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Topic: My investigation on satoshi - page 2. (Read 851 times)

legendary
Activity: 2898
Merit: 3937
December 21, 2020, 10:30:07 AM
#8
I'm talking about europe because it's what I know, if anyone from Asia or Africa could bring their input on the matter, I think we'd have similar answers.
You're correct.

British English is commonly used by Commonwealth countries which could possibly narrow it down to those 50+ countries. I was taught British English growing up but I found myself using American English more often instead, possibly due to me having more American influence on my linguistics. I think I observed that he was using British English before and I saw someone mentioning it.

Anyways, if you want to really want to follow the trail, you could possibly scrape all his posts (and the whitepaper) and analyse it using NLP. Perhaps it could narrow it down slightly further with the nuances in the language used in the post but I'll treat it with a grain of salt, maybe the most you could do is to determine his demographics.
legendary
Activity: 1022
Merit: 1043
αLPʜα αɴd ΩMeGa
December 21, 2020, 08:29:29 AM
#7
My opinion about your investigation...  Grin



Well analyzed in principle, but let a legend also remain a legend, I think...
legendary
Activity: 2702
Merit: 2831
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December 21, 2020, 07:44:47 AM
#6
A deliberate effort to obscure their identity.  Maybe they changed the settings on their spellchecker so they didn't have to make a conscious effort to remember to change all the spellings manually each time they posted.
Do you think that more than one person posted from the satoshi account?

Whilst I'm not doubting satoshi wasn't British, I think he would be smart enough to cover his tracks this way and changing your spelling would be the easiest thing to do.
If he is British, he didn't cover his tracks. Most of the examples were written according to the British way of spelling. 

I'm saying he would have been smart enough to make out like he was British if he wanted to, so therefore him appearing to be British doesn't mean he is. If I wanted to pass myself off as an American here on an alt account I'm sure I would be able to remember to spell colour as color and use Zs etc. The 'bloody' thing is pretty well known to be a British trait and is often mocked by Americans. I've seen variants of "bloody hell want some tea and crumpets mate" various times online.

Also, Satoshi saying 'block chain' may have been corrected by spellchecker.
I am not sure of that. I think he would have noticed that at some point and gone back to edit his post. There is also the case with 'inpoints' and 'outpoints'. I think a spellchecker would have corrected this. Never heard of an inpoint before.   

I'm sure most spellcheckers would have autocorrected blockchain to block chain back then. It seems he made one mistake at least:

Quote
Behind it all was this anonymous figurehead, Nakamoto. But who the hell was he? The bigger bitcoin grew, the more people wanted to know. He has a Japanese name, a German email address and writes in almost impeccable British English. In the 80,000 words (more than a book’s worth) he wrote online as bitcoin was developed, I found just one spelling mistake (ideological was spelt “idealogical”).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/03/bitcoin-craig-wright-satoshi-nakamoto-blockchain-technology
legendary
Activity: 2716
Merit: 7007
Farewell, Leo. You will be missed!
December 21, 2020, 07:28:25 AM
#5
A deliberate effort to obscure their identity.  Maybe they changed the settings on their spellchecker so they didn't have to make a conscious effort to remember to change all the spellings manually each time they posted.
Do you think that more than one person posted from the satoshi account?

Whilst I'm not doubting satoshi wasn't British, I think he would be smart enough to cover his tracks this way and changing your spelling would be the easiest thing to do.
If he is British, he didn't cover his tracks. Most of the examples were written according to the British way of spelling. 

Also, Satoshi saying 'block chain' may have been corrected by spellchecker.
I am not sure of that. I think he would have noticed that at some point and gone back to edit his post. There is also the case with 'inpoints' and 'outpoints'. I think a spellchecker would have corrected this. Never heard of an inpoint before.   
legendary
Activity: 2702
Merit: 2831
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December 21, 2020, 07:00:08 AM
#4
Most european countries teach British english to people wanting to learn english (or forced to do so). I've always been taught Brit; but as I have later been "exposed" to tons of audiovisual content on AME; you end up mixing both. Considering satoshi posted 10 years ago, and that watching TV shows on the internet was not really a thing, I don't think it's some "definitive" or linking proof. I'm talking about europe because it's what I know, if anyone from Asia or Africa could bring their input on the matter, I think we'd have similar answers.

Well it should be taught correctly. I don't know why someone would teach people the American version since it's only used there, unless the job or industry someone is going into is US-based.

Of course, it could all be misdirection.  A deliberate effort to obscure their identity.  Maybe they changed the settings on their spellchecker so they didn't have to make a conscious effort to remember to change all the spellings manually each time they posted.

This. Whilst I'm not doubting satoshi wasn't British, I think he would be smart enough to cover his tracks this way and changing your spelling would be the easiest thing to do. If satoshi took extreme precautions from the start to remain anonymous and has probably done so to this day it isn't that remarkable that he would so such a thing. Also, Satoshi saying 'block chain' may have been corrected by spellchecker.
legendary
Activity: 3724
Merit: 3063
Leave no FUD unchallenged
December 21, 2020, 06:29:02 AM
#3
Of course, it could all be misdirection.  A deliberate effort to obscure their identity.  Maybe they changed the settings on their spellchecker so they didn't have to make a conscious effort to remember to change all the spellings manually each time they posted.
copper member
Activity: 1568
Merit: 1319
I'm sometimes known as "miniadmin"
December 21, 2020, 06:02:36 AM
#2
Most european countries teach British english to people wanting to learn english (or forced to do so). I've always been taught Brit; but as I have later been "exposed" to tons of audiovisual content on AME; you end up mixing both. Considering satoshi posted 10 years ago, and that watching TV shows on the internet was not really a thing, I don't think it's some "definitive" or linking proof. I'm talking about europe because it's what I know, if anyone from Asia or Africa could bring their input on the matter, I think we'd have similar answers.

