The data stored in the chip is signed using a new PKI. Modern chips can also do challenge/response. So it makes the passports impossible to forge. That's the reason for it.

The data on a passport is encrypted with a key derived from the "machine readable zone" that's inside the book. To decrypt the data available via NFC you have to actually optically scan the open page. In addition US passports have a shielded chip so the book has to be open to be readable.

The article calling for giving up the constitution isn't calling for the establishment of a police state, as you seem to be implying. It's pointing out that arguing over interpretation of an ancient document that doesn't evolve with the needs of the time is unnecessary for freedom (as evidenced by other countries and America's presidents own frequent disregard for it), and causes unnecessary problems. Example: people who justify gun ownership not on any kind of reasoned argument about the needs of the time, but just "because the constitution says so". There may well be good arguments for high rates of gun ownership in 2013 but "someone thought it was a good idea hundreds of years ago" probably isn't one of them.

The credit of the USA is itself issued in dollars, so you can't say the dollar is backed by that. Say it's "backed" by taxes or the military or anything else, but credit isn't an option. And BTW I'd say you can't back a currency by levelling taxes in it. That might create demand for it, but in the most extreme scenario of total Bitcoin success combined with total govt/people disconnect, then nothing stops you living entirely in Bitcoins and come tax time buying dollars with them, giving them to the government which then turns around and sells them back for Bitcoins so it can pay its suppliers.

Let's apply Occam's Razor. We have two competing explanations.

One is that the Swedish prosecution is hopelessly corrupt and has decided to level very, very specific yet trumped up charges against him, despite having successfully prosecuted him before for running the Pirate Bay (so there isn't much more to be had by doing it again).

The other is that a guy who made profits out of massive piracy of other peoples work doesn't have any moral qualms about stealing things from other peoples computers. Note that even his friend/partner in crime Sunde isn't willing to actually state in public he thinks the guy is innocent - rather telling.

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say the right answer is probably two. But let's wait and see what comes out at the trial.

If I recall correctly CSIRO are the guys who claimed to employ the scientist who invented wifi and proceeded to tell the whole world how this great Australian invention had been ripped off by nasty companies who just didn't want to give them their fair dues. The reality of course is that nobody in particular invented wifi, it was the result of many standards committees and donated technologies from lots of companies, and CSIRO was in fact just a patent troll.

The idea that the government (and government) would try and screw with the block chain is ridiculous, there's no way that would help them achieve their goals. If there's any kind of analysis the NSA would want to do, it'd be analysing the block chain and possibly crossing it with their own crawl of the web/peoples emails/etc. If Bitcoin were to get large enough to be of interest to the NSA (which I doubt would happen anytime soon), de-anonymising the block chain is what they'd be interested in - not out running it.

One other thing I recall the OFT investigating is/was people who took free government provided online services, repackaged them in app form and then sold them to unwitting people who didn't realize the services were meant to be free. Which seems like something that should indeed be handled, although I'm not sure if it really violates any law or how one might write a law to stop it.

But the long term trend with Bitcoin has been upwards in both value and transaction volume. So what economics predicts simply doesn't line up with reality, no matter which way you slice the data.

They've been doing it a long time. That's why the ZeroAccess guys run their own pool (or tried to at least).

As cool as bitcoin is, it has serious problems which will keep it from being used in day to day life.

Bitcoin does indeed have problems that make it hard to use in daily life, but "deflation" is not one of them. BitPay has reported that when the value of a Bitcoin rises their transaction rate goes up not down, as macro-economists would predict. Perhaps because holders of coins feel rich and start to splash out. This should not surprise us. The consumer electronics industry has been in a permanent state of economy-destroying inflation since pretty much forever yet even better and cheaper smartphones/mp3 players/etc continue to fly off the shelves. And in case you'd like observations more rigorous, there is no empirical evidence of a link between deflation and depression.

Anyway, obviously the goal is that nobody loses Bitcoins through carelessness - there are many strategies to help people back up their keys, and over time they will become widely implemented and used.

A 250,000 machine botnet is extremely large, that puts you up in the worlds largest active botnets. Building and maintaining such a thing is not easy at all. To mine off that, you need to run a pool server that those machines can all get work from (as the existing pools will all ban you), which is a rather complex scaling problem all by itself, and then you have the fact that it's all a time limited technique. ASIC hardware has, from what I understand, finally started to ship in significant numbers from the Avalon guy and people will be wiring them in and starting them up over the next few months, which will shortly make just 1 terahash/sec not very much at all.

All things considered, whilst botnet mining can make sense today (especially with gpu miners), the perps know that it won't last.

Hmm. I would note that the dotcom bubble did leave several very successful companies in its wake, and the internet itself whilst subject to a bubble was not, itself, some kind of scam or inevitably doomed project. Bitcoin can be subject to speculation and volatility yet still not be doomed.

Wait, you think the Fed is trying to deflate the bubble? No no no, that's not how it works at all. The Fed has a more or less explicitly stated goal of buying up the bulk of low risk assets in order to force people into higher risk assets like the stock market, and they're doing it with money printing. The stated goal of all this being employment at any cost. If the jobs that are created are all stupid or useless, no problems. That's the great thing about planned economies - you can artificially manipulate statistics but it has a way of not achieving your real goals in the end.

What's more, they're getting nervous about what happens when they try to unwind their positions, as those positions have become so huge - in other words they aren't sure they can safely deflate the bubble they've created without an almighty bang. See the recent FOMC notes or Bernanke's testimony to Congress on the matter.

Anyway, this purchase by Yahoo is a fail move. I have no idea if Summly is good or not, it might be the best thing since sliced bread for all I know, but the question is - could Yahoo really not have built something similar given $30 million and some headcount in their home town? Of course they could. It's just an app. It has less than a million downloads, so that's more than $30 per user which is absurd. It speculates in the article that the real reason for the acquisition is pretty much fashion-driven - the creator is "well spoken and adorkable". Adorkable? Urgh. I think there's an even simpler explanation - Mayer is trying to revive Yahoo by cargo-culting strategies she witnessed at Google. Unfortunately, splashing out megabucks on fluff purchases of questionable startups is pretty common at Google which can get away with it due to its huge bank balance. It can afford to write off huge purchases as worthless time and time again without anyone really noticing (see, the Groupon clone that was sold back to its founders as a recent example). This is not a key part of Google's success story, but Mayer doesn't seem to care.

What's especially got to hurt at Yahoo, which has seen a lot of layoffs, is that the "everyone works from HQ" policy doesn't apply to Summly. The creator will continue to live in England with his parents, and only two of the employees will join Yahoo. And they only handcuffed him for 18 months! What a failure. He'll be out of there the moment his 18 months is up and Yahoo will have flushed $30 million down the toilet.

The money is going into the stock market, just like it did in the late 90's. I thought this was uncontroversial? It's explicitly stated Fed policy. They are buying up all the Treasuries (and effectively financing the US deficit with inflation as a result), with the end goal being to force everyone else into riskier assets. This, Bernanke believes, will invigorate the economy. Because there's nothing like forcing people to gamble on the stock market to build a strong foundation!