Comment Disappearing act? (Score 4, Interesting) 231
What's the betting that the site will one day suddenly disappear, taking all the outstanding donations which happen to be on their accounts with them?
Spoiled Onions: Exposing Malicious Tor Exit Relays 65
An anonymous reader points out this recently published study (PDF) on detecting malicious (or at least suspicious) Tor exit relays. From their conclusions: "After developing a scanner, we closely monitored all ~1000 exit relays over a period of four months. Wed discovered 25 relays which were either outright malicious or simply misconfigured. Interestingly, the majority of the attacks were coordinated instead of being isolated actions of independent individuals. Our results further suggest that the attackers made an active effort to remain under the radar and delay detection."
One of the authors, Philipp Winter, wrote a followup blog post to help clarify what the paper's findings mean for Tor users, including this clarification: "First, it's important to understand that 25 relays in four months isn't a lot. It is ultimately a very small fraction of the Tor network. Also, it doesn't mean that 25 out of 1,000 relays are malicious or misconfigured (we weren't very clear on that in the paper). We have yet to calculate the churn rate of exit relays which is the rate at which relays join and leave the network. 1,000 is really just the approximate number of exit relays at any given point in time. So the actual number of exit relays we ended up testing in four months is certainly higher than that. As a user, that means that you will not see many malicious relays 'in the wild."
Comment Good luck with that (Score 1) 731
So I indicate to you, by using AdBlock, that I hate advertising and do not wish to see any (from which you could deduce that showing me advertisements would be useless at best and counterproductive at worst), yet you choose to force ads down my throat anyway? Well fuck you then.
Comment Re:For comparison (Score 1) 479
Sorry, that should be 60/6 Mbps of course.
Comment For comparison (Score 1) 479
I live in the Netherlands. I have a 60/6 MBps cable Internet connection, in combination with digital HD cable TV and telephone service, for € 54 ($73) per month. This is with "unlimited" bandwidth (they do have a "fair use" clause, but I've never heard of anyone hitting it). For the Netherlands this is pretty typical.
Comment Nothing to do with net neutrality (Score 1) 479
With the landmark Net Neutrality ruling this week will larger providers try to move to similar price models?
Why would they? The one has nothing to do with the other. If anything, since providers can now be payed at the back end as well, they could in theory lower prices at the front end. In theory.
Is Earth Weighed Down By Dark Matter? 247
Nerval's Lobster writes "There may be a giant ring of dark matter invisibly encircling the Earth, increasing its mass and pulling much harder on orbiting satellites than anything invisible should pull, according to preliminary research from a scientist specializing the physics of GPS signaling and satellite engineering. The dark-matter belt around the Earth could represent the beginning of a radically new understanding of how dark matter works and how it affects the human universe, or it could be something perfectly valid but less exciting despite having been written up by New Scientist and spreading to the rest of the geek universe on the basis of a single oral presentation of preliminary research at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December. The presentation came from telecom- and GPS satellite expert Ben Harris, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas- Arlington, who based his conclusion on nine months' worth of data that could indicate Earth's gravity was pulling harder on its ring of geostationary GPS satellites than the accepted mass of the Earth would normally allow. Since planets can't gain weight over the holidays like the rest of us, Harris' conclusion was that something else was adding to the mass and gravitational power of Earth – something that would have to be pretty massive but almost completely undetectable, which would sound crazy if predominant theories about the composition of the universe didn't assume 80 percent of it was made up of invisible dark matter. Harris calculated that the increase in gravity could have come from dark matter, but would have had to be an unexpectedly thick collection of it – one ringing the earth in a band 120 miles thick and 45,000 miles wide. Making elaborate claims in oral presentations, without nailing down all the variables that could keep a set of results from being twisted into something more interesting than the truth is a red flag for any scientific presentation, let alone one making audacious claims about the way dark matter behaves or weight of the Earth, according to an exasperated counterargument from Matthew R. Francis, who earned a Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from Rutgers in 2005, held visiting and assistant professorships at several Northeastern universities and whose science writing has appeared in Ars Technica, The New Yorker, Nautilus, BBC Future and others including his own science blog at Galileo's Pendulum."
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."
