A reddit user discovered that when he recently went to claim the balance from a "Crypto Coin Wallet Card" physical Bitcoin product the balance had already been spent (archived). If you happen to have any sort of physical Bitcoin the best time to recover the balance from the private key is well before the person who generated that key inevitably gives in to the temptation to spend the balance themselves. Sorry for your loss.
HSBC Executive Arrested For Inside Trading
HSBC the bank known for being charged with enabling Latin American drug cartels to launder money, found one of its executives charged for insider trading Tuesday night. Mark Johnson, global head of foreign exchange trading as HSBC, was detained at JFK airport attempting to board a transatlantic flight to London. The complaint accuses Johnson of "defrauding client", and “corruptly manipulated the foreign exchange market to benefit themselves and their bank”.
In particular, Johsnon and his colleague Stuart Scott, who was also charged, made a $3mn profit by fraudulent trading in front of clients market buy orders, and then charging fees for their "work". They would essentially instantly profit from a price spike on their trades from client orders pushing the price up. Meanwhile Bitcoin regularly sees insider trading and the economic health that follows.
Alleged Hero Arrested
Authorities have announced the arrest of Artem Vaulin, allegedly the man behind the KickassTorrents p2p bittorrent site. Ukranian prosecutors have charged Mr. Vaulin with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement. kat.cr does not host any copyright infriging matter, but contains links to peers that can share the file. The DOJ is seeking to deport him to the US to stand trial for violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to an affidavit filed by Homeland Security agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan. Mr Der-Yeghiayan is famously known as a witness in the Ross Ulbricht trial, specifically the one who was convinced Mark Karpelès did it.
The Department of Justice press release can be found here. Peace in our time.
Poor Wi-Fi Hygeine Snags Data At RNC
Avast security announced today that rogue wireless access points set up in and around areas at the Republican national convention in Ohio netted around 1200 unsuspecting users in what the company claims was an experiment to demonstrate how risky it can be to connect to public Wi-Fi. Researchers set up several fake access points, naming them after common hotspots, and some with clever names like “I vote Trump! free Internet”. Approximately 1.6 Gb's of data was exposed, with the report stating that 68.3% of users had their identities or other sensitive information exposed upon connection. Nearly 25% of the users browsed porn sites, while only a little over 5% used the connections to play Pokemon Go. The experiment at the very least highlighted the lack of security consciousness amongst the average person that occurs on a daily basis.
US Department of "Defense" Switches To iPhone
Reports are emerging that the United States Department of "Defense"1 is moving from Google's smartphone platform to Apple's smartphone platform. Apple already enjoys a rather chummy relationship with various organs of the United States government but now Apple has won endorsement from the Special Operations Command for the supposed tactical utility offered by the iPhone 6s ™(r). The price Apple paid for the marketing value of having the iPhone, assembled in Shenzen by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., endorsed as a "National Security Product" used by 31337 special forces operators playing Modern Warfare IRL has not been disclosed. Peace in our time.
An odd designation considering nearly all of its roles and abilities are balanced towards offensive rather than defensive capability. ↩
Coinbase's Brian Armstrong Huffs The Ethereum Hardfork Jenkem
With approximately 24 hours left until Ethereum forks, at block 1,920,000, reports show that at least 60% of miners are supporting a hard fork at this time. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (WOT:nonperson) lauded the effort on twitter, stating that "If ethereum pulls off this hard fork, very positive signal for them as a team. Shows they can listen to community, execute in time of crisis." Ironically, it appears Mr. Armstrong will be correct in his assessment, as the hard fork will permanently execute any hopes that one can take the immutability of the Ether block chain seriously, and proving that "smart contracts" are not unstoppable and irreversible despite the hype to the contrary. Sorry for your loss.
First Difficulty Adjustment After Halving: Very Slight Increase
The Bitcoin network mining difficulty went from 213398925331.32391357 t0 213492501107.51336670 an increase of 0.04385016% in the first difficulty adjustment after the network's second halving. Prices reported by fiat/Bitcoin interfaces have been similarly stable staying with the number of United States dollars required to purchase a Bitcoin remaining in the middle 600s much of the time. HODL on!
Arizona Deputies Refused Service By Taco Bell Employee
Two deputies with the Lee County Sheriff's department were refused service by a Taco Bell cashier on Saturday night (archived). The cashier reportedly told the two that the restaurant does not serve law "enforcement" officers. In spite of reports that other customers approved of the cashier's exercising her ability to refuse service, the cashier was fired Sunday while management from the Franchisee and Yum brands were occupied with apologizing to the local "law enforcement" community.
The cashier has neither been identified nor given an opportunity by the local media to offer details about the incident. The possibility of bad behavior on the part of the deputies acutely justifying the refusal of service for reasons beyond the cashier taking a principled stand may exist. Peace in our time.
EthereumClassic Emerges!
Ether huffers dissatisfied with community attempts to change the formula of their beloved jenkem have released EthereumClassic, billed on github as "a project to keep the original censorship-resistant Ethereum going". The github repo offered no actual code, only a statement regarding opposition to the hard fork meant to rescue The Dao.1 A subreddit was also set up, r/ethereumclassic, which had 75 members at the time of this article. The move follows an increased amount of anxiety in the community as the hard fork inches closer, with new security issues seemingly found every day. Just yesterday it was discovered that Ethereum's parity HTTP JSON API contained a flaw that would allow anyone to remotely empty wallets. The Ethereum Classic community did not respond to a request for comment as to whether their team planned on fixing these issues. Sorry for your loss.
Notably this hardfork doesn't actually change the working of Ethereum. It instead retroactively changes the meaning of the DAO's contract. This is a truly brazen attempt at theft under the guise of "improving the network" by changing one thing built on it. It also means Ethereum clients can accept either side of the chainsplit for maximum lulz. ↩
Three Baton Rouge Officers Killed In Ambush
Three Baton Rouge, Louisiana police officers were killed after responding to a call of shots fired (archived). Once the police arrived at the scene the suspects who appeared to already be engaged in a gun battle with each other redirected their aggro and targeted the police officers. Whether this was an honest gun battle between actual adversaries that turned into an ambush when police arrived or a planned ambush shaped by the idea that simulating a gun battle in the streets would1 attract a sizeable police response. One of the ambushers was shot dead and two were arrested. Other participants may at present be suffering neither confinement nor the actualization of their mortality. Peace in our time.
At least at present ↩