This business is amazingly stupid on the part of the US and New Zealand governments. MegaUpload really was a criminal enterprise: their entire business model was facilitated on fake takedowns, incentives for copyright violations, and other games. That it is gone is good riddance.

But they didn't need to create a massive violation of the law like this and create a huge circus about it: They had enough evidence to get plenty of legal wiretaps. They didn't need to come in with the SWAT team. If they played it by the book, Mr Dotcom would probably already have been extradited to the US.

But instead it is horribly misplayed, and as a result there is a non-trivial chance that Dotcom will slip free with his millions intact.

This is why law enforcement needs to actually follow the law.

As the founder of the 42nd New Reformed Neo-Rebel Orthodox Pastafarian Church (newly created, 30 seconds ago), I find that all laws against blasphemy are blasphemous against my religion.

So such laws must be eliminated because they are self-violating.

This ban was signed into law by the Bush Administration.

And now, after putting it in place, the Republicans NOW object?

Password hashing doesn't matter when the login password is conveyed in a URL and the URLs fetched are logged.

From the article, its clear that this is what happened: the login process creates a URL with the username & password in it, and since the URLs were logged and accessible, the login passwords could be obtained in the clear.

If you are in that position, you already HAVE your industrial robots: They can work in a cage (so no safety concerns and can run faster), and that it takes a day of work to program up a task is, eh, yeah, whatever.

This is for the tasks where current robots fail at: tasks where you need to reprogram the robot perhaps as often as once a day, move the robot to different locations, have the robot work with a human, etc....

The listed MAX power is 10A at 110V. So say 1 kW power consumption (probably less), which translates to $.20/hr or less in electricity for most businesses.

Repair and maintenance? Over the first couple of years, I'd assume 10%/yr downtime & repair cost

Larger facilities? How many manufacturing facilities are really limited by workstation space on the floor itself?

This thing really really pencils for a lot of tasks.

Yes, its slow (~4-6 pick & place operations per arm per minute), and not very strong (5 lbs max weight) in the current form. These restrictions are probably semi-arbitrary in the name of safety. But thats still enough to be an incredibly big deal in a large number of manufacturing tasks. Also important, its transportable (the base is on wheels), and flexible in learning new tasks, so it doesn't have to do just one thing but starts to approach the flexibility of a minimum wage worker. And for that role, it needs to be safe more than it needs to be quick.

Lets say it can perform task X at 1/4 the rate of a manufacturing worker. But at $8/hr minimum wage + 20% in additional costs/worker-hour, say $10/hr for a minimum wage worker. So that value is at least $2.50/hr.

So it pays for itself in 1100 worker-days, compared with a minimum wage worker and only 1 shift a day. At 3 shifts/day, payback is in 1 year!

Slow is NOT a problem when it is that cheap, that flexible and that safe.

(Since its a duplicate post, I'm going to include my reply from the last time it was posted)

The basic design flaw is how key duplication/recovery is handled.

On my motorcycle (a Concours 14 with keyless ignition), to program a new key you need an existing key, to tell the computer "hey, this is the new key to use". The disadvantage is, naturally, if you lose all your keys, you need to replace the computer!

But its better than the alternative. On the BMW, all you need to do is plug into the OOBDII port and tell the computer "Here is the new key". This means if you lose all your keys, you don't have to buy a new computer... But it also means that anyone who can break into the car can create a key and drive off.

Actually, its the opposite. If you see the FA, these HFT algorithms end up deliberately widening the spread because they poll the market and then shift things when a trade actually attempts to occur.

Also, see the zero sum part. If they narrowed spreads, then the HFT programs would not be making the money. But they do.

At such short timescales, trading is a provably zero-sum game. So where do all the fantastic profits that HFT operations claim come from? Everyone else. If you invest in a stock, during that process, an HFT algorithm (or ten) attempt to manipulate the market to cost you a fraction more, sweating the coins that you might receive. (The rest of the time, the HFT algorithms end up fighting each other, but apart from driving the market unstable, its only the HFT operators who win/lose amongst themselves, the HFT industry gains nothing).

Yet they don't actually provide the much vaunted "liquidity": if they did, they couldn't extract the revenue by making the liquidity dissipate when its actually needed: if the HFT bots added liquidity, Knight Capital wouldn't have taken a huge loss, as they could have sold the stock they bought back to the market rather than having to lose $400M! selling the shares to Goldman Sachs.

It really is time for a microscopic but non-zero Tobin tax on stock transactions: $.00001 per buy or sell request issued to the market. That should stop the bots from spamming the market with bogus requests, and level the playing field for everyone else.

BitCoin is frankly too small and too loony and too easy to trace!

The insane self-destructive tendencies of the BitCoin community ensure that governments don't need to do anything about BitCoin. Any "Currency" where 5%!!!! end up in a single Ponzi scheme, where +/- 200% swings in "value" are taken as, ehh, whatever, etc, is going to implode just fine on its own.

Heck, if I was the US Treasury I'd instead (quietly) buy out Magic the Gathering Online Exchange, so that they can trace the USD -\> BTC -\> USD flow in detail, since once things are in BitCoin land, the traceability is easy. Not because BTC will get big, but so they can quietly say "yeah, we have a handle on it" when some congresscritter gets a bee in his bonnet.

I think those who tried running the Armory found out its hard to compete as a black market when the LEGAL sales are from companies with names like "Cheaper Than Dirt"

Its not anonymous, but pseudonomous. Its actually the opposite of anonymous, as EVERY transaction is recorded in public.

It can't scale.

The major use beyond geek things is buying drugs (Silk Road etc). Heck, even illegal arms sales weren't profitable in BitCoin land!

The believers seem to have a huge amount of "goldbug variation", obsessing about a fixed currency supply.

Hardly any exchange or similar service has remained unhacked.

And 5% of ALL bitcoins ended up in a 6 month, blatenly obvious pyramid scheme run by an anonymous individual named PIRATE!!!!

The only saving grace is bitcoin is remarkably small: with only ~10M bitcoins in existence, the delusionary notional value is small.

It really depends on the application in question: The Push tokens are application specific, and Apple knows or can trivially find out which application vendor is the source of this information.

If its a game, then the Anons are full of it, there is no reason for the FBI to have gotten that data.

If its something like, well, who knows, then the Anons are probably telling the truth.

If some slashdot reader's UUID is on the list, please contact me. It may be possible to use the phone backup file to determine which application was responsible for this data breach.

If one finds a phone which is in the list, is there a way to find out which application is associated with the push notification token? If so, this would help identify the application vendor responsible for dumping this data onto the FBI.