Bit Gold was maybe to test out interest, then when the real one was made it would be more anonymous. If you think about it, bitcoin being anonymous is a feature as it makes it seem less centralized eventhough Satoshi owns a large chunk of it. Today companies or individuals will control a large chunk of other coins/platforms and it feels more centralized or even autocratic. At any time those big fish could wreak havoc. Satoshi seems more hands off.
Another potential reason is the money it would generate and the recognition would attract too much attention. The successful decentralized currency like bitcoin might have been foreseen as a threat to the creator after it takes off and gains in value.
From the wiki on Nick Szabo, he is more 'reclusive' and not wanting to be known. On his blog he mentioned his intent on creating a live version of the currency as Bit Gold was more of a prototype/demo and was never launched. Even the name Bit Gold and bitcoin are very similar as is the name Nicholas Szabo (N.S.) and Satoshi Nakamoto (S.N.) in a few ways. Satoshi Nakamoto always seems like a purposeful shroud of a name, looking for someone by that name is probably not going to find them:
> Nathaniel Popper wrote in The New York Times that "the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo." In 2008, prior to the release of bitcoin, Szabo wrote a comment on his blog about the intent of creating a live version of his hypothetical currency. [1]
Hal Finney was the first to receive 10 bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto [2]. Hal Finney was the next employee after Phil Zimmermann at PGP. So he knew the potential for being pursued by governments for software creations. Hal, who died in 2014 unfortunately, probably knew Satoshi and would have known he was shrouding/anonymous for good reasons as seen in the PGP history just before that and around the same time bit gold was being created.
The very likely people to be Satoshi Nakamoto are Nick Szabo and Hal Finney due to the early interactions and transactions, and potentially Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, but that seems unlikely they would use their real name [3]. Maybe it was all three or someone else entirely, these guys are just around the early days and some of the first transactions. Either that or someone or some group saw the need for decentralized currency from their efforts and then front ran them and made it seem more like them to help shroud themselves.
Potentially just living there, or there for something, or a false positive.
> Bitcoin had been released a few days prior to that log file. So unlikely to be on vacation.
Vacations are great for after shipping though, after the long slog of a project. Since it was new it would be a good time to escape before all the support requests and more usage increased. Maybe they couldn't stay away from that draw and then got a bit lazy on vacation in terms of opsec. Or maybe not. Good info nonetheless, it is one potential clue or not in the mystery.
Nick Szabo has been potentially mentioned as Satoshi for sometime [1] due to him working on decentralized currencies since 1998 with Bit Gold [2].
Elon Musk mentioned Nick Szabo on Lex Fridman's podcast as Szabo was also doing Bit Gold prior and is heavy into crypto and currencies. [3]
> "Obviously I don't know who created bitcoin ... it seems as though Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas," said Musk, adding, "he claims not to be Nakamoto ... but he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind it than anyone else."
> Szabo is best known as the inventor of one of bitcoin’s predecessors, Bit Gold, and digital smart contracts—which eventually evolved to become a key part of the ethereum blockchain. Szabo has previously denied he's Satoshi Nakamoto, telling financial author Dominic Frisby in 2014, "I'm afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I'm used to it."
Szabo's full name is Nicholas Szabo [4]. Just seems quite a bit like Satoshi Nakamoto. It feels like there is something there potentially.
Could have even been something like Satoshi wasn't on his normal setup at the time and it slipped through. Maybe on vacation or a wireless connection that connected near there. Or the IP lookup was even slightly off and they were in Sherman Oaks or anything really. Sometimes even wireless connections can appear to come from an entirely different state based on the network. The IP could have also been spoofed or temporary.
Covad Communications was the 16th biggest ISP at the time and then "Covad was acquired a by private equity firm, Platinum Equity, in April 2008. In 2010, it was sold to U.S. Venture Partners, which merged Covad, and Speakeasy into MegaPath." [1]
It appears when this IP connected (Jan 2009) it was owned by the private equity firm Platinum Equity [2].
The IP was definitely logged in Los Angeles, beyond that it could be anything.
> Everytime I see these threads I end up feeling inadequate.
It is always good to see people with successes that granted them some amount of freedom. Though it looks daunting in a time/competition sense, it is one day at a time towards a goal, and compounding focus amounts to large efforts that look daunting.
These threads are great because they motivate and show you what is possible, should you choose to pursue.
Not everyone has success either, these are survivorship bias. However, the reality is the ability to succeed is there. Many of these ideas, big business would not pursue due to market size, but for one man/small teams these are perfect.
With enough time put towards something and smart tuning to niche/market/needs, efforts can be fruitful.
A programmer, engineer, creative and product developers job is to create simplicity from complexity.
The job is to tame complexity via simplicity, not make a complex beast that needs more taming.
Sometimes engineers take something simple and make it more complex which is against simplifying either due to bad abstractions or proprietary reasons or obfuscation for job security or to ego flex. Anyone can make something more complex, making something simple and standard takes lots of work and iterations.
Nature is built with simple iterative parts that look complex in whole, systems that work well mimic that. Math is built with simple parts that leads to amazingly complex and beautiful things. Art is built with simple marks to create something complex and beautiful. Humans as well, and they desire simplicity so they can do more and build on that.
