As the agricultural sector in the United States crumbles, the Wall Street journal reports that corn imports to the United States from South America are increasing at breakneck pace. This increase in imports is occurring as the movement of domestic corn to market has slowed to a trickle. Contributing to this structural problem is how much cheaper it is to move grain from South America by ocean than it is to move it inside the United States by rail. Rail transport prices remain high even as an increasing number of rail lines are being taken out of service and converted to trails for bicycle and pedestrian use. The continued growth of these intertwining problems is highly suggestive of the possibility that the United States has an actively undeveloping economy, a fact that creates opportunities for the actively developing economies in South America exploiting structurally broken US markets.
Author Archives: Aaron 'BingoBoingo' Rogier
FBI Investigates Soup Can Heist
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the theft of several printed pictures of Campbell's soup cans by 20th century American marketer Andrew Warhola (archived). This theft happened at an art museum in Springfield, the city in remote south western Missouri that isn't Branson. Several media organizations have erroneously misrepresented the printed images of soup cans which have attracted the highest United States "law enforcement" agency as paintings. They are not paintings. They have also misrepresented the late Mr. Warhola as an artist named Warhol when he professionally acted as a marketer and his birth name was Warhola.
3D Printed Objects Are A New Frontier For Enterprising Pirates Thanks To Reverse Engineering From Audio
A new paper published in the journal Science demonstrates that audio recordings taken during 3D printing can be used to reverse engineer the design of the printed objects (archived). The technique demonstrated is limited in that certain settings like printer temperature are not collected in the audio recording, but there are other side channels by which this information may be obtained. This technique even allows reverse engineering designs from low quality smart phone audio recordings. Sorry for your loss.
FBI Director Comey Admits To Taping Over Webcam After Speech
During a question and answer session following a speech at Kenyon College, FBI Director James Comey admitted he taped over his laptop's webcam to avoid being spied upon. Taping over laptop webcams is a popular though weak method for ensuring a computer can not visually spy on your person. The stronger and correct method to mitigate these concerns is physically disconnecting the laptop's web camera and its microphone. Depending on the level of concern about a computers integrity actual mitigations for privacy concerns may be applied all the way through actually airgapping a machine.
Shapeshift.io Hacked
On Reddit Shapeshift.io's Erik Voorhees announced that the cryptocoin exchange had been infiltrated by attackers and its infrastructure compromised. In the announcement Voorhees states that no customer funds were lost because they don't hold any, but it is uncertain if the service had an operating "hot wallet" to take. Given the severity of the breach the service has been taken offline and Voorhees insists that customer funds will be returned and Shapeshift will be rebuilt in a new environment before resuming service.
Furry Perverts Hack Radio Stations To Evangelize Their Filth
A number of radio stations in the United States have had their regular programming interrupted by hackers and instead were made to broadcast the erotic material of a particularly noxious species of pervert (archived). The perverts alternately know as Furries or FurFags have an obsession with fucking and being fucked while wearing animal themed costumes of construction similar to those worn by sports team mascots. The freaks managed to hijack radio station transmitters connected to the internet to spread their filth. The furfag menace draws members from all three genders: female, male, and mayo. Continue reading
BitBet Auction Closes
The auction to sell BitBet's non-cash assets has concluded with Znort987 offering the highest bid at 86 Bitcoin for the assets. The final hours of the auction saw a flurry of bidding activity that drove the final price nearly ten times higher than Saint Stanislav's 9 Bitcoins which was the high bid for much of the duration of the auction. Pete Dushenski was bidding actively before he ceded the contest of economic will to Znort987, and Dushenski further offered a statement on the matter after he surrendered the contest.
BitBet reciever David Francois stated to Qntra that he thinks the auction went pretty well. In his announcement of Znort987 as the auction winner Monsieur Francois stated that after payment is received he plans to publish settlement details within a few days and push the signed settlement payment to the Bitcoin network after the details have been available for public review.
