Earlier this week the council governing the United States Capitol region approved a bill which would lead to stipends for up to 200 persons with a history of criminal convictions determined to be the most likely commit new crimes (archived). Criminals offered this fellowship stipend would maintain their fellowship through participation in their re-education curricula and avoiding capture in connection with the commission of new crimes.
Mercedes Joins German Carmaker Emissions Train
Never content to allow trends to pass it by without a full-throttle attempt at keeping up – be it luxury SUVs, hybrid cars, or überfragmentation of market niches – German firm Daimler AG, which oversees automaker Mercedes-Benz, has just been implicated in its own nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions scandal, following the lead of compatriot Volkswagen and overseas upstart Tesla Motors. Continue reading
Alan Reiner Quits Armory as Multi-Year Commercialization Effort Fails
Today Alan Reiner announced he is quitting Armory wallet development, and that efforts to commercialize the Armory Bitcoin wallet have failed. Armory started life as a promising wallet management tool that runs on top of a local Bitcoin daemon, but when a "phone home" feature became public knowledge any potential of trusting Reiner as a software developer or Armory as a software product was lost. Reiner with the help of serial fundraiser Trace Mayer raised funds in an attempt to make a business out of the Armory software. Reiner's announcement is presented in full below: Continue reading
Ebay Has No Plans To Stop Being A Vector For Malware Propagation
Numerous sources are reporting that Ebay has no intentions of remedying a severe vulnerability that allows people to use obfuscated javascript to order to phish and spread malware through postings on Ebay's platform. Ebay's web interface in its current form does not allow users to engage in commerce without consenting to allow javascript to run on their machines, breaking Ebay on browser configurations which mitigate this vulnerability.
Turmoil Lead To Mizzou Credit Outlook Downgrade
The turmoil which gripped the University of Missouri's Columbia campus last fall has lead to a downgrade of the University of Missouri's credit outlook from stable to negative by Standard & Poor's. The civil unrest lead to the departure of several high level administrators from the University. Standard & Poor's currently rates the University of Missouri's credit as AA+ which leaves substantial distance before catching up to Illinois Universities whose credit ratings are falling into junk status with the rest of Illinois' public debts.
Shaun Bridges Arrested For Attempting To Flee United States
Former United States Secret Service Agent Shaun Bridges was arrested for attempting to flee the United States last Thursday. Bridges was scheduled to surrender for the purpose of serving his prison sentence on Friday. After having plead guilty in June, Shaun Bridges was sentenced to serve 71 months in prison this past December.
Popescu Offers Condition For Accepting Future Hard Forks
Today Mircea Popescu offers a proposal which he is mulling as a necessary condition for any fundamental change to the Bitcoin protocol to receive his approval. The proposal would strengthen the bond between Bitcoin miners and nodes. Popescu is pledging to sink any hard fork proposal that does not include these changes, but if these changes are to be adopted he is willing to negotiate changes to the Bitcoin protocol including a maximum blocksize increase.
Ether Huffing Reddit Spam Persists
Private message spam on the social engineering platform Reddit supporting the dreams and aspersations of Ether huffers continues without any sign of abatement. The continued spam promoting Buterin's waterfall suggests that either Reddit is incapable of controlling spam, or that they actually support this spam at a high level. The lack of more traditional spam promoting online pharmacies, LVMH merchandise, and other marginal commercial ventures seems to demonstrate that Reddit actually has the technical ability to prevent spam. This leaves the very real possibility that Reddit management materially supports this spam campaign as the increasingly probable explanation for the spam campaign's persistence.
Bitcoin Foundation Address Recap: Next Release Imminent, Shiva Introduced
A flurry of activity at the Bitcoin Foundation in January, much of which has already been covered on Qntra, has lead up to a code freeze for the next release of the reference Bitcoin daemon. The address covers a number of developments relevant to the upcoming release including makefile contributions, Malleus Mikehearnificarum, a switch for toggling between enforcement of low-s or high-s signature creation, refinement of the programmable version strings mechanism, and further iteration of the V provenance management system.
One particularly interesting development which will miss this release, but likely play a key part in the future of the reference client was given a brief mention. In late January asciilifeform of No Such lAbs introduced Shiva, an experimental Lisp shell for interacting with bitcoind. Shiva's introduction introduces a number of possible development directions, all of which are far more interesting than various coups intending to impose governance upon Bitcoin through sloppy hard fork plans.