Yearly Archives: 2013

Chi Raq

"The first in a series of exclusive commissions for Protein TV, Chi Raq is an intimate video portrait of life in South and West Chicago. For the past decade, Chicago has been enduring a violence epidemic, with a death toll in the thousands and casualties mirroring the losses experienced by the US army in Iraq war over the same period. Allowing its subjects to take centre stage and tell their stories in their own words, Robson-Scottʼs film is unflinchingly honest in its depiction of life on the streets of one of the most dangerous cities in America." Continue reading →

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2.7 Million Children Under the Age of 18 Have a Parent in Prison or Jail

"Most prisoners are parents of children under 18 years of age. Two-thirds of incarcerated parents are nonviolent offenders, often locked up on minor drug-related charges. They make up the majority of parents in prison, and they and their children are the ones criminal justice reform will most affect. One in 28 kids in the United States (as of 2010) has a mother or father, or both, in lockup – a dramatic change from the one in 125 rate a quarter of a century ago. One in nine black children have an imprisoned parent, four times as many 25 years ago. 14,000 or more children of the imprisoned annually enter foster care, while an undetermined number enter juvenile detention and adult prisons." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin Gains Credit Union Cred

"A New Jersey credit union has agreed to accept accounts transferred from a trading exchange that handles Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. The move, apparently aimed at attracting business from investors and financial institutions that trade in the alternative forms of tender, could provide them with a much needed level of legitimacy. Staff reporters discuss." Continue reading →

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The Rush to Bitcoin ASICs: Ravi Iyengar launches CoinTerra

"Coming into the ASIC market is CoinTerra, headed up by Ravi Iyengar, former CPU Lead Architect at Samsung’s Austin Research Center (SARC). Ravi’s focus at SARC was on the CPU Mid-Core, including integer execution and special purpose registers (good for Bitcoin). His history also includes helping design chips for the SGS4, as well as stints at Intel, Qualcomm and NVIDIA. At CoinTerra he is joined by Jim O’Connor, VP of Engineering with a history of SOC design and Dr. Naveed Sherwani, CEO of Open Silicon. CoinTerra has raised $1.5 million from investors to fund development costs and an initial production run. CoinTerra’s CEO was happy to speak to us and answer a few questions." Continue reading →

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Edward Snowden legal defense fund raises over 100 BTC so far

"The Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund raises money for Journalistic sources' legal defence. Periodically it will nominate sources it wishes to direct legal and campaign aide to. For its first source it has selected Mr. Edward Snowden whose revelations have exposed the extent to which the world is being mass surveilled by the United States. Mr. Snowden is currently in Russia where he has been granted temporary asylum. The United States government is exerting substantial pressure on Russia and other countries in an attempt to force Mr. Snowden to the United States where he will face decades in prison or worse." Continue reading →

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Chip veterans form new startup, will sell high-end Bitcoin miner for $14,000

"On Tuesday, a new Bitcoin startup called CoinTerra announced that it raised $1.5 million in venture capital. This likely puts the company in a position to dominate the Bitcoin hardware market—assuming it can come through on its promises. Earlier this month, CoinTerra revealed the TerraMiner IV, a two terahash per second ASIC Bitcoin miner that will sell for $13,999 and is set to ship in December 2013. (An ASIC is a specialized computer designed to one specific task, in this case the goal is mining bitcoins.) By contrast, the one that Ars tested earlier this year was a five gigahash per second device made by Butterfly Labs." Continue reading →

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10 Futuristic or out of the ordinary projects that accept Bitcoin

"Financing novelty projects can be a challenge when it comes to gather supporters, but Bitcoin might be a great help. In these cases, when the projects sound too outrageous for conventional financial investment, cryptocurrency steps in to change the game. Take a look at these 10 examples." Continue reading →

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Hayek to Satoshi and Beyond

"In Denationalisation, Hayek wrote that if anything resembling his vision were to come about, it would probably happen in a way he had no chance of accurately predicting-and on that count, he was definitely right. We, however, may be in similar position to the one he occupied some thirty seven years ago. If Bitcoin succeeds, it will completely alter the way human beings relate to the creation and management of money; the future that’s set to unfold over the next three and half decades is probably even more opaque to us than our present day was to F.A. Hayek." Continue reading →

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What Are Bitcoins: The How, Why and Why Not

"There is a large and growing list of internet based companies that do business in bitcoins. Earlier this year, bitcoin payment processor BitPay partnered with gift card company Gyft, which now accepts bitcoins for its mobile gift card products. So now, buy using these gift cards, you can use your bitcoins at large number of big companies that include names like Burger King and Nike. Interestingly, areas in Germany have many merchants that do business in bitcoins. Germany has now declared this virtual money as official 'unit of account.' Adding a bit more credibility to this virtual currency, the Winklevoss twins, of Facebook fame, are working on launching an ETF that will track the value of bitcoins." Continue reading →

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Sure, You Can Steal Bitcoins. But Good Luck Laundering Them

"Bitcoin is a bit of a paradox. It can be used nearly anonymously: any two people can easily set up brand new Bitcoin wallets, meet in a park, and exchange cash for Bitcoin. But at the same time, Bitcoin trades are public: all transactions are shared in a publicly available file called the Blockchain that’s posted to the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network. That public ledger makes it pretty tough for big-time criminals to launder money through the network. At least that’s what researchers at the University of California and George Mason University found when they studied the Bitcoin network by developing sophisticated tools to track how money was moving around it." Continue reading →

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