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Cryptographers are not happy with how you’re using the word ‘crypto’
- hanoz 5y agoThis is what happens when you try and own a prefix, Facebook.
- vmception 5y agoCryptography shortform had 100 years to bubble up higher in the lexicon and didnt. This fight is over. Just accept a second context, the second being the more obscure cryptography definition
- jgrahamc 5y agoSee also hackers not happy about hackers being called hackers.
- cblconfederate 5y agobut they're not hackers, they 're mbas
- criddell 5y agoAnd don't forget the begs-the-question crusaders.
- jgrahamc 5y agoI have no idea what that means.
- technothrasher 5y agoBe 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.
- dnautics 5y agothe way to fight back is to aggressively use it correctly when it's due. E.G: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291894
- criddell 5y agoWhat would you say determines correct usage of a word of phrase?
- dnautics 5y agoMe. What response were you expecting?
- criddell 5y agoI 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).
- dnautics 5y agoIt'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.
- criddell 5y agoThat'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.
- sowbug 5y agohttp://begthequestion.info/ http://begthequestion.info/ TL;DR: almost every common usage of the phrase is incorrect.
- criddell 5y agoThe "raises the question" use far outstrips the "laying claim to the principle" use. In general it's wrong to call either use incorrect. I'd avoid it entirely. The original phrase is a bad translation and the modern use triggers prescriptivists.
- OJFord 5y agoI've seen it used correctly just once: by a lecturer of Contemporary Philosophy marking my essay...
- JohnFen 5y agoAnd 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.
- glenjamin 5y agoactually.
- JohnFen 5y ago"Actually" means something rather different than "literally", though.
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- Frondo 5y agoLiterally has been used as a term of hyperbole since at least 1769. That one's hard for me to get too worked up about. :-) https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-literally https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-lite...
- MiguelX413 5y agoAnd singular they has been in use since the 13th century. Such semantic gaps really aren't a big deal tbh.
- OJFord 5y ago'literally literally'? (Oh god..) While I'm here there's also 'I guess' (suppose), 'I feel like' (think), and 'So' (I'm about to start a sentence).
- NoGravitas 5y agoMy pet peeve of 2014 was when my manager started referring to computer security as "cyber".
- st_goliath 5y agoYes, 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY6KkRsS26M).
- thrill 5y ago(laughs in cryptocalvinism)
- xiphias2 5y agoCryptographers 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 :)
- goalieca 5y agoCrypto 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.
- prohobo 5y agoThey'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.
- xiphias2 5y agoBitcoin 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?
- Grimm1 5y agoUnfortunately 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.
- JohnFen 5y agoI agree, it's already lost. The question then becomes -- since "crypto" no longer means "cryptography" -- what new shorthand term do we use?
- rsj_hn 5y agoI prefer to just keep using "crypto" and confuse the outsiders with my own crypto-jargon
- iamcurious 5y agoDid you meant cryptic-jargon?
- JohnFen 5y agoThis 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".
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- throwvirtever 5y agoYou abandon the shorthand altogether, so that "cryptography" and "cryptocurrency" are distinguished the same way that "astronomy" and "astrology" are.
- 323 5y agoLanguage is what's used. Words can change meaning, like "drone", "literally" and so many others.
- lordnacho 5y agoSpiders aren't happy with what you call "Web Design". Languages change over time. Even words like "nice" don't mean what they used to mean.
- DonHopkins 5y agoI always wondered why positive niceness makes processes run slower. That's not nice!
- smnrchrds 5y agoIf the process is very nice, it says "you first, sir" and "after you, ma'am" to everyone so it goes last.
- SilasX 5y agoYes, 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.)
- dehrmann 5y agoThese are different, though. "Web" in the context of the world-wide web is being used metaphorically. "Crypto" is clipped from "cryptocurrency."
- capableweb 5y agoWe're hardly building websites that form "webs" anymore but more like towers with bridges. We still call it the web though.
- cheeze 5y agoI don't understand the difference.
- nnoitra 5y agoOne way to fix that is to tell them you rolled your own crypto
- gruez 5y agoWhy yes I did roll my own crypto. The ICO will be next month. Would you like to participate?
