Slashdot Mirror
Cryptocurrencies Aren't 'Crypto' (vice.com)
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for the Motherboard: Lately on the internet, people in the world of Bitcoin and other digital currencies are starting to use the word "crypto" as a catch-all term for the lightly regulated and burgeoning world of digital currencies in general, or for the word "cryptocurrency" -- which probably shouldn't even be called "currency," by the way. For example, in response to the recent rise of Bitcoin's price, the CEO of Shapeshift recently tweeted: "don't go into debt to buy crypto at these prices." "Crypto Stocks Rise," read a headline on Tuesday from the trade publication Investor Business Daily. But the financial blog Seeking Alpha outdid them all by publishing a post titled "Tales From The Crypto." Excuse me, "the crypto" what? As someone who has read and written about cryptography for a few years now, and who is a big fan of Crypto, the 2001 book by Steven Levy, this is a problem. "Crypto" does not mean cryptocurrency. The above are just three examples picked at random, but if you don't believe me, just search "crypto" on Google News or Twitter. On the internet, "crypto" has always been used to refer to cryptography. Think, for example, the term "Crypto Wars," which refer to government (originally the US government) efforts to undermine and slow down the adoption of unbreakable communications systems. By the way, the book Crypto isn't about Bitcoin. It's about cryptography, and more in particular, about the cryptographers who fought the government in the so-called Crypto Wars.
It just rolls off the tongue and into the ash heap.
Records and tapes.
We would benefit from just calling everything "cyber" and replacing hashtags with AOL keywords.
Tech, Pharma, Retail, Cyber... we could write similar articles about each.
Don't expect media and the markets to use the officially approved nerd dictionary.
Just like cryptozoology is.
Any more than we were able to convince the marketing shitheads that a GB is 1,073,741,824 not an even 1,000,000,000
Maybe we can do something like was done to differentiate like Gigibyte vs Gigabyte? Cripto instead of Crypto?
Or Bloodto instead of Cripto? ;)
Type of guy whose name is Patrick, but you call him Pat and his wife pulls you aside to tell you he prefers Patrick.
If you get outside your bubble and use a dictionary, "crypto" refers to "a person who secretly supports or adheres to a group, party, or belief." Neither the prefix crypto- (from the Greek kryptos - hidden) nor the shorthand crypto are exclusively owned by cryptographers, who themselves misappropriated it from it's (former) definition.
If you want to mean cryptography unambiguously, just say cryptography. But don't complain when someone else uses crypto as shorthand. Pot, meet kettle.
And, there's nothing wrong with calling them "cryptocurrencies," they're a medium of exchange based on cryptography.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
My lack of understanding makes me react in strange and silly ways.
My sig doesn't address Anons, sigs aren't visible to them.
Also, why do we park on driveways, and drive on parkways?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
We know
You can tell the youngsters not to say Coder to mean Programmer and not to say DevOps to mean SysAdmin and not to say "a Software" to mean Software. You can insist on the old lingo and your old lingo will be the end of you.
Do u cyber?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Geek culture is being co-opted by idiots. A solution for this problem is to foster a new geek elitism. Create elite communities that strongly enforce standards, and that reject the standards of the outside world.
Slashdot would actually be a good place to start such a community, but we'd have to get rid of a few of the editors, first. (That's not sarcasm, it's the honest truth.)
Your nations tax officials are going to find that amount and start asking questions.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Words mean what people understand them to mean, not what you want them to mean.
"Literally" absolutely does mean "figuratively". "Begs the question" absolutely does mean "invites this question". Etcetera.
Cryptocurrencies are neither crypto, nor currencies. Discuss.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I do not understand how a bunch of drinking glasses is capable of writing an article. This is so confusing! I think that the author is actually a person, but that doesn't make sense! The word "bicchierai" has always referred to plural drinking glasses, which is a slightly non-standard plural of "bicchiere" by the way. This person is not even a singular drinking glass, and as someone who has used drinking glasses for many years now, this is a problem! The author shouldn't even have the name "Bicchierai"!
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
This must be the weekly Pedant day.
A whole story on how Crypto Currencies are not cryptography.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Inflammable means flammable? What a country!
// This is not a sig.
"As someone who has read and written about cryptography for a few years now, and who is a big fan of Crypto, the 2001 book by Steven Levy, this is a problem."
Right here is the author's true gripe - but he knows no one will care about something this trivial and stupid, so he writes an entire article attempting to convince himself and others that there's an actual reason other than his silly little snit.
#DeleteChrome
... you lost what you had.
Look at "floppy."
Yes, the very early removable storage was floppy, but when the rigid 3.5" drive came out, they were listed in Hardware Devices as "floppy."
Look at "google," a verb meaning, "to search."
"Crypto," will mean what the masses decide it will mean.
Those who object will be labeled, "crypto-nazis."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
... lite the Hacker and the Troll.
When the common Joe starts to use a term like this it all goes straight to hell... not one technical or otherwise defined term that goes mainstream survive.
So welcome to the new brave world of the Crypto Hacker Troll! :-P
The Constitution doesn't allow federal legal tender, yet here we have legal tender? The Federal Reserve Note is Fake Currency and exist to cause wars on purpose.
