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Bitcoin

Why Charles Stross Wants Bitcoin To Die In a Fire 691

Posted by timothy from the compare-and-contrast-with-unbacked-fiat-money dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "SF writer Charles Stross writes on his blog that like all currency systems, Bitcoin comes with an implicit political agenda attached and although our current global system is pretty crap, Bitcoin is worse. For starters, BtC is inherently deflationary. There is an upper limit on the number of bitcoins that can ever be created so the cost of generating new Bitcoins rises over time, and the value of Bitcoins rise relative to the available goods and services in the market. Libertarians love it because it pushes the same buttons as their gold fetish and it doesn't look like a "Fiat currency". You can visualize it as some kind of scarce precious data resource, sort of a digital equivalent of gold. However there are a number of huge down-sides to Bitcoin says Stross: Mining BtC has a carbon footprint from hell as they get more computationally expensive to generate, electricity consumption soars; Bitcoin mining software is now being distributed as malware because using someone else's computer to mine BitCoins is easier than buying a farm of your own mining hardware; Bitcoin's utter lack of regulation permits really hideous markets to emerge, in commodities like assassination and drugs and child pornography; and finally Bitcoin is inherently damaging to the fabric of civil society because it is pretty much designed for tax evasion. "BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions," concludes Stross. "The current banking industry and late-period capitalism may suck, but replacing it with Bitcoin would be like swapping out a hangnail for Fournier's gangrene.""

Submission + - Microsoft Merges Windows Phone And Windows Store Developer Accounts

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: There is now a unified registration procedure http://sdt.bz/65333 for Windows Store and Windows Phone developers. Developers of each can use the same account, while managing apps with separate Dev Center dashboards, to submit apps to each store. Windows App Store General Manager Todd Brix announced the merger in a blog post http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/appbuilder/archive/2013/11/06/unifying-developer-registration-windows-and-windows-phone.aspx yesterday, revealing that new developers need only pay a one-time fee of $19 for registration to both app stores, or $99 for a company account.

Submission + - French Court Orders Google To Block Pics and Links of Max Mosley (pcmag.com)

Submitted by Virtucon
Virtucon writes: This one goes to the old adage "closing the stable door after the horse bolted." A French court on Wednesday ruled that Google must remove from its search results photos of a former Formula One racing chief, Max Mosley, participating in an Nazi-themed orgy. Google could be fined up to 1,000 Euros/day for not complying. What's strange here is that Mosley A) Sued in a French Court B) Didn't go after anybody else other than Google and C) has definitely strange tastes in extracurricular activities. In this day and age it's laughable to think that once your private photos/videos hit the Internet that you have any expectation of reigning them in or filtering the embarrassing parts out. Google isn't the only game in town so to speak in terms of Internet search. I wonder if his lawyers checked out Yahoo or WebCrawler? Of course Google plans to appeal the decision to ... be able to show pics of an old man getting er um never mind...

Submission + - A Playstation 4 Teardown

Submitted by Dave Knott
Dave Knott writes: Just over one week ahead of the launch of the Playstation 4, Wired has posted an article with a full teardown of Sony's new device. In an accompanying video Sony engineering director Yasuhiro Ootori dismantles the PS4 piece by piece, describing each component and showing just what is contained inside the sleek black box.

Submission + - Saudi Nuclear Weapons 'On Order' From Pakistan (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The BBC reports, "Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, ... While the kingdom's quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran's atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic. Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery. Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, "the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring." Since 2009, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned visiting US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross that if Iran crossed the threshold, "we will get nuclear weapons", the kingdom has sent the Americans numerous signals of its intentions. " — A Telegraph story from July discusses a recently identified Saudi missile base. The Christian Science Monitor reports on slow progress in negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. NBC news reports on strained relations between the US and Saudi Arabia.

Submission + - Want a petabyte of mobile data? That'll be £8m, please (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: UK mobile operator EE has unveiled a new mobile data plan for businesses: the world's first petabyte data bundle. The petabyte bundle – one million gigabytes – costs a cool £8m, but according to EE it could save companies, such as broadcasters, that rely on data millions of pounds in the long term by using mobile connections instead of satellites. "Satellite uplink costs range from £20/GB for data transfer," it says. "Super Bundles, costing £8 per gigabyte for a petabyte of data, could save broadcasters as much as £12 million when using that amount of data."

Submission + - Internet Archive Burns (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: The San Francisco building housing the Internet Archive, and its popular Wayback Machine, has suffered a serious fire. While no archived data was destroyed, materials awaiting archival were. Rebuilding with be a major undertaking, and the group is soliciting donations.

Submission + - As IPO Nears, Do Twitter's Active User Claims Add Up? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by netbuzz
netbuzz writes: With Twitter’s IPO looming, an independent developer who is intimately familiar with the makeup and behavior of the site’s users says his analysis of 1 million random accounts does not support the company’s claims of 215 million active monthly users and 100 million active daily users. In fact, Si Dawson, who until March ran Twit Cleaner, a popular app used to weed deadwood and spammers from Twitter accounts, puts those numbers at 112 million and 48 million, respectively, or about half of what Twitter claims.

Submission + - H.264 going Free (cisco.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We plan to open-source our H.264 codec, and to provide it as a binary module that can be downloaded for free from the Internet. Cisco will not pass on our MPEG LA licensing costs for this module, and based on the current licensing environment, this will effectively make H.264 free for use in WebRTC.

Submission + - Dark Mail initiative being Kickstarted

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There is a Kickstarter page for the Dark Mail initiative which promises to clean up and release code for the "magma" encrypted email daemon of Lavabit infamy. The kickstarter campaign also promises to begin development on an open source Dark Mail Protocol client to connect to the daemon. The only "real" reward for donating is the peace of mind brought by a ubiquitous encrypted mail solution, but that's enough for me.

Submission + - High-gain patch antennas boost Wi-Fi capacity for Georgia Tech (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: To boost its Wi-Fi capacity in packed lecture halls, Georgia Institute of Technology gave up trying to cram in more access points, with conventional omni-directional antennas, and juggle power settings and channel plans. Instead, it turned to new high-gain directional antennas. Ventev’s new TerraWave High-Density Ceiling Mount Antenna, which looks almost exactly like the bottom half of a small pizza box, focuses the Wi-Fi signal from the ceiling mounted Cisco access point in a precise cone-shaped pattern, covering part of the lecture hall floor. Instead of the flakey, laggy connections, about which professors had been complaining, users now consistently get up to 144Mbps (if they have 802.11n client radios). “Overall, the system performed much better" with the new antennas, says William Lawrence, IT project manager principal with the university’s academic and research technologies group. “And there was a much more even distribution of clients across the room’s access points.”

Submission + - Blackberry's secret weapon (foxnews.com) 1

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: What's going on in Canada, eh? Toronto is being run by a wild man — Mayor Rob Ford just admitted to smoking crack during a “drunken stupor" — and one of the country's leading technology lights has got not just a black eye, but a black berry (yes, I went there). No longer hooked on the Crackberry, the world has moved on to iPhones and Android handsets. Fortunately, Blackberry has a secret weapon — if only they realize it. In 2010, Blackberry purchased QNX Software, ostensibly to power a growing panoply of Blackberry devices, including a tablet computer (we all know how that went). But QNX's real strength, indeed what it's famous for in the tech world, is what's in the car.

Submission + - It's hard NOT to use Google Now on the Nexus 5 (citeworld.com) 2

Submitted by mattydread23
mattydread23 writes: Google's latest Android showcase device is really a showcase for its services, particularly Google Now. It's so deeply integrated into the platform, you're practically compelled to use it for everything. That may be the whole point.
Internet Explorer

Why Internet Explorer Still Dominates South Korea. 218

Posted by timothy from the stuck-in-a-rut dept.
New submitter bmurray7 writes "You might think that the country that has the fastest average home internet speeds would be a first adapter of modern browsers. Instead, as the Washington Post reports, a payment processing security standard forces most South Koreans to rely upon Internet Explorer for online shopping. Since the standard uses a unique encryption algorithm, an ActiveX control is required to complete online purchases. As a result, many internet users are in the habit of approving all AtivceX control prompts, potentially exposing them to malware."

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