Archive for the ‘General’ Category

The FBI’s Bitcoin address

Saturday, November 2nd, 2013

The capture of ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ has significant implications for the future of the Bitcoin industry.

Earlier this month, the FBI announced the capture in San Francisco, of a young individual by the name of Ross Ulbricht. Allegedly he is the man behind Silk Road, a black market website only accessible through the Tor anonimising network.

bitcoinSilk Road allowed the trading of all sorts of illegal goods and services, from malicious software to hard drugs, through a user-friendly, Amazon-like interface. Its founder was known by the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts“, also known as DPR, and had become a sort of online ideological celebrity for radical libertarians.

Silk Road relied on the booming Bitcoin currency to enable hard-to-trace payments between buyers and sellers. Rapidly gaining global reach, Silk Road was a profitable endeavour, and DPR amassed a multi-million dollar fortune in Bitcoins. As it was to be expected, law enforcement agencies were on the hunt to shut down Silk Road and to capture its notorious founder, who in the meantime, had started giving interviews to the media.

The first chapter of Silk Road’s downfall, which began with the news of Ulbricht’s capture, reached its end on October 25. On that day, a long series of transactions, each for 324 Bitcoins and totalling over 144,000 Bitcoins was recorded in the Bitcoin public ledger. Later that day, the FBI revealed that the transactions where made by them in order to transfer the funds from DPR’s Bitcoin wallet to another one under their control. The way in which the funds were transferred, in chunks of 324 Bitcoins, conveyed in itself a message: That the FBI had indeed gained control of at least one of the main Silk Road wallets. When typed into a phone’s numeric pad, the number 324 spells “FBI”.

The Federal Bitcoin Reserve?

In Bitcoin, all transactions are public and it is easy to verify any movement via a web browser. The catch is that while Bitcoin addresses are public, the system provides no information about who owns any given address. A user can nonetheless choose to make public his or hers Bitcoin address, which is what the FBI did. The FBI’s Bitcoin address is 1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH, and its balance and transactions can be monitored by anyone in real time simply by pasting it to Google and clicking on the first result.

– More:  

 

Pentagon weapons-maker finds method for cheap, clean water

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

– A-hem.  Yes, it will be very nice if this is true.  And I’d like to believe it is.  But….

– Well, you knew there was going to be a ‘but‘ didn’t you?

– On one hand, the conspiracy theorists (who generally are a bit light on their science education chops) are always telling us how it’s possible to run cars on water or to pull energy straight out of the air and that they know for a fact that a fellow named Bubba in Alabama or Colorado has got it all working in his garage and has showed hundreds of people … but that the government is doing its best to shut him down.  But Bubba’ll sell you a kit quietly for $39 in the mail if you’d like to get in on it all early before the rush.

– But there’s the other side of this phenomenon as well.  And that’s when we see these exciting new discovery announcements like the one I’m blogging about now in relatively reputable publications.

<cynic>

– Do I sound cynical?  

– Well, for me cynicism began all the way back in the early 80’s when I read an article in OMNI magazine that a Dr. Bussard down near San Diego in La Jolla had made a breakthrough in the theoretical physics of nuclear fusion.  Even then, we all knew that if fusion could be made real, it would be a world shaker.   This fellow had, apparently, started a small company, International Nuclear Energy Systems,  in preparation for taking all of this ‘live’.

– I took a day off from work and drove my motorcycle down from Long Beach (100km or so) to find these people.  I was going to beg and cajole my way into working with them – for free, if I had to.  

– I had an address for their company in an industrial park.  But Dr. Bussard wasn’t there when I called so I talked with a receptionist and looked at some flashy pamphlets.  After she said, ‘no’, the boss wasn’t in, I told her how far I’d come, she took pity on me and gave me a home address and told me I might try there.  So, I rode off again and eventually I found a very upscale looking house near the sea also in La Jolla, I think.  

– I knocked on the door and a young woman in her early 20’s answered.  ‘No’, her father, Dr. Bussard, wasn’t home.   I asked if she knew much about his work and told her how impressed I was with what I’d read and why I wanted to meet him.  ‘No’, she knew it was a big deal but she didn’t know a lot about it.

Truthfully, I think she found me of more interest than the fusion stuff and she asked me in to visit which rather amazed me.  But, I digress.