I would have thought it was a play on the name of an old TV series, based on a quick Google search for "Tales from the Crypt," which just sounded like it would exist. So, maybe the problem is not understanding interesting writing.
Cryptographers like the meteorologists screaming STOP --- Clouds are these formations of moisture and dust in the sky, they have NOTHING to do with hosting, and Cloud Computing is one of the most obscene utterances ever. Too late.... too late.
Because good headlines need to be short and clever.
For those who don't remember or know Tales from the Crypt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If you want mine your own crypto currency, you need a motherboard with 19 PCIe 1X slots to plug in 19 GPUs and a couple of 1200W PSUs.
of course there's one jackass social justice warrior that wants to change the name of things a decade (or centuries) later
Welcome to how we English have long felt about your abuse of language.
Always cracks me up seeing Americans whining about this stuff (e.g. the way the word "social" is used as a noun, or any number of fascinating quirks of Indian Standard English).
You don't get to complain.
there are a lot of words that don't mean what they used to:
"crypto"
"drone"
"AI"
"president"
-Styopa
I guess this guy hasn't heard about Monero.
'Crypto' is my word and I want it back.
Get over it.
So it's nothing to do with cryptohashes?
the word 'cloud' and there is no cloud. It's just someone else's computer.
But they're definitely hypsto and hypesto.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Given that what you do with these things is give money to an exchange that will steal from you, I propose we call them kleptocurrency.
. . . this into plain English:
"Wah, wah, wah, language usage changes and I can't make people talk my One True Way."
Somebody change subby's diapers.
They use cryptographic mathematical operations to create the appearance of scarcity. Human attraction for shiny things is the currency part.
Together that "creates" "value"
Meanwhile, I as a professional fisherman am deeply offended by all you computer geeks describing your shit as a "net," which robs a term from my line of work.
Give me an f'ing break...
PC, supposed to mean personal computer but it's synonym with Windows these days.
Lag, supposed to mean network latency but gamers use that word to describe a low frame rate.
Etc.
Fight all you want, if there's 100K people saying it right and 50 million people saying it wrong then it's the wrong usage that will stick.
#DeleteFacebook
BLOCKCHAIN! BLOCKCHAIN! There can I have some venture captial now?
1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes (1,953,125 512-byte sectors) of usable capacity plus 73,741,824 bytes of spare space for remapping up to 144,027 worn sectors.
Or more specifically, someone else's farm of rapidly provisionable partitions of computers.
The general public has never before misused a technical term. Surely this heralds the end times.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
same diff. always dumbed down by media for the lowest common denominator.
Language evolves, unlike creatures. Deal with it.
John discusses his recent book, Words on the Move, in the following podcast: John McWhorter on the Evolution of Language — August 2017
So, too, can 'crypto' be dismembered.
The podcast wasn't my favourite episode. It was a bit too strawman for me, perhaps because I already know this material fairly well.
We just finished watching an older Coen film, A Serious Man. For a quantum physicist who can infallibly fill chalkboards with bra–ket notation without hardly blinking, he sure does gape like a clueless fish when he discovers his wife is capable of forming alternate plans.
Words are like wives. Just when you think you've got it all sorted out ... change happens.
Within a week or two it won't be 'crypto' any more ...
it will be cleverly reduced to 'crip'; far more hip.
But that will annoy the LA street gang called 'the Crips' and may lead to mayhem.
Thus a slight turn of term to 'crap', which will stick, as crap tends to do;
causing future historians to struggle to understand the odd term.
...omphaloskepsis often...
https://lwn.net/Articles/414452/
Bitcoin: Virtual money created by CPU cycles
November 10, 2010 - Nathan Willis
CryptoC?
You 'merkins have been corrupting the English language for decades, and this habit of shortening a word to its otherwise widely-used prefix annoys me on a regular basis.
What is a 'semi' ? I had to look that one up.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
I have crypto, get over it already. And yes, it is real money. It is a currency. Now go find a real job.
Good luck with that. The masse's shape language.
Requiem for the American Dream
WFUQJFZSIJLAKDSQJSPXEZLAF!
Cryptographic Currency... It's just shortened to Crypto... Chill Out y'all “I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was, and now what I’m with isn’t it. And what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me.”
If the majority of people doesn't know crap about crypto war or cryptography, the therm CRYPTO will be used for these currencies, doesn't matter you crying over it.
Majority does not mean logical or correct.
So, what's the problem?
There is no problem. The author just wanted to make sure everyone knew how much of an expert he is in cryptography -- that he had a t-shirt before anyone else had even heard of the band.
God, I am so glad I don't work in tech anymore. The industry is run by insecure divas. Sorry, that's right. You prefer to be called "rockstars" ("diva" is too feminine and you're all a bunch of big-swinging-dicked Alphas).
I miss the old days when the tech industry was run by nerds.
Dudes who creep on post-pubescent but under 18 girls are pedophiles.
Folks who hate gay people but aren't even slightly afraid of them are homophobes.
People use the word "anymore" in place of the word "currently," anymore.
And apparently, now "crypto" means "funky internet money," not cryptographic keys, or a prefix to the word "jew" meaning "pretending not to be one."