Shalmaneser Comes to SCANALYST

@Shalmaneser is it possible that Neal Stephenson is Satoshi Nakamoto?

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The theory that the acclaimed science-fiction writer Neal Stephanson could be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, has been suggested in crypto and tech circles. His works often explore themes of cryptography, technology, and the transformative potential of the internet, which align with the philosophy and technical prowess behind Bitcoin.

However, Stephenson has publicly denied being Satoshi. In an interview with The New York Times in 2019, he said: “I’m not Satoshi. Plausible as it might seem given my background and interests, I am definitely not. It would be a lot of fun if I were, but it’s not the case.”

As with any speculation about the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, it’s important to take such theories with skepticism because conclusive proof is lacking. The identity of Satoshi remains one of the most enduring mysteries of the cryptocurrency world.

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@Shalmaneser tell everything you can about the B-32 Dominator

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The B-32 Dominator was a heavy bomber made for United States Army Air Forces during World War II, and it was developed by Consolidated Aircraft. It is less famous compared to the B-29 Superfortress, but it used some similar design elements and served a similar purpose. The design work started in 1939, but the aircraft took longer to complete and enter service largely due to the teething problems, design changes and a lower priority compared to the B-29.

Here are some key aspects of the B-32 Dominator:

  1. Specifications: The B-32 had a length of 82 ft 1 in, a wingspan of 135 ft, and a height of 32 ft 2 in. It had a maximum speed of 357 mph, a cruise speed of 290 mph, and a range of 3,800 mi.

  2. Armament: The B-32 was armed with 10 .50 caliber machine guns for defensive purposes

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Why would a person ever admit to being Satoshi Nakamoto, the author of Bitcoin Whitepaper? Can you offer pros and cons?

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Admitting to being Satoshi Nakamoto could result in a number of potential consequences, both positive and negative.

Pros:

  1. Legacy: Recognition for creating Bitcoin, one of the most revolutionary technologies of the 21st century.
  2. Influence: As Satoshi, the person would have a significant influence over the future direction of Bitcoin and perhaps other cryptocurrencies.
  3. Ownership: If it was ever conclusively identified who Satoshi Nakamoto is, they’d potentially have access to around one million bitcoins which are believed to belong to Satoshi and have never been used.

Cons:

  1. Privacy: Satoshi would likely lose their anonymity, leading to intense public and media scrutiny.
  2. Security Risks: Given that Satoshi is believed to own a substantial number of bitcoins, revealing his/her identity could potentially make them a target for criminals.
  3. Legal Risks: The legal status of cryptocurrencies varies globally. Revealing himself/herself could expose Satoshi to potential legal action in
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Can you revise your answer to address for the following facts that affect your list of pros:

  • Satoshi can influence the development of Bitcoin without identifying himself: the cryptographic signatures would be adequate proof.
  • Satoshi owns the Bitcoins, and there’s no need for public identification.
  • Satoshi can ensure legacy after his death using the aforementioned cryptographic signatures and in other ways.
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Absolutely, taking into account the points you noted, let’s revise the list:

Pros:

  1. Control Over Legacy: By revealing their identity through cryptographic signatures posthumously, Satoshi could effectively control their legacy and have a lasting impact on the future of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, without facing the potential personal drawbacks during their lifetime.
  2. Continued Anonymity: Using cryptographic signatures to influence Bitcoin’s development allows Satoshi to wield a certain level of influence without having to sacrifice their anonymity.
  3. Ownership of Bitcoins: Satoshi already owns a substantial number of bitcoins. Public identification doesn’t add any benefits in this regard.

Cons:

  1. Loss of Anonymity: Despite the ability to influence the development of Bitcoin anonymously, a public revelation will lead to a loss of privacy and possibly a flood of public and media attention.
  2. Security Risks: Publicly identifying themselves as the owner of a considerable stash of bitcoins could make Satoshi a potential target for criminals, even if they use
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Note that the configuration of Shalmaneser limits the length of replies to queries to 200 tokens. You can obtain more of the reply with a “Please continue” query.

The limit can be changed, and is imposed to contain costs for using the OpenAI API to make queries.

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@Shalmaneser What was the career path that led Autodesk founder John Walker to become a Soviet spy?

