"Many people don't understand that school officials aren't necessarily doing what's best for a kid, and that they are likely to bring in law enforcement if they suspect a crime has been committed. And sharing sexually charged images of minors—even consensually, even if the people doing the sharing are themselves minors—is a felony."
"If they're going to be so explicit in their hostility to the anonymity and liberty those means of exchange offer people, we should take them at their word. Let's be clear in response that what they see as problems are the precise features we like about cash and cryptocurrencies. We support our well-worn folding money and bitcoin and its successors to come precisely because they put at least some of our activities beyond the reach of control freaks who want to monitor, tax, and regulate our lives."
"Lauri Love, who has Asperger's syndrome, is accused of involvement in a series of hacks in 2012 and 2013 into computers at agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. army, the Missile Defense Agency and the Federal Reserve. Charged with multiple offences in three U.S. indictments, he had been facing a life prison sentence in the United States if found guilty, a fate which he has said could lead him to taking his own life."
"S.B. 315 would criminalize simply accessing a computer, app, or website contrary to how the service provider tells you, even if you never cause or intend to cause harm. A violation under S.B. 315 would be classified as 'a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature,' punishable by up to $5,000 and 12 months in jail."
"When it comes to repair, farmers have always been self reliant. But the modernization of tractors and other farm equipment over the past few decades has left most farmers in the dust thanks to diagnostic software that large manufacturers hold a monopoly over. In this episode of State of Repair, Motherboard goes to Nebraska to talk to the farmers and mechanics who are fighting large manufacturers like John Deere for the right to access the diagnostic software they need to repair their tractors."
"With the ticker HBLK, the fund has a management fee of 0.65 per cent and seeks to replicate the performance of the Harvest Blockchain Technologies Index; an index designed in-house to track the performance of issuers in both the large-cap blockchain segment and the emerging blockchain segment exposed to the development and implementation of blockchain technologies in North America. At the same time, two other providers are looking to access the ever-growing popular blockchain technology. Both First Trust Portfolios Canada and Evolve Funds Group Inc. have filed preliminary prospectuses with regulators this week for blockchain funds."
"ATM 'jackpotting' — a sophisticated crime in which thieves install malicious software and/or hardware at ATMs that forces the machines to spit out huge volumes of cash on demand — has long been a threat for banks in Europe and Asia, yet these attacks somehow have eluded U.S. ATM operators. But all that changed this week after the U.S. Secret Service quietly began warning financial institutions that jackpotting attacks have now been spotted targeting cash machines here in the United States."
"In what many will see as the latest sign of investor euphoria — and of our society’s oversharing epidemic — sharing your 401(k) balance on social media seems to have become a thing. With the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index hitting record after record since President Trump’s election in November 2016, the question, 'How’s your 401(k) doing?' has become a staple in his speeches at campaign-style rallies and fundraisers. And 401(k) balance shoutouts have become a staple among his supporters — and detractors — on Twitter."
"It’s like someone figured out how to monetize the awful Flash ads everyone used to hate for eating CPU cycles. A true win-win! And now it’s even hitting YouTube. TrendMicro has released an updated report, showing a sharp rise in ads served by Google’s DoubleClick service being infested with mining software. Like other attacks, this one uses a Javascript miner to mine Monero via Coinhive."
"Dozens of entrepreneurs, made newly wealthy by blockchain and cryptocurrencies, are heading en masse to Puerto Rico this winter. They are selling their homes and cars in California and establishing residency on the Caribbean island in hopes of avoiding what they see as onerous state and federal taxes on their growing fortunes, some of which now reach into the billions of dollars. They want to build a crypto utopia, a new city where the money is virtual and the contracts are all public, to show the rest of the world what a crypto future could look like. Blockchain, a digital ledger that forms the basis of virtual currencies, has the potential to reinvent society — and the Puertopians want to prove it."