Be glad. Misuse of the phrase "beg the question" is like salt in my ears. But I mostly keep my mouth shut as it's a battle hopelessly lost at this point.
I assume you considered a bunch of different perspectives and concluded that one is more correct than the others. I was curious about the reasoning that went into your decision.
I went through that process myself a while ago and came to a different conclusion based on the idea that the meaning of a word or phrase in conversation is determined by what it communicates. I qualify with "in conversation" because there are audiences and venues where that's not necessarily true (like in a courtroom).
It's completely arbitrary, from case to case. To answer your question about "begging the question" I think the concept of "circular reasoning" is important enough to have a cutesy phrase associated with it.
That's interesting. I agree that the concept is important and that's why I avoid begs-the-question. Most of the time it doesn't communicate what you hope it does.
And the most irritating part of the redefinition of "literally" to mean the opposite of literally... there's no clear synonym that people can use when they literally mean literally.
Yes, that was the time when politicians and managers for some reason suddenly decided to exhume that 90ies buzzword (32C3 press conference montage from around that time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY6KkRsS26M).
Cryptographers should be happy about the importance cryptography plays in our world instead of being grumpy about how non-technical people use the word.
I personally significantly benefitted from understanding Bitcoin level cryptography, so I can't complain :)
Crypto currencies are highly controversial. Many see the problems with few benefits. Yes, many speculators got rich but they’ve disrupted supply chains, enabled the ransomware revolution, benefit money laundering, and consume insane amounts of energy. We still do not have that killer use case we were all hoping for with decentralized money.
They're not controversial right now, they're politicized - people have to agree on the reality before they can start arguing about whether it's good or not. Most of what you stated isn't even epistemically agreed upon, and you're saying we're already in the judgement phase? Of cryptocurrencies as a concept?
JEEZUS. I'm tired of social media. People buy into all kinds of narratives then use them to justify other narratives. It just never ends. Most cryptographers don't care about this at all, except that it brings the cryptobros to their forums, when what they're looking for are trading communities.
Bitcoin must be controversial, as it's disrupting much more than the supply chains: the whole global financial system. Nobody knows if it will be successful or not, we need 10 more years to find it out.
Can you imagine a non-controversial or non-volatile way to do it?
Unfortunately language isn't a static thing and is somewhat defined by the dominant usage of something over time (unless you're in the rare country that has fully prescriptive language). I had been using crypto as shorthand for cryptography for a long time but cryptocurrency quickly subsumed that. If I talk to any of my non technical friends, and even technical friends who don't touch cryptography, crypto = cryptocurrency. I think the war is lost here.
This is actually my personal approach, because I'm a curmudgeon. If I'm talking about cryptography, I say "crypto". If I'm talking about cryptocurrency, I say "cryptocurrency".
Frankly, you're reading HN, you can cope with it; a lot of people can't, and do confuse them as adults.
An extreme example - there was a paediatrician murdered (? At least something severe happened) in the UK after a newspaper published his name and occupation in connection with some more mundane story, and some idiot saw 'paed' and assumed all words with that prefix mean the same bad thing, or whatever.
Many people can't reliably tell you whether they bought something in a shop, or brought it home from a friend who gifted it to them.
Signatures, hash functions, message authentication codes, zero-knowledge proofs, authentication, etc. are all part of cryptography. They’re not “encryption” no matter how hard you try to stretch that word’s definition.
The bigger problem is for non-technical users "cryptography" and "cryptocurrency" now sound interchangeable. So now you can't have a conversation about cryptography without explaining how it's distinct from the concept of cryptocurrency and that you're not talking about Bitcoin.
While most people aren't talking to their non-technical friends and family about cryptography too often, the co-opting of "crypto" is problematic for companies. They now have to explain to lay people why a new phone isn't pumping out Bitcoin when it was advertised as having strong cryptography. It's going to also be super problematic when politicians start talking about "crypto" regulation and we're having to fight battles over the legality of cryptography again. I don't think my old RSA-as-one-liner still fits.
