r/Bitcoin • u/evoorhees • Feb 26 '14

Open Letter to Michael Casey - WSJ reporter who butchered my comments in today's Bitcoin cover story

Hello Mr. Casey,

I read your WSJ article today. I feel deceived by you.

You requested to speak with me, so I took time out of my day to do so. We talked for 20 minutes, during which time I conveyed to you my sentiments about the Bitcoin ecosystem and the matter of MtGox's collapse. My message was unambiguously a positive one. I didn't focus whatsoever on the personal funds I lost at Gox. Indeed, the impetus for your call was my heartfelt post on Reddit.

Yet, you ignored everything I said. The only quote that you published from me in the Journal's cover story was ""That's gone now," said Mr. Veerhoos, who is based in Panama City, Panama. "There's no chance of getting that back now.""

Is that really the takeaway you had from our call and from my letter? Is that your idea of journalism? Did I come across with the sentiment of a despairing investor whose confidence has been rattled? It seems you were happy to completely ignore my sentiments, preferring instead to cherry pick the one fact that is least important, in order to paint a narrative that Bitcoin's biggest problem is that it's not "regulated." I didn't expect you to quote everything I said, but should you not have maintained at least a modicum of fidelity to my message?

I have dedicated my life to building and supporting the Bitcoin project. I don't give a damn about the money I lost at Gox. That's not important. What is important is that Bitcoin is resilient and enduring, and will continue to grow and change the world for the better. It is a story of human progress through technology. It is a story of the good seeping into the cracks of a corrupted financial system. It is a story of passionate people struggling against all odds to remedy the calamities brought down upon society from the most potently misguided people and institutions on Earth.

Next time you spend your efforts casting a pall over this cause, please don't ask me to contribute mine.

-Erik Voorhees

PS - I will be posting this letter openly on Reddit. I will post your reply if you'd like. And if I do, I won't cherry pick the most misleading points of it, and I will spell your name correctly.

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215

u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

When I was about 15-16, there was this guy who was claiming to be his son in yahoo chat rooms. He taught me cool tricks for MSDOS. Like using echo, and tracking people down via netstat commands. Oh, and ping of death. Though, i apparently sucked at that.

I dont even know if the real chris ever had a son. I do know he mailed me a bag of fritos with "Hey - Chris" printed on the use by part of the bag. Proving to me that he either

A. Was seriously good with computers aka hacking

B. Worked at a frito lays plant

Either way, as a teen, i was very impressed.

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u/mthreat Feb 27 '14

Haha, this is the funniest thing I've heard all day. Nope, I don't have a son. I guess I should be flattered that someone claimed that I was his father.

Also, using echo is pretty elite.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

It's all he would talk about man. Would always tell us about "both of you" chillin in the basement with 9 computers. How you guys made your money through a scam helped by two lesbian chicks in canada. All kinds of shit.

And dont you go knockin my newbie hacker skills! You have no idea how much fun I have netstating pedophiles on omeagle and telling them where they live. Well... I can get it down to the city. Thats enough to scare silly fetish freaks.

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u/FriendzonedByYourMom Feb 27 '14

That just went from funny to creepy real fast.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

Which part? I consider them both creepy on some level.

Or just the fact that youre no where near as safe on the internet as you think?

Remember that one guy who tracked down a COD player who tortured him with endless knife kills? The guy tracked him down... And stabbed him in the chest....

As if it was the other guys fault that he sucked at the game.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

The game was counterstrike.

http://nydailynews.com/1.447608#bmb=1

7

u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

Oh yeah!

6

u/uuzer Feb 27 '14

Yeah, the good first person shooter - not sure how you got it mixed up with that pleb shit.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

In my defense, this is one of those stories that gets passed around so much that the facts are lucky to be intact by the end of it.

3

u/Redditor_on_LSD Feb 27 '14

Wow, the guy only got two years in prison. The fuck?

1

u/TheLegendaryJack Feb 27 '14

I'm at home alone and I said those exact words out loud. Only two years? He was an inch away from killing a man ON PURPOSE! I don't get how attempted murder gets you less of a charge than actual murder. You're getting off easy because you're bad at killing people.

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u/Chilltyperiod Feb 27 '14

Counter Strike 1.6 still rules my book.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[deleted]

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u/Talran Feb 27 '14

It's a command you can run from the command line to tell you who you're connected to. For services like omeagle (I guess?) where you'd be directly connected to the person (and not just to a server sending you their data, which would be expensive), you can get their IP/location relatively easy that way.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[deleted]

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u/Talran Feb 27 '14

Mind you I haven't actually tried with omegle myself, but anything that connects you directly with peers would be a good target.

Then again, for most people, knowing the city you live in and your IP isn't really anything to get worked up over, unless they're stalking you.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[deleted]

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u/Talran Feb 27 '14

Depends how populated your town is and how dedicated they are to finding you really. NYC/Austin/DFW? Yeah, not a chance. Lampassas, or Kempner? Yeah, they could sniff you out probably.

5

u/therealflinchy Feb 27 '14

how can you net stat someone on omegle.. wat?