– I left my contact data and as much of my enthusiasm as I though I could convey through her and I departed back to Long Beach no wiser than I’d come.

– Well, nothing ever happened from any of this.  The world was not shaken by a new fusion technology and, other than that magazine article, I never heard of any of these folks again until I stopped this evening to do a bit of long-after-the-fact research.  

– You can read about some of what I found here and here. 

The fellow’s name was Robert Bussard and he was, in fact, quite a famous scientist and he was the inventor of the Bussard Ram Jet.  But his fusion ideas were, apparently not to be.

– Then, we can all remember the fiasco over cold fusion, yes?  

– And then, as well, a few months ago, I read that a new way of storing energy had been discovered and it was going to revolutionize the world.  Because now we could gather up sunlight power all day, store it and then release it at night.   All they needed was a few months to perfect the process.

– And look!  Here’s another.   In this one, we’re going to store the energy in a certain semi-magical molecule.  We’ll be able to just carry this chemical around quite safely and then, when we need the energy back, it’ll just ‘pop’ out in the form of heat.   Is that cool or what?  Yeah, right.   Just a few months or years away.

</cynic>

– So now, in this article, we have a new way to make cheap, clean water?   Well, maybe.  I mean I am hopeful but so many of these breakthroughs seem to, in the end, go pfffff to nowhere.

– I had a female friend years ago that loved to give me a bad time about things in general,  And she just loved to say to me that, “I was always patting the bed and telling folks how good it was going to be but that nothing ever happened.”   And then she’d laugh and laugh (smile).   Somehow, that anecdote seems appropriate.

– Anyway, please enjoy the article.  

– I’m going to go off now and see if they’ve found pieces of the Ark on top of Mount Ararat (again).  It’s an exciting quest.   You can follow along here:  ,   or  

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* Filter could sharply cut energy needed to remove salt from water

* Officials say firm has patented process, looking for partners

* Cheaper seawater purification could help ease water security fears

A defense contractor better known for building jet fighters and lethal missiles says it has found a way to slash the amount of energy needed to remove salt from seawater, potentially making it vastly cheaper to produce clean water at a time when scarcity has become a global security issue.

The process, officials and engineers at Lockheed Martin Corp say, would enable filter manufacturers to produce thin carbon membranes with regular holes about a nanometer in size that are large enough to allow water to pass through but small enough to block the molecules of salt in seawater. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

Because the sheets of pure carbon known as graphene are so thin – just one atom in thickness – it takes much less energy to push the seawater through the filter with the force required to separate the salt from the water, they said.

The development could spare underdeveloped countries from having to build exotic, expensive pumping stations needed in plants that use a desalination process called reverse osmosis.

“It’s 500 times thinner than the best filter on the market today and a thousand times stronger,” said John Stetson, the engineer who has been working on the idea. “The energy that’s required and the pressure that’s required to filter salt is approximately 100 times less.”

– More…  

– Research thanks to Tony H.

 

Happy Holidays

Sunday, December 23rd, 2012

I’d like to wish everyone happy holidays.

Remember, give what you want to get and be a light unto yourself.   You are the only person, really, whose thoughts, intentions and behaviors you can control.   Be an artist – create something beautiful.

And remember also to do your best at every moment – and then let it go,  Because, if you do your best, then you cannot possibly be responsible for the outcome; whatever it is.   Buy yourself this freedom.

– dennis

 

Two excellent movies in two days

Monday, September 10th, 2012

Last night, I watched “The Hunter“.  A film that takes place in Tasmania about 2001.

Tonight it was “The Tracker“, which takes place in New Zealand just after the Boer War.

Both excellent and recommended.

U.S. Pharmacy Prices

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

I had a Prostatectomy in August of 2009.   One of the consequences of that operation is a tendency towards impotence since the nerves that control erections are seriously disturbed by the process of removing the Prostate Gland.  

If you are marginally impotent, as I was, following the surgery, Erectile Disfunction drugs like Cialis are indicated.   And they are, in fact a great help.

But the prices of Cialis is astronomical.   

I’ve tried ordering the cheaper generic stuff from India but, in truth, I have no confidence in it nor to I think it works.

So, that left me with ordering it in New Zealand or in the U.S.   New Zealand doesn’t subsidize Cialis as part of their medical system so they are simply charging U.S. prices with a shipment markup added.