The worst part is that there is already another word for cryptocurrency. Blockchain. It has the same number of syllables as "crypto" and isn't ambiguous.
The cynic in me says they did it on purpose, because it's widely agreed by non-morons that cryptography is good and important and people wanted to associate their controversial shitcoins with that good and important thing.
> The worst part is that there is already another word for cryptocurrency. Blockchain.
There do exist cryptocurrencies that are not based on a blockchain. For example, Iota is based on a tangle, which the creators of Iota claim is better suited for their intended IoT applications than a blockchain.
Or more centralized cryptocurrencies, for example eCash, which was invented 1983 by David Chaum:
"Centralized cryptocurrency" already has its own word. Banking.
Banking would be better if it worked like eCash, but it would still not be a problem to not have a single word that encompasses both this and Bitcoin, since they are actually two different things.
People will also deny that Wine is an emulator, and people will also claim that whatever tinc does is not an VPN because it doesnt hide your IP when watching porn. My coworker denied DOS is an operating system because it doesn't have virtual memory and paging.
all nonsense ... People generally aren't good with subtle differences, i guess. I've given up explaining it to people.
I know the old version from memory, but there is nothing in there that say it was ever short for windows emulator. It is quite clear from the history that it was named not emulator since day 1, to emphasize that it doesn't have true emulation layer that will make it slow.
It doesn't have a CPU emulation layer, but that doesn't mean it's not a emulator.
The name always stood for "WINE Is Not an Emulator", I'm with you on that. Self-referential acronyms were extremely fashionable back when WINE started out.
Actually blueflow deleted comment referenced the following interesting link (PDF, page 3) which shows that the acronym came very shortly after the name, seems that the project was named wine very early without concrete meaning, and the self-referential acronym followed soon. As far as I can tell it was never Windows Emulator.
Before wine, there was wabi for Solaris, and wine was implementation of the same idea for Linux. wabi is indeed more correct name, since it is an ABI layer (despite Solaris claim to the contrary, the motives for might be legal reasons).
I talk about encryption which cuts the confusion nicely even if it isn't a perfect replacement but I find lay people don't care about the general field of cryptography they care about privacy and from that, encryption. I've been able to get a few people onto signal for instance by going that route.
Yes, and it’s still noteworthy when it happens and still merits responding with countermeasures (like new terms) to ensure the meaning you want can be efficiently communicated without error.
(Except for the the small part of the population that actively resists such efforts in the belief that they’ll have an advantage over others in correctly guessing the intended meaning, or that those that have a harder time don’t matter.)
"Web" pages are linked together in a way that can be visualized as a web. It's barely even a metaphor. In the context of the article, "crypto" is just a short version of "cryptocurrency." These terms came about through different mechanism.
Like 99% of "cryptographers" are just shills these days. They go around calling all FOSS absolutely insecure, and promote Microsoft/Google/Apple as best authorities to trust (root of trust). It is pathetic. Meanwhile they forget the goal of not having to trust other parties to create secrets; they forget what their entire profession was about.
Other philosophers enjoy watching meatbags trying to communicate through flatulence, delight in the many interpretations a single sound can entail, and marvel at the ensuing chaos.
On one hand, I agree that it sucks that the 'crypto' term has been overwhelmed by hucksters. On the other hand, I'd rather expect cryptographers to either pwn it, or comport themselves with a bit more dignity and call their field what it is: cryptography. You only lost a nickname. Deal.
Since there's no other such comments, I'm just going to chime in & say I'm extremely sympathetic.
This is a classic case of confusion, of two things being mixed together & fused, in terminology, when they are distinct areas. Our languages are, as many commenters point out, flexible & changing. But when that flexibility leads to the distinct & clear becoming mixed & hazy, that is usually a loss.
I have to disagree, while it can sound a bit "off" I think it's probably the most natural word to use where gender is unknown or irrevelant. All the other constructs I'm aware of that have been used for this purpose are more of a speedbump than "they", for example replacing "he" with "he/she" or "s/he" rather than "they" is a much more tortured way of achieving the same meaning in my opinion.
