"PayPal has cut off VPN provider iPredator, an anonymity service launched by Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde. The popular VPN provider is no longer allowed to accept payments and PayPal has frozen all funds for up to 180 days. PayPal didn’t provide any details as to why iPredator was banned, but the action comes after their credit card processor stopped doing business with all VPN services." Continue reading →
"Hello [name removed], We have reviewed your PayPal account and found that you are selling bitcoin mining machines. Per our current Acceptable Use Policy for Money Service Businesses, PayPal may not be used to operate a currency exchange, bureau de change or check cashing business including the sale of bitcoins, bitcoin mining units, and other related bitcoin products. To continue using your PayPal account, we need some additional information from you. Keep in mind that we have placed a limitation on your PayPal account, and this limitation will remain until we receive and review this information." Continue reading →
"Now, it looks like Let's Play videos are one more piece of content that's being caught up in YouTube's Content ID system. It's an automated copyright-enforcement system that's been glitchy from the start and often criticized for taking down legitimate content. Remixes of cultural icons have been taken down with no good explanation, as well as NASA content that should be in the public domain. Political satire didn't stand a chance either. Until October, there wasn't even a meaningful appeal system for owners of wrongly removed videos." Continue reading →
"Revelations about the US government’s vast data collection programs have already started hurting American technology firms, according to an industry survey released this week. The Cloud Security Alliance said 10 percent of its non-US members have cancelled a contract with a US-based cloud provider, and 56 percent said they were less likely to use an American company. In the survey, 36 percent of US firms polled said the revelations would make it more difficult for their company to do business outside the United States, while 64 percent said it would not." Continue reading →
"Since the beginning of this year, China has played an increasingly important role in the digital currency universe. After state-run CCTV ran a documentary about bitcoin in May, Chinese adoption grew dramatically. At the time it was unknown whether the interest spike would be a mere blip in bitcoin’s history or a trend that would continue into the future. Since beginning the year at just over one percent of total bitcoin trading volume, CNY trading has recently ballooned to 10% of the total market, claiming the title of second largest bitcoin trading volume for 13 out of 23 days so far in July." Continue reading →
"Most devices send 'probe requests' akin to a town crier shouting out the names of networks which the device has previously connected to, so that a nearby base-station that matches any of these requests can respond. Place several Wi-Fi base-stations in a shop, then, and you can pick up these probe requests, extract the device IDs, trilaterate the positions of the devices sending them, and thus track the movements of individual shoppers, seeing which racks or displays they stop at, and what paths they follow through the store. This is arguably just the latest development in the well-established field of 'retail science'. This was once done using video cameras." Continue reading →
"A United Nations group that advises nations on cybersecurity plans to send out an alert about significant vulnerabilities in mobile phone technology that could potentially enable hackers to remotely attack at least half a billion phones. The bug, discovered by German firm, allows hackers to remotely gain control of and also clone certain mobile SIM cards. Hackers could use compromised SIMs to commit financial crimes or engage in electronic espionage, according to Berlin’s Security Research Labs, which will describe the vulnerabilities at the Black Hat hacking conference that opens in Las Vegas on July 31." Continue reading →
"'Thanks to a generous person who will remain anonymous for the time being, we have been given a building that we hope to convert into a 'Bitcoin Embassy'. With three floors to do with as we please, we hope to organize the space to make it easy and fun for people from all over the province to come and learn about Bitcoin, as well provide an office space for Bitcoiners to come do in order to start Bitcoin related projects, so they can work closely with other Bitcoin entrepreneurs, to develop exciting projects that will utilize Bitcoin in new ways!', says the announcement." Continue reading →
"Driving is perhaps the prime time when your hands and eyes aren’t free, so with voice commands, the app will also be able to open the sunroof or change the temperature or do any number of other actions. So even though Glass Tesla is nestled in a niche that fewer than 50 people are likely to use, it’s on the cusp of something big. But Google Glass is too much of a departure from the present mobile computing paradigm to be covered under current safe-driving laws. It’s entirely possible that a decision could be made to ban Glass from moving vehicles, like it’s been banned in certain static locations. Such is the risk of the bleeding edge." Continue reading →
"The U.S. and Russian navies have long used nuclear-powered submarines, aircraft carriers, and icebreakers. But a new kind of nuclear power is coming. Russia's Akademik Lomonosov, currently under construction, will be a floating power plant with two 35-megawatt generators designed to supply power to hard-to-reach Arctic communities straight from the ship. After years of delay, the Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation says it plans to build this first ship by 2016 and to ramp up to four to six in the near future to power up remote cities and industrial areas cut off from the regular power grid." Continue reading →