Search Results for “https:” – Page 697

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 →

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 →

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 →

U.S. and China announce cybersecurity collaboration amid hacking dispute

“China and the US, which are embroiled in a bitter dispute over hacking, have agreed to set up a cybersecurity working group, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday. ‘All of us, every nation, has an interest in protecting its people, protecting its rights, protecting its infrastructure,’ he told reporters on a visit to Beijing. ‘Cybersecurity affects everybody,’ he said. ‘It affects airplanes in the sky, trains on their tracks, it affects the flow of water through dams, it affects transportation networks, power plants, it affects the financial sector, banks, financial transactions. So we are going to work immediately on an accelerated basis on cyber.'” Continue reading →

Obama Signs Law Gutting Insider Trading Regulations For Congress

“President Obama signed a law that gutted the reporting requirements originally included in the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. Before these changes were made the STOCK Act required congressional staffers to disclose their finances to the public to help ensure they were not engaging in corrupt practices. But on second thought, President Obama and Congress decided that congressional staffers should be able to escape transparency. Unanimous consent, no one wanted to put their name down as openly supporting corruption while supporting corruption. And now President Obama has signed the bill guaranteeing a more corrupt Washington.” Continue reading →

France ‘ready to punish’ Syria over chemical weapons strike

“French President Francois Hollande upped the ante, pledging to ‘punish’ the regime over suspected chemical attacks and boost military support for the opposition. Hollande will on Thursday meet the head of Syria’s main opposition group, which has blamed the regime for a suspected gas attack that it says killed more than 1,300 people. The alleged attack has prompted increasingly frantic calls from Western and Arab nations for action against the Syrian regime, which denies any involvement. Sources close to Hollande say one of the options for France would be to deploy the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier off the Syrian coast. Hollande said the Syrian conflict threatened ‘world peace.'” Continue reading →

Obama’s visit to Israel gets an official logo

[February 2013] “Netanyahu won a smaller than expected victory in elections in January. In the run up to the American elections last November, Netanyahu was perceived as favoring Republican nominee Mitt Romney for president. The office of Israeli President Shimon Peres announced Monday that Obama would be presented with the Presidential Medal of Distinction in March, according to the Guardian. It would recognize Obama’s ‘unique and significant contribution to strengthening the State of Israel and the security of its citizens.’ The prime minister’s official Facebook page offers these three choices for logos to represent Obama’s visit.” Continue reading →

Britain has invaded all but 22 countries in the world

“A new study has found that at various times the British have invaded almost 90 per cent of the countries around the globe. The analysis of the histories of the almost 200 countries in the world found only 22 which have never experienced an invasion by the British. Among this select group of nations are far-off destinations such as Guatemala, Tajikistan and the Marshall Islands, as well some slightly closer to home, such as Luxembourg. Stuart Laycock, the author, has worked his way around the globe, through each country alphabetically, researching its history to establish whether, at any point, they have experienced an incursion by Britain.” Continue reading →