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
Category Archives: News
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
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
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.
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
Bitcointalk is Down, Migrating? – Update – Disk Failure
Attempts to reach Bitcointalk.org now result in database errors. Whether or not this is a signal Bitcointalk is migrating to its new bespoke platform from Simple Machine Forums is unclear. As a reminder, a reputable mirror at http://bitcointa.lk exists. Update: They just experienced a disk failure.
Prosecutors Seek to Bar DPR Interview From Jury – Updated
In Wired Andy Greenberg writes that the Preet Bharara's team prosecuting the Silk Road case wants to bar the Jury from being exposed to the only interview done with the Dread Pirate Roberts of the Silk Road. The interview done by Andy Greenberg for Forbes is notable for sounding to Department of Homeland Security agents a lot like Mark Karpelès and containing a number of answers from the Dread Pirate Roberts which supports the argument presently being advanced by the defense that in spite of founding the Silk Road and being caught holding the bad for the Silk Road Ulbricht had little to do with the Silk Road for most of its history. Continue reading