Maybe I should have said Feynman but Musk definitely has done great things and is making people think that Mars travel might be a reality. He is making us look up, making people dream and working to make it a reality.
The booster rockets returning to Earth in unison and on the barge originally, both were amazing moments that were almost as impactful as the space race accomplishments during the Apollo program. Definitely exciting that it is a reality that is happening not just hope, Musk has amazing teams and funding but he is using all that to accomplish these things instead of just getting richer, risking his personal wealth many times over for these goals.
Sagan would probably be thrilled with SpaceX.
Then you have Tesla electric cards rocking the electric car / battery industry and making it business ready today.
Nikola Tesla would be thrilled with Tesla and battery power to lessen reliance on the electric grid.
Then you got solar homes and batteries along with the SpaceX accomplishments in rocketry, that you can start to put together and see the uses for interstellar travel and harsh planet settlement.
Hawking would be thrilled at the interstellar travel part as he has been warning humans to look for other places for years and thinks we must be interstellar within hundreds of years to survive.
Musk is more of a business focused guy but he is making people look up and is accomplishing these tasks by challenging big competitors and ultimately his products will be good for Earth. That is amazing in my book.
Feynman liked making everyone interested in science and talked to people with the aims of understanding not just being smart, he'd be thrilled that Musk is bringing amazing scientific achievement to regular people's lives.
Sometimes the RNG of the Universe creates people with intelligence, innovation and insight that are one in a billion that make the world better than it was before in immense ways, Stephen Hawking is one of those mountain movers.
People like Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Nikola Tesla and even Elon Musk today, that make us look up, innovate and think way out there, bring us together and remind us we are all on this planet together and can do amazing things if we choose to put our energy towards it.
Lumberyard is a fork by Amazon of CryEngine that they licensed in 2015 that Star Citizen switched to. If developers start with that engine they are ok but looks like there were deals with Crytek on games/content before that date.
Legal challenges from a game engine is something that can scare away new projects in that engine. This wouldn't affect most developers as Star Citizen signed with CryEngine but it won't be attracting people to use CryEngine over others anytime soon.
Crytek is one of those companies that has great game engine tech but got high-centered when Unreal and Unity went free in 2015. Crytek is from the age of game development where licensing per game could run up above 300k for licenses and/or percentages that were much higher than today (Today Unreal is free but 5% royalties of gross over 3k quarterly -- but previously was 300k for the license -- Unity free up to 100k revs and $35/$125 Pro with no royalties, previously it was $1500 a year minimum). Crytek has been in a reactionary mode since 2015 when they also had to significantly change their model due to Unity/Unreal competitive moves.
Unreal at 5% royalties over 3k a quarter, Unity at free to 100k annually and $35/$125 Pro after that and even Crytek at $50/mo, all are very helpful for game development skills. Previously when engines were hundreds of thousands for a license it was hard to even gain skills beyond modding tools for engines and game companies had to shoulder all the training costs of even good game devs. Today, Unity/Unreal skills are much easier to find because of the low cost of entry. Ultimately the change to subscriptions and low cost (relatively) of the licenses allows a good market for developers investing in skills that will immediately translate at the game company they are working at, much easier to hit the ground running. Ultimately access to the engines is more valuable than the up-front costs of the past. Crytek is still dealing with that competitive pressure most likely.
Game development also has very large files and codebases, Git LFS is sometimes not enough. This is great for everyone really but very nice for game development and larger codebases that might have lots of assets along with it.
Microsoft is doing great work here and hope it makes it to bitbucket, github etc.
A big part of the 3DS launch was AR [1][2]. They actually used it in unique ways. They haven't yet gone to head based VR/AR but device level like mobile was part of the 3DS pitch/features.
Another potential reason is the money it would generate and the recognition would attract too much attention. The successful decentralized currency like bitcoin might have been foreseen as a threat to the creator after it takes off and gains in value.
From the wiki on Nick Szabo, he is more 'reclusive' and not wanting to be known. On his blog he mentioned his intent on creating a live version of the currency as Bit Gold was more of a prototype/demo and was never launched. Even the name Bit Gold and bitcoin are very similar as is the name Nicholas Szabo (N.S.) and Satoshi Nakamoto (S.N.) in a few ways. Satoshi Nakamoto always seems like a purposeful shroud of a name, looking for someone by that name is probably not going to find them:
> Nathaniel Popper wrote in The New York Times that "the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo." In 2008, prior to the release of bitcoin, Szabo wrote a comment on his blog about the intent of creating a live version of his hypothetical currency. [1]
Hal Finney was the first to receive 10 bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto [2]. Hal Finney was the next employee after Phil Zimmermann at PGP. So he knew the potential for being pursued by governments for software creations. Hal, who died in 2014 unfortunately, probably knew Satoshi and would have known he was shrouding/anonymous for good reasons as seen in the PGP history just before that and around the same time bit gold was being created.
The very likely people to be Satoshi Nakamoto are Nick Szabo and Hal Finney due to the early interactions and transactions, and potentially Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, but that seems unlikely they would use their real name [3]. Maybe it was all three or someone else entirely, these guys are just around the early days and some of the first transactions. Either that or someone or some group saw the need for decentralized currency from their efforts and then front ran them and made it seem more like them to help shroud themselves.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_sp...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Possible_iden...