[ck2]

By the way have you seen Mark Karpeles public apology in Tokyo?

(20 seconds in) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15IZtzWOzRU

So he is French, educated in Paris and living in Japan since 2009?

Speaks French, English and Japanese. Sounds interesting, he's no dummy.

[mintytruck]

Some non-Japanese speakers are giving him credit for apologizing in Japanese, and Japanese media is also giving him leeway -- only because he's a foreigner. But his Japanese is really pitiful, and the apology is a farce.

The point of this kind of apology is to tell people you are sorry and you have caused trouble to other people, and you are repenting for this trouble. There is no such feeling in this act of Karpeles.

Moushi-wake-arimasen is a phrase used to mean "there is no excuse [for what I have commited]". He was unable to finish it, and half way through he goes, nan-dakke? Meaning "what was it?". If Mark is really trying to do it Japanese style, he would not have messed up like this. Some people say he is under stress. I don't think that gives a free pass for such a shameful performance.

It's like a foreigner going to US court and thinking, I should act American, so starts by saying "Yo dude, my bad."

[afterburner]

Born in France, so he speaks French.

Involved with the internet, so he speaks English.

Lives in Japan, so he speaks Japanese.

This is not impressive.

[jmduke]

Speaking as someone who is anti-Karpeles and unilingual: I think speaking three languages, regardless of context, is incredibly impressive.

[nkuttler]

That's probably because of your upbringing and your surroundings. When English is your native language, and all the input you get (books, tv, music, internet) is in English, there's little incentive to learn more languages.

For a majority of the people on this planet, this isn't the case.

[afterburner]

It's extremely circumstance based. I have countless relatives that are tri- or quadri-lingual (or more), merely because they have different cultures in their background and/or were forced to immigrate. Those that are uni- or bilingual simply were lucky enough (or stuck enough) that they didn't move much. And I don't think there's any particular astonishing knack for languages needed to explain this.

Additionally, if you're exposed to a new language early in life, it becomes much easier to learn new languages in the future. And being immersed in it forces you to learn, as your survival depends on it.

So, incredibly impressive? Nah. Mind you, if someone is legitimately a fast language learner, given that I am not at all, it does impress me, especially if they truly master it and can think in that language.

[Avalaxy]

It isn't. I'm Dutch, and had to learn Dutch (obviously), English, French and German. And so did all the other people I know. People who attended gymnasium also had to learn ancient Greek and Latin.

[iopq]

I can speak this much in 5-7 languages. It's not impressive.

I'm only fluent in 3 languages.

[sdrothrock]

I can't speak for his French (or English) proficiency, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that he "speaks Japanese."

He may know enough Japanese to get along in daily life -- many people I know who have lived here for a number of years develop some level of listening proficiency regardless of whether they can speak it -- but the Japanese he uses in the video does not convince me that he can "speak Japanese" in either the normal usage of the phrase (proficiency in the language) or the cultural usage of the phrase (understanding register and when and how to say things).

This should be a perfect, well-rehearsed apology. There's really no excuse for the level of Japanese he demonstrates in there. At the least, he should have written something, had a native check it, and then practiced saying it. He should also have gotten a suit/shirt that fit properly.

I know this comes across as sounding very superficial and nitpicky, but image means a lot here, especially in business situations, and especially with these formal apologies.

I don't know about his motives or feelings, but when I watch that video, it comes across as very half-assed, as if he doesn't really care and someone is making him do it. It's very unprofessional and culturally deaf; I would not use it as evidence that "he's no dummy."

[isaacb]

Speaking three languages doesn't qualify him as a competent developer.

[ck2]

Cannot comment on his code. Or how he operates a business.

Just that he seems rather smart in general, or rather not stupid.

I wonder what the motivation to move to Japan was.

[jonknee]

I suppose it's all relative, but it should be pretty easy to judge his code and how he operates a business--MtGox was by all measures poorly coded and that directly resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being damaged financially.

He may have a high IQ, but he is not fit to run a giant financial exchange. I'm not sure any single person is, this is why large financial organizations have tons of people with different areas of expertise (development, security, law, finance, risk, etc etc). He rode "internet freedom" all the way to being way over his head and took everyone else down with him.

[bennyg]

He built an MVP and then kept going by iterating on the same codebase. This is literally the mentality HN tries to collectively push forward. If he had gotten the security/crypto right the tables would be turned and we'd be reading an article about how a guy bootstrapped the largest crypto currency exchange and how many people thought they could do it too and lost everybody's money collectively trying.

I'm beginning to think that the only constant in security/crypto is that people fuck it up.

[jonknee]

That's one way to look at it, another is that it wasn't minimally viable at all because it did the worst thing that an exchange can possibly do--lost everyone's money.

Coding aside, I don't think anyone at HN tries to push the mentality that you should try a financial startup without any accountants or a compliance department.

[thesimpsons1022]

where do people get the idea that speaking multiple languages makes you intelligent. In a lot of third world countries almost everyone speaks 4 or 5 languages.

[RockyMcNuts]

Married to a Japanese woman... allegedly moved there after an accusation of computer fraud in France - http://www.lejsl.com/saone-et-loire/2014/03/01/un-qi-superie...

[rodgerd]

The normal French academic school curriculum mandates three languages: French, a secondary language studied in-depth, and a tertiary language. So school leavers should be fluent in one, competant in another, and have the basics of a third.

If people are expected to learn languages early, polyglots are the norm.