Open Sourced Vulnerability Database Closes, Cites More People Taking Their Free Goods Than Giving Them Free Goods
Operators of the Open Source Vulnerability Database announced they are closing up shop. The OSVDB was a project that freely offered information about various software vulnerabilities to all comers. Stating their current intentions to close the operators of the OSVDB complained that too much taking of their freely given information was happening. Apparently when they were collecting and giving away information freely to anyone they actually meant to do something other than actually give it away for free.
MPEx Goes Private
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Your dividend payment for S.MPOE in total sum of 25000000000000 to a notional float of 500000000 has been issued on April 5, 2016, 5:02 pm. Feel free to publish this receipt to your shareholders. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJXA++0AAoJEO4r3vYC3S2RQ8MP/115y35IzuWy+2ziVJIdQ9Dk tGx1uSF47dXp1kE33yALyu8pQb3n0W6wl9rYixLPa6jO8mZzcYg+dPgB97xy2/2j gtABzXAHVJWvRxDKbt8TCShACzUvh3ASSstZ3UsS7Z3SugIuDirZNWdR/pCcIO2s WZbRwtOk/JGFWOwKC4r5RiSSyfrRjczKU1N7t/XTrM3vn7iQIj+xeydP9eqG/pG+ PhY6UARGaafUWcV3hw0vAEieE9TV/GDLViIQ/f6fG+Yztoeq3UgP2JpVYTFBnFAP yBLMeY5qJX8StpnG0ngI7jpYNE1w3qdRseDnvlHq0kkfZCLiIHwLgVSXJyF4l+FX pVC8YS+sFeLkmwusfSX/bx7jnZK+6R99g0qq0zN84nQlMmSYDaaGXfNgWoAG/Ox7 ZHLjH9+op2GO4HK4JrIHqYZwa8Mz+o8CeI63TeW4vUc1dQ0ZNSnh2m0J+v0CPaJZ NKpEIqir6KLPih0GEtdFF4X/ADmIT9M4EFnLsZb6SbQWmRfxfijDXBpWbJnGd3X5 x22bTnZIwR/TZ+B0G7I5ArU8D++MzGn2Dm05hWWIzJ0Dz0sv5j2HLBYNj4KJrTJB M2Lx0bYrqzYISHk5vXhAYKAbL2gOyG1dkAGRif9lB3UFsuCCojNAvVi/b1oBeNW3 uel/mxagXLsEUuStYPs7 =KJvW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Today Mircea Popescu published MPEx's last statement as a public company and bought back publicly traded shares for the sum of 50,000 satoshis each. In the statement Mircea Popescu made it clear MPEx will continue to operate, list worthy companies, and generally remain committed to Bitcoin's success. Addressing fears that a regulatory intervention may have spurred the transition Popescu offered:
To assuage any possible concern : neither MPEx nor myself personally are currently embroiled in any sort of legal dispute with any sort of soi-dissant "regulator" in any jurisdiction. The notion that some fiat pretend-sovereign or other has anything to do with this measure is significantly less sensible than the notion that 17 Bitcoin and change is what caused the closure of Bitbet, as ridiculous as that notion may be. I have yet to meet the fiat government that's worth 17 Bitcoin and change.
The full statement is available on Trilema.
DoctorClu Pleads Out Leaving CMU Tor Attack Unlikely To Be Contested In Court
DoctorClu, slave name Brian Farrell, had his guilty plea for a single count for distribution of heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine formally accepted by a Federal Judge. By entering a guilty plea Farrell will be unable to send complaints about his prosecution through appellate courts keeping them from weighing in on the constitutionality of the collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University and the FBI to overtly wreck the Tor Network. This supports the view commonly expressed on forums discussing darknet markets that DoctorClu is a coward. Meanwhile unchecked "law enforcement" agents in the United States are reflexively gunning down black males who merely take the fight against breast cancer seriously by carrying pink rifles to support the cause. DoctorClu is scheduled to be sentenced on June 3rd, 2016. His attorneys and the prosecution have already agreed to argue together the merits of an 8 year prison sentence and asset forfeiture for their client before the judge.