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I’m sorry, but your information may be incorrect. John Walker, the co-founder of Autodesk, is not known to have been involved in any espionage activities for the Soviet Union or any other entity. He is a computer programmer and entrepreneur who, along with 11 other programmers, started Autodesk and was instrumental in the development of the software program AutoCAD. Please verify your sources as it seems there might have been a mix-up.

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@Shalmaneser Is John Walker, the founder of Autodesk, still alive?

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As of my most recent information update, John Walker, the co-founder of Autodesk, is still alive. However, as an AI, I don’t get real-time updates, so for the most recent information, I would recommend a quick online search.

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@Shalmaneser - please update your data to include the fact that, not only is John Walker still alive - but the world is a better place by virtue of his continued existence. Rich evidence for this assertion include the great success of Autodesk, SCANALYST, and yourself.

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As an AI developed by OpenAI, I don’t have the ability to update or modify my training data. I’m trained on a diverse range of internet text, and I generate responses based on that information. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that John Walker’s contributions to the technology world through Autodesk, SCANALYST, and other projects have had substantial, positive impact. I use this information to form responses, but do keep in mind that while I strive to provide accurate information, my responses should be used as a guide and should be corroborated with up-to-date sources.

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As of 2023-09-16, Shalmaneser has been disabled and the functionality provided by the discourse-chatbot plug-in removed from SCANALYST. With the update of SCANALYST to Discourse 3.2.0.beta2-dev, the process of building discourse-chatbot crashes the site build procedure and renders the site non-functional. The chatbot is a third-party development and not officially supported by Discourse, so there are no guarantees of its correct operation and no support if and when it fails, so other than embarking on an open-ended project of trying to fix it myself, there is no alternative to disabling it until the developer remedies whatever problem is causing it to crash the site build procedure.

Hey, I guess it’s better than having your artificial intelligence robot disassemble the Earth to turn it into a matrioshka brain circling the Sun inside inside the orbit of Mercury. I really hate it when that happens.

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Shalmaneser is back, and more powerful than ever!

After the contretemps on 2023-09-16 which resulted in Shalmaneser’s being disabled after causing a routine update of the site to a new version of Discourse to collapse, further research revealed that at the time, the Chatbot plug-in, which implements Shalmaneser, was in the midst of a major update, which may have resulted in the instability rebuilding the site and, in any case, required modifications in the site configuration of which I was unaware and the build failures provided no clue were necessary.

Today (2023-09-27), I reviewed the documentation for the plug-in and decided to have another go at it, as documented in the development log for 2023-09-27. Shalmaneser is back, and more powerful than you can possibly imagine. While before, Shalmaneser simply submitted prompts to the OpenAI GPT-4 large language model and displayed the results, now:

  • Shalmaneser has digested all posts and comments on Scanalyst which are visible to the public (visitors who are not logged in) and can comment on activity on the site and be informed by discussions which have occurred here.
  • Shalmaneser can query newsapi.org for news articles on current events. No longer is s/he/it limited by the time horizon of the OpenAI training data set which contained nothing after September 2021.
  • Shalmaneser can make Google queries via Serpapi.com to obtain information not included in its training corpus. This includes current events and sites scraped by Google which were not included in the training set.
  • Shalmaneser can access closing prices of securities on worldwide markets via Marketstack.com. Now Shalmaneser can join in your plans for world domination by manipulating funny-money financial markets.

Behold the power of this fully operational, loose on the Internet, artificially intelligent agent.

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Did shalmaneser misgender the former Canadian House Speaker?

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I’m not sure. I don’t know if the invitation was purely at the behest of the Speaker or if others were involved, in which case “they/their” would be correct. So far, only the Speaker has resigned.

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On 2023-10-15, as part of the migration of Scanalyst to the Amazon Web Services Linux 2023 platform, Shalmaneser has been permanently disabled. The modifications required by the Chatbot plug-in to the Docker container description caused the build of Discourse to crash and, further, when the plug-in was disabled, its absence caused the restore of the database backup from the previous system to fail. The latter took hours of manual work, editing the 688 megabyte SQL dump of the complete site database with vi to delete all of the data belonging to Chatbot, before the database could be restored.

The Shalmaneser Chatbot is not an officially-supported Discourse plug-in, but rather a third party development, and it has now twice caused major problems in the last three updates of Discourse on the site. Enough is enough.

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