- temptemptemp111 5y agoLike 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.
- nathias 5y agoPhilosophers are not happy how you're using all other words, so what.
- klyrs 5y agoOther 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.
- jacquesm 5y agoWe're all making a hash of it, apologies.
- rektide 5y agoSince 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.
- throwawayboise 5y agoSingular "they" is my losing battle there. It creates a speedbump in reading every time it's used. I'll never agree that it's acceptable to use it.
- vangelis 5y agoIf thou wants to be consistent, drop the singular "you" as well.
- BoxOfRain 5y agoI 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.
- DennisP 5y agoAccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, singular "they" has a long history going back to 1375. https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/ 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.
- akvadrako 5y agoThat's only for nonspecific persons, where it does indeed seem natural.
- hugocbp 5y agoTotally understandable, but that has ship has probably sailed a while back. Trying to fight this now is very likely a losing battle.
- KKKKkkkk1 5y agoNot true. At this point, some of them have jumped in and are cashing out. See, e.g., Silvio Micali [0]. [0] https://www.algorand.com/about/from-our-founder https://www.algorand.com/about/from-our-founder
- cblconfederate 5y agoLet's call then Croins
- echelon 5y agoOh my God I love this. I'm using this from now on.
- echelon 5y agoI'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. I'm sure the pendulum will swing back eventually.
- bdcravens 5y agoFrom the industry where most of the participants have a degree in computer "science"
- p4bl0 5y agoAre you saying that some engineering degree are called computer science degree?
- bdcravens 5y agoIn 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.
- dboreham 5y agoShip. Sailed.
- rhacker 5y agoMeanwhile docusign is still advertising "Digital Signatures" lol!
- jollybean 5y agoThat 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.
- SilasX 5y agoI’m not, either — it makes it harder to search for articles on each of those topics!
- astoor 5y agoThe 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.
- hanoz 5y agoSo now the true meaning of crypto is hidden?
- dpryden 5y agoI 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- colinmhayes 5y ago> Does anyone believe it means exclusively that? 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.
- jrochkind1 5y agoYes. 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". I see it all the time on my social media feeds.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 5y agoThere are t-shirts, stickers, pins and mugs with "crypto means cryptography" printed on them. This linguistic squabble is so well established that it has merch. But I can't begrudge publications getting an easy bit of writing out. This fight is over. You knew it was over the second time you were talking to someone you didn't know well, were about to use the term "crypto", and paused to check in your head how they'd interpret the word. "Crypto" means "cryptocurrency", not "cryptography". We shouldn't be surprised: there's orders of magnitude more people interested in get-rich-quick schemes than in abstract algebra. The cryptography engineers will be happier the sooner they let this go and find some new slang for themselves.
- SubiculumCode 5y agoIt reminds me of my conversation with my daughter about the meaning of meme. I bring up Richard Dawkins and she brings up imgur. :)
- forgotmypw17 5y agoI think there's room for both, and it can be figured out from context, usually.
- tptacek 5y agoI'm fine with that! What I'm saying is that the concerted effort to roll back Dogecoin's claim on the term "crypto" is doomed; it reminds one of the 1990s effort to reclaim "hacker" from the, err, hackers.
- dfxm12 5y agoThe cryptography engineers will be happier the sooner they let this go and find some new slang for themselves. This reminds me of Michael Bolton in Office Space being angry at the musician with the same name. "Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI1NfFExOSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI1NfFExOSo
- trulyrandom 5y agoEven Bruce Schneier is still annoyed about it seemingly: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/11/crypto-means-cryptography-not-cryptocurrency.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/11/crypto-means-....
- mig39 5y agoTo me, it's like the word "hacker." I mean, we're on a site called "hacker news." If any non-technical person looks over my shoulder and sees the title of this site, they automatically think cyber criminal website. Because that's what "hacker" means to a majority of people. Heck, even to a lot of technical people. "Crypto" is going down the same road. Sure, we know the difference. But most people think "Crypto" is Bitcoin. Period.
- vmception 5y agoAnd this site’s audience doesn't even like talking about how hacks are performed, where caches are found, or even the marketplaces!
