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
Author Archives: Aaron 'BingoBoingo' Rogier
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
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
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
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
Troubled EgoPay cries "Hack"
Payments processor EgoPay which has been troubled since at least December recently issued a blog post stating that they have fired employees likely responsible, and that the source of their problems was likely internal to their company. The full text of the post is preserved below for posterity. Continue reading
Winklevii Intend New York Based Exchange
The Winklevoss twins are reportedly working on a New York based Bitcoin exchange that will exist in submission to all United States regulations. This is in spite of New York doing everything it can to write itself outside of Bitcoin in both its regulatory environment and legal climate.
Group Proposes Bitcoin Wallet Privacy Ratings Criteria
A group referring to itself as the Open Bitcoin Privacy Project has recently released a draft set of criteria for comment that they would like to use for evaluating and rating different Bitcoin wallets from a privacy perspective. The criteria include a number of points about wallet behavior alongside a number of other factors. The heading under which their proposed criteria fall include: Continue reading
Drones Revolutionize Cross Border Drug Shipment
While the Silk Road trial is ongoing, San Diego's NBC news affiliate is reporting on a drone that crashed near the border crossing at San Ysidro while carrying more than 6 pounds of methamphetamine. The crash location itself was a Tijuana grocery store parking lot. This is far from the first report of drug trafficking across the United States – Mexican border using drones, and is largely notable because of the drone's crash. Continue reading