Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared. Adam is a well known supporter of small blocks, ultimately the "winning" side of the debate. They are not the same person.
I haven't read the article yet but I remember this as well. IIRC Adam went the route of more towards a centralized group controlling Bitcoin's future during the BTC/BCH debates/fork. It seemed against what Satoshi would have pushed for. Plus Adam's group seemed like a catalyst for Gavin stepping back as a result of the political in-fighting and mud-slinging. It would be a huge surprise if Satoshi were Adam.
Adding on now that I've read the article and this situation is covered:
> The following year, in 2015, the Bitcoin community fractured over a proposal to increase Bitcoin’s block size. A faction led by two Bitcoin developers, Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn, wanted to make the blocks much bigger to accommodate more transactions. But this was controversial...
> Mr. Back fiercely opposed increasing the block size. In a series of posts on the Bitcoin-dev list, he warned against Mr. Andresen and Mr. Hearn’s proposal in increasingly strident tones.
> Then, out of the blue, Satoshi appeared on the list with an email that neatly dovetailed with Mr. Back’s position. It was the first time Satoshi had been heard from in more than four years, other than a five-word post the previous year denying a Newsweek article’s claim to have unmasked him.
> Many in the Bitcoin community questioned the new email’s authenticity since another of Satoshi’s email accounts had been hacked. But Mr. Back argued that the email sounded real. In a series of tweets, he called Satoshi’s observations “spot on” and “consistent with Satoshi views IMO” and took to quoting from the email.
I now realize that the Satoshi email was after Hal Finney's death so that changes my opinion.
From OP:
> Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared
>> Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared
>
> This isn't correct. In fact, the linked email in the article says the opposite
Characterizing the arguments are big vs small blocks, seems wrong.
There appeared to be broad agreement that the block size needed to be increased, however there were 4 competing proposed solutions(BIP 100, 101, 102, 103), and consensus on which approach to take could not be reached.
Gavin decided to push ahead with BIP 101, and both Satoshi and Adam agreed that it was reckless to proceed without better consensus.
The small block faction, of which Adam was absolutely one of the ring leaders, were willing to do literally anything to win. They were and still are collectivist totalitarians. Above it was described as a debate, but it wasn't, it was more like a war. Amongst other things, the small block faction:
• Launched botnet attacks on any node or company that expressed support for big blocks. They took Coinbase offline, they took any mining pool offline for merely allowing users to vote for big blocks. They took out entire datacenters because it hosted a single node expressing support for bigger blocks in its version handshake. One of these attacks was big enough to take out the internet for an entire rural ISP.
• Constantly lied about everyone who was working on bigger blocks. I've actually met people who said they didn't trust me because I worked for British intelligence. I've never worked for British intelligence!
• They constantly manipulated people, promising them they'd work on a compromise solution whilst actually refusing to do so and organizing conferences with rules like "nobody is allowed to discuss solutions to the problem" or "nobody is allowed to make written notes".
... and more. I don't recall Adam expressing any opposition to these acts or trying to stop them. Frequently he was directly engaged in them (not sure who was behind the DDoS attacks, but none of the Blockstreamers publicly asked them to stop).
Satoshi's account had been hacked at that time, and one of the main arguments for raising the block size was simply that it wasn't controversial at all - it was in fact the planned roadmap for Bitcoin from day one, that everyone had signed up to and that Satoshi had discussed. Given their willingness to lie to everyone else and use outright illegal tactics to win, would a small blocker have forged an email from Satoshi? Absolutely they would, which is why nobody cared about it and it made no difference. Especially as that email inexplicably refuted a position Satoshi had repeatedly defended for years, without explanation.
I have no real interest in this chat, but a quick google makes me agree that Hal Finney was very likely Satoshi. Fits my
expectations perfectly and would also explain why it’s a “mystery”, ie some people know but agreed not to reveal it as per Hal or family wishes given their targeting by criminals in the past. Extremely plausible.
It can’t be Finney because there was an entire send reply send reply sequence that was while Finney was in a marathon race between Satoshi and others which could not have been scripted.
The case for Jack Dorsey is much stronger than the Back claim.
Doesn’t this fierce debate exist because people cannot agree what Satoshi would have written had he known Bitcoin would take off in such a massive way, versus what Satoshi believed back when bitcoin was just a paper? If it actually is the case that Adam Back is Satoshi, we shouldn’t find it surprising that Back’s views on bitcoin changed as bitcoin’s viability and real world impact changed
> Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared. Adam is a well known supporter of small blocks, ultimately the "winning" side of the debate. They are not the same person.