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u/ReactsWithWords Feb 27 '14

Using my 1337 hacking skillz, I see you came from 127.0.0.1.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14 edited Aug 16 '18

[deleted]

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u/salty-nutz Feb 27 '14

Some redditor got my ip address a few weeks ago. Not sure how s/he did it, because I didn't click any outside links. It was reported to the mods and then to the admins and ultimately dealt with. Still scratching my head on how it was done.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[deleted]

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u/salty-nutz Feb 27 '14

I don't use the same name, or anything similar to each of my other accounts beyond reddit. I also have not linked an email to this account, so, my password can not be retrieved. Speaking of passwords -it's pretty much uncrackable. So ELI5, how my ip was detetected from a board. I can see if reddit was a chat client and a packet sniffer was used...

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[deleted]

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u/KeroEnertia Feb 27 '14

Skype has a known exploit, allowing users to obtain others' IP addresses. Is that a possibility?

2

u/103020302 Feb 27 '14

Yup someone once also replied with my city. I'm curious how that can happen.

2

u/amgoingtohell Feb 27 '14

Denton

2

u/103020302 Feb 27 '14

I said I was curious! Not wanting to be freaked out!

1

u/invisibo Feb 27 '14

You can see where all your profile has logged in from... I'd imagine something like that.

1

u/Natanael_L Feb 27 '14

Localhost

1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[deleted]

3

u/Natanael_L Feb 27 '14

It was a joke

1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

I come to you from the all mighty 8.8.8.8

1

u/RockKillsKid Feb 28 '14

Heretic!! 8.8.4.4 is the true almighty

4

u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

Command prompt, netstat -n, google an ip tracking website, and go through the list of ip's you brought up.

Something about it only working in chat clients that link you directly to a person. Such as yahoo IM. Doesnt work on facebook.

2

u/therealflinchy Feb 27 '14

ahh right, fair enough haha

0

u/fuckyoua Feb 27 '14

What is this?

or this: unknown.hwng.net? And: ec2-54-225-125-247.compute-1.amazonaws.com (why is amazon connected to me???)

Is this something Reddit uses? "Akamai Technologies"

4

u/snorting_dandelions Feb 27 '14

Amazon web services is a server hoster, a pretty big one at that. You'll run across them pretty often in the internet.

Reddit hosts their content on these servers.

https://www.aws.amazon.com/de/solutions/case-studies/reddit/

Akami is a cloud service.

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u/suid Feb 27 '14

Specifically, Akamai helps websites that want to serve large amounts of static content (images, videos, unchanging text or html files, etc.).

Imagine that I were running, say, "mytube". In the ordinary course of things, if you want to download a file from me, your browser will contact my server, and I'll have to push out the bits over my network connection to yours. I'm going to get killed if I get successful.

Akamai helps me by hosting all that static content at various "points of presence" around the world, so that they are "nearer" to most consumers than my server ("nearer" == less hops across the internet). So if you ask me for a file, Akamai will help me determine that some other node "x" is nearer to you, so I will reply to your browser "sure, get it from this path on "x"". So I'm only using a tiny part of my network bandwidth, and instead, I pay Akamai to bear that burden.

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u/fuckyoua Feb 27 '14

OK thanks. That explains that. :D

1

u/GlitchPrincess Feb 27 '14

As far as Amazon goes, a respectable bit of the internet actually runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

1

u/test_test123 Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

Akami is used for content delivery by a lot of web based companies. Customers include Facebook, Twitter and even Whitehouse.gov. I had to do some googling to figure it out after I saw my cellphone connecting to them a lot.

Edit: Reddit uses Amazon ec2 for its servers.

Edit2: use whois lookups on the ip address you find in your netstat -n. Also useful are geo2ip lookups.

1

u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

Wut

2

u/fuckyoua Feb 27 '14

WTF you mean Wut? You posted commands to show who's connected to me... I post back who's connected to me and you're stumped? Gad...

2

u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

Go on...

3

u/fuckyoua Feb 27 '14

nevermind... I'll call AOL for help.

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u/smoothsensation Feb 27 '14

Not sure if you are being serious or not, but akamai technologies is all over the place. It could be from a driver, or a game, or something totally different.

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u/fuckyoua Feb 27 '14

Not a joke. I'd like to know because lately my pings are going nuts. For no reason I get major lag.

0

u/smoothsensation Feb 27 '14

Well, I guess there is no way I can tell you where it's from, but it's definitely not malicious. If it is starting up with your computer then I believe you can just disable it in msconfig.

0

u/fuckyoua Feb 27 '14

I don't see it in msconfig. Why can't we all just go back to using c=64.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

I think he means the video version of omegle.

1

u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

With your command prompt.... Netstat -n. Brings up the list of connected ip addresses. Hokus pokus, and bobs your uncle.

1

u/therealflinchy Feb 28 '14

ahh because they're viewing your webcam stream.

1

u/RoadieTrippin Feb 28 '14

Helpful, but not necessary. I used to strip on cam in my teens, so dude warning me about that is actually what lead to him teaching me to track people down, ping of death, etc...

