Comment Alien pod (Score 1) 339
Obviously this must be an alien pod buried millions of years ago and patiently waiting for its pilot to arrive riding the lightning. We were bound to stumble across them some day!
Comment Re:Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the U (Score 1) 475
... decent monetary policy is a necessary though not sufficient condition for good economic performance.
Exactly. In other words, without a lot of scientific research you can't conclude from the fact that the Eurozone did worse than the US for the last few years economically that the ECB therefore did a worse job of making monetary policy. They could have just been dealt a much worse hand. Ultimately I don't think you can make comparisons like this between the Eurozone and the US anyway. The Eurozone is not one country, which makes a huge difference in practice and invalidates all kinds of comparisons.
It is designed to maintain its value against other currencies,
I have to disagree again. It can't maintain its value against other currencies if it is to be a success. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. If it ever becomes a large and stable economy then the bitcoin will have to be worth much more than it is worth today against other currencies. That's what I'm banking on anyway...
Comment Why?! (Score 1) 698
This makes no sense whatsoever. Why on Earth would China want to destroy the US economy?! China is not at war with the US. On the other hand China has huge financial interests in the US (I believe China owns most of the US these days), and even if it didn't, the hit to the world economy if the US economy collapsed would be so large that China would be dragged down as well. There is no reason for China to want to harm the US economy and every reason for them to want to bolster it.
Could the NSA really not have come up with a more believable story?
Comment Re:Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the U (Score 1) 475
And it is fair to say that the Euro has not been governed well over the last few years.
I don't agree with that at all. The Euro has consistently remained strong, even during this so called "Euro crisis". Whether the way the Euro is being governed is good for the economies of the individual countries of the Eurozone is an entirely different question, but reality shows that it was good for the Euro and that the ECB is doing a good job of keeping its independence. There just is no comparison whatsoever (which the original poster was doing) between the Euro and the way it is governed, and Bitcoin.
Comment Re:Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the U (Score 1) 475
Well obviously I don't have a crystal ball. But there is no evidence or reason to assume that they won't. All of the doomsayers are just speculating wildly. They're mostly hacks who are hoping to profit from it somehow.
It would be very bad for the Euro if Greece defaulted, or left the Eurozone. I think it simply won't be allowed to happen. Note that I'm not saying that that's necessarily a good thing.
Comment Re:Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the U (Score 1) 475
Yes, really. There have been a few extremely uneventful defaults against private creditors, but not against the EU bailout loans.
Comment Re:Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the U (Score 5, Informative) 475
"No one governing" the Euro is what almost caused the collapse of the EU over one small state having credit difficulties.
Wow. It's been a long time since I've seen such a high concentration of ill informed bullshit in one sentence...
- The Euro is not "not governed". It is governed by a very strong and independent central bank, namely the European Central Bank
- The EU did not "almost collapse". A few countries have received some large loans, all of which still look like they will be paid back in full. At no point was the "EU" in danger, nor even the Eurozone (despite wild speculation in the media), which is what you probably meant
- The Euro was not "dramatically volatile" at any point. It's been trading for about $1.20 to $1.40 consistently for the last ten years
Comment Obligatory Bruce Schneier quote (Score 1) 281
"(...) trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet."
RF Safe-Stop Shuts Down Car Engines With Radio Pulse 549
An anonymous reader writes with news of a device built by a company in the U.K. which uses pulses of electromagnetic energy to disrupt the electronic systems of modern cars, causing them to shut down and cut the engine. Here's a description of how it works:
"At one end of a disused runway, E2V assembled a varied collection of second-hand cars and motorbikes in order to test the prototype against a range of vehicles. In demonstrations seen by the BBC a car drove towards the device at about 15mph (24km/h). As the vehicle entered the range of the RF Safe-stop, its dashboard warning lights and dials behaved erratically, the engine stopped and the car rolled gently to a halt. Digital audio and video recording devices in the vehicle were also affected.''It's a small radar transmitter,' said Andy Wood, product manager for the machine. 'The RF [radio frequency] is pulsed from the unit just as it would be in radar, it couples into the wiring in the car and that disrupts and confuses the electronics in the car causing the engine to stall.'"
Comment Re:Should have been driving a Tesla (Score 1) 961
I don't see him wrapping it around vertical objects.
Yet.
Comment Re:Does it really matter? (Score 1) 120
that would be around 2M bitcoins
I think it's safe to assume that they meant 10% of all currently existing bitcoins, which, if true, would currently amount to around 1.2 million bitcoins.
2-D MMOG Glitch Released Completely Into the Public Domain 70
c0d3g33k writes "Glitch, a collaborative, web-based, massively multiplayer game developed by Tiny Speck, Inc. (tinyspeck.com) has been released under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal License. I'm not at all familiar with this game, but it is rare that both source code and all game assets are released into the public domain, which makes this announcement noteworthy. An excerpt from the announcement: 'The entire library of art assets from the game has been made freely available, dedicated to the public domain. Code from the game client is included to help developers work with the assets. All of it can be downloaded and used by anyone, for any purpose. (But: use it for good.)'"
Comment Re:Why always a back door (Score 2) 228
The court is set up already for that thinking so what or how does this court do something different.
What they mean is that the court stayed their decision (postponed the time at which it would come into force) to give the DHS time to appeal.
When I read that I get the feeling that the "Court" felt ugly for their ruling and really really hopes that aggrieved party will appeal.
No, it's pretty standard in cases where a) the court thinks the party who lost might appeal, b) there is at least an outside chance such an appeal might succeed and c) if they didn't stay their decision the appeal would become moot since in the mean time the losing party would have to (in this case) hand over the information and there would be no point in appealing. It's to protect the integrity of the judiciary system. Otherwise, what would be the point of having appeals?
Building an 'Invisibility Cloak' With Electromagnetic Fields 71
Nerval's Lobster writes "University of Toronto researchers have demonstrated an invisibility cloak that hides objects within an electromagnetic field, rather than swaddling it in meta-materials as other approaches require. Instead of covering an object completely in an opaque cloak that then mimics the appearance of empty air, the technique developed by university engineering Prof. George Eleftheriades and Ph.D. candidate Michael Selvanayagam makes objects invisible using the ability of electromagnetic fields to redirect or scatter waves of energy. The approach is similar to that of 'stealth' aircraft whose skin is made of material that absorbs the energy from radar systems and deflects the rest away from the radar detectors that sent them. Rather than scattering radio waves passively due to the shape of its exterior, however, the Toronto pair's 'cloak' deflects energy using an electromagnetic field projected by antennas that surround the object being hidden. Most of the proposals in a long list of 'invisibility cloaks' announced during the past few years actually conceal objects by covering them with an opaque blanket, which becomes 'invisible' by displaying an image of what the space it occupies would look like if neither the cloak nor the object it concealed were present. An invisibility cloak concealing an adolescent wizard hiding in a corner, for example, would display an image of the walls behind it in an effort to fool observers into thinking there was no young wizard present to block their view of the empty corner. 'We've taken an electrical engineering approach, but that's what we are excited about,' Eleftheriades said in a public announcement of the paper's publication. (The full text is available as a free PDF here.)"
Edward Snowden Leaks Could Help Paedophiles Escape Police, Says UK Government 510
An anonymous reader writes "Paedophiles may escape detection because highly-classified material about Britain's surveillance capabilities have been published by the Guardian newspaper, the UK government has claimed. A senior Whitehall official said data stolen by Edward Snowden, a former contractor to the US National Security Agency, could be exploited by child abusers and other cyber criminals. It could also put lives at risk by disclosing secrets to terrorists, insurgents and hostile foreign governments, he said."