I did like reading the last curious facts tho.
legendary
Activity: 2716
Merit: 7007
Farewell, Leo. You will be missed!
December 21, 2020, 05:42:36 AM
#1
I want to start off by saying that if I knew who satoshi was, I would never reveal his identity out of respect for what he gave us. It is his choice to remain anonymous and possibly choosing to continue his work from the shadows. It still remains a mystery who the man was, but looking at publicly available data won’t interfere with his privacy.

After reading The Chain Bulletin report where a conclusion was made that satoshi lived in the UK while working on Bitcoin and is possibly British, I started my own research. I slowly went through all 27 pages of satoshi's post history.

My goal was to check his spelling and find sentences and phrases to determine if those were written by a British person. Whether he lived in London or somewhere else, can't be defined from his posts.


If there were records of him speaking live, it would make this task much more manageable. Since I am not aware of any, I had to focus on some of the differences in the spelling between US and British English.

Let me show you what I mean.

1.
In US English, you can notice that the letter ‘z’ is often used instead of the letter ‘s’ in words such as modernized, formalized, optimization. The British forms would be modernised, formalised, optimisation.

Here are a few examples from satoshi’s posts, so you can check for yourself whether he used British or US spelling. 

A)
We could potentially schedule a far in future block when Bitcoin would upgrade to a modernised arrangement with the Merkle Tree on top, if we care enough about saving a few bytes.

-US English spelling is modernized. Modernised is the British variant.

B)
Priority is a more formalised version of the concept you're describing.

-Same as the above example. In US English, you would spell this word formalized, but satoshi spelt it formalised. 

C)
The key was Gavin's idea for prioritising transactions based on the age of their dependencies.

-Another example of satoshi using the British spelling form in words like prioritising, instead of prioritizing, which would be used by an American.

D)
There's something with MinGW's optimisation, I'm not sure but maybe a problem with 16-byte alignment on the stack...

- Another example where satoshi spells the word with an ‘s’, instead of the American way with a ‘z’.


2.
In the UK, words like colour or honour are spelt with ‘ou’. US Americans tend to drop the ‘u’. They will spell these two words as color or honor. When it comes to satoshi, I was able to find both forms in his posts. Unfortunately, I don’t have many examples to show.

A)
The foreground is now exactly the same colour as the BC in the old one.

- In this example, he uses the British variant.

But Satoshi also used the US form. He simply didn't pay that much attention to it all the time, or he could have also been familiar with the American way of spelling, so he adopted both forms.

Here is an example:

B)
I have to guess it has something to do with your display color depth selection.

- As we can see in the above example, satoshi used the US form.


3.
-There is a difference between how the word ‘dependent/dependant’ is spelt in American English and British English. Americans would spell the word with an ‘e’, but we can see that satoshi used the British style and spelt it with an ‘a’.

Merriam-Webster's dictionary explains the difference perfectly:

The OP_BLOCKNUMBER transaction and all its dependants would become invalid.


Some interesting things I discovered while going through satoshi’s posts:
 
- He often referred to the blockchain as ‘block chain’. There are many examples of that, here are just two:

A)
You do need to have downloaded the complete block chain (currently 71040 blocks) before you'll see any confirms.

B)
0.3.2 has some security safeguards to lock in the block chain up to this point and limit the damage a little if someone gets 50%.


- He referred to inputs and outputs as inpoints and outpoints. Does anyone know when and why these terms were changed to inputs and outputs?

A)
The network would track a bunch of independent outpoints.  It doesn't know what transactions or amounts they belong to.  A client can find out if an outpoint has been spent, and it can submit a satisfying inpoint to mark it spent.  The network keeps the outpoint and the first valid inpoint that proves it spent.  The inpoint signs a hash of its associated next outpoint and a salt, so it can privately be shown that the signature signs a particular next outpoint if you know the salt, but publicly the network doesn't know what the next outpoint is.

Another example:

B)
The challenge is, how do you prove that no other spends exist?  It seems a node must know about all transactions to be able to verify that.  If it only knows the hash of the in/outpoints, it can't check the signatures to see if an outpoint has been spent before.


- Although this can’t be used as concrete evidence that satoshi is from the UK, this very much sounds like something a Brit would say, not an American.

A)
Sorry to be a wet blanket.  Writing a description for this thing for general audiences is bloody hard.

‘Bloody’ is an intensifier that is not that common in America. You will rarely hear an American saying: “That is bloody difficult to do”.

Here is what the BBC says about it:

Quote
Bloody is an all-purpose intensifier that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, once qualified as the strongest expletive available in just about every English-speaking nation except the United States.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151109-english-speakers-or-not-brits-and-americans-swear-in-different-languages


That’s it. I wish I could have found more examples. If we had for, example, soccer/football, sidewalk/pavement, fries/chips, pants/trousers... we would have more proof. But I still feel like all this is leaning towards satoshi being British.

What do you think?
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