

Mysterious Initials and Nick Szabo

In one notable email to Finney, Nakamoto writes:

I just thought of something. Eventually there’ll be some interest in brute force scanning bitcoin addresses to find one with the first few characters customized to your name, kind of like getting a phone number that spells out something. Just by chance I have my initials.

The bitcoin address Satoshi is referring to is his own, in the message, and it is 1NSwywA5Dvuyw89sfs3oLPvLiDNGf48cPD — the first two letters being “NS.” There are a couple things that have sparked intrigue for Satoshi sleuths here. For one, Japanese names are traditionally stated and written with family names first, so the guy known as Satoshi Nakamoto in the U.S. would be called Nakamoto Satoshi (NS) in Japan. However, based on Nakamoto’s fluid English writing style and immaculate grammar — not to mention non-typically Japanese sleep schedule — there is doubt as to why the otherwise “Westernized” Bitcoin creator would point to initials in the Japanese order. Perhaps Finney was familiar with this aspect of the culture and, writing to himself as Satoshi, let it slip out.

Some think the initials stand for “Nick Szabo,” another early cypherpunk, creator of the Bit Gold forerunner to Bitcoin, and contemporary of Finney who corresponded with him extensively. While this theory might seem to point to Szabo, and not Finney, as Satoshi, some Satoshi hunters view the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin as a group project of sorts, comprising two or more actors.

Simultaneous Retirement

Hal Finney retired from the PGP Corporation in early 2011. Satoshi Nakamoto’s last known email correspondence is dated April 26, 2011. Writing to developer Gavin Andresen after having effectively turned the Bitcoin project over to his leadership, Satoshi states: “I wish you wouldn’t keep talking about me as a mysterious shadowy figure, the press just turns that into a pirate currency angle. Maybe instead make it about the open source project and give more credit to your dev contributors; it helps motivate them.” Andresen replied, informing Satoshi he’d been invited to speak at an event connected with the CIA. Nakamoto never wrote back.

Bitcoin Runs On

Like Szabo and many others in the space, Hal Finney was deeply interested in Extropianism and cryonics, and after his untimely passing due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in August, 2014, his body was cryogenically preserved at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona. Just 17 days after the initial diagnosis, five years earlier, he tweeted:

Just got back from 11 mile run – really treasure each one now.

— halfin (@halfin) August 22, 2009

Hal Finney’s contributions in bringing Bitcoin to where it is today can hardly be overstated. A rarity in the domain of hackers, crypto geeks and cypherpunks is Finney’s warm spark of childlike enthusiasm and down-to-earth approachability that brought a human element to his work and legacy. Whether he is Satoshi Nakamoto, of course, remains unknown. The fact that Bitcoin is still running is undeniable.

Source: news.bitcoin