I'm not happy with "web3" trampling on the history of the semantic web, but what can we in the minority really do? Probably best to just shrug it off.
At the same time as crypto is in the limelight, I'd rather us not forget the lessons of RDF, triple stores, rich schemas, etc. Semantic models were well positioned just as the Facebook/Google platforms were taking off. The platforms just grew faster with VC and ad money.
If we'd have had a distributed/bittorrent moment for sharing our data outside of platforms, we'd have had messaging and news that worked like email. We were really close.
In the US at least, if you get a 4 year degree at university to learn programming, it's almost always the Computer Science program. There are certainly other programs that would fit the bill, but CS is generally the preferred degree.
That ship has sailed, and cryptographers will not regain use of that word at least for some time (maybe forever), best to find a new thing and move on.
I'll bet using the long form 'cryptography' would be ideal.
The underlying issue is hinted at towards the end: "cryptocurrency, on the other hand, is a relatively recent development ... that may or may not survive". It is not just that it is being confused with something else, but that it is being confused with something else which (in the eyes of most people in tech, excluding cryptobros) has exceedingly negative connotations. It would be like having the same personal name as a mass murderer.
I am finding this article and the comments here very surprising. Do a large number of people actually believe that the word "crypto" means exclusively "cryptocurrency"? Does anyone believe it means exclusively that?
To me it seems similar to how "auto" as a noun is generally short for "automobile", but most people are aware that other things can also be called "auto". When a camera says it is "auto focus" I cannot imagine that any normal person would assume that phrase has anything to do with automobiles.
It is incredibly common for the same word to have different meanings in different contexts. I personally have literally never had a conversation about cryptocurrency in which any person used the word "crypto" to mean "cryptocurrency", so I am clearly out of this loop. But if people decide to use it that way as slang in a certain context it certainly doesn't change the meaning of related words, or even mean it's impossible to use a different slang meaning in different contexts.
I'd say about 90% of people believe that since they don't know cryptography is a thing. Now if you're talking to people that work in tech it's a different story, and they'd probably accept both definitions.
Yes. A large number of people who are not software engineers or mathematicians currently think "crypto" means "cryptocurrency", and don't know what "cryptography" is or think about it at all in and of itself. They think about cryptocurrency a lot, and call it "crypto".
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[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] threadE.G: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291894
I went through that process myself a while ago and came to a different conclusion based on the idea that the meaning of a word or phrase in conversation is determined by what it communicates. I qualify with "in conversation" because there are audiences and venues where that's not necessarily true (like in a courtroom).
TL;DR: almost every common usage of the phrase is incorrect.
I'd avoid it entirely. The original phrase is a bad translation and the modern use triggers prescriptivists.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-lite...
While I'm here there's also 'I guess' (suppose), 'I feel like' (think), and 'So' (I'm about to start a sentence).
I personally significantly benefitted from understanding Bitcoin level cryptography, so I can't complain :)
JEEZUS. I'm tired of social media. People buy into all kinds of narratives then use them to justify other narratives. It just never ends. Most cryptographers don't care about this at all, except that it brings the cryptobros to their forums, when what they're looking for are trading communities.
Can you imagine a non-controversial or non-volatile way to do it?
The question then becomes -- since "crypto" no longer means "cryptography" -- what new shorthand term do we use?
Maybe some things simply can't be solved without education & maturity?
An extreme example - there was a paediatrician murdered (? At least something severe happened) in the UK after a newspaper published his name and occupation in connection with some more mundane story, and some idiot saw 'paed' and assumed all words with that prefix mean the same bad thing, or whatever.
Many people can't reliably tell you whether they bought something in a shop, or brought it home from a friend who gifted it to them.
While most people aren't talking to their non-technical friends and family about cryptography too often, the co-opting of "crypto" is problematic for companies. They now have to explain to lay people why a new phone isn't pumping out Bitcoin when it was advertised as having strong cryptography. It's going to also be super problematic when politicians start talking about "crypto" regulation and we're having to fight battles over the legality of cryptography again. I don't think my old RSA-as-one-liner still fits.