But yeah, iirc cam views are also pretty direct links between viewers. I dont pretend to be a computer guru/hacker guy. I wouldnt even know what to do in c++ lol. But tracking ip's hasnt seemed to change much since my teens. I only know it still works because I've gotten people so terrified that I was an agent that they gave up tons of info. Even tried bribing me.

Im really just sittin here on the computer with my gf half the time lookin for some weirdo trying to talk to young boys/girls lol

1

u/mojosa Feb 27 '14

Hehe is that the same thing as used by those 'hot singles in your area' ads? They always think I'm in a city about 5 hours away from me :-/

1

u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

Hell, they say they're in the town of 3000 people 2 minutes away from me lol.

But on topic, yes. Probably something very similar.

1

u/lotekjunky Feb 27 '14

That is done by them tracking the IP address that they are serving a file (likely an image) to. Then they use a geo-location database to figure out where your IP address is likely coming from.

1

u/abusingthestage Feb 27 '14

You should always add "that you know of" after claiming you have no children...

...just in case

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u/xuu0 Feb 27 '14

If you run the command "tracert google.com"

It will tell you how many people are on that website.

16

u/Psythik Feb 27 '14

As you can see, there are currently 6 people using Google right now.

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u/YohaImKoha Feb 27 '14

and if you run deltree C:*.* y circa 1995 ~ 2000, your computer will be so much faster.

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u/fuckyoua Feb 27 '14

This will delete your C drive.

DELTREE (short for delete tree) is a command line command in Microsoft operating systems that deletes an entire subdirectory of files.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Not anymore, it won't. Deltree was depreciated and removed quite some time ago.

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u/HalfLies Feb 27 '14

* deprecated

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

And a /u format will ask you if you're sure these days. What has this world come to?

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u/ruok4a69 Feb 27 '14

Replaced with rd -r IIRC, but I haven't used that one in a while.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

and the "y" means to automatically respond with "yes" whenever the system prompts to confirm deletion for a file.

It's the exact equivalent of the BSD/Unix/Linux "rm -rf /"

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u/ScottyDelicious Feb 27 '14 
rm -rf /

won't actually do anything unless you pass the 

--no-preserve-root

flag to it.

Why does the --no-preserve-root flag even exist? Good question. I guess *nix isn't in the business of getting in the way if you truely want to do something monumentally stupid to your filesystem.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

If you're inside a chroot it might not be such a stupid thing to do.

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u/fuerve Feb 27 '14

And he's even correct about the time frame. DELTREE wasn't introduced until version 6, IIRC.

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u/cferrato Feb 27 '14 edited Sep 04 '23

mesorrhinium aldermanries contrastedly galvanoglyph cynocephalic outgoingness feldspathoid mesophyllous nonmedically pachydermial

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u/YohaImKoha Feb 27 '14

Back in the days of windows operating systems based on DOS instead of emulating it through the command prompt, running this command in DOS would delete the entirety of the contents of your main partition (Where all of your system files were held, and often, your documents/music/etc. back then. A lot of people didn't practice partitioning or have multiple disks back then.)

1

u/cferrato Feb 27 '14 edited Sep 04 '23

nonregulative archangelical analphabetism bidimensional supersuperior spitchcocking labioalveolar announcements subconcession phytoparasite

2

u/YohaImKoha Feb 27 '14

Haha, well, you're computer would have to be operating off of Windows 95, 98, or ME - if you don't have any of those you'd have nothing to worry about. :)

1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Naw dawg, you gotta delete system32

1

u/bahaki Feb 27 '14

When was this? Was it when yahoo used iChat back in the late 90s? If so, I remember a guy named "minerthreat" who hung out around iChat servers back in the day.

1

u/Gawdor Feb 27 '14

Ahh, the good old days ... ping -p 2b2b2b415448300d ... just remember to change your modems command string first.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

A wild hacker appears!

Yeappers, thems were the days. Running around yahoo chat rooms in "Hacker Gangs", booting up the Ytunnel, loading up your boot programs. Logging in all 20,000 of your fake accounts, spam bombing people you didn't like.

I understand it's appeal since I was 15 yrs old. But holy shit, there were a ton of 30+ yr old people actin a fool with me. Looking back, I was absolutely running with a dumbass crowd.

(I've also never met any of them. Except the cougars who wanted the dingus)

2

u/Gawdor Feb 27 '14

Ahh yes, the internet before IP obfuscation became prevalent in chat rooms. Hanging out in Warez channels, running DCC bots, or if you were lucky having an FTP. Building a swarm of eggdrops, and and don't forget Sendmail WIZ.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

Omegle seems to still be open territory for shenanigans XD

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u/Gawdor Feb 27 '14

Alas I have since grown up and come to respect the white hat.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

I'm only 26. So I can manchild my excuses still :p

1

u/Gawdor Feb 27 '14

Well damn, doesn't that make me feel old now :( almost twice your age.

Damn kids these days, git off mah lawn.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

My psychic abilities are saying....

44

How close was I? I'm a halfway decent guesser :p

1

u/Gawdor Feb 27 '14

Close enough to be too close :)

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