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Submission + - Congressman Accepts BitCoin For His US Senate Run (businessinsider.com) 1

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: US Representative Steve Stockman, a vocal opponent of Federal Reserve policy, told reporters that he wants to promote Bitcoin, whose most fervent evangelists tout as an alternative to fiat currency.

To do so, he is now accepting Bitcoin for his Senate campaign against incumbent John Cornyn of Texas.

The announcement was made last night at the launch event for the NYC Bitcoin Center, located just up the street from the New York Stock Exchange. Center founder Nick Spanos a real estate developer and Bitcoin enthusiast says the Center itself is still in something of a planning stage, existing more as a statement about Bitcoin itself, though he plans on hosting a "hackathon" later this month.

Comment Re:Privatise it (Score 1) 97

by SonicSpike (#45785583) Attached to: NASA's Greatest Challenges In 2014

Firefighting can be profitable. There are many security services that are profitable. There are many private land use areas (think parks) that are profitable. Plowing the streets is profitable (I have a friend who makes good money doing it), teaching is profitable, toll roads are profitable.

Not sure what world you're living in.

Submission + - Red Light Camera Controversy Drives Mayoral Race In Florida: (orlandosentinel.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: In Apopka, FL where John Land has served a record 61 years as mayor, two of the candidates lined up to oppose the city's most iconic politician have one thing in common: They hate red-light cameras.

Political newcomers Glen Chancy and Edwin Radcliff III want to bring the cameras down.

No other municipality in Central Florida has made as much money with red-light cameras in the past two years than Apopka. The city levied a total of $3.6 million in red-light fines from 22 cameras during fiscal years 2012 and 2013, about $200,000 more than second-place Orlando did during the same time span.

The city keeps $75 from each $158 fine collected; the state gets the other $83, including $13 that is diverted to trust funds that help fund trauma and brain-and-spinal-cord injury centers.

"Nobody likes robo-enforcement," said Chancy, co-founder of http://www.banthecams.org/ a grassroots Apopka group organized to combat red-light cameras. "They ticket people for doing things a police officer never would."

Though red-light camera critics often protest the devices at Apopka City Council meetings, Land has endorsed the traffic sentinels since 2005, when the city became the first in Central Florida to put them up. "They save lives, first and foremost it's that," the mayor said of his support.

"They make us safer," Land said

Comment Re:Guesses as to end effect? (Score 1) 202

by SonicSpike (#45761007) Attached to: Overstock.com Plans To Accept Bitcoin

The value of the dollar has lost close to 98% since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 and took us off the gold standard. That's not exactly "stable" and it punishes people who save their money plus it hurts the poor because price inflation increases faster than their wages do making their buying power less and less.

And the reason governments took their currencies off of the precious metal standards was so that they could inflate (tax) their citizens. People get up in arms when a new tax is raised, however when their currency is devalued by the wholesale printing of money by their government, they are not as quick to understand the reasoning behind it. Governments have inflated and devalued their currencies forever, even the Roman Empire did it by reducing the amount of precious metals in their coins.

Search for "Austrian Economics" if you want to understand more about this subject.

Submission + - Overstock.com plans to become first big online retailer to accept Bitcoin (cnbc.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Overstock plans to become the first big U.S. online retailer to accept Bitcoin, as Patrick Byrne, the company's libertarian chief executive, warms to the virtual currency as a refuge from government control.

Mr Byrne told the Financial Times that Overstock planned to start accepting Bitcoin next year – possibly by the end of the second quarter – a decision that he said was driven mainly by his own political philosophy.

"I think a healthy monetary system at the end of the day isn't an upside down pyramid based on the whim of a government official, but is based on something that they can't control," Mr Byrne said.

Submission + - Two researchers send a text message using vodka (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Two researchers at York University have worked out a way to communicate between two points using vodka evaporated into the air. They used their system to message the lyrics of “O Canada” between two points, leading them to conclude that in times of need, when there is no cellular reception, it would be possible to text-message using this system.

The authors of the paper, published Thursday, used specific concentration levels of the vodka to represent bits 1 and 0. They wafted the “message” across 12 feet in the lab to the receiving unit, which read out the message as it detected the concentration of vodka in the air rising or falling over time.

