Substantial noise is being made this weekend over a game of Naval footsie between US and Chinese warships in the South China Sea (archived). The cause for the drama is the fact that US warships can no longer navigate the South China Sea on the strength of the US Navy's armament, in this young century their presence in the South China Sea has been reduced to a courtesy extended to the US ships by Chinese Armed Forces.
Author Archives: Aaron 'BingoBoingo' Rogier
Forkcoin "Bitcoin Gold" Hit By 51% Attack
The worthless Forkcoin known as "Bitcoin Gold" is even more worthless having been hit by double spending and 51% attacks demonstrating that its deviant blockchain lacks sufficient interest and value to attract sufficient mining activity. Much like the Roger Ver-ified "Bitcoin Cash" Forkcoin, "Bitcoin Gold" was split from the Bitcoin Blockchain via hardfork by a marginal crew with odd politics and like "Bitcoin Cash" failed to attract sufficient serious interest to matter.
The hill on which the "Bitcoin Gold" crew chose to die was changing the mining algorithm to a GPU mining friendly memory hard algorithm of recent publication dubbed "equihash" leaving their blockchain's security to the mercy of altcoin miners with GPU farms and no particular loyalty to any of the non-Bitcoin blockchains they mine. The meteorological risk of circumstances aligning to make these attacks the natural, economically rational choice for miners looms over every purported "cryptocurrency" blockchain that fails to attract sufficient value to actually be Bitcoin.
US Embassy Staff Member Suffers Alleged "Sonic Brain Injury" In China
A member of the US embassy staff in China has reported to have suffered a "mild brain injury" after experiencing a abnormal sound. Similar incidents in Cuba lead the US to depopulate its diplomatic mission in that country. That these incidents keep happening in US embassies raises the possibility that various surveillance and electronic warfare equipment maintained by the US empire in its embassies has adverse effects on human health.
Brits Hassle Business Man Over "foreign cash deemed not conducive to public good"
British immigration authorities are demanding businessman Roman Abramovich "prove" the legitimacy of his wealth (archived). Abramovich has numerous business ties to the United Kingdom developed over the years including his personal ownership of the Chelsea football club. For years Abramovich has held a "Tier 1" investors visa, but is latest renewal application is being held up pending a new and invasive AML/KYC demonstration of the money's "legitimacy", in the eyes of the government ruling for the crown.
New CPU Speculative Execution Flaws Just Keep Rolling In
Yet another vulnerability baked into the "speculative execution" optimizations bundled with many contemporary CPUs has been documented (archived). Expect this trend to continue well into the future.
Another Set Of "Undocumented Default Static User Credentials" Spotted In Cisco Gear
In the latest round of Cisco patches, the known USG.NSA collaborators included a patch for "CVE-2018-0222" a intentionally placed yet undocumented administrator account with fixed credentials in Cisco's Digital Network Architecture Center (archived).
German Cartoonist Fired By Paper That Published His Jew Cartoon
German daily newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung ran this rather credible cartoon featuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a sterotypical Jew in drag, following in a long German tradition of caricaturing Jews in drawings. However, uproar alleging anti-semitism over a German newspaper publishing a Jewish caricature lead the newspaper to fire 85 year old cartoonist Dieter Hanitzsch.
The editorial staff that published the cartoon for print distribution however apologized profusely while throwing the elderly cartoonist Dieter under the boxcars.
Dubious Yet Encouraging Report Supposes Bitcoin Mining Achieved Or Set To Promptly Achieve 0.5% of World Energy Consumption
A number of dubious publications this week floated a "research paper" of unclear origin, methadology, and conclusion. The popularly distilled headline they produced from the report is that Bitcoin has either achieved or is set to imminently achieve 0.5% of the world's energy consumption. Naturally pantsuit outlets editorialized this uncertain finding as "a bad thing" though few things are more encouraging.
Woman Killed By Pack Of Small Dogs In US
Reports are emerging out of the US that a woman died after having been attacked by a pack of seven small dogs (archived). Local media identifies the dogs as dachshunds all weighing under 18 kilograms.
Airstrip One To Arm Rural Police As Insecurity Grips The Land Of Ingsoc
Frontline rural police in Britain are likely to be routinely armed in the near future after an effort to recruit "specialist counter terrorist firearms officers" has failed (archived). When rural British police call for armed support, the current British SOP calls for "Armed response vehicles" with 13 "specialist firearms officers" to make their way to the scene.