From February second through Valentines Day recycled food byproduct purveyor McDonald's will be minting and accepting the limited redemption of their own alternate currency. The currency will be allocated by fiat through a "Lovin' Lead" at each individual store that will select 100 customers at their location and offer them the chance to pay with the alternate currency. Those selected may commit a "Lovin' Act" as specified by the "Lovin' Lead" in order to pay for their "meal" at the cash register. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: January 2015
Police Offer Well Surveilled "Online Exchange Zone"
Columbia, Missouri police have recently unveiled an online exchange zone where people might exchange goods being bought and sold on the Internet. All that is necessary to take advantage of this "safe space" for transacting with other members of the public is arranging to meet in the lobby of the police station as this video so helpfully demonstrates. Also emphasized heavily in the video is that in this "safe space" you are prohibiting from bringing or transacting in weapons. Continue reading
Police Warn Bitcoin Extortion Letter Recipients Not To Pay
Farmington Police have told recipients of an extortion letter – which demands payment of USD $2,000 made in bitcoin – not to send payment but to contact local police instead. Farmington Police are so concerned about the pay or be killed letters that they've involved the FBI and Postal Inspector to investigate further. Continue reading
Barret Brown: The Myth of Plea Leniency
Last week journalist Barret Brown was sentenced to 63 months in prison after entering a guilty plea. In contrast to Government approved journalists handling information unfavorable to the regime, Barret Brown was charged as an accessory to activities he reported on while New York Times reporter James Risen was not charged as an accessory for the "espionage" he reported on. Being completely at the whims of the sentencing court the court determined: Continue reading
Reddit Drops "CryptoCurrency Engineer"
Ryan X. Charles has announced that he is no longer working for Reddit, a "social media" platform with questionable practices. He was hired in December of last year and tasked with producing yet another scam-coin. Redditnote has not materialized during the two months of Charles' employment, and although his statement implies that it will be abandoned, there is no official affirmation at this time. It is now unclear as to how Reddit will make good on its promise to "give back" 5 million dollars.
BlackPhone Less Opaque Than Promised
Silent Circle has confirmed allegations that their privacy software has been completely useless. A memory corruption vulnerability allowed decryption of private messages to any attacker with the victim's user ID or phone number. The attacker can trigger the flaw by sending a hostile text message. Silent Circle is no stranger to this kind of embarrassment; a few months after receiving 30 million dollars in funding, a Blackphone was rooted by hackers at DEFCON. Discouraged former users of this pathetic device should be comforted to know that proper cryptography will likely be made user friendly by the end of the year. Until then, people who wish to obscure their messages from the prying eyes of big brother should stick to the classics.
Greece Taps Anti-Bitcoin Video Game Economist as Finance Minister
One piece of fallout from the recent SYRIZA win in Greece's election is the appointment of Yanis Varoufakis, most notable for tinkering with Valve's Steam video game marketplace to the position of Finance Minister. Yanis Varoufakis is much less notable for in the spring of 2013 writing one of the many essays naively assailing Bitcoin as some sort of impossible fantasy incapable of anything, an essay that safely could have remained entirely without note. Unfortunately someone decided to promote him from advising ways for an arcade could extract more money from chumps to managing the finances of a populated area that is still by some miracle, in some form a sovereign state with a government. Let us consider some excepts beginning with the title: Continue reading
LocalBitcoins.com Compromised, Bitcoins Stolen
It appears that LocalBitcoins LiveChat feature was compromised earlier today and that the attacker fooled some users with a trojan and proceeded to withdraw coins from their accounts. An administrator for LB posted the following message on the LB forums: Continue reading
Rumor: CenturyLink May Buy CoinTerra
A snippet of from the St Louis Business Journal offers that troubled Bitcoin mining firm CoinTerra might or may have been acquired by Louisiana based Internet Service Provider CenturyLink as it continues to progress through a Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy.
CSM Profiles Homero J Garza, Serial Entrepreneur
Today the Christian Science Monitor published an profile of Homero "Josh" Garza featuring selection from an interview they conducted before the North American Bitcoin conference. Most of the information in the profile is not going to be new to anyone who has been following the GAW saga, but the profile covers Garza's history of serial entrepreneurship from Optima Technology and Great Awk Wireless to GAW Miners. Continue reading