Hal Finney, the programmer and cryptographer, has died aged 58. Finney worked for APh Technology Consultants, who helped design the Intellivision. He worked on several titles for Intellivision and Atari 2600, and was responsible for the "Yer Out" voice in Major League Baseball without the need for an Intellivoice. He later went on to be the second programmer hired to work on PGP. He also became the first person to receive a Bitcoin payment! Sadly, Hal was diagnosed with ALS (AKA Motor Neurone Disease or Lou Gehrig's Disease) in 2009. He was unable to work by 2011 and, two years later, was confined to a wheelchair and doing everything with an eye tracker, including talking through a voice synthesizer. After his passing, he was cryogenically frozen. Hal's game titles include: Adventures of TRON (VCS) Armor Ambush (VCS) Astroblast (VCS) Dark Cavern (VCS) Night Stalker (VCS) Space Attack (VCS) Space Battle (Intellivision) Star Strike (Intellivision) He also programmed two unreleased titles for the Intellivision Entertainment Computer System add-on - Conversational French and Jack LaLanne's Physical Conditioning. RIP Hal - thanks for some great games and cryptography! Here are some links: http://www.wired.com/2014/08/hal-finney/ http://www.digitpress.com/library/interviews/interview_hal_finney.html http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...s-neighbor-the-bitcoin-ghostwriter-who-wasnt/ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0 *EDIT* Just in case the thread gets derailed with Ice Bucket Challenge talk, I've created a separate thread for such stuff: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?53441-The-ASSEMbler-ALS-Ice-Bucket-Challenge
