Post #1060788

The NYTimes article that proposes Adam Back as Satoshi Nakamoto is interesting, in the way that all such articles are. The evidence is definitely more convincing than average, but I can't help but notice that a lot of the grammar/spelling "tells" the journalist relies on are also present in my writing. Some are just very common mechanical errors in English (it's/its). But I think a lot of them are common traits of writers with a Computer Science education: inconsistent hyphenation of compound words and use of certain terms like "backup" as a single word are ubiquitous in both academic and casual writing in CS. Much of the field's jargon consists of two words stuck together with a sometimes-on, sometimes-off hyphen between them. I also think that mixing of US and British spelling is a fairly common trait among people who spent a lot of time online during the Age of Textual Social Networks. Too much exposure to casual writing with British English conventions and "check" starts looking suspicious. Doesn't that need a Q or something? Maybe the real test is "maneuver" because I can never quite remember what the British spelling is. Of course the journalist finds that Back's writing matches Nakamoto's better than other Cypherpunks, who presumably all have similar backgrounds, but I still think that they do a poor job of exploring how much these errors are just common among cryptographers and mailing list posters.