Hal Finney, PGP and Bitcoin Pioneer, Dies At 58 40
New submitter brokenin2 writes Hal Finney, the number two programmer for PGP and the first person to receive a Bitcoin transaction, has passed away. From the article on Coindesk: "Shortly after collaborating with Nakamoto on early bitcoin code in 2009, Finney announced he was suffering from ALS. Increasing paralysis, which eventually became near-total, forced him to retire from work in early 2011."
Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
I nominate Hal Finney for the Ice Bucket Challenge!
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
no, jumping into an ice bucket is not the same as having it dumped on you.
RIP, you cold cypherpunk (Score:1)
I'm assuming he still wanted to be cryo'd.
Fran, you have my condolences.
Re:RIP, you cold cypherpunk (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, he was cryopreserved.
On the plus side, knowing your own death is coming and being at a hospital already gives the best chances for cryopreserving the brain before it begins to degrade. You can get a "standby" watch as the time approaches.
On the minus side, ALS is a neurological disease. It affects the motor neurons, not the ones responsible for cognition, but that includes the "upper" motor neurons... including the ones in the brain.
Maybe we'll be able to repair ALS-damaged neurons before we figure out how to safely reverse cryopreservation. Maybe we won't, but life support systems will be good enough it'll be worth bringing him out anyhow. Maybe we'll achieve brain uploading and ALS will be irrelevant. Any which way you look at it, though, he's going to need some work.
That's actually one of the (many) problems with cryopreservation research. We can't bring people out of full suspension right now, so cryopreserving a living person is legally considered killing them. Thus, it can only be done to people already legally dead. Legally dead people tend to have died *of* something. There just isn't any point to bringing people out of cryonics until we can repair (or replace) their bodies.
Re: (Score:1)
No worries, cryopreserved people are dead forever. They will not and can not be revived and the industry is a scam going on for now 47 years. I'll bet some of those early adopters thought they'd be thawed and "cured" (nevermind they died before freezing) by now. suckers.
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine some of the cryo houses are 'scams' in that they don't believe revival is possible, some are true believers. Regardless, I don't think that 'revival' is going to be possible until somebody figures out a protocol for actually freezing the bodies without damage in the first place. What is quite possible is instead us figuring out how to make exceptionally fine brain scans before some or most of these companies go bust. It's much, much cheaper to maintain a massive redundant storage server farm than
Re: (Score:2)
There's probably not much point in trying to fix the bodies anyhow; even without the freeze damage, the people are legally dead because their bodies were shutting down. In many cases, the freezing just finished a process of tissue damage that was already near-complete.
With that said, bodies (unlike brains) cannot currently be preserved without any freeze damage. Although some places will cycle cryopreservative though the bloodstream to mitigate the damage, others don't bother keeping the parts that can't be
Re: (Score:2)
Some of those early adopters... you mean, like the ones who put their own money into launching the industry, and are themselves cryogenically preserved? I doubt any of them thought they would be restored by now - they knew, as well as we know today, that technology would need to advance to the point of either completely rebuilding their bodies or making bodies themselves redundant - though I suspect some of them thought (and I'm sure they all hoped) there would be more research in the field. In any case, I'
Re: (Score:2)
No, brain death is the legal criteria. Cessation of heartbeat is NOT a consideration. Research the phrase "beating heart cadaver" which is medical technique sometimes used to preserve organs prior to transplant.
Those people were dead, meaning brain dead. No hope of recovery or ressurection.
Dies... (Score:2, Insightful)
... and was cryogenically frozen. You'd think this would be mentioned in a Slashdot article.
Thank you for everything Hal, you were an inspiration to many. My condolences to your family.
I only he had known (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
He kicked the bucket, maybe he didn't follow the ice water chain letter instructions.
... infinite ... (Score:1)
Programmers don't die, they just enter an infinite goto
FTFY
Assisted suicide (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
There are some things that are much, much worse than death. ALS is right near the top of that list.
The Day Before Yesterday's News Today! (Score:2)
Ah, we've found a new slogan for Slashdot.
Hal's not so much died, as changed phase... (Score:1)
He'll be missed while he's gone.
Au Revoir, old pal
ce
Early contributer to the Everything List (Score:1)
In particuar the notion of the quantum theory of immortality received a lot of discussion. Hal followed the absolute SSA interpretation, which means he didn't believe in the quantum theory immortality. However, if he's wrong, I hope he didn't stay locked in for long!
Secret sharing code (Score:1)
What happens to the bitcoins? (Score:1)
We are now seeing the start of the death of bitcoin.
As people die, their coins -- protected by passwords not available to anyone else -- will be taken out of circulation.
So what happens to the bitcoins of the dead? What is the future of a currency that has to suffer hard decline in total units as generations go by?
What is the future of a currency where only corporations can live long enough to use it -- and they cannot prevent theft (if the corporation has a way to spend it, then at least one person must ha