Vessenes' Foundation director Bruce Fenton has proposed a voluntary code of conduct that would adopt a form of historical revisionism as its first principle (archived). Fenton proposes that everyone who wants to be involved in Bitcoin let go of the past, forgive, and ignore the fact that in the past year numerous parties hostile to Bitcoin have engaged in attacks attempting to subvert the Bitcoin network. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: February 2016
Open Europe Closing
As numerous policies disconnected from reality collide into a clusterfuck of failure, the European Union is exploring an end to passport free travel in the Schengen area (archived).
Austrian Minister Seeks Constitutional Protection For Cash Payments
With many governments and businesses in Europe moving to abandon physical cash in favor of trackable electronic payments, Austrian Deputy Economy Minister Harald Mahrer has called for consitutional protection of the right to transact in cash for privacy reasons (archived). The European Union is currently debating restrictions on banknotes and coins in the name fighting of "terrorism" though central banks noise about negative interest rates suggests that European finance ministers advocating against physical cash may have ulterior motives.
As ClassicCoin Client Hits Release, Miners Formally Reject It
With the client designed to fork ClassicCoin from Bitcoin hitting release, numerous outlets are reporting a group representing pools with a substantial amount of the Bitcoin network hashrate have signed a letter formally rejecting the Classic fork. Who could have forseen ClassicCoin enjoying the same failure mode as XTCoin:
For all the ways the manufactured crisis around the ClassicCoin hard fork push is made to seem more polished than the XTCoin manufactured crisis, the results of the effort somehow seem still more underwhelming.
Maybe it's the part where back in August fiat markets were just starting to show indicators of an impending downturn, but now things are solidly falling apart? Could it be the full depth of the wealthlust inspired in various fiat "law enforcement" agents upon their exposure to Bitcoin's promise coming to light? How about the months long game of good cop/bad cop various fiat backed start ups have been playing in an effort to see just how many forks they might be able to sell some Bitcoin holders on. Perhaps it is just the fact that Bitcoin absolutely trounced fiat in every way that matters over the course of 2015.
If it seems like various fiat interests, outlets, and agents are getting more desperate in their attempts to alternately dismiss or insert crises into Bitcoin, it is because they are. That line Satoshi inserted into the Genesis block:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
is still there seven years later. That bit about what awaits fiat attempts to hard fork Bitcoin into something else remains one year later. Actual Bitcoin interests have abided the turmoil presented by various fiat/Bitcoin interfaces. By contrast fiat interests are struggling to handle fiat/Reality interfaces and are coping, as is their custom, through various forms of theft (archived). In the moral contest between Bitcoin's indifference to the hungry mouths of the world and fiat's theft from the mouths it promises to feed, there seems to be a clear winner. Sorry for your loss.
– From "Fiat Market Slide, fiat/Bitcoin Interfaces Follow In Friday Trading" published on Qntra January 16th, 2016
Embattled Ferguson Defies United States Department Of "Justice"
The embattled city of Ferguson in the frontier province of Missouri has refused to issue its consent to a "consent decree" sought by the United States Department of "Justice" which would end the troubled city as a going concern (archived). Since civil unrest struck Ferguson the small city north of St Louis has suffered financially with Moody's dropping Ferguson's credit rating seven steps, from a respectable Aa3 to Ba1 "junk" status all in one fell swoop this past September. The city with 21,000 residents and a roughly 12 million United States dollar annual budget if it consented to the decree would have been forced to, among other things, raise its level of "law enforcement" officer pay to the to 25th percentile for the region. The payroll bump alone is projected to generate approximately a million dollars worth of expenses for the city on its own. Other costs would include monitoring fees paid to the Department of "Justice" and an inevitable stand off with the firefighter's union over their salaries if a pay raise for police officers goes through. Ferguson's city government has resigned itself to Federal monitoring and other onerous provisions of the agreement, but they are taking a stand on the financial aspect as the numbers involved could lead to no outcome other than the dissolution of the city.
Cattle Rancher And American Patriot Cliven Bundy Arrested In Portland
American Patriot, Cattle Rancher, and inspiration for the militia liberation in Oregon Cliven Bundy was arrested in Portland after travelling from Nevada to support his sons (archived). He had travelled to Portland with his Nevada State Assembly member Michelle Fiore to seek the release of his children from Federal Prisoner of War1 camps. This round of militia liberation may be reaching its end. For 40 days and forty nights in the high desert of Oregon brave militia men and women have taken a stand supporting the Spirit of the United States Constitution and the American People against the crimes committed by the Federal Government. Since the dark day that Lavoy Finicum was slaughtered by Federal Forces and other militia leaders were captured with Ryan Bundy sustaining a gunshot wound, only four brave souls remained to continue the liberation and they have continued to maintain it under a constant state of seige. If the Oregon liberation ends today, may the American people honor the sacrifices of these brave militia souls have undertaken on their behalf.
What war? The war on America's productive citizens where they are deprived of the fruits of their labor in order to better support clerks and other socialist bureaucrats. ↩
Bitcointalk Default Trust Member Escrow.ms Arrested For Debit Card Fraud
Pankaj 'escrow.ms' Bhardwaj was arrested by police for participating in a fraud ring that used cloned debit cards to withdraw money from other people's accounts at automated teller machines (archived). Under his forum username escrow.ms, Bhardwaj was a member of the "Default Trust" list used to seed the reputation ratings system on Theymos's Bitcointalk forum. He enjoyed a stellar reputation on that forum as evidenced by a thread on that forum discussing recent developments in the life and times of escrow.ms forum escrow, default trust member, and apparent fiat payment card cloner. Escrow.ms is not the first member of Bitcointalk's default trust list to undergo a sudden transition from trustiness to ignominy. Shortly after the creation of the default trust list, inaugural member member TradeFortress operated node.js based webwallet service Inputs.io for only a few short months before 4,100 Bitcoins disappeared from the service on November 7th, 2013.
Clapper: "Internet Of Things" Offers Tempting Surveillance Opportunities
In testimony presented to the United States Senate, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that the horrifically insecure "Internet of Things" presents a target for United States surveillance operations (archived). In the same testimony Clapper noted United States activities in the United States were boosting the recruiting and resolve of organizations adversarial to the United States.
Intel Removes Skylake Feature Retroactively With Microcode Update
In further bad news for customers of Intel's Skylake chips, PC World is reporting that Intel has is issuing a microcode update which removes a feature present at shipping which allowed safely and easily overclocking the chips by increasing their base clock frequency (archived). Normally overclocking is done safely on other chips through increasing the multiplier applied to the base clock. This is because in other chips the base clock frequency is used to derive the frequency of a number of buses on the system which can begin exhibiting aberrant behavior when the base clock frequency is molested. Skylake however divorced the base clock from other system buses which reintroduced the possibility of overclocking the chips by increasing the base clock while leaving the locked multiplier alone. Continue reading
Dotcom Extradition Appeal Set To Begin August 29
Denying a request by United States agents to expedite the matter, Justice Raynor Asher of the High Court in Auckland has set Kim Dotcom's appeal to begin on August 29th, 2016 (archived). Lower Court Judge Nevin Dawson ruled in favor of extraditing Dotcom in the initial hearing, but so far appellate courts have ruled more favorably for Dotcom in this case than the lower courts have.