
Len Sassaman memorialized in the Bitcoin block-chain - trotsky
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=BUB3dygQ
======
davidu
It's a nice tribute to Len. Len's indirectly the reason I live in San
Francisco today, and why I moved here without a job after graduating college.
Through Len I met people who are my close friends in the hacker community
today. The last time I heard from Len was four days before his death, and
sadly, there was no indication that there was anything amiss.

I'm not sure of the exact circumstances of Len's passing, and I'll probably
never really know. Instead, I'll just say that for all of you reading this
today -- if you suffer from depression or feel a deep darkness over you,
please seek help. Depression is a disease, and it can be treated. So while it
may seem hopeless, or that nobody knows of the deep burden you carry, give it
a chance. There was a time you felt good, even if it's hard to remember right
now, and there's a way to get back to that place.

RIP Len. ;-(

------
georgemcbay
This is veering off the original topic, but isn't the ability to embed
arbitrary text into the blockchain a bit problematic? Suppose a nefarious
actor embedded text under current copyright (that s/he did not own) into the
chain?

(or other data, though presumably text is the only medium where a possibly
significant violation seems likely given the size limitations).

------
kragen
It's a lovely tribute to Len. It's perhaps worth pointing out that he was not
a fan of Bitcoin. Here are some of his Bitcoin-related Tweets over the last
few weeks of his life:

@glynmoody I wasn't happy with EFF's original acceptance of bitcoin, but I
agree with you that their reasons for reversing course are "eh."

<https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/83095852104695809>

@znmeb Ah, then you'd be missing the people advising their mothers to put
their life savings into Bitcoin while they still can get in on it.

<https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/82850601876205568>

@mentalguy The question is, though, just how much of Bitcoin's success is due
to irrational exuberance? I think most of it.

<https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/82754572958961664>

mentalguy

RT @mentalguy Also, if I had a significant BTC balance, I'd have kept it in
PDF417 in a safe deposit box, not on someone's servers. Retweeted by
lensassaman

<https://twitter.com/mentalguy/status/82552784876089344>

In reply to Mary Gardiner wishing the damn "kids would get off her lawn":

@hypatiadotca As a cypherpunk entering middle age, I have one word in response
to that: Bitcoin.

<https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/82638700185530368>

@jonmatonis has your opinion of bitcoin's anonymity (or rather, lack off)
finally changed?

<https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/84184691892166656>

Ugh, another stupid article claiming "anonymity is inherent in Bitcoin." Dear
reporters: please stop sucking. | <http://j.mp/iU2paU>

<https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/81431725510635521>

@dredeyedick That only works if you want to leave the inflated value of
Bitcoin on the table; otherwise you must cash out before the crash.

<https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/81121594373709825>

~~~
streptomycin
Those tweets read like someone who had a levelheaded view of Bitcoin, as
compared to a minority of irrational Bitcoin fanboys. A Bitcoin bubble is a
real issue. Volatility is a real issue. Anonymity is a real issue. Despite
those issues, Bitcoin is still really cool.

------
lep
I wonder if he will talk about it in this lecture [1].

[1]: <http://events.ccc.de/camp/2011/Fahrplan/events/4555.en.html>

~~~
jf
Yes, he will. He will also be talking about it at Blackhat.

------
JeremyBanks
Wait 'till somebody encodes child porn in the block-chain... BitCoin will be
illegal a week.

Pirated material works too, but that would probably be legislated against a
_bit_ more slowly.

~~~
templaedhel
This ASCII is child porn. I can tell by some of the characters, and having
seen many unicodes in my day.

~~~
drdaeman
yEnc or Base64-encoded JPEG image?

------
X-Istence
Could someone explain what this means?

~~~
dfc
Who Len was or what the blockchain is?

Len Sassaman was a very prominent member of the cypherpunk community who
recently passed away.

The blockchain is the record of all transactions that the bitcoin network has
processed. The blockchain is how bitcoin clients know who sent how many
bitcoins and to whom.

~~~
kiba
Can you explain what Dan Kaminsky is trying to do with the Genesis block?

Edit: corrected for improper terminology. I understand now.

~~~
soult
You are mixing two different terms here: The blockchain is a list of
transactions that are linked to each other using cryptographic functions. Each
block in the chain links to it's parent block. The genesis block is the first
block created, it has no parent block. As proof that Bitcoin wasn't started
before a specific date, the block references a The Times headline ("Chancellor
on brink of second bailout for banks").

Dan Kaminsky figured out a way to embed ascii text into the block chain. I did
not try to find out how he did it, but he probably created some transactions
that include those strings. If you want to find out more about how he did it,
he will give a talk at the Chaois Communications Camp related to Bitcoin.

------
Astrohacker
I verified it by typing in the command. The ASCII Bernanke is truly hilarious.

------
cop359
" coauthor and cofounder and Shmoo and so much more.

"

A typo immortalized?

~~~
jackolas
Could be because of the width constraint (could be self imposed)

~~~
jf
The method that Dan Kaminsky used is subject to a width constraint in Bitcoin.

------
Groxx
That's quite the memorial. And that ASCII Bernanke is STARING INTO MY SOUL
O_O.

------
kiba
Um, this is not part of the bitcoin block-chain? The bitcoin blockchain
started way back in 2009. Nice try?

Perhaps this guy is Satoshi Nakamoto?

I am confused.

~~~
trotsky
Sure it is. You can verify it yourself.

    
    
      [tsl@pepper ~]$ strings -n 20 ~/.bitcoin/blk0001.dat | tail -3
      :TXXXWw,_ "), ,wWT: 
      ::TTXXWWW lXl WWT:  
      ----END TRIBUTE---- 
      [tsl@pepper ~]$
    

The bitcoin blockchain contains a record of every verified transaction that's
happened to date - it needs this information to verify new transactions.
Sometime in the last 500 blocks or so, Kaminsky and Goodspeed used a trick to
embed this memorial inside a transaction, which is then dutifully stored by
all bitcoin clients.

~~~
rphlx
One wonders how the creators intend to scale a system where every user needs
the entire past state of every coin..

~~~
wcoenen
See <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability>.

It is true that the network would have to evolve to a two-tiered structure
with supernodes and client nodes. In Satoshi's paper it is explained how low-
power client nodes can do "Simplified Payment Verification" (Section 8 of
<http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf>). This is the mode implemented by
bitcoinj (<http://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/>) and it is already used to run
bitcoin clients on android.