The cynic in me says they did it on purpose, because it's widely agreed by non-morons that cryptography is good and important and people wanted to associate their controversial shitcoins with that good and important thing.
There do exist cryptocurrencies that are not based on a blockchain. For example, Iota is based on a tangle, which the creators of Iota claim is better suited for their intended IoT applications than a blockchain.
Or more centralized cryptocurrencies, for example eCash, which was invented 1983 by David Chaum:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash
Banking would be better if it worked like eCash, but it would still not be a problem to not have a single word that encompasses both this and Bitcoin, since they are actually two different things.
all nonsense ... People generally aren't good with subtle differences, i guess. I've given up explaining it to people.
Of course they will, it's even in the name!
Wine Is Not an Emulator
Wine is imitating the windows libary interface. It literally is an emulator: "To strive to equal or excel, especially through imitation".
Wine devs had to to the renaming because people incorrectly read it as "it runs in a virtual machine" for no reason.
> Wine (originally an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator")
https://www.winehq.org/about
The name always stood for "WINE Is Not an Emulator", I'm with you on that. Self-referential acronyms were extremely fashionable back when WINE started out.
https://wiki.winehq.org/images/5/5c/Wineconf-2018.pdf
Before wine, there was wabi for Solaris, and wine was implementation of the same idea for Linux. wabi is indeed more correct name, since it is an ABI layer (despite Solaris claim to the contrary, the motives for might be legal reasons).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi_(software)
[0] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Embedded_Systems/Common_RTOS/D...
[1] http://www.on-time.com/rtkernel-dos.htm
Words can change meaning, like "drone", "literally" and so many others.
Languages change over time. Even words like "nice" don't mean what they used to mean.
(Except for the the small part of the population that actively resists such efforts in the belief that they’ll have an advantage over others in correctly guessing the intended meaning, or that those that have a harder time don’t matter.)
On one hand, I agree that it sucks that the 'crypto' term has been overwhelmed by hucksters. On the other hand, I'd rather expect cryptographers to either pwn it, or comport themselves with a bit more dignity and call their field what it is: cryptography. You only lost a nickname. Deal.
This is a classic case of confusion, of two things being mixed together & fused, in terminology, when they are distinct areas. Our languages are, as many commenters point out, flexible & changing. But when that flexibility leads to the distinct & clear becoming mixed & hazy, that is usually a loss.
https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...
With a little googling you can verify that Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Chaucer all used it.
Trying to fight this now is very likely a losing battle.
[0] https://www.algorand.com/about/from-our-founder
I'm using this from now on.
At the same time as crypto is in the limelight, I'd rather us not forget the lessons of RDF, triple stores, rich schemas, etc. Semantic models were well positioned just as the Facebook/Google platforms were taking off. The platforms just grew faster with VC and ad money.
If we'd have had a distributed/bittorrent moment for sharing our data outside of platforms, we'd have had messaging and news that worked like email. We were really close.
I'm sure the pendulum will swing back eventually.
I'll bet using the long form 'cryptography' would be ideal.
To me it seems similar to how "auto" as a noun is generally short for "automobile", but most people are aware that other things can also be called "auto". When a camera says it is "auto focus" I cannot imagine that any normal person would assume that phrase has anything to do with automobiles.
It is incredibly common for the same word to have different meanings in different contexts. I personally have literally never had a conversation about cryptocurrency in which any person used the word "crypto" to mean "cryptocurrency", so I am clearly out of this loop. But if people decide to use it that way as slang in a certain context it certainly doesn't change the meaning of related words, or even mean it's impossible to use a different slang meaning in different contexts.
I'd say about 90% of people believe that since they don't know cryptography is a thing. Now if you're talking to people that work in tech it's a different story, and they'd probably accept both definitions.
I see it all the time on my social media feeds.