From the article:
Then, out of the blue, Satoshi appeared on the list with an email that neatly dovetailed with Mr. Back’s position. It was the first time Satoshi had been heard from in more than four years, other than a five-word post the previous year denying a Newsweek article’s claim to have unmasked him.
Many in the Bitcoin community questioned the new email’s authenticity since another of Satoshi’s email accounts had been hacked. But Mr. Back argued that the email sounded real. In a series of tweets, he called Satoshi’s observations “spot on” and “consistent with Satoshi views IMO” and took to quoting from the email.
Mr. Back was likely correct: To this day, there is no evidence to indicate the email was a forgery, and no other emails from that account have surfaced.
The Satoshi email sounded a lot like Mr. Back had in his posts during the preceding weeks, although no one took notice. Like Mr. Back, Satoshi argued that the Bitcoin network’s increasing centralization jeopardized its security. He called the big block proposal very “dangerous” — the same term Mr. Back had used repeatedly. He also used other words and phrases Mr. Back had used: “widespread consensus,” “consensus rules,” “technical,” “trivial” and “robust.”
At the end of the email, Satoshi denounced Mr. Andresen and Mr. Hearn as two reckless developers trying to hijack Bitcoin with populist tactics and added: “This present situation has been very disappointing to watch unfold.”
It also happened to be densely cited with hyperlinks:
Excellent power efficiency in apple silicon - good battery life and good performance at the same time. The aluminum body is also very rigid and premium feeling, unlike so many creaky bendy pc laptops. Good screen, good speakers.
Aluminum and magnesium non-Apple laptops are just as stiff. There's just a wider spectrum of options, including $200 plastic ARM Chromebooks available.
the whole pc laptop industry really is an embarrassment right now. It has been 5 years since the M1 Macbook release, and there is no real equivalent. I'm on a thinkpad x9, which might be the closest I've seen, but the cpu performance just isn't as good.
Vizio made a good laptop once and then they just existed the computer industry. They had a vision of high quality approachable laptops, desktops and pro platforms and their first gen was a good attempt, but they just didn’t follow on.
I think it was fine 20 odd years ago. I had a Thinkpad T41p in 2004 and it was a great laptop. Even my Sony Vaio Z was nice in 2008 compared to the competition (although it had serious issues with the screen flexibility causing it to fail multiple times).
Since 2012 I've had 3 Macs, a 2012 Air, a 2020 M1 (this was a massive upgrade and the nicest laptop I ever used, even compared to my relatively new work thinkpad). I just cracked the screen on my M1 so bought a discounted M4 air on black friday. I can't tell the difference other than I like having magsafe back and only miss the touch bar slightly.
Yes! I had a Vizio laptop (the thin one ala a macbook air) and it was absolutely fantastic, probably the best PC laptop I have ever had. It was lightweight, powerful, had a good screen (for the time) plus some things that few other laptops had at the time, like a TPM.
The gaming laptops that have been made a bit less game-y without the RGBs and thick chassis turned out to be the sweet spot for me. Some compromises here and there, sure, but they mostly have the hardware I want. Asus has a good line up that works very well with Linux from 13 to 16 inches, all with dGPUs, AMD CPU (though Intel is also there), high-refresh rate OLEDs etc.
The tablet itself has been good. The firmware support is good. The charger died, and the keyboard case is on its last legs. I had to solder the pins back on to keep it working. It's an acceptable keyboard case, but the 'a' key doesn't work super well. Still a decent product, particularly for a Linux convertable, but definitely not something I would give my dad.
XPS 13 has snapdragon x elite and is very well built. Not sure how good Linux support is, tho. I run Linux on my Intel-based XPS 14 and it's pretty good, apart from the webcam being totally uncalibrated and looking kinda shite, but at least it works.
Maximum 32GB of RAM, which is a bad joke if you want to use it as developer system nowadays.
TL;DR: Waited for a decade for somebody to make a non-shitty notebook, went for macbook as the least bad option when the old one was falling apart.
Also the modern thinkpad keyboards are crap, and the trackpoint is unusable in the low profile style.
