Pascal Reid who was charged for his involvement in trading Bitcoin on an individual basis in the state of Florida has announced his intention to accept a guilty plead which compels him to train "Law Enforcement" on Bitcoin related topics. He is further compelled as well to consult with Miami area police and the United States Secret Service on cases involving Bitcoin as they see fit. Reid's efforts to have charges dismissed back in November were denied by Judge Katherine Fernandez Rundle. In addition to working on the behalf of local and federal "Law Enforcement" agencies the plea agreement includes a sentence of 90 days in jail with credit for time served, and the agreement is further conditional on Reid reimbursing Florida $500 for their expenses in prosecuting him. The explicit public disclosure that the plea bargainer must turn stoolie is uncommon, but it highlights that the cost of signing the papers and avoiding trial is your own title to yourself. It is a tremendous credit to the local officers of the court that the explicit nature of this was made available to the public in this rare occasion. All parties involved in Bitcoin are advised against knowingly dealing with Pascal Reid, or any other party know to have entered a guilty plea, either in business or mere conversation for the entirety of the future. The full text of the draft plea agreement is below: Continue reading
Category Archives: News
War on Engineering: Teen Arrested for Building Clock
Police in Irving, Texas arrested a teenager on Monday for bringing a a clock he produced on his personal time to school to show off to his Engineering instructors. Up until today local authorities were intending to pursue "hoax bomb" charges against the teenager, Ahmed Mohamed in spite of his constant assertions that the device he created was nothing more than a clock. Ahmed was involved in robotics club in Middle School and wanted to make a project at home he could use to demonstrate his engineering prowess for his new High School teachers. Ahmed's teachers upon hearing the clock beep pulled him out of class and alerted police who arrested him and drew up initial charges (archived). School principal Dan Cummings summarily suspended Ahmed from school grounds for three days. Continue reading
Twitter Continues Flirtation With Politicians
After gifting politicians with an embargo against following their retractions, Twitter yesterday announced a further gift for politicians which begins with those running for office in the United States. In a blog post today (archived) that could not be contained within their otherwise customary 140 character limit, Twitter announced they would be unveiling "cash tags" facilitating donations to politicians named in a $cashtag through an arrangement with Jack Dorsey's social payments startup Square. Continue reading
Cryptome PGP Keys Compromised, Revoked
Today Cryptome and operator John Young announced the compromise and revocation of their PGP keys. Relevant text posted to Cryptome below. Not the user agent string disclosing the use of Symantec's PGP Desktop product for Microsoft Windows. Continue reading
Appeals Court Denies Dotcom Request for Extradition Hearing Delay
Torrent Freak reports that in a decision that according to Kim Dotcom makes "the New Zealand judiciary… a US owned dancing bear" (archived) an Appellate court in New Zealand has denied Dotcom's petition to delay his extradition hearing in order to allow him and his counsel adequate preparation time. It was only on June 3rd of this year that Kim Dotcom finally had a victory in the United State's asset forfeiture case which allowed him the resources to seriously begin preparing a defense against the United States effort to extradite him to a a land which has always been foreign to him. Continue reading
Microsoft Preemptively Downloads Windows 10 On Windows 7 and 8 Boxes
In it's latest abuse of people commonly thought to be its customers, Microsoft is pre-emptively downloading gigabytes of Windows 10 installation files (archived) onto the machines of people who have expressed no interest in transitioning to Microsoft's newest software. This follows Microsoft's recent move to push telemetry, the greatest anti-feature of Windows 10 onto users who are declining the "free" upgrade to Windows 10. According to the Inquirer's report Windows users are complaining about this Microsoft compelled download unknowingly forcing some users on quota enforced broadband to exceed their usage limits and further exhausting some user's storage space. The situation of users still subjecting themselves to Windows has long been tenuous with serious ongoing security concerns, yet Microsoft keeps doubling down with the abuse.
Mark Karpelès Charged With Embezzlement in Latest MtGox Criminal Charge
Via the South China Morning Post (archived) news comes that the latest criminal charge Mark Karpelès faces for his role in the MtGox debacle is that of embezzelment.
Former Reddit CEO Surrenders Legal Fight After Losing Media Outlet
Today Ellen Pao has dropped an appeal of her courtroom loss against one of her former employers, the firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and will have to pay the firm's costs related to the affair (archived). At trial her allegations of discrimination were determined to be unfounded and she was ordered to pay the firm's legal fees. Even though she had advanced her career at the firm to the point she was elevated to partner at the firm, she still alleged that systemic gender discrimination had limited her potential to advance her career. Pao was determined to appeal the ruling during her short tenure as CEO of the social media outlet Reddit where she advanced a censorship agenda which involved shuttering communities that celebrate healthy lifestyle choices and suppression of accurate legal analysis of her case. Near the end of her reign there was further a large rebellion of unpaid moderation staff as she cut a number of resources once available to support them. Pao's post Kleiner legacy as a business leader raises serious questions about the managerial competence at any firm that would elevate Ellen Pao to partner.
Coinwallet Turns Stress Test Into Dust Givaway
Spam generator Coinwallet has taken a different avenue to carry out its latest network "stress test" by presenting its latest round as a "giveaway" where they are posting private keys owning numerous dust outputs on the Bitcointalk forum. According to their announcement they intend to distribute roughly 200 Bitcoin in this manner. Attempts to claim these outputs may explain the recent increase in the number of weird non-standard transactions hitting certain Bitcoin nodes. Previously suggested countermeasures for surviving a transaction flood including demands for a higher base transaction fee per kilobyte of transaction data should still work to help keep nodes running happily throughout this event.
MIT Sacrifices Rag in XTCoin Push
Since the original XTCoin fork of Bitcoin was announced MIT's Technology Review has been the solitary media outlet of note lending its complete and unreserved support to XTCoin's social media propaganda war. MIT's rag has effectively sacrificed whatever reputation it may have still had as it attempts to force a narrative that frames Gavin Andressen and Mike Hearn's efforts as an attempt to somehow save Bitcoin. The once storied Massachusetts Insitute of Technology, which has taken money from the United States Military to research Bitcoin prices and rescued Gavin Andressen from poverty when the Vessenes' Foundation collapsed is now set on burning the last of its credibility in an attack on Bitcoin.