As Bitcoin continues marching towards its grandiose destiny, it seems we just can’t get enough of the inept US Butt Thunder striking yet another fool boy and his pale imitation of a domestic commodity exchange. Continue reading
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Grows For The Sixth Consecutive Time
Today's adjustment in the Bitcoin mining difficulty sees it grow to a total of 59,335,351,234, an increase of 4.17% over the September 4th update. Today's change also marks the 6th consecutive increase, a streak which began back in July of this year.
"Y Combinator" Too Generic To Trademark
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has ruled against startup and censorship incubator Y Combinator's petition to register their name as a trademark (archived). The office in making the decision noted that "Y Combinator" as a term of art used in computer science and mathematics is by its nature too generic to stand as a distinguishing mark denoting a particular trade venture.
BitPay Claims Hack Amounting to 5000 Bitcoins
According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle BitPay Chief Financial Officer Bryan Krohn's loose treatment of email credentials resulted in the transfer of 5000 Bitcoins from BitPay's control (archived). An adversary party who received the credentials from Krohn managed to send emails posing as Krohn which resulted in Chief Executive Officer Stephen Pair sending transactions of 1000, 1000, and 3000 Bitcoin to Bitcoin addresses outside of BitPay's control. BitPay's insurer declined to pay $950,000 requested by the firm to cover the loss. Whether this was an actual attack or internal embezzlement is unknown, and likely unknowable. This is just the latest in a string of problems for BitPay including layoffs, low return yet high cost marketing expenses, and their inability to convert Bitcoin users to retail consumer uses of their coins.
Pascal Reid Pleads Guilty Promising to Service USG "Law Enforcement" – Full Draft Plea Text
Pascal Reid who was charged for his involvement in trading Bitcoin on an individual basis in the state of Florida has announced his intention to accept a guilty plead which compels him to train "Law Enforcement" on Bitcoin related topics. He is further compelled as well to consult with Miami area police and the United States Secret Service on cases involving Bitcoin as they see fit. Reid's efforts to have charges dismissed back in November were denied by Judge Katherine Fernandez Rundle. In addition to working on the behalf of local and federal "Law Enforcement" agencies the plea agreement includes a sentence of 90 days in jail with credit for time served, and the agreement is further conditional on Reid reimbursing Florida $500 for their expenses in prosecuting him. The explicit public disclosure that the plea bargainer must turn stoolie is uncommon, but it highlights that the cost of signing the papers and avoiding trial is your own title to yourself. It is a tremendous credit to the local officers of the court that the explicit nature of this was made available to the public in this rare occasion. All parties involved in Bitcoin are advised against knowingly dealing with Pascal Reid, or any other party know to have entered a guilty plea, either in business or mere conversation for the entirety of the future. The full text of the draft plea agreement is below: Continue reading
War on Engineering: Teen Arrested for Building Clock
Police in Irving, Texas arrested a teenager on Monday for bringing a a clock he produced on his personal time to school to show off to his Engineering instructors. Up until today local authorities were intending to pursue "hoax bomb" charges against the teenager, Ahmed Mohamed in spite of his constant assertions that the device he created was nothing more than a clock. Ahmed was involved in robotics club in Middle School and wanted to make a project at home he could use to demonstrate his engineering prowess for his new High School teachers. Ahmed's teachers upon hearing the clock beep pulled him out of class and alerted police who arrested him and drew up initial charges (archived). School principal Dan Cummings summarily suspended Ahmed from school grounds for three days. Continue reading
Twitter Continues Flirtation With Politicians
After gifting politicians with an embargo against following their retractions, Twitter yesterday announced a further gift for politicians which begins with those running for office in the United States. In a blog post today (archived) that could not be contained within their otherwise customary 140 character limit, Twitter announced they would be unveiling "cash tags" facilitating donations to politicians named in a $cashtag through an arrangement with Jack Dorsey's social payments startup Square. Continue reading
Cryptome PGP Keys Compromised, Revoked
Today Cryptome and operator John Young announced the compromise and revocation of their PGP keys. Relevant text posted to Cryptome below. Not the user agent string disclosing the use of Symantec's PGP Desktop product for Microsoft Windows. Continue reading
Appeals Court Denies Dotcom Request for Extradition Hearing Delay
Torrent Freak reports that in a decision that according to Kim Dotcom makes "the New Zealand judiciary… a US owned dancing bear" (archived) an Appellate court in New Zealand has denied Dotcom's petition to delay his extradition hearing in order to allow him and his counsel adequate preparation time. It was only on June 3rd of this year that Kim Dotcom finally had a victory in the United State's asset forfeiture case which allowed him the resources to seriously begin preparing a defense against the United States effort to extradite him to a a land which has always been foreign to him. Continue reading
Microsoft Preemptively Downloads Windows 10 On Windows 7 and 8 Boxes
In it's latest abuse of people commonly thought to be its customers, Microsoft is pre-emptively downloading gigabytes of Windows 10 installation files (archived) onto the machines of people who have expressed no interest in transitioning to Microsoft's newest software. This follows Microsoft's recent move to push telemetry, the greatest anti-feature of Windows 10 onto users who are declining the "free" upgrade to Windows 10. According to the Inquirer's report Windows users are complaining about this Microsoft compelled download unknowingly forcing some users on quota enforced broadband to exceed their usage limits and further exhausting some user's storage space. The situation of users still subjecting themselves to Windows has long been tenuous with serious ongoing security concerns, yet Microsoft keeps doubling down with the abuse.