I switched to a macbook pro last year after having some contact with apple hardware in a customer project, from a thinkpad x230 with a x220 keyboard I've kept barely alive over the years. Now _some_ non-Apple notebooks (mostly from framework) can take sensible amount of memory, but at the time of purchase that was the only 14" notebook capable of taking a decent amount of RAM. The only other ones that could take RAM were some xeon workstation type builds - big display, shitty battery runtime, and same or more expensive than a fully specced out macbook.
Apple also seems to have put some effort into keyboards - with the current macbook pro keyboard being one of the best notebook keyboards currently out there. Not as good as the classic thinkpad keyboards, but better than anything lenovo made in over a decade. Dell never was that great, and did a massive step back in their latest model. HP is somewhat close, but still noticeable difference.
Since I switched to a macbook from a (proper) thinkpad I just carry a trackball with me when I expect to do longer stuff that requires mousing - the track pad isn't bad, but gets annoying over time. That also finalized my switch away from mice - before that I had both a mouse and a trackball on my desk, and while I still have that I can't remember when I last touched the mouse.
I suspect it does not work well outside Apple world. And that's kind of the thing with "I want Apple hardware but with Linux software": Software is actually important in the user experience with the hardware.
I don't know about the magic trackpad specifically, but on my HP Elitebook I can use gestures. I'm running i3 and it doesn't support much out of the box, but I was able to configure stuff using libinput-gestures.
> "the whole pc laptop industry really is an embarrassment right now. It has been 5 years since the M1 Macbook release, and there is no real equivalent."
True. I think that's mostly because they model their merchandise after Apple's products. I find Apple's hardware utterly undesirable, tho. The only product of theirs I ever showed any interest in was their Newton line of handhelds; my dream machine is quite far removed from the stuff that's mentioned in the OP's article, let alone anything that maps to Apple's portfolio (and even more importantly, product philosophy).
AGPL is not enough to prevent someone providing competing hosting options. They'd need to provide code if they make changes, but competitors are still free to offer the exact same service and not spend anything in development, which reduces the viability of the original project if hosting was the supposed source of income.
So the original project wants to restrict user freedoms, i.e. they _do not_ want the project to be open source; it's a legit choice, even if I personally prefer free software.
I think this comment is emblematic of a broader western trend underestimating recent Chinese technological development. It is understandable, given how backward they were for so long. The last five years though, things have really gotten crazy over there in terms of investment and progress.
Anyone claiming to have made a microkernel, seemingly quickly, with Linux ABI and driver compatibility while supposedly being 10-20% faster would also be getting the same amount of skepticism.
Especially if that was just one component of a supposedly entirely new OS that quickly replaced something decades established without regressing user experience or features
The whole point of restricting the block size was to ensure space in the blockchain was scarce to drive the price of fees up, better securing the network. Well, that and keeping the blockchain total size small enough to be processed on an regular user's PC for decentralization sake. While a loss of some decentralization is non-ideal,
increasing the block size dynamically, similarly to how difficulty is handled, would be a reasonable compromise to ensure the security of the network long term.
Monero does dynamic block size. It works fine. There is a penalty for large swings in size and that controls the fee which allows the fee to be appropriate during swells and luls in volume.
Something I would like to see from the cryptocurrency space is some way for the block size to fluctuate with daily and weekly transaction volume. For example, you would expect that the transaction volume would be greater when it is daytime on the east coast, so the blocksize should adapt to those temporal changes as well.
If there is a certain latentcy/bandwidth/storage/decentralization tradeoff with block sizes, then we ought to design cryptocurrencies to make the most of this tradeoff with respect to predictable low/high demand.
Ethereum changes the cost to use the network based on recent block sizes, and allows the block size to go up during high demand. So it's cheaper to use the network when blocks are less full, and more expensive if blocks are mostly full. I'm behind on the current parameters, but they're essentially doing what you ask for:
That wasn't the reason to restrict block size. There is no way to scale the number of transactions on the main layer to anywhere near the level required to cover daily transactions. The bitcoin main layer was always destined to be for settlements between financial institutions anyway. Making any accommodations for use cases that are fundamentally unsustainable never made sense. Buying coffee was always going to have to be on a second or third layer, so restricting the block size introduces an incentive to develop those layers that are needed anyway.
That's also nice, but the memory speed is also higher, Ddr5-7266 vs 5600 iirc. The resulting higher bandwidth translates more or less directly into more performance for the iGPU.
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