In the USA, for 45 – 20mg pills, the cost is $1100+ USD.   Ouch!   I paid that last year when I was here and this time, I thought I’d have to do the same.

But, I had a trip up to Canada scheduled to visit a good friend of mine and, in the course of things, I found myself with most of a day to kill here while my friend was at work one day.

I decided to see if I could do better price-wise on Cialis here.

The bottom line is, “yes”, I could do better.   I paid only 60% of the US price here and got the ‘real deal’ Cialis from the genuine U.S. pharmaceutical firm that makes it.

If you need this stuff and live anywhere near the Canadian border, this is worth knowing about.

Get a U.S. prescription (original copy) and bring it to a Canadian walk-in clinic.   Pay the $60 CDN (your price may vary) to see a doctor and ask him to rewrite the prescription as a Canadian prescription.   Then carry that to a Canadian pharmacy and you’ve saved yourself 40% off the U.S. prices.

Why are U.S. prices so high?  Such an obvious question and none of our elected representatives (elected to supposedly represent our interests) can tell you.  Maybe it is all those Big Pharma donations that helped get them elected?

Dennis

Quote of the Day

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

“A time will come when a politician who has wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men’s lives should not stake their own”   – H.G. Wells

Scrap heap may be last stop for secret slice of Navy history

Monday, April 30th, 2012

– An interesting bit of U.S. Naval history.  It’s hard to imagine all the secret projects that are carried out that we’ll never hear anything about.   Here’s one which the curtains, finally, have been taken down on so we can see what was done.  

– I’m not much for military stuff but I admit I found this fascinating and spent a long time poring through the interior shots of this one-of-a-kind ship.

– Dennis

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A secret chapter in American naval research could soon reach an ignoble close when a rusty barge and its once-classified contents leaveSuisun Bay for the scrap heap.

Slipping through the sea like a black mirage on catamaran legs, the 164-foot Sea Shadow looks like something Darth Vader might fly. It is the world’s only ship built to be invisible, assembled secretly in Redwood City in 1985 by the U.S. Navy and contractor Lockheed Martin at an estimated cost of $50 million.

Sea Shadow’s purpose was to test radar-cloaking technology and other naval engineering innovations. Many of its breakthroughs can be seen in present-day Navy warships.

Even at nearly 30 years old, Sea Shadowremains the most radical ship afloat.

– More…

– Direct to the photos…

 

Why the world is running out of helium

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

– I’ve been following this for years since one of my long-term hobbies has been a deep interest in The Elements of the Periodic Table.    

– The situation with Helium just screams ‘investment opportunity’ to me.   I just wish I has some cash to do something about it.

– Dennis

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A US law means supplies of the gas – a vital component of MRI scanners – are vanishing fast

It is the second-lightest element in the Universe, has the lowest boiling-point of any gas and is commonly used through the world to inflate party balloons. But helium is also a non-renewable resource and the world’s reserves of the precious gas are about to run out, a shortage that is likely to have far-reaching repercussions.

Scientists have warned that the world’s most commonly used inert gas is being depleted at an astonishing rate because of a law passed in the United States in 1996 which has effectively made helium too cheap to recycle.

The law stipulates that the US National Helium Reserve, which is kept in a disused underground gas field near Amarillo, Texas – by far the biggest store of helium in the world – must all be sold off by 2015, irrespective of the market price.

The experts warn that the world could run out of helium within 25 to 30 years, potentially spelling disaster for hospitals, whose MRI scanners are cooled by the gas in liquid form, and anti-terrorist authorities who rely on helium for their radiation monitors, as well as the millions of children who love to watch their helium-filled balloons float into the sky.

– More…

– And, see this:  

 

 

Why some of us are leaving the U.S.A.

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

– These comments were part of a larger discussion in which some of us were discussing why we’d immigrated from the US to New Zealand.   Some felt ‘pulled’ by New Zealand’s attractions while other felt more that events in the U.S. were ‘pushing’ them to find another place to live.  

– Chanah’s comments here clearly show that she and her family felt they were in the ‘pushed’ camp.