- toastedwedge 5y agoAlways have to second guess what I say when asked what I like reading by other nontechnical people. It's fun, but awkward.
- MiguelX413 5y agoSemantic shift happens, prescriptivism is dumb.
- nice_byte 5y agoI hate that the name of a well-respected technical discipline has been appropriated by a community full of scammers and con-men, but sadly I think this battle has been lost a long time ago.
- vmception 5y agoI was at a mixer recently and talking about digital assets with some other people at the table, I dont even think I said “crypto”, and this person from Amazon bee-lined into a holier than thou crypto[graphy] discussion as if there was ever any confusion. Followed by the distinctly corporate “enterprise blockchain has legs” before continuing their obscure irrelevant cryptography discussion. Of interest to them and not “big ole bad cryptocurrency” not noticing the relative morality of working for an exploitative corporation for decades. This matches the level of socialization I’ve experienced with cryptographers my whole life.
- jurassic 5y agoIf it makes you feel any better, numismatists and coin collectors are not happy about the coopting of the word “coin” either. For millennia a “coin” was a physical item (usually a metal disk) which served as a medium of exchange in commerce. Coins are typically accepted everywhere within the jurisdiction of the issuing authority, and sometimes even beyond if the coin is minted out of a metal with intrinsic value such as silver. (For example, Spanish silver coins were heavily used in the colonial US for more than two centuries. Europeans lived in North America since 1492 but we never minted our own coins until the 1790s.) Coins can also be used to pay taxes to the issuing government which helped maintain these physical coins as acceptable legal tender even when made from base metals carrying no inherent value. I’m not a cryptocurrency expert, but from what I know it seems like cryptos don’t have any of these useful properties of money. Hoarding and manipulation by speculators coupled with limited opportunities to transact with them make cryptocoins a poor medium of exchange for most people most of the time. Proliferation of competing “coins” reminds me of the wild west early days of paper money where every local bank was printing their own paper but it probably wouldn’t buy you much in the next town over.
- jrochkind1 5y agoAre coin collectors really annnoyed at bitcoin using the word "coin", like you have personal knowledge that this is a common thing coin collectors are annoyed about? Or you're just hypothesizing it for the sake of argument?
- jurassic 5y agoI am a coin collector. So, yes. They should call them what they are which are “tokens”. But physical tokens are usually understood as a poor substitute for real money (think arcade token you can only spend in the arcade, or subway token for the subway, vs a quarter dollar you can spend anywhere) so I understand why they wouldn’t want to brand it that way.
- akvadrako 5y agobitcoins arent really tokens, but just entries in a ledger.
- elipsey 5y agoIf you think "crypto" is short for cryptocurrency, you're probably exactly the kind of person who should stay away from cryptocurrency.
- nicwolff 5y agoIf you want to see "not happy", ask a licensed architect how they feel about people like me calling ourselves Systems Architects.
- dr-detroit 5y agoI beg to differ. We are using it as a synonym for what it is: anonymous global shadowstate figures human traffics drug pushers etc. Everything shady and hidden from view hence crypto you have "encrypted" your evil intentions.
- meh2frdf 5y agoThe cyberneticians aren’t happy how cyber means infosec these days!
- defgeneric 5y agoThe crypto- prefix has been used in all sorts of contexts. In politics, for example, terms like crypto-fascist/crypto-marxist/crypto-Royalist are used in texts from at least the 19th century where the meaning adheres to the original sense of intentionally hidden or obscured. Edit: a quick look at occurrences of crypto-* from the 19th century shows varied usage from medicine, architecture, and especially religion (crypto-Jesuit, crypto-Protestant, etc).
- jrochkind1 5y agois crypto currency intentionally hidden or obscured?
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- beej71 5y agoOnce when I was giving a presentation about cryptography just as this whole cryptocurrency thing was kicking off, I titled the talk "Crypto!" without thinking twice about it. I was shocked at the extensive turnout. Who knew so many people liked cryptography? But most people left disappointed. :)
- h0nd 5y agoUnlike drone pilots, who most likely don't mind that people think of toys instead of war machines now.