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Qntra - Herald Of The Most Serene Republic |
Today Timothy Pearson of Raptor Engineering issue a dire lamentation to the Free Software Foundation Europe mailing list asking:
Are you willing to continue to use FOSS software inside the ever-shrinking x86 "software jail", or are you possibly willing to give up some cost or performance advantages in order to retain full control of the software running on your hardware?
David Francois acting as the receiver BitBet has issued his second progress report. Monsieur Francois has certified debts owed for bettor winnings, unresolved bets, zeroconf bets placed on propositions not processed by BitBet moderators, and his fee for undertaking the grim work of parting out BitBet. The current high bid for BitBet assets remains a signed 9 Bitcoin bid by Saint Stanislav. Monsieur Francois is closing the auction for BitBet's non-cash assets at the end of April 6th, 2016 or one hour after the highest bid has been bested by at least 1 Bitcoin, whichever comes later.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the capture of noted mathematician and widely published philosopher of technology Theodore Kaczynski by forces of the United States regime in Washington, DC. Theodore Kaczynski is also widely suspected to have been forcefully drugged and violated as a part of the CIA's MKULTRA program as an undergraduate at Harvard. In a rare feat for any author Kaczynski managed to get a 34 kiloword essay titled Industrial Society and Its Future published in print in the September 19th, 1995 editions of the New York Times and Washington Post in its entirety.1 After a political show trial the regime in Washington DC had locked Kaczynki up at their Florence, Colorado super maximum security prison where he remains a political prisoner.
The full text of Industrial Society and Its Future is reproduced below: Continue reading
This was before the Internet had emboldened both of those publications to adopt their present habit of routinely publishing whatever long for slop they can get their hands on. ↩
This week it was announced that the US National Geospatial-Intelligence agency is moving its western headquarters from the southern portion of Saint Louis, Missouri to an area in the north of the city (archived). Much of the chosen site is vacant land that was once home to failed the Pruitt–Igoe public housing, but in order to fully accommodate the spy facility a number of happily inhabited homes will be taken through eminent domain and demolished. Certain quirks of the neighborhood and their affect on property values mean that affected home owners will be unable to replace their commandeered housing with anything comparable when they are compensated according to their homes "fair market value" as is traditional in eminent domain cases. It turns out the property development tactics of Hussein Bahamas aren't all that different from those of serial scammer and bankruptcy artist Donald Trump-Clinton.
The latest network difficulty adjustment has taken difficulty from 165496835118.22634888 to 166851513282.7771911 for a change of approximately 0.82%. This is a remarkably small change following single digit increases and decreases with an approximately 20% change opening the year.
With the iPhone Circle Jerk drawn to a close the FBI is showing off its newly revealed ability to independently unlock iPhones (archived).
The Stack reports that Cloudflare co-founder Matthew Prince is pressuring Tor Developers and users to adopt some sort of "anonymous" identification scheme (archived). Prince is threatening more captchas and content blocks from Cloudflare if the firm's demands are not met. Cloudflare is a known enemy of internet privacy and generally a force for making the internet shittier. Tor on the other hand often fails to deliver its promised level of privacy and is likely socially and technologically compromised beyond repair. This declaration by Prince when considered alongside a "heated debate" continuing in the comments of a five week old Tor project blog post (archived) lead to this affair having a strong social engineering smell much like the recent iPhone Circle Jerk. Expect this ongoing discussion to lead to Cloudflare and Tor both getting shittier independently and when used in concert.
BitBet Reciever David Francois has issued his first statement of progress in evaluating BitBet's assets and liabilities. As part of determining the value of BitBet's non-cash assets Monsieur Francois has opened bidding in the comment section of his progress report. The current high bid for the domain, software and other non-cash assets of a venture that routinely took and settled betting pools in the range of hundreds and thousands of Bitcoin is 9 Bitcoin.
The United States Supreme Court issued a decision in the case Luis v. United States covered earlier on Qntra upholding the right of United States citizens to access assets frozen pretrial, but only so long as they spend those assets on securing a lawyer of their choosing. This decision one of the first in the post Scalia era, offers only a gentle reminder to agents of the criminal gang occupying the halls of governance in Washington DC that a defendants right to select counsel of their choosing is in the United States constitution while the gang's interest in delivering punishment and securing restitution aren't and for that reason a defendant may access assets. Not because Luis's money is Luis' money, but because the piece of paper allows the money to be spent that way. The decision is presented in full below: Continue reading