– Dennis

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“We came back in 2004. We did NOT come because we fell in love with New Zealand-we came because we wanted to get the Hell out of the United States while we still could (before we hit the age of 40). We came because they were charging us over $500 per month for Blue Cross health insurance that only covered 80% of the doctor THEY chose after we paid $500 deductable. Pretty crappy health care for a Registered Nurse. We came because a root canal ran me nearly $2000 and there was no dental coverage available. We came because we had to pay nearly $300 for a bottle of eye drops for my husbands glaucoma (that now costs us $3 BTW)-we came because we needed a credit card just to afford basic medications and co-pays. We came because I was tired of having to pay “malpractice cover” in order to keep my job. We came because after 911 my Civil Engineer of a husband had nearly $300 per month deducated from his pay for insurance in the event that a terrorist blew up a bridge that he happened to have signed off on. We came because the families of those killed on 911 are now suing those who happen to still be alive that built the World Trade Centers and while personal people have donated money the US governement has done little to nothing to support the families of those lost. We came because my nephew was forced to join the US Army in order to afford College/University and now that his term is up the Army is making him stay on additonal tours of duty against his will. We came because young people in high schools feel forced to go to college whether they want to or not in order to “get a job”. There is little to no respect for the hardworking plumbers, carpenters, labours who find it very difficult to make a decent living to raise a family on. We came because we felt the only way to be safe from the “Mad Cow Disease” that was being covered up was for us to becme vegetarian. Most important, we came because New Zealand offered us Permanent Residency and Australia only offered work visas. The first few years I was miserable. We had to live on savings and minimum wage jobs (we did not have jobs when we came). Am I happy? Actually I think I have come around to the point that I am a lot happier here then I would be in Australia. We’ve had a child (FREE-BTW) and  I KNOW I’m happier raising Rachel here then in America. About the government-the earthquake and its aftermath has given me a whole new respect for the New Zealand government. They are not “unreachable” or “untouchable”  like in the USA. If the Kiwis don’t like something that is going on they WILL hold their officials accountable. And, if that does not work they WILL vote them out of office-and the officials here know it. There are time AND financial limits on elections…all of this primary and sub-primary crap simply does not go on here. When I went to vote I was given an orange  marker to check the box of who I wanted. I forgot my ID so I simply gave my address and phone number and was permitted to vote. I then placed my ballot into a cardboard box….no hanging chads or “rigged” machines here in New Zealand.  What would make my life perfect? For my family to financially reach a point that we can travel to the States yearly-see family & experience the toursit sites. Each trip to the USA is “fun” but it leaves me happier then ever to return to New Zealand…I view the USA a bit like an amusement park-love to go eat, shop and see friends but when the day is over I’m happy to return “home” to some normality and stability.”

– Chanah Luppens – Christchurch, New Zealand

 

Wave Glider aquatic robots set world record

Sunday, March 18th, 2012

Prediction time.  Drug runners and others are going to begin to use these for smuggling.   A small bit of extra technology can make these units able to receive instructions via satellite Internet.  They can be programmed to put their antennas up at night and down in the daytime and with the right coloration and low profile, they will be able to travel unseen from virtually any coast in the world to any other coast.

– Given the huge profit margins involved in smuggling, if they loose a few along the way, it’ll just be the cost of doing business.

– In fact, a secondary industry might spring up among people who want to find them before they deliver their goods to the smugglers.

– Dennis

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A group of four autonomous underwater vehicles have just set a world distance record, by traveling from San Francisco to Hawaii

On November 17th of last year, a group of four wave-powered autonomous aquatic robots set out from San Francisco, embarking on a planned 37,000-mile (60,000-km) trip across the Pacific ocean. Recently, the fleet of Wave Gliders completed the first leg of their journey, arriving at Hawaii’s Big Island after traveling over 3,200 nautical miles (5,926 km). By doing so, they have set a new distance record for unmanned wave-powered vehicles – that record previously sat at 2,500 nautical miles (4,630 km).

The Wave Gliders are made by California- and Hawaii-based Liquid Robotics, and each consist of a floating “boat” tethered to an underwater winged platform. The motion of the waves causes these wings to paddle the boat forward, while solar cells on the deck of the boat provide power to its sensors and transmitters. These sensors measure oceanographic data such as salinity, water temperature, wave characteristics, weather conditions, water fluorescence, and dissolved oxygen. GPS and a heading sensor also help the craft to orient themselves.

– More…