The process sounds slow and short-range, but the researchers suggest that it could work for closed environments that don’t have the benefit of a cellular or Wi-Fi signal. They cite the example of the clogged London sewer system as one where robots could have been deployed below ground and have relayed their findings via the molecular communication system.

A third researcher quoted by Eurekalert further suggests that similar systems of molecular communication could be “used to communicate on the nanoscale,” when scientists are, for instance, trying to target drugs or cancer cells inside a human body.

Submission + - FBI Owns the World's Biggest Bitcoin Wallet (wired.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: In September, the FBI shut down the Silk Road online drug marketplace, and it started seizing bitcoins belonging to the Dread Pirate Roberts — the operator of the illicit online marketplace, who they say is an American man named Ross Ulbricht.

The seizure sparked an ongoing public discussion about the future of Bitcoin, the world’s most popular digital currency, but it had an unforeseen side-effect: It made the FBI the holder of the world’s biggest Bitcoin wallet.

The FBI now controls more than 144,000 bitcoins that reside at a bitcoin address that consolidates much of the seized Silk Road bitcoins. Those 144,000 bitcoins are worth close to $100 million at Tuesday’s exchange rates. Another address, containing Silk Road funds seized earlier by the FBI, contains nearly 30,000 bitcoins ($20 million).

That doesn’t make the FBI the world’s largest bitcoin holder. This honor is thought to belong to bitcoin’s shadowy inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, who is estimated to have mined 1 million bitcoins in the currency’s early days. His stash is spread across many wallets. But it does put the federal agency ahead of the Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who in July said that they’d cornered about 1 percent of all bitcoins (there are 12 million bitcoins in circulation).

In the fun house world of bitcoin tracking, it’s hard to say anything for certain. But it is safe to say that there are new players in the Bitcoin world — although not as many people are buying bitcoins as one might guess from all of the media attention.

Submission + - Senator Rand Paul Plots NSA Class-Action Lawsuit Options (usnews.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: After months of consideration, Sen. Rand Paul, (R-KY), is moving closer to filing a lawsuit in federal court against National Security Agency surveillance programs.

A senior Paul staffer says U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon's Monday decision that NSA opponents have standing to sue over the bulk collection of phone records makes Paul "much more likely" to file his own lawsuit.

The senior staffer, who spoke with U.S. News on background, says hundreds of thousands of people volunteered online as possible plaintiffs after Paul first floated the idea of a class-action lawsuit in June.

If Paul does file a lawsuit it would be the fourth major legal attack against the NSA's bulk collection and five-year storage of American phone records. "As of now the senator is in the process of finding the best lawyer to file the [possible] suit [and] is still accepting more plaintiffs for the case," Paul spokeswoman Eleanor May said.

Submission + - Red Light Camera Use Declined in 2013 For The First Time (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: 2013 may be a turning point for red-light cameras across the United States. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a non-profit largely funded by auto insurance companies, this year is the first time in nearly two decades that the number of American cities with red-light cameras has fallen—the systems were installed in 509 communities as of November 2013.

While a single-year drop may not ultimately mean much, legislators across the country are increasingly agitated about the cameras. Bills are also pending in Florida and Ohio that would ban the devices entirely. A state representative in Iowa has also twice introduced legislation to ban RLCs (he was not successful). Part of this backlash has to do with the (sometimes accurate) perception that RLCs are a moneymaking scheme, pure and simple.

Comment Re:This is going to be an epic fight (Score 1) 261

by SonicSpike (#45711599) Attached to: Streaming and Cord-Cutting Take a Toll On the Pay-TV Industry

Rent-seeking is just the opposite of free market capitalism. And the only reason these corporations have a monopoly / cartel, is because the government grants them one. This is called corporatism, or maybe even fascism.

If the government didn't intervene in the marketplace these monopolies / cartels wouldn't exist, or if they did, it would be short lived.

Study Austrian economics sometime: http://www.mises.org/

Comment Re:Lie-fest from the NSA (Score 1) 504

by SonicSpike (#45711557) Attached to: CBS 60 Minutes: NSA Speaks Out On Snowden, Spying

No, CBS's existence is based upon a government-granted monopoly via the FCC. They are not about to anger the feds, it would be bad for business, since the federal government has the ability to take them OUT of business if they should so choose to do so.

This is why government shouldn't be allowed to set up cartels or monopolies.

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