Author Archives: Aaron 'BingoBoingo' Rogier

Monsanto On Dicamba Drift Disaster: We Are Not An Enforcement Agency, To Argentina: We Are An Enforcement Agency

Posted on by

In response to growing tensions over Monsanto's Dicamba resistant soybeans tempting farmers to use Dicamba and wilting neighboring soybean fields along with the occasional stand of trees,1 Monsanto's response through a representative of the company is:

“We understand the EPA is investigating and Monsanto is supporting that work.”

Richard: “The thing I want to underline is we, as a company, aren’t an enforcement agency. We’re confident that the state officials will be evaluating the complaints, will investigate and will take appropriate actions.

“As a company, we can’t speculate on what action government officials will take – especially those who are investigating complaints of misuse. I’m sure they’re working diligently and will be taking action.”

– Monsanto Representative to Delta Farm News (archived)

By contrast when Argentina refused to follow Monsanto's exacting instructions in an attempt to enforce dubious and expiring patents, acting as an enforcement agency Monsanto embargoed Argentina.

For all the pain market forces are continuing to heap on the value of the corn crop, the soy crop this year is on track to produce nothing but losers. On one side will be farmers with a spectacular haul burdened by torts and on the other are farmers who went through the expense of planting only to harvest wilt if they don't end up tilling the field under. Sorry for your loss.

  1. On a recent country drive numerous stands of deciduous trees near farms appeared to have been experiencing profound stress disproportionate to this summer's heat. ↩

Louisiana Enacts and New York Considers Protecting Law Enforcement With Hate Crime Laws

Posted on by

A new trend emerging in regional legislatures governing subdivisions of the United States are efforts to protect "law enforcement" officers by passing "Blue Lives Matters" laws making attacks on police subject to enhanced penalties as "hate" crimes. Apparently the existing mechanism for enhanced penalties, which work because attacking a "law enforcement" officer is already its own unique additional criminal charge, aren't working. Tensions between "law enforcement" and the public are high for a number of reasons. Peace in our time.

Blog Post On Insurance Disappears From BitGo Website

Posted on by

On February 25th 2015 BitGo, the firm which "held" the recently liberated Bitfinex customer coins in a sort of deviant escrow demanded by the United States Commodity and Futures Trading Commision, published a blog post on how they were insured against theft. That blog post is no longer available on BitGo's website. Bitstamp reportedly also uses BitGo in a similar capacity though they assure customers that the particulars of their arrangement are so different this could never happen to their customers.

P2SH considered harmful, sorry for your loss.

Phree Software Download Website Fosshub Distributed MBR Tainting Malware

Posted on by

This week the free software download website Fosshub distributed master boot record tainting malware after reportedly being compromised (archived). The alleged attackers are trumpeting that in spite of producing malware that infected the master boot record of affected machines, that bundling further malware with an impact beyond vandalizing machine start up output was too much for them. Such claims are to be taken with a grain of salt and affected machines cleansed with fire. Sorry for your loss.

Woman's Facebook Account Suspended During Fatal Standoff

Posted on by

Korryn Gaines (WOT:nonperson) was killed by Baltimore County police during a standoff. Before killing the 23 year old woman police requested that Facebook suspend the social media accounts she was using to broadcast her personal revolution. Facebook obliged, she died. Apparently the revolution will not be Facebooked, Instagrammed or Whatapp'd.1 Peace in our time.

  1. As these are all Facebook social media properties.  ↩

First US Cop Faces Terrorism Charges, Crime: Buying Gift Cards

Posted on by

In what mainstream media is reporting as the first case of terrorism charges targeting a law enforcement officer in the United States, a DC area transit cop bought ~250 United States dollars worth of gift cards (archived). Prosecutors allege he then distributed the gift card codes to FBI agents so that those FBI agents could buy paid mobile messaging apps for the Islamic State.

Law enforcement officers not facing terrorism charges in the United States include:

Those most be some serious mobile messaging apps.

Yet Another Underwhelming Effort To Fork Bitcoin Unveiled

Posted on by

After the grossly underwhelming reveal of last month's "Terminator Plan" hard fork buzz this month brings yet another social engineering attempt. A new subreddit named "btcfork" was publicly announced and it swiftly filled with a bunch of activity from people who won't attach names to the positions they are trying to advance. Apparently having people with names was the problem this whole time! This latest attempt comes after Ethereum hard forked with substantial lulz. The nameless posters however insist that this will be different and successful. Sorry fork, your loss.

Network Difficulty Experiences Modest Drop Of ~5.4% In Second Change Post Halving

Posted on by

Bitcoin network difficulty fell ~5.43 percent from 213492501107.51336670 to 201893210853.05895996 in its second adjustment following the second halving of the Bitcoin block reward subsidy. The first adjustment following the halving was a very slight increase in difficulty. Paired with the bleeding and breaking occurring among fiat/Bitcoin interfaces it looks like the short term forecast is "there will be lulz."

Coinbase Engineering Director Jokes That Roger VERified Their Coins Are Safe

Posted on by

Coinbase Director of Engineering Charles Lee1 (WOT:coblee) today joked on Twitter that Roger Ver has VERified the Coinbase coins are safe. Roger similarly VERified that the coins at Mt Gox were safe and present in their reserves up until the moment Mt Gox died and even then for a bit of time after that. The history of Roger VERified jokes stretches back to December of 2012.

In December 2012 Roger Ver (WOT:nonperson) used his access to the administrative panel of Blockchain.info in order to compromise the supposedly secret information of a user of that service following a dispute over a payment error made by an unrelated venture of Roger Ver's (archived). The payment error was for 4.5119 Bitcoin, an amount that summed to less than 50 United States dollars at a time when buying that amount of Bitcoin was still an easy task.2

Compounding Roger Ver's mistake was his attempt at a cover up insisting that he was a sufficiently special snowflake to have all threads discussing the matter retitled, locked,  and deleted (archived). At the time MPOE-PR (WOT:hanbot) wrote of his efforts:

We're not discussing the "change the thread title" part of your statement. We're discussing the "better yet, lock the thread and ask the mods to delete it" part of your statement.

It is not this thread that is causing undue alarm. The alarm is very much due, this BS of divulging customer details is widespread to the point of universality. Aurum did it, MtGox did it, the list is pretty much "everyone except MPEx". This has to cease, universally, as it has no place in BTC.

The other thing that has to cease is the unwarranted delusions of self importance. You personally are not great enough to request moderators to delete the signs of your stupidity "so as not to harm bitcoin". Should you want to request it, do it in the adequate terms, which are "I've been really stupid, please delete this before it ruins my reputation".

That aside, you personally are not big enough to harm Bitcoin, for one, and moreover this "too big to fail" mentality and the corresponding expectation of throwing everything to the wind for the sake of propping up random doods with self-awarded VIP status is completely irrational.

Since the Blockchain.info episode Roger Ver has continued his pursuit of pennies at the expense of potential fortunes. He publicly defended the insovlent Mt Gox, engaged in premature passport shennanigans that greatly restricted his ability to travel, further sold his illusion of credibility in the XTCoin and ClassicCoin pushes, and jumped on the ether huffing train shortly before their huffing bag detonated. Sorry for your Roger VERified loss.

  1. Of "Litecoin" infamy. Litecoin was this "better Bitcoin" endorsed by Wired Magazine in August 2013 much like DogeCoin and Ethereum would later be "better Bitcoins" endorsed by mainstream media rags until they sunk.  ↩

  2. It was indeed less that four years ago that a person could acquire 5 whole Bitcoins for less than the price of a nice restaurant meal.  ↩

Gawker Media's Nick Denton Personally Files For Bankruptcy

Posted on by

Gawker Media founder Nick Denton (WOT:nonperson) filed for bankruptcy protection. This follows Gawker Media's filing back in June. This bankruptcy filing follows Denton fraudulently misrepresenting to the court value of the Gawker Media stock posted as bond following the loss by his company and himself personally to Hulk Hogan. The day after Denton posted the Gawker media stock as bond, Gawker media filed for bankruptcy. Failing to take personal responsibility for his failings, Denton blames fellow homosexual in tech Peter Thiel (WOT:nonperson) for using his play money to support litigation against Denton and Gawker Media for outing Thiel's homosexuality